Given the enmity towards women in general, and feminists in particular, that’s omnipresent in the manosphere, it seems logical to assume that most of the dudes lingering around MRA, PUA and MGTOW sites online would take a certain secret pleasure in seeing women suffer.
As regular readers of this blog know all too well, oftentimes the desire to see women suffer is not so secret: some MRAs and others of their ilk literally laugh at women getting cancer, declare that rapists should be given medals, openly fantasize about “beat[ing] the living shit” out of women, and tell feminists who complain about this sort of shit that they’re “so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.” (Those last two examples come from Paul Elam, one of the MRM’s most influential bloggers.) Still others send rape and death threats to outspoken women online.
But good news, folks! It turns out that not all manosphere misogynists want women to suffer. Why? Because suffering is an ineffective way to put women in their place. That, at least, is the argument of a fellow calling himself Höllenhund. In a comment on Susan Walsh’s Hooking Up Smart blog, he offered this argument:
Making women suffer wouldn’t achieve anything in itself – I’m pretty sure the overwhelming majority of the Manosphere would agree. Women are normally solipsistic and they fail to understand their own urges and don’t comprehend the connection between cause and effect. They’d never understand why they’re suffering in the first place.
So, basically, in his mind, women are dumber than dogs and thus harder to train. Even worse, the suffering women can sit down in the street and cry, and countless “white knights,” hoping to win their approval (and get in their pants) will rush to their aid:
Suffering only motivates them to fish for male sympathy (and thus investment) through crying and whining, to blame ‘ bad men’ for their ‘misfortune’ and thus play the game of ‘let’s you and him fight’. That’s how it has always been.
So making women suffer is largely pointless. I’d go further and say it’d actually be detrimental to men because it encourages white-knighting and intra-male competition. …
And some of the ladies even seem to sort of like it:
Not to mention the fact that many women actually seem to find some sort of twisted pleasure in suffering, that all this’d simply serve to justify more anti-male legislation and whatnot.
Poor Höllenhund doesn’t have much hope that women will ever see how totally terrible they really are
[T]he notion of making women ‘admit their faults’ is pie-in-the-sky as well. Again, I’m sure pretty much everyone in the Manosphere would agree. You have a bigger chance of seeing pigs fly.
If women are to recognize their faults in this SMP [Sexual Marketplace], they need to have a realistic picture of both their own sexuality and the SMP in the first place, plus they need to have empathy for beta males …
Er, you’re lecturing us about empathy?
Sorry, on with the rest of the sentence:
plus they need to be imbued with the sense of morality without which the very concept of ‘fault’ is meaningless.
And lecturing us about morality too?
I think we’ll sooner see Haiti become a dreaded military superpower.
I’d rather see that than live in a world in which women were so self-hating that they actually believed they were guilty of whatever unnamed sins Höllenhund attributes to them.
NOTE: I found Höllenhund’s comment because the blogger at Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology cited it as a prime example of the sort of brave “truth telling” that will get you banned “on feminist sites that supposedly support men.” And yes, it apparently did get poor Höllenhund banned from Hooking Up Smart. I’m not quite sure how Susan Walsh, a traditionalist devoted to slut shaming in a thousand different flavors, counts as feminist, but that’s not the point. The point is: I’m regularly accused of “cherry picking” comments from MRAs. In this case, Mr. PMAFT picked the comment for me.
There are already problems with some lesbian abusers entering women’s only shelters to access their victims. All inclusive shelters could have that same problem with abusers tracking down their victims.
The question is how do shelter workers keep abusers away from their victims without denying service to those who really need it?
Apparently there’s two men-only shelters in Alberta, one in Calgary, one in Edmonton. Run by one Earl Silverman, Familyofmen.ca. But his website is so full of “Misandry!” that he neglects to tell men how and where to seek shelter. CTV news says they exist, which I hope they do.
Source: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/CTVNewsAt11/20030713/stastcan_violenceagainstmen_20030713/
“Earl Silverman has created the Men’s Line Support group in Calgary — only the second shelter for abused men in Canada.”
Depressing article though; domestic violence by women against men is apparently going up. Yay equality.
Yes, and that was sort of my point, that the issue of abusers trying to follow their victims to a shelter is a problem that should be worked on and obviously isn’t fixed by just excluding non-binary people from the shelter system.
I’m not saying that I have all the answers to this problem, just that I don’t think leaving an extremely vulnerable population out in the cold is the right answer at all.
@FelixBC:
Earl Silverman’s shelter is not gender-exclusive nor exclusive to a sexual orientation. It’s open to all, as (I believe) all DV shelters should be. Unfortunately, many people believe that turning away male victims is somehow justified. Such people, like BooBooNation (whose comment I linked to earlier in this thread) and similar commenters, will not be challenged by the author of this blog if they express such opinions here.
In urban areas, couldn’t shelters assign people to lottery shelters instead of gender segregation, with the quiet exclusion of the other spouse’s shelter? At least, assuming a more centralized way of running them than now. That’d mean pinning down an abuse victim’s location is amazingly harder without, you know, meaning that queer couples have no protection.
LIKE WHO.
Seriously, read this page of discussion, and tell me WHO thinks men shouldn’t have access to shelters.
The only point of contention here is that men shouldn’t have access to women’s shelters.
“Earl Silverman’s shelter is not gender-exclusive nor exclusive to a sexual orientation.”
Oh, was I supposed to also find a shelter that is exclusive to sexual orientation? No gay men allowed? Really, you need to mark those goalposts more clearly. The markings wear off when you keep moving them.
And where in Silverman’s schmozzle of a website did you find that he admits women? Darned if I could even find out how to get in, let alone who’s allowed in. (I know shelters don’t list addresses, but some sort of “click here if you need shelter” would be useful.)
But you’re really saying all this just to trip up the commenters and prove David in the wrong? Good to know. Cause it would be such a waste of time to try to actually provide information for abused men.
I’m starting to think the only thing that would satisfy Roscoe is a women’s shelter that only admits men.
Come on now, Felix, Roscoe doesn’t give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about male DV vicitims, he cares about being RIGHT. Shame that hasn’t happened for him yet, but he can dream.
Seriously, I have no idea what the fuck Roscoe wants. He isn’t just shifting goalposts, he’s changing his position around. It’s like playing football on a lake.
Congratulations, that’s the system we currently have. Able bodied cis heteros are given preferential treatment, and many other groups of people are often turned away.
So, now everyone is cis heteros? Because you admit to endorsing a system that is explicitly keeping out and not serving many LGBT people. You have an entire group that is being given no shelter, so don’t say that the risk of their abuser managing to slip through security is greater than having to stay with the abuser because they have nowhere to go or sleeping on the streets.
You know, we couldn’t even brainstorm ideas like keeping a list of abuser’s names to ensure they don’t get assigned to the same shelter, nope, let’s just toss the LGBT victims under the bus as “collateral damage” so that everyone can be safer.
@Roscoe, please fuck off. You whining now about how some services are coed totally flies in the face of the notion of gender neutral shelters which you raised. You’re being 100% asshole troll right now.
and there were homeless shelters,
Or just regular “shelters”. You do know that “DV” shelters for women are homeless shelters too right? or do you think women in there aren’t homeless? (actually this is a place where the MRA-hated VAWA ends up creating stats that benefit them in internet arguments because VAWA rules prevent homeless orgs from including women’s shelters in homeless counts)
I find NWOslave and other MRAs who complain about “homeless shelters” pretty classist. Like they look down on “homeless” people, and “how dare you expect me to stay with them!?”
Also what do you mean non-men? There are a lot of men’s shelters here who turn away trans men, forcing trans men into this place where they either need to find a women’s shelter (which may not accept them either) or have no place to go. I notice that MRAs complain a lot about cis men but have absolutely no caring about the issue of trans men being denied services from men’s shelters (“for their own safety” is usually the excuse). -_-
I know this is an issue since I work with these places.
I also agree with DSC that there’s a lot of issues with inclusion of GQ and trans ppl in shelters, though I’ve also seen a lot of improvement in that area, and policies being created to allow GQ and trans ppl in shelters. Ideally, we’d have a system that isn’t gender binarist, but at the moment, this is what we have, however, that doesn’t mean that we can or should exclude GQ and trans ppl. The progressive agencies I’ve worked with, basically allow GQ and trans ppl to access the shelter, whether you’re trans female or male identified, or whether you’re FAAB or MAAB, if you believe this is the shelter for you, then it is.
I do think we’re ultimately moving to a place where we have non-segregated shelters, and that gender segregation creates a lot of problems for queer people. At the same time, I do understand traditionally, the benefits of it, that survivors (presumably ones in hetero relationships) have a place where they know their abuser can’t reach them, where they can at least fear a little less, etc, but again, it assumes a cis heteronormative world. :
I think the biggest issue for US as we’re discussing this, is that MRAs constantly try to make everything back to being about the cis straight men, and the defensiveness we have about being trolled by them means that we can’t have a real discussion about these things, because there’s always this idea that we’re going to open the door to abusers being able to come in, or people with bad intentions (like our trolls) or etc… but it’s kinda like saying we need to have binary divisions of bathrooms, and not let trans and GQ people choose their bathrooms (or even get rid of binary divisions all together) because people with bad intentions will try to sneak in and take pictures or something (as Conservatives always warn when it comes to trans inclusion).
Also many women’s shelters do provide vouchers for hotels and etc for men who need their help.
Our buddy up there though, from what I’ve read, seems less interested in trying to find and create shelter options for everybody as much as just exclude people, or makes this into a game -_- Which is something with MRAs that really bugs me, b/c I work in this field and it’s NOT A GAME. And the way they argue about it, and talk about it sounds just like a game. >_<
Also, if MRAs don't like any of the men's shelters currently available, or shelters that take men, or options to help men and etc, if all of these just aren't good enough to them, or excludes enough groups for them, or has too many "homeless" people, or has too many unsavory poor people, or whatever their issue is, then they can always open up their own houses and doors to shelter men (this is what a lot of women did a long time ago). And they can work to create and raise funds to build a shelter more to their specifications. I'm not sure what yelling at US, will do, since the shelter system is already seriously underfunded and trying to keep up with what they have. :
Basically his point is “David doesn’t yell at the people I want him to yell at, and this proves that he’s evil/misandrist/whatever”. It’s like NWO’s “why don’t you beat those women in the street?”, just less homicidal.
Giving people motel vouchers isn’t turning them away. I don’t think we should have a system where people who aren’t able-bodied cis heteros are turned away! I just don’t think we should have a system where inclusivity is used to justify shelters with zero safeguards against abusers getting the bedroom next to their victims.
Abusers can lie about their names.
And I am not not not trying to justify a system where there’s a women’s shelter, a men’s shelter, and a “tough luck.” I’m trying to justify a system where there’s a women’s shelter, a men’s shelter, and a motel voucher or a spot in a private (i.e., one DV resident at a time) safe house.
I’m concerned you’re arguing for a system where people of all genders are housed communally, and I’m worried that that would just be equally unsafe for people of any gender or orientation.
Whew, that is a whole lotta crazy compressed into just a few paragraphs.
Roscoe and his ilk are f-ing up the whole thing right now because it’s creating a defensiveness and putting people in mind that asshats like Roscoe simply want in in shelters because they aren’t currently allowed, and would do it just for fun or to make a point. -_- And so people are like “omfg, if we allow queer people, what if NWOslave or Roscoe pretend to be queer just to get in and be an asshole?”
But then that’s the same argument about washrooms “what if a guy just claims to be a trans woman and walks into the washroom for s-s and giggles?” -_- Aside that I HOPE ppl, even asshat trolls, have better things to do, and there are ways to deal with abusers and asshats, also… it can’t be the most important thing, because the people being excluded from men’s and women’s shelters are real actual people too, and as I pointed out, among some of the most marginalized and abused groups, and we generally don’t have places to turn.
Turn it around. The idea is cis women wouldn’t feel safe going to, or even trying to go to a women’s shelter if they knew that their abusers could track them down… trans people ALREADY don’t feel safe going to or even trying to go to any shelter because they think they’re going to be rejected, humiliated, or face trans phobia. A lot of trans ppl just assume no shelters will accept them at all. Is that “safer”? Is that “better”?
Trolls are trolls. Roscoe’s the least important person in this discussion, and let’s not care what he tries to jump on, or what argument he needs to win, or what’s most important to him because what’s most important to him is winning the argument, is causing disruptions, is disrupting safe spaces, etc etc…
but what’s most important to US, I think, and I hope, is about protecting EVERYBODY, esp the traditionally marginalized and oppressed groups like disabled ppl, PoCs, trans ppl, GQ ppl, etc and sometimes that includes dealing with really tricky issues using more specific rules and policies rather than just blanket ones because the blanket ones exclude those groups.
Holly, the problem with solely relying on a voucher system for people who don’t fit into gender/sexuality binaries is that they lose out on a lot of the benefits that shelters can provide: mutual support, access to staff, someone to watch the kids while you’re looking for a job, etc. As a stop-gap solution it’s better than nothing, but there needs to be a way that grants everyone the same access to all services while also ensuring everyone’s safety. (Unfortunately, I don’t have a good idea of what that is, except that it requires much higher levels of public awareness and financial investment than we currently have.)
Almost every post that I have posted here over the past year or so discussing DV, spousal abuse, and “rape” raised this point. Abusing, terrorizing, or hurting women was unwise, as well as brutal and cruel, because it was unlikely to get the abuser what he wanted, and was also likely to have very detrimental consequences to him and to what was left of their relationship.
Good to see somebody finally agrees with the obvious, even if it means that some, perhaps even most, claims of abuse or DV deserve to be taken with considerably more skepticism and reserve than has been the case.
Women, like pets, respond to love, attention, and patience much better than they do to harshness, beatings, or sadism. If she is in a long-term relationship, I should think that this is even more true.
I think this is the point where I back out and simply say I don’t have a great solution, and I don’t know enough about DV shelters to talk like an expert.
I mean, I guess the ideal solution is a shelter that admits everybody but is secure enough that it can immediately crack the hell down on any abuse or intimidation happening within the shelter (and can convince its residents of this thoroughly enough that they don’t just flee when they realize their abuser is there)? I just don’t know how well that can be done in practice.
I just want to know exactly which women these misguided fools are using to characterize all women, because they sure ain’t the women I know. At my job, for instance, I regularly interact with some super high-level lady-smarties: MD’s, anesthesiologists, medical researchers, surgeons. I cannot even fathom how these women even remotely fit the MRA depictions.
I always wonder how an MRA would handle being saved by lady doc if he landed in the emergency room, or needed a specialist who happened to be a lady, or noticed the vast number of highly trained ladies working in healthcare on all levels. Would he GHOW rather than accept medical care from teh wimminz?
@Holly would you want to continue this discussion in private (you and me) or in the secret room? Because there’s stuff I wouldn’t be comfortable talking about in front of the trolls (or in public in general)
I always wonder how an MRA would handle being saved by lady doc if he landed in the emergency room, or needed a specialist who happened to be a lady, or noticed the vast number of highly trained ladies working in healthcare on all levels. Would he GHOW rather than accept medical care from teh wimminz?
I think that they’d essentially believe that any care they get that doesn’t suck could be better, and if something goes wrong, it’s because she’s a woman (or if anything isn’t to their liking).
It’s sorta like the way the redditors manage to turn every news story as “YOU KNOW IF HE WAS A WOMAN HE’D HAVE GOTTEN NO YEARS IN JAIL” or “IF SHE WAS A MAN SHE’D HAVE GOTTEN 100 YEARS IN JAIL!” or etc…
you can’t argue with a hypothetical, so in the same way, perhaps they’d see any treatment they got from a female doctor as being inferior to the hypothetical male doctor which would have been in her place?
Ami – Sure, I started a topic in the secret room about it.
*sticks hand up quietly*
i have worked in homelesssnes for 15years starting off in women’s DV shelters, then just simply women’s homelessness shelters, then male only shelters, back to women only for a bit and now i work as a support worker to homeless/at risk people…i feel like i am quite qualified on this topic on a very practical level. i call troll on Roscoe, he keeps shifting the goalposts.
and the shelters i worked in admitted transwomen and lesbians and we worked damn hard to screen out abusers. Sometimes we didn’t manage it and we had to deal with it. also we worked hard to address the prejudices of the resident group with regards to transwomen and lesbians with mixed success again. in my fantasy life, we would have shelters that would cater across the spectrum of life, but the funding and political will is simply not there. we have to find a way to break down these barriers which is about changing views across society so that politicians can see that the electorate, who votes them in, want these changes made.
and i reject the MRA view that because women make up the majority vote, we have some sort of hive mind and are responsible for this perceived lack of shelters for men because we don’t care. For one, in all my years of experience, shelters by default are near on exclusively occupied by men when the shelter says it provides accommodation to both men and women. And i know of male only services, i worked in one for several years. And for two, in all my years of experience, my colleagues and i have abhorred violence and abuse no matter who doles it out. i have personally provided support to men to enable them to be accommdated and move on.
i have to stop now.
see what happens when you live in Australia, you miss all the fun.
@Holly, Ami – if you come up with better ideas in your talk, could you post them somewhere? Because I’m following the discussion with pretty much the same misgivings Holly has – there should be shelters where everyone is accepted and safe, but how.