I’ve been following the Men’s Rights Movement for some time, and I’ve never been quite sure exactly what the major injustices faced by men are. I haven’t really noticed much to speak of in my own life, but evidently there are some and they are really, really bad.
Luckily, in recent days A Voice for Men has begun to clarify the issue for me. For example, AVfM Radio’s new theme song points out two of the worst injustices of all:
- Men having to hold doors open for ladies.
- Ladies wanting to marry us.
But these are not the only important men’s issues out there. In a recent post titled “A hard rains gonna fall: how hard is up to you” (clearly a reference to the famous song by Carly Simon), AVfM head dude Paul Elam spells out the most important issues of all in a set of bullet points. To save the beleaguered men of the world some important man-time I will summarize them for you here. Bullet-time!
- Thomas Ball’s suicide isn’t mentioned on Wikipedia because feminism.
- The Obama administration urged colleges to use the same standard of proof used in most non-criminal cases in their non-criminal disciplinary proceedings dealing with rape cases. Because feminism.
- Australia. Something about Australia. Ok, here’s the deal: Australia is very, very far away from me, like literally on the other side of the planet, and my eyes sometimes glaze over when reading about it. I’m sure whatever Elam is mad about is really bad. It might involve Koalas. Feminist Koalas. But that’s just speculation on my part.
- In India, where women are routinely harassed in public and groped on train cars, there are a tiny number of women-only train cars set up to cut down on the groping.
- In Sweden, a small group of feminists did a theatrical production based on/dealing with the writings of Valarie Solanas. It was performed in some schools.
- “Men constitute the lion’s share of combat deaths[11], workplace deaths[12], suicide deaths[13], and are afflicted with almost every known human malady and disease more frequently and more severely than women.” Obviously, the feminists are to blame, for their staunch opposition to women serving in the armed forces, and for their secret program of giving men girl germs.
- There are agencies dealing with women’s health issues. Clearly, men need to have just as many of their own agencies to deal with such male health issues as not being pregnant.
I hope my summary of these issues has been fair. As Elam has pointed out on a number of occasions, I am fat, so really nothing I do or say has any value. Plus, of course, I am a mangina. Just, you know, FYI.
In any case, these injustices have Elam plenty mad:
I am truly curious as to what festering, morally atrophied deviation of humanity could look at anything approaching this level of discrimination and suffering without becoming angry.
So mad that his metaphors all get up in each other’s business:
Whether it becomes a wave of social change, or a violent tempest of indignation and fury, the pendulum will continue to swing.
So there you have it. Naturally, Elam’s readers are grateful for his efforts to bring justice to the world by yelling about it online and trying to get people really, really mad at certain specific ladies without explicitly advocating violence against them. That’s pretty much how Martin Luther King did it, only with fewer references to “bitches” and “cunts” and not so many threaty remarks.
As Alfred E puts it:
Well said Mr Elam. May the harpies finally get a clue about their complete lack of compassion for men and boys all the while living in a gold box carted around by the prince.
Justice and compassion for all, except you harpies in your gold boxes! And also the rest of the bitches, cunts and manginas.
NOTE: That bit about Carly Simon above was a joke. Obviously the song in question was written by The Bangles.
My list:
1. Being murdered. More likely to happen to men.
2. Being tortured. More likely to happen to men.
3. Being raped. More likely to happen to women.
4. FGM. More likely to happen to women.
5. Being otherwise mutilated or permanently scarred. More likely to happen to men.
6. Severe depression. I don’t know who is more afflicted, but based on suicide rates, probably more likely to happen to men.
7. Starvation. Probably about equal.
8. Perpetual homelessness. More likely to happen to men.
9. Alzheimer’s. More likely to happen to women, I think?
10. Watching Two and a Half Men. About equal.
“Why can’t you and the MRM roll up your sleeves and actually work to help men?”
“What do you do personally and specifically to address the issues that face men disproportionately?”
You people keep asking this. ;You want examples? OK, I will give an example:
STOPPING CORRUPT FEMINIST PROSECUTOR MARY KELLETT.
Kellett is a crazy feminist man-hating prosecutor from Maine. Any man who asked for custody of his children in Maine risked being arrested and jailed. All were soon released for lack of evidence, but not before the custody was awarded to the mother. AVfM exposed her hate crimes, and the ABA found her culpable of a series of professional misconducts. Fathers in Maine can now request custody of their children without fear of prison and witch hunts:
http://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/family-violence-national-legal-response-alrc-report-114
MRAL, we’ve told you before that depression actually affects women more, but suicide rates for men are higher because of the methods they use.
Oops, wrong link. Here is the correct link:
http://mockup.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/activism/kelletts-prosecutorial-crime-spree-continues/
Not that I want to get into a “which gender has horrible things happen to them more” slapfight because a) the goal is to make horrible things happen less for everyone, and b) men and women are not opposing armies.
Zarat is, if I remember correctly, one of the MRAs who believes in lying to advance his goals, so there’s no point in debating him seriously. I say ignore him unless he can make himself more amusing. How’s the research on your VR wife substitute going, Zarat?
OH MY GOD, AN ARTICLE, ZARAT????
You must need a nap. That’s some heavy lifting right there.
And complaints to the Maine bar–that must really take it out of a dude. It’s Miller time.
What I have seen on this is more women are depressed but more men successfully commit suicide. The explanation for the disparity is the fact that women tend to seek help before men do. That poisonous “be a rugged individual who needs no one” really harms men because they then do not seek treatment.
That is something to change-along with the stigma of being mentally ill itself.
I actually looked up her name on Maine’s bar complaint webpage and found zilch showing anyone either filed a complaint and/or had her disciplined.
hellkell: Depression in men does tend to be underdiagnosed– partially because going to a therapist is not manly, and partially because suicidal/depressed men tend to show different warning signs (most notably, substance abuse and aggression) than women.
Nevertheless, a lot of the difference in suicide rates is difference in method; I’d say that men and women are equally likely to be severely depressed.
Right, Ozy. If only there a movement that wanted to change that stigma…. huh.
PFKAE, I only scanned what Zarat posted, but it looks like if she doesn’t shape up they’re GOING TO complain. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Argh, I forgot about female genital mutilation! I have to go back and change my horrible list!
Any kind of genital injury, male or female, freaks me out. I’ve never found gags about men getting hit in the balls funny; it just makes me wince and cross my legs.
Bless your heart, Zarat. The premise of the entire thought experiment was a top-ten list of things that the responder, personally, thought were The Most Awful Things That Could Happen to Anyone Ever(TM).
(For instance, as a sufferer of a degenerative motor disease and also of severe depression, I wouldn’t put either of those on my personal Top Ten List, like some other commenters on this post have. But those are *their* lists, not *mine*, and so are valid answers to the question *for them.*)
Yeah, rape appears at least twice on *my* list. “Inability to get an abortion even if I’m going to fucking die from this pregnancy” is also pretty high on my list. That doesn’t mean any of those things needs to appear on anyone else’s list, ever. The question asked what was top-ten worst *for me,* and I answered *for me.*
As for your MRM-ish hissyfit: being forced at age 12 to carry one’s rapist father’s baby to term and being systematically raped as a weapon of war in the Congo do happen more often to women and girls than to men and boys. Even if you factor in that some of those women and girls may actually self-identify as male. Because the whole point of the rape-as-a-weapon-of-war in the Congo thing is to oppress women and girls directly, and the men who care about them only indirectly.
And, um, you sort of can’t be forced to carry a rapist’s baby to term if you do not have a full set of working female reproductive organs. You seem confused by that idea, but trust me: babies cannot get carried to viability unless there is a functional uterus involved (plus functional ovaries and Fallopian tubes to make pregnancy possible and a functioning cervix and vagina for delivery). Ergo, this is NOT a thing that can happen more often to men than to women. By definition.
Yes, there is one plausible exception: 12-year-old transmen (transboys?) as well as girls could be forced to carry a rapist father’s baby to term, if said 12-year-old identifies as male but still has a working set of female reproductive organs. But – and please correct me on this if I’m wrong – so far, I haven’t seen a great deal of concern about gender identity issues from the MRM. On the contrary, you lot seem more likely than bog-standard humans to reduce a full-fledged individual human being to a mess of hateful genitalia-based stereotypes.
“4) For men:
— ZERO university departments working to find solutions to men’s problems
— ZERO public institutions, commissions, etc. to help implement these programs
— ZERO scholarships, programs, and initiatives to help men and boys.”
Anthony Zarat, the university I attended had many departments that were working to find solutions to the problems that people faced, and men are a subset of the group people.
There are in my nation, state, county, and city a multitude of public institutions trying to implement solutions to the problems faced by people, and again men are a subset of the group people.
I am a man and I was helped both by scholarships and grants, both as a boy, and upon reaching adulthood. Stafford loans, Pell Grants, and Cal Grants were all available to me, and they are available to other men and boys.
Meh, depression is honestly way too underdiagnosed in both genders. I was really happy to see the Canadian government’s started doing PSAs for depression.
I don’t like the Oppression Olympics either, but I’m saying, let’s not pretend women are the primary victims of violence or anything fucking ridiculous like that.
On second thought, I’d probably drop being raped to like #7.
The rothschilds? Or is it the CIA?
@Zarat: can you MRM guys stop trying to disturb serious attempts to work on men issues?
thxby
@MRAL: I don’t like the Oppression Olympics either, but I’m saying, let’s not pretend women are the primary victims of violence or anything fucking ridiculous like that.
I like the Oppression Olympics because I think that men are the primary victims of violence and also women spit at me on the street all the time and refuse to talk to me or have sex with me which just proves that men WIN the Oppression Olympics just like everything else because wymmynz are just fucking Holy Highnesses.
There, fixed that for you.
My nursing school has a Men In Nursing scholarship. It’s not ZERO.
So … nobody comments on the fact that A Voice for Men is saving hundreds of Maine fathers per year from feminist witch hunts and false accusations.
Mary Kellett is gone, and it is no accident. We made that happen in the AVfM blog.
What, exactly, havy any of YOU accomplished on this blog?
MRAL, shut the fuck up.
Yes, you dipshit, because it’s relevant. All the ranting about virtual reality sex partners and continental, gender divides are the pointless, silly, fruitless fantasies of a delusional idiot. Real activism, real work is required to address issues like homelessness, mental health care, addiction, etc. for men. Not some guy on the internet who believes that lying is a valid form of debate and has his panties in a bunch because he figured out that -being human- wife has free will.
Also, the “article” you linked doesn’t have anything to do with the activity of AVFM or your personal and specific activism. The lawyer, Kellet, may be guilty of misconduct and that is being investigated by the proper authorities. The only thing that comes close to any kind of active involvement is the tentative:
“However, if Kellett gets yet another pass (yes, that pass) on her misdeeds, then A Voice for Men will spearhead a complaint to the Overseers of the Bar in Maine for her clear-cut tampering with a witness in the Sayasane trial.”
Try again, Zarat. What have you done, specifically and/or what do you do specifically to address any of the issues that you listed in your initial post?
How did you make that happen, Zarat? Send indignant letters?
Elizabeth looked up bar complaints for her and there were none.