Amanda Marcotte, feminist blogger and Friend of Man Boobz, has been taking a lot of shit from MRAs – and I mean a LOT of shit – for a comment she made here on the Thomas Ball suicide.
As you may already know, Ball burned himself to death outside a New Hampshire courthouse. In a lengthy manifesto he wrote shortly before killing himself, he portrayed his suicide as a protest against a corrupt family court system, and went on to argue that MRAs should quite literally assemble some Molotov cocktails and “start burning down police stations and courthouses.” (You can read the whole manifesto here.) Despite his calls for violence many MRAs have hailed him as an MRA martyr.
Marcotte, in her comment here, suggested that there might have been other, more personal reasons for his suicide – namely, the desire to hurt his ex-wife:
I’ll point out that setting yourself on fire is an extremely effective tool if your goal is to make your ex-wife’s life a living hell, and if your anger at losing control over her overwhelms all other desires. Which is common enough with abusers, who will ruin their own lives and their own shit and turn their children against them in an effort to hurt the woman they’ve fixated on.
One MR blogger declared this comment “pure feminist evil”; a conservative blogger compared Marcotte to the Beast of Babylon. Still other MRAs resorted to assorted variations on the c-word.
Marcotte has now responded to this, er, “criticism” with an excellent post on Pandagon. As she points out, correctly,
suicide and threats of suicide are common tactics used by abusers to hurt their victims. Abusers dramatically self-destruct all the time in their desperation to control and hurt the objects of their obsession. There was just recently a big story about this, in fact: Jason Valdez of Utah, who had a long criminal record that included domestic violence, held a woman hostage in a hotel room for 16 hours and kept updates about the situation on Facebook. He eventually committed suicide.
The notion that suicide can be a hostile, aggressive act designed to hurt other people is hardly a controversial one, whether the person committing suicide is male or female. Threats of suicide are often used to manipulate other people; suicide itself can be an act of revenge.
Marcotte goes on:
Apparently, I’m supposed to pretend that suicide isn’t a disruptive, selfish act in many cases (especially when the suicide victim commits it in a public and destructive way), and that people who do it, while yes victims of their own mental health problems, are also thinking that they’re going to make everyone pay for not indulging them. In fact, not only is this true in Ball’s case, but he spelled it out in his suicide note. The “make the bastards suffer” theme of his note is the reason that wingnuts are supporting him.
But you don’t have to take her word for it. Read Ball’s entire manifesto, to the end, and ask yourself if this man is an appropriate “martyr” for any political movement.
“It only happened once” is not that great of a counter argument. Also, he did intend to hurt her-no one slaps a person with the intent of not hurting that person, even if it is only a brief sting.
If he had thrown her into the wall instead-would that not be child abuse either?
When does it become abuse to you? When the child is lying in a morgue?
@Pecunium
The frequency of the abuse was not my only criteria. I also mentioned intent, which is important in terms of framing a case like this as abuse. As for hitting being done without the intent to harm, that is not a difficult notion. For example, if you slap a child’s hand when the child reaches for something, it might hurt them, but you probably are not trying to. You are trying to correct their behavior through a rather cowardly method. Likewise, arguing that certain acts do not constitute abuse does mean that one defends abuse, especially if one objects to hitting children in the first place.
That said, how admirable that you left out the word “defensible”. Few people have the courage to admit their arguments make no sense.
No, hitting someone always is with the intent to hurt them-generally not to hurt them a lot.
Toysoldier:
(1)
I asked for quotes that prove that Marcotte “mocks Ball:”
You directed me to these comments, which contain “quotes” at least (a step up from your usual fare, “assertions”), but they don’t prove what you want them to.
Facty parts in bold. You’ve given up on the “sexism and perverse satisfaction” bit, because it makes no sense, but are attempting to hold the line on “bigotry.” Here is what she says:
–> Ball was influenced by right wing propaganda and the online anti-feminist community (this claim occurs twice): This looks correct, as evidenced by Ball’s use of common right wing and anti-feminist tropes in his suicide manifesto, such as:
*The phrase “the system” to refer to the government
*Claims that he is being “bullied for being a man,” not for failure to pay child support,
*Claims that “the people in Washington” have it in for him,
*Claims that the US government “declared war on men”
*Calls for violence: “It is time now to see how committed they are to their cause. It is time, boys, to give them a taste of war.”
*insinuations that women can get away with hitting their children and men cannot
*Feminism is Hitler: “Labeling someone’s action as domestic violence in American in the 21st century is akin to labeling someone a Jew in Germany in the 1930’s.”
*Obsession with the idea that being arrested for domestic violence is unjust and that large numbers of men are being targeted in this way
*Mention of VAWA
* “Some of the boys in the Father’s Movement think Congress might have shot themselves in the foot over this one. Personally, I think they shot themselves some place anatomically higher. No wonder the Speaker of the House is always crying. The Dummies on the Potomac.”
*”And if the Tea Party is any indication, insurrection is brewing in the land. Just a coincident? Not likely. This is what happens when the government wipes out the middle class.” [by which he means, men that have been accused of domestic violence]
*Blames Betty Friedan for the “fact” that 1 in every six adults in this country have been arrested for domestic violence
*Feminism is Stalin: “Feminists had always claimed that when women took over, we would have a kinder, gentler, more nurturing world. After 36 million arrests and 72 million evictions what we got was Joe Stalin.”
*“man-hating-feminists”
And that’s just from the first third of the manifesto!
Calling right wing people ‘right wing” and anti-feminists “anti feminist” isn’t “bigoted.” Saying that Ball may have been influenced by certain points of view isn’t, either.
–> Some have called the “online anti feminist community” the “abuser lobby” This is more of a meta-claim, as she’s talking about something other people have said about the MRA movement/s. Since attempting to argue that this distances Marcotte from the claim would be disingenuous, I’ll address the fact of the claim itself: does the online anti-feminist community lobby on behalf of what, among most people who speak English, is referred to as “abuse” or “abusers”? Yes it does: womens’ shelters and women leaving their abusive partners are commonly decried by MRAs.
–> Ball was a mentally ill person with an obsession. Finally, claims about the man himself. I, for one, would describe someone’s ten-years’-running concern with his ex-wife as an “obsession.” I also think the description of Ball as “mentally ill” is probably accurate. The use of the pet name “The Second Set of Books” for the conspiracy he believes he has uncovered—to arrest domestic violence cases!—and the claim that 25% of the population of the US is homeless because men have been accused of domestic violence don’t make him look, you know, stable. I don’t know for sure, though. But harsh words are not necessarily “bigotry.”
Might I remind you that you yourself say that Ball had something wrong with his mind when you write this:
When it makes Ball look good, he’s got something wrong with him. When it makes Marcotte look bad, then calling him “mentally ill” is bigotry. Classy.
Once again, Marcotte isn’t “trashing” him. She’s laying into the MRA movement Once again you’re equating any criticism of the MRA movement with mockery of the man himself, and therefore “bigotry.” Not going to work, especially since you disavow any connection between Ball and the MRA movement on those occasions when it makes him look bad.
(2)
English, motherfucker: do you speak it? Of course it is: that’s what she’s speculating about. Right or wrong, her speculation is “based on” Ball’s writings.
What do comments on this thread have to do with Marcotte then? And where do you see evidence of “smugness” in Marcotte’s writing on Ball? She lays into MRAs pretty heavily but that’s cause she, you know, hates their point of view.
So…you are now the arbiter of what counts as “throw away lines” now. Good luck with that.
But let’s look at this in context. In addition to “I feel bad that Thomas Ball killed himself,” Marcotte writes things like this:
She’s not “trashing Ball,” she’s regretting his association with the MRAs that might have driven him to do this. The “self-pitying fools” who “rant” aren’t him,, they’re you guys.
These are accurate descriptions of Ball’s positions. They are also positions that many MRAs endorse.
I thought she did, and it was mean because it was bigotry? Which is it?
From Ball’s manifesto:
“The ex-wife lawyer wants me jailed for back child support…I could have made a phone call or two and borrowed the money. But I am done being bullied for being a man.”
“My story starts with the infamous slapping incident of April 2001. While putting my four year old daughter to bed, she began licking my hand. After giving her three verbal warnings I slapped her. She got a cut lip. My wife asked me to leave to calm things down. When I returned hours later, my wife said the police were by and said I could not stay there that night. The next day the police came by my work and arrested me, booked me, and then returned me to work. Later on Peter, the parts manager, asked me if I and the old lady would be able to work this out. I told him no. I could not figure out why she had called the police. And bail condition prevented me from asking her.So I no longer trusted her judgment.”
Looks like he’s mad at his ex-wife to me.
“After six months of ME not lifting a finger to save this marriage, she filed for divorce. .”
He didn’t want to save the marriage. She filed for divorce, now he’s mad. Meanwhile, after he got arrested for domestic violence, after his ex-wife called the police, suddenly everything’s about domestic violence—he believes that one in six adults in the US have been arrested because they were accused of DV, and that as a result, 25% of the US population is homeless.
Where in this article do you see her commenting on men in general and demonstrating “a very negative opinion” of them? The only negative opinion I see is of the men’s rights movement, and she’s allowed to think those people are idiots.
Hey, a snappy comeback! About fucking time your prose got some zip in it. Too bad you’re using “association fallacy” incorrectly: Marcotte would be making an association fallacy, in this case “guilt by association,” if she had attempted to prove, for instance:
“Ball was mentally ill. Ball was an MRA. Therefore, all MRAs are mentally ill.” She’s not.
It’s not a fallacy if she’s trying to prove that MRA views influenced Ball.
(3)
And this shit again:
No it doesn’t. One is a debating tactic (which she’s not doing, but WHATEVER), the other is an emotion. I could misrepresent someone whose death I did not welcome if I wanted to, because they are separate actions. You are conflating them in an attempt to connect Marcotte with nasty, mean wrongthink that makes feeling people feel bad (imagine Dr. House pulling a sad face. Only he’s not sad, he hates you).
“For example, if you slap a child’s hand when the child reaches for something, it might hurt them, but you probably are not trying to.”
We’re talking about a man who slapped a four-year-old child in the face three times and split her lip open. Did he “not intend to hurt her” all three times?
Here’s his manifesto: why don’t more people read it, so we call all see who’s correct?
http://www.sentinelsource.com/news/local/last-statement-sent-to-sentinel-from-self-immolation-victim/article_cd181c8e-983b-11e0-a559-001cc4c03286.html
what.
e_e
ET TU NWOSLAVE
The secret cult books must be for third years, because I have made it through my whole first year of law school without spotting one. Our fifteen pound casebooks and forced memorization of the rule against perpetuities are just for hazing purposes, apparantly.
toysoldier: If (and it’s a big if) we accept the idea that striking a four year old is acceptable; the facts (as admitted by Ball) don’t match your example. This was not a reactive/protective strike; meant to keep a child from doing something risky.
It was several blows. It was for typical four year old behavior (having reared several). There was nothing in his description which allows for the, “exigent circumstances” sort. So your claim to be, “anti-abuse” is coming up hard against your desire to defend Ball against, “the system” and, “the feminists”.
As to what you think I meant when I didn’t say defensible… read it again. I said you were understanably frustrated at being unable to counter the arguments. So far, this still seems to be the case.
Well duh. What did you think it was for, darksidecat? 🙂
Fuck, I learned why lawyers always write shitty deeds and do such a crap job on title. Law school teaches them everything they need to know about 15th century property law, and stops.
All Ball needed was a law librarian, but he found the MRM. Isn’t that always the way?
I like this trend of giving trolls diminutive nicknames more than I should. Bucky Boy! 😀
“All the best athletes were and are men. Shall I go on?”
No love for Serena Williams? Picabo Street? And I don’t even care about sports–I’m sure someone who gave a damn could actually think of more.
@ithiliana Oh, I got that these were interpretations. My reaction was just, “WTF? How on Earth do you even *get* that?”
I missed the best athletes line.
Billy Jean King.
VoiP:
Well of course Toysoldier will read/glance at all that and come back with some well-considered retort like, I know you are, but what am I? He stopped being amusing to me a while ago, what with his thorough reluctance to change his argument once presented with new information. But I’m glad you were here to lay it all out. Well presented argument, VoiP. Very nice.
And, in the realm of non-overlapping magesteria, I’d like to see the male gymnasts try to do Beam, or Uneven Parallel Bars. The women may not be as good as the men (for lack of muscle mass. It’s a conjecture, since they don’t compete) in Rings and Pommel, but men can’t even begin to do those two events.
Male fencers don’t have any actual edge against female either, the separation is one of tradition, not merit. Shooting sports… women are every bit as good. Same for more homegrown things like bowling, and pool.
Thanks. That means a lot to me. It’s good to be here, and I’m glad to be kind of accepted by the community.
@Pecunium B/c I have a feeling somebody’s gonna bring it up neways, and also b/c I want to clarify it neways… Billy Jean King beat an aging Bobby Riggs who was more showman than athlete at the time (and he defeated an unprepared and shaky Margaret Court (top-ranked 30 year old female player) earlier, in the first “Battle of the Sexes”) after first refusing his challenge. She accepted only after he beat Court. It should also be noted that Riggs was playing the heel in the challenge, and was trying to elevate the popularity of tennis by doing the whole thing, and he wasn’t actually trying to prove “male superiority”. Either way, he was beaten in three straight sets by Riggs. :]
It doesn’t prove that female tennis players are superior to male ones, or even ones in their prime are… but what it DID prove at the time (and even now) is that while the top men might be “superior” in certain sports than the top women, it doesn’t mean that all men are greater in sports than all women, which is unfortunately (and amusingly xD ) still a myth that some guys need to desperately hang on (as evidenced by this thread and others xD ) The whole idea at the time was that Riggs, a former men’s number one, despite being in his 50s, could beat any woman simply b/c he was a man and she was a woman. xD That proved to be false xD
(just a little historical perspective and context from the sports bunny :3 )
Honestly tho, it’s pretty obv that Cobra Commander isn’t interested in actually debating about the whole “men are superior to women in EVERYTHINGZ” thing xD He was hoping to rile you up, and I suspect he’ll be back to get “teh last wordz” cuz he was hoping you’d all stop talking about him after the hilariously desperate flounce xD
@ Toysoldier:
You know what, I’ll buy your apparent point that an incident involving a split lip isn’t the same as a lifetime of abuse. Perhaps, indeed, it did only happen once.
Let’s believe that Mr. Ball was telling the truth about the whole thing. He lost his temper with his daughter and hit her several times in the face until she bled. Awful, but no permanent damage done. But I think we can both accept that he did hurt his daughter, even if he didn’t mean to. The human response, when you have hurt someone you love without meaning to, is to apologize and do whatever you can to make it right. The hoops which Ball were told to jump through were not that onerous or unreasonable – I think I saw it cited elsewhere that it was two hours of counseling? Two measly hours? I bet he could have gotten the State to pay for it, too. I haven’t read his manifesto, did he ever mention apologizing to his daughter and/or wife for what happened?
So, yeah, an unfortunate incident, but one in which he showed no remorse. And without showing remorse, how is there any way to indicate that this wouldn’t happen again? You know why it only happened once? Because that was a damn smart mother who acted quickly and decisively to protect her children. It was enough for her that there was a first time, she wasn’t going to let there be a second time. So even saying ‘it only happened once!’ is a bad-faith, facetious argument. Yeah, it only happened once, because there was someone damn sure it would only happen once, and that person wasn’t Thomas Ball.
No. In fact (and they’ve made the page with his manifesto on in subscription-only, dang) he has a passage talking about how “judges are addicted to counseling like meth addict are to meth,” and how if his daughter goes through with the counseling it will take so long that she will have children of her own before the process is completed.
FWIW, the Ball manifesto has been posted on various MR sites, so it shouldn’t be hard to locate.
I’m sure I could find if I really want, but I don’t really want to engage in some asshole’s posthumous need for attention.
@VoiP
You presented a lot of logical fallacies (most notably argumentum verbosium), and rather than wade through them point by point I will focus on the critical matters.
As I noted, Marcotte resorted to an association fallacy by asserting that qualities of one thing (MRA) are inherently qualities of another (Ball) merely by an irrelevant association (similar position on the family courts). She used that fallacy while trashing MRAs — therein trashing Ball via said fallacy — and then used that to attack those supporting Ball.
You engaged the same association fallacy with your list. Coincidentally, Ball’s suicide note suggests he did not support MRAs: “Some of the boys in the Father’s Movement think Congress might have shot themselves in the foot over this one. Personally, I think they shot themselves some place anatomically higher.” On a related note, using terms to mischaracterize one’s opponent is an example of bigotry if one does it out “stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one’s own”, which describes Marcotte’s position on men’s groups.
Regarding Ball, I never stated that he was mentally ill, and neither his troubled state of mind, his extreme views, or his suicide mean he was mentally ill. While he made no effort to save his marriage and may have harbored some anger towards his ex-wife, that does not prove he killed himself to terrorize her or blamed her. He comes across as rather indifferent about his divorce.
@Pecunium
Where did I state that striking a child is acceptable? The example I gave only stated that the parent slapped the child’s hand, so it is analogous to Ball’s case. However, the point was to illustrate that a person strike someone without intending to hurt the other person. As for the other bit, I stated that I find striking a child cowardly and do not condone it. If you chose to ignore those statements and resort to strawmen and ad hominems, it only makes you look foolish.
@Victoria von Syrus
We do not know what occurred between Ball and his daughter over the past ten years, so to assume he never expressed any remorse or never apologized is unwise. Likewise, we do not actually know what occurred and we do not know what preceded or followed the incident, so it is unwise to draw conclusions about Ball, his ex-wife, or their general situation.