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.
@Dan
Sorry that happened to you dude. Yeah, I’m fully supportive of gender parity in the law, and definitely believe she should have faced any punishment that a man would have received for inflicting the same amount of damage. My point was more along why male-on-male violence is different to female-on-male violence in most circumstances. I’m actually not all that concerned with intragender mutual fights (AFAIC that’s just two people getting a little stress and frustration out) but fully agree that intergender violence is a problem. I DO think that a single slap, like a single punch, does not count enough to be included in a societal discussion of violence i.e. a woman slapping/punching a man once does not mean there’s a problem of female-on-male violence and a man punching/slapping a woman once does not indicate a problem of male-on-female violence. Please note that this is not meant to belittle what you went through, because AFAIC that was more than just a single slap, it was part of a larger effort to create a threatening environment.
And to whoever said it wasn’t “realistic”, audiences don’t have a hard time buying flicks with action females, as long as they’re, you know, good movies (see: Kill Bill opposed to Elektra).
Look, what I think you really mean is that due to misandry/male disposability, the audience might have a harder time accepting women. Not that they flat-out won’t, exactly, but the masses are so used to never seeing women in so-called “disposable” roles that it throws them when they are. Even myself- back when I was 12, I watched Kill Bill, because that’s the kind of supervision I had as a kid. When the Bride fights the Crazy 88, there were a bunch of female members mixed in, who were killed unceremoniously with the male members. It threw me, not because I objected or anything, but it just wasn’t how it was done.
As far as I can tell, the Ms. Kellet’ only “wrongdoing” was that she had the temerity to prosecute a man. On a domestic violence charge. That’s all. Even the appellate court that acquitted him commented that there was sufficient evidence for the prosecution, for godssakes.
I can’t read the words “golden box” without giggling.
Also, MRAL, did you ever think that maybe there aren’t any “female goons” for the same reasons there aren’t many female fighters in video games? The male goons might be disposable, but women are seen as too incomptent to fight. We’re not so much expendable as background characters in certain action genres so much as we don’t exist in that genre at all.
Again, I disagree that women are confined to such limiting roles these days, and yet even it action grrrl stuff, all the victims are male.
Following a seven month investigation, the Maine Bar Counsel and Grievance Commission “found probable cause to believe that Assistant District Attorney Mary Kellett had engaged in misconduct subject to sanction under the Maine Bar Rules for which appropriate discipline should be sought”.
So write a movie where the two main characters who want to kill each other are both women. Because one ordered the death of the other one’s parents or siblings or whatever.
I think your assumption that “Women can do whatever they want in movies!” is still too premature. Sure, there’s been Kill Bill, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Buffy, etc., but these movies are all pretty darn recent. We wouldn’t have to be having discussions like, “Why aren’t there more female fighters in video games?” and “Why do superheroine costumes always look like lingerie?” if we’d acheived equal representation in pop culture.
A feminist action movie wouldn’t have one girl killing all the men. It would have a male or female protagonist killing a mass of goons that were male AND female. Movies now are more like, “There’s one *special* woman, so we let her have a good role, but most of the rest of the characters in the movie will still be male because women can’t be fighters or evil kung foo masters”.
Actually, I think Battlestar Galactica had some good examples of gender parity in who gets hurt during the story. Huge swaths of humanity, male and female pilots, and male and female robots all bit the dust during that.
“so you acknowledge that on average women are physically weaker than men, that it’s not a fair fight, yet you think it’s a bad thing that violence against women is considered special or unique, and somehow attribute it to male disposability.”
Looks like the bigot princess “duck” queen Quackers had an epiphany. She knows that intimate partner violence is mutual, and occurs with equal frequency to both sexes …
… but ! …
Its not really equal, because the big bad menz does not feel any pain, since they are strong apes.
Using that logic, only men should be allowed into homeless shelters. After all, women can use their “biological advantage” to get room and board, while men have freeze on the street. Here is the math equation, so that feminist bigots can understand it:
Government protects women in a “special” way from intimate partner violence because men have a “biological” ability to protect themselves …
… hence …
Government should protect men in a “special” way from extreme poverty because women have a “biological” ability to protect themselves …
I hope the suggestion that government should not protect homeless women because they can “protect themselves” using their “biological advantage” is as repulsive to you as it is to me.
Maybe the idea that government should not protect men from DV because men can “protect themselves” should also be repulsive? Are you capable of setting aide feminist bigotry for just a second?
I just did a search on that and the only people who are making that claim are…Elam and the other MRAs.
Disciplinary Decisions
Nothing with her name on it. No link on Elam or anyone else’s page to a proposed finding order. Not a copy of an email that may have been responding to the complainant or a scanned letter, nothing.
I did find a response to a complaint from her attorney but beyond that-nada.
MRAL, in many stories, be it movies, comics, video games the stereotypical story line is the following: Male hero fight against evil force and save woman.
I understand your point of view, who is, I think, completely valuable: the man is expected to put his life in danger, which may include dying, to save the life of the woman. From what you deduce man’s life < woman's life.
But there are other ways to look at it.
One one hand there is a character who is brave, act for what he cares regardless of obstacles, out of passionate love or generosity. He overcomes his fears and generally prevail.
On the other hand, a character who is weak, at least physically if not emotionally. She waits, passive, to be saved. At which point she's expected to reward hero with love, sex, marriage, kids or at the bare minimum kissing.
What character do you think is more empowering? What role model would you prefer? Spider man or Mary Jane? Prince charming or Sleeping Beauty?
Zarat? Kellett is still a practicing attorney, there are homeless shelters for men and no one on this thread has ever suggested that men cannot be the victims of domestic violence.
So, what have you done to create a DV shelter that provides care and services, specifically, for men?
You know, Zarat, since you imagine yourself a “legal expert” and what not, it would interest you to know that fake-quoting a governmental entity may very well be tantamount to an act of impersonation. Which is a crime.
You will find a thread that tells you EXACTLY how repulsive the posters found it when one of YOUR fellow MRAs decided to advise his comrades on how exactly to go about getting this to happen
Not to mention, Zarat, that it’s a classic example of libel.
@Amused
Sorry, we men are human beings. We are no longer afraid of your feminist threats to use the oppressive power of the state to intimidate those who fight for our civil and human rights.
Bigot.
Zarat, you claimed that AVFM succeeded in getting that lawyer disbarred, and yet none of the several people who’ve looked have found no proof that this happened. Care to respond?
Curse you, double negatives!
No one has found any proof*
Zarat. Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself. I know you believe everything that AVFM and other MRM outlets tell you but, seriously, stop.
Kellett is a practicing attorney. What you do is not activism. You don’t actually care enough about men to do real activism. You enjoy posting on the internet about antifeminism. It’s basically a hobby.
I like to crochet.
“Sorry, we men are human beings. ”
Well yes, I like to think that my boyfriend is a human being, and my father too, and my brother too, and my grand-father too, and my male friends too and the rest of them too. Who said you were not?
(I have my doubts for Meller, but his gender is not the problem)
@Crumbelievable Sorry, we men are human beings. We are no longer afraid of your feminist threats to use the oppressive power of proof to intimidate those who fight for our civil and human rights.
Ack! Channeling Antz briefly there. A shattering experience, shattering.
Anyway, if feminists are baby (boys) eaters and your main priority is to show that very fact to the general public, what are you doing here? Do you hope to convince us we are evil?
Problem is that you are not doing squat to actual fight for your or anyone’s civil/human rights.
You know what makes this so adorable? Everyone remembers how Zarat was always going on and on about how the only problem with his human wife was her free will. And how he went on and on about how great it would be to have a virtual reality lover who wasn’t human, had no free will, and could never leave?
So cute.