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.
Wasn’t it GLENN SACKS, not AVFM that had something to do with her misconduct charge back IN 2010? (Which I think was probably justified, if I remember correctly?)
What is AVFM claiming they’ve done?
What I don’t get is how being afraid of someone using the power of the state against you makes you inhuman? Or was that just a hilarious/enraging misread on my part
No clue Zhinxy but the response was dated 5/6/2011 so even the slowest Bar in the nation would have issued some kind of ruling by now as it is a very simple complaint.
Nothing like the Epic Breakdown here locally of a few attorneys.
“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?”
I never said she was disbarred. She is being investigated, and there has been an initial finding of wrongdoing. She is also no longer persecuting her hate war against fathers. It does not take a genius to figure out why.
As to why you find no press releases about this — the answer is YOU. Femifascist bigots who control the press, government, institutions, and courts of this country.
I’ll make a drawing so you can understand:
MISANDRY INDEX (higher is more bias against men):
*
* B *
* *
* *
* *
* *
* A *
*
*
*
* C
Conservatives want to go back to point A, where men and women both had obligations towards each other. They claim to love men, and to admire the traditional male role (sacrifice) enough to reward that role with respect. See this article on Laura Wood to know what the MRM thinks about them.
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2011/02/19/a-response-to-the-hysterical-housewife/
Feminists (and your liberal allies) want us to stay at point B, where we are today. Men have more obligations (collectively and individually) towards women than ever, but women have no obligations to anyone. You already know what we think of you.
The MRM wants to move on to point C, where both men and women are completely free of obligations towards each other.
Why this matters:
The MRM has no friends in any position of power. Conservatives despise us. Liberals hate us.
It is not surprising: nobody is happy when the slaves rebel.
Shadow – Well, to be fair, It does make you inhuman. As an anarchist, I am a quarter robot, another quarter fairie, a dash of fox, a sprinkle of cat, a smidgen of wolf, and the rest mostly squirrel, for example.
Shadow: I agree with everything you typed and did not take it as a belittlement of what I went through.
So, to go to C we have to go through A again?
What if I want to go to D?
What if the world is not in one dimension?
What does the stars mean?
What did AVFM or you did to bring the investigation of this judge?
“It is not surprising: nobody is happy when the slaves rebel.”
Not having friend is not a proof you’re oppressed.
Why are you here?
In Elam’s article he talks about Tory Shepherd, Australian feminist journalist. From memory I don’t think she’s actually a feminist (or identifies as one). I might be wrong about this as I stopped reading her over a year ago because her ideas were frustrating to this feminist. She’s certainly a bit more progressive than other journalists, but I think she got Slut Walk very wrong and got a lot of criticism for that amongst other things. Does this mean ‘feminist’ is probably any woman who talks in public, or says something they don’t agree with???
“She is being investigated, and there has been an initial finding of wrongdoing. She is also no longer persecuting her hate war against fathers. It does not take a genius to figure out why.”
.,..
Forgive me if I think that if there was real wrongdoing, which is possible, it wasn’t the amazing combined force of AVFM that had anything to do with it being investigated. Going right to AVFM DID THIS! Does not seem to be a genius move.
Words AntZ doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of: obligations, bigot, facist, misandry, feminist, slave and rebel.
Nope. Here’s the point: Elam’s site has apparently been getting some more traffic lately because an Australian journalist did a blog post mentioning it.
So Elam takes the opportunity to set forth a bullet-pointed list that he thinks shows what horrible oppression men face.
Most of the items on the list are ridiculous. A couple refer to real issues, but these issues aren’t caused in any way or form by the evil feminists he goes on about.
This was also the case with the AVfM song. door holding, really??
Elam doesn’t seem much interested in actually helping men. He seems far more interested in coming up with random shit to get mad at women and feminists about.
I’ve written about numerous issues faced by men on this blog. Take prison rape. Because there are far more men than women in prison, this is an issue that mostly affects men. When MRAs talk about prison rape it’s all “men get raped more than women [false], argle bargle false accustions slutwalks.” It becomes another excuse to get mad at feminists. Has Elam ever actually talked about or linked to organizations that ACTUALLY TRY TO COMBAT PRISON RAPE, like Just Detention?
If you asked a feminist activist what the big issues facing women were, you’d likely get a list of specific real-world issues that feminist and other activist organizations actually attempt to deal with in a practical way.
With MRAs, as was the case with this post from Elam, it’s a flurry of weird little news items that make them mad.
Consider the vast number of “women behaving badly” posts about women abusers and other (alleged) criminals you see on r/mensrights all the time to the almost complete lack of similar “men behaving badly” posts on feminist blogs. Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of crime is committed by men and that it would be really really easy to come up with endless examples of really vile crimes.
But that’s not the point, because mainstream feminism isn’t all about “men are evil assholes argle bargle fuck their shit up!”
What they hell kind of activist slogan is “fuck their shit up” anyway? I’ve run across a few anarchists in my day who might have found that slogan appealing, but most of them were teenagers and got over it.
Conservatives want to go back to point A…,Feminists (and your liberal allies) want us to stay at point B, …
Well, Zarat, I’m a libertarian, and I abandoned MRA (To which I was initially very sympathetic) because it turned into a cesspool of misogyny, illogic, and violent rhetoric. Too bad, but having no allies doesn’t mean you’re automatically right. It means people with any shred of decency or sanity are running away from you and shaking the dust from your feet. Your movement is shrinking, and only getting “more attention” insofar as it is, because it’s becoming increasingly entertaining and alarming, not because it’s mattering.
Why are men who hate women referencing Carly Simon?
I am in so much favor of feminist koalas. Koalas are awesome. They look so soft and peaceful, but get in between them and their eucalyptus fix and they will cut you.
AntZ is going to need his own Big Book ‘o Leranin’
There are 600 feminist university departments with thousands of employees paid to find solutions to women’s problems but ZERO university departments working to find solutions to anything else.
There are 2000 publicly funded institutions, presidential commissions, etc, working to help women to implement these solutions but ZERO public institutions, commissions, etc. to help implement anything else.
There are 10,000 scholarships, programs, and educational initiatives to help women to find their own solutions to their problems, in cases where institutional solutions are inadequate but ZERO scholarships, programs, and initiatives to help anyone but women.
@ Dani Alexis, ouch. Does you hand hurt from that smack down?
@Ozy
Apparently donated all his capital letters and half his punctuation.
Mein GOTT!!! The reason there aren’t more homeless, suicidal men posting here is David is CENSORING THEM!!!!!
When does he find the time between his slanderous accusations and his malicious accusations!?
@ Shora
I though we agreed not to discuss Twilight? 😉
But Boy Howdie are those printers and envelop sealing machines frightening!
And don’t even get me started on Vacuum Cleaners!
@zhinxy
You’ve heard other definitions of humanity? I thought the “sugar and spice and everything nice” theory was debunked with the discovery of chemical X!
“Why are men who hate women referencing Carly Simon?”
Cause they’re so vain?
“What they hell kind of activist slogan is “fuck their shit up” anyway? I’ve run across a few anarchists in my day who might have found that slogan appealing, but most of them were teenagers and got over it.”
Hmm… As an overgrown anarchist, I could maybe kinda like “fuck their shit up” if it’s directed at the military-corporate-industrial complex, but it’s pretty lame if it’s directed at “the people with the cooties”
Also, it would be the difference between seeing a bold young anarchist yelling it and going, right on, young anti-stateling, and seeing a 40 something year old man say it as a serious political thing…
RE: The point about missing (white, middle class) women gaining more news coverage than missing men – it’s mainly to do with the theory of ‘ideal victims’.
Basically, the theory is thus: people REALLY hate shades of grey. They like to see one goodie, who has no negative characteristics, beat one baddie, who has no positive characteristics. So the media only tend to report cases where their readership can’t blame the victim for precipating hir attack.
The original list (Christie, 1986) was used to define ‘a person or category of individuals who, when hit by crime, most readily are given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim’. A person will typically be described as an ideal victim if:
They are vulnerable and weak
They were carrying out a respectable activity when the crime occurred
They were where they could not possibly be blamed for being
The offender was ‘big and bad’
The offender was unknown to the victim
So, we can see why young, white, middle class women fit this trope so well – they’re seen to be weak and respectable. Contrast with men, who are seen as ‘strong’ (or possibly blameworthy, given that men are most likely to be the victims of violence perpetrated by other men), or POC or poor people, who are inherently seen as less ‘respectable’ or more ‘streetwise’ (and so able to take care of themselves).
However, we can still look at cases to show that this is not simply a ‘woman good, man bad’ narrative – in January 2006, two men were killed on the same day in London – Thom Ap Rhys Price, a white lawyer, and Balbir Mataharu, an Asian taxi driver. In the fortnight after the murders, the media had generated 6,061 words about Rhys Price’s death, and 1,385 about Matharu’s.
So, if we made the media understand that *every person matters*, regardless of age/appearance/skin colour/size/gender/faith/ability etc., and people learned to accept that not everything is cut and dry when it comes to crimes, this would stop. It’s not a feminist conspiracy, it’s an ‘I want to sell newspapers and people don’t like thinking too much’ conspiracy.
Can’t breathe
(Sorry if that was boring/late/off topic, but I studied this phenomenon and potential responses to it at university and rarely get to rant about it)
TheNatFantastic – No, that was cool.
Why do you call her prosecuting (you know, her JOB as a prosecutor) one guy a “hate war against fathers?” I mean if she had dozens of prosecutions going on against men who were clearly innocent? Yeah I could see it. But she had one. A single case. A single case that even the appellate judges found to have enough merit to go to trial.
Also, she is still a prosecuting attorney as the Grievance Commission has not issued any suspensions. I checked.
You have no moral right to freedom to libel people and impersonate public officials.
Antz, you are so damn tedious. Go back to yelling about your virtual reality sex bots; at least that was entertaining.
Whoever thinks that women are never expendable characters has clearly never watched SVU, CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, and so on.
Antz, you idiot. Men make up half of the people emotionally abused; however, they make up less than half of the people physically abused, and about a third of those severely physically abused.
THAT IS NOT WHAT GENDER PARITY LOOKS LIKE FFS.