What can you do when you realize that you’re losing the war of ideas? You can rethink some or all of your ideas, seriously considering the unnerving possibility that you might be, well, wrong. You can reconsider how you present your ideas.
Or you can give up on ideas entirely, and attempt to pressure or harass or even terrorize others into some form of surrender. That’s what the the uber-radical Weathermen did in the 1960s and 70s, turning first to violent direct action in the aptly named “days of rage” and then to bombs when the revolution that many in the New Left had been prophesying failed to materialize. That’s what the anti-abortion movement has been doing for decades now, with some in the movement harassing women trying to get abortions while more radical antis bomb clinics and kill doctors. .
And now we’re seeing rhetoric from Men’s Rights Activists that suggests some in that movement may also be giving up on talk. Consider A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam, who declared in a fundraising letter a couple of months back that:
Progress for men will not be gained by debate, reason or typical channels of grievance available to segments of the population that the world actually gives a damn about. The progress we need will only be realized by inflicting enough pain on the agents of hate, in public view, that it literally shocks society out of its current coma.
Elam is – presumably deliberately — vague about what exactly he means when he talks about “inflicting … pain,” and as far as I know he has never explicitly endorsed violence. But he has spoken openly about “stalking” individual feminists and otherwise “fucking their shit up” by, among other things, posting personal information about them on the AVfM-sponsored site Register-Her.com for all would be vigilantes to see. And in the “activism” section of his website he has reprinted a manifesto explicitly calling for the firebombing of courthouses and police stations.
Elam isn’t the only MRA who has officially given up on “debate and reason” in favor of “inflicting … pain” on feminists. The “counter-feminist” wannabe philosopher who calls himself Fidelbogen makes a similar argument in a recent post on his blog:
Feminism is your enemy, and the obligation to treat feminists as fellow human beings is officially waived. They are not fellow human beings, they are ALIENS.
Dehumanizing the enemy always a good start.
[L]et’s not hear any crap about so-called “hate speech”. You see, there is simply no way that you can resist evil, denounce tyranny, or call pernicious things by their right names, without crossing a fine line into “hate speech” or something very like it. Extremism against a bully is no vice, and since bullies have their own moral economy, you are entitled to pay them in their own coin.
It’s not hate speech if you really do hate them?
The important thing to understand about the feminists is, that they will not change their outward behavior unless social heat and pressure are inflicted upon them.
Fidelbogen, a sometime contributor to A Voice for Men, is also vague about what exactly he means by this “social heat and pressure.” He continues:
What, do you think they will stop what they are doing just because somebody intellectually convinces them they are mistaken? They will do no such thing, because they are people with an agenda who know they are “right”, and they lack the gift to see themselves as the rest of the world sees them.
IRONY ALERT. IRONY ALERT.
Over on Reddit, meanwhile, the charming JeremiahMRA – who used to post comments here as Things Are Bad – thinks the “inflict pain” policy should be extended to all women, any time they engage in “bad behavior.” Responding to a poster asking how to handle a disagreement with his mother, he explained his theory in (sometimes redundant) detail, receiving several dozen net upvotes for his post:
The ONLY way you change women’s bad behavior is by punishing them if they won’t start acting like adults. …
The only way you change a woman’s bad behavior is by making sure they know it hurts them. …
Reasoning with her will not work. The only answer is to use the power he has as her SON to threaten to hurt her emotionally. Women are emotional creatures. Nothing else will work. This is what it means to be a man: you do what you have to do so that things will be better in the end, even if you don’t like it. …
It isn’t about convincing her what’s right, it’s about showing her she will suffer if she doesn’t do what’s right. That is the only thing that will work.
The Men’s Rights Movement likes to pretend that is it a civil rights movement. But threats, harassment, hate speech, and emotional blackmail aren’t the tactics of a legitimate civil rights movement. These are the tactics of angry narcissists clinging to retrograde prejudices, who have given up on the war of ideas because on some level they know that history is against them, and that they will never win.
@debaa
Why don’t you try reading my comment again? With a little comprehension this time.
If someone holds a gun to your head to get your consent, then that is obviously (and legally) rape. If someone has no reasonable choice except to consent to sex, then their consent is compromised and the sex that follows is rape.
When I say “pressure,” I’m envisioning things that fall well short of creating any kind of unlawful duress.
Legally, consent is a binary. It could never be anything else. Consent, in a legal sense, just means that someone voluntarily agreed to engage in sexual activity without being unlawfully forced or compelled to do so.
Threats of violence, threats of confinement, and certain kinds of blackmail create unlawful duress. Saying “please” does not.
Well, I still do not see that restraints on slut shaming are an undue burden on the legal system.
Plenty of rapists still get away with raping.
I suppose MRAs will not be happy unless rape is completely legalized.
Okay Quackers, let me try again.
Got it!…?
I got it!
…
Now I’ll stop spamming. ^__^
Yeah because calling out your ableist crap is so ableist…..
I’m not cool with you deciding that I must have schizoid pd because I’m asexual. seriously fuck off
(ps armchair diagnosing everyone you don’t like or disagree with is ableist period )
Our friend Roberta:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_sW65ilskOC8/Sg8c0EAdD3I/AAAAAAAAXa4/0sCY80mXhC0/s400/ConcernTroll.jpg
Concern Troll is very concerned.
Okay roberta, how about this:
“Consent” is obtained, sexual intercourse starts, woman changes mind, halfway through. She at that moment, withdraws her consent.
Her partner continues to have sex with her.
She *just* said no, he *just* ignored her.
Is that rape at that moment? Cause the whole “obtaining consent” thing only really even matters if women get to have their choices respected in the first place, which seems like an odd thing to expect of say, rapists.
@debbaa
Yes. If someone consents to sex and then withdraws their consent half-way through the encounter, then yes it’s rape if their partner doesn’t stop when they are asked to do so.
That is legally and morally rape, and I’ve never argued otherwise.
@Jumbofish:
I didn’t say that most asexuals, or you in particular, are schizoids, I’m sorry if you interpreted it that way. I said that most schizoids are asexuals. It’s obvious there are a lot of asexuals who are NOT schizoids.
And I still maintain that dismissing the knowledge of someone with AvPD about personality disorders like if he’s an ignorant moron is ableist.
Okay, would the woman who withdrew her consent have any realistic chance of getting her rapist convicted in court?
@jumbofish
I don’t think NMMNG’s diagnosing asexuals as schizoid, so much as he is IDing most schizoids as asexual. Which is still problematic for all the reasons that DSC said, so I’m not defending the statement, just saying you may have misread it. I have not seen anything linking schizophrenia to asexuality myself, so I’m pretty skeptical of his claim as well.
and ninja’d
and I meant SPD not schizophrenia. Oh edit button, wherefore art thou
edit button met with preview button and ran away together. I hear they are very happy!
and the quote button jumped over the moon!
@debbaasseerr
Depends on quite a few factors. If she asks her partner to stop, and just ignores her and keeps going, and she doesn’t do anything else to try and stop him, then probably not. If she starts to physically resist after he ignores her request to stop, then probably yes.
In the first scenario there are just too many questions which would frustrate a prosecution. Did he hear her when she said stop? Did he think she changed her mind because she only said stop once and then let him finish without a word? Did she say stop forcefully or did she say it in a way he might of interpreted as her just playing coy? Etc.
Keep in mind that everything has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. You have to prove that: not only did she withdraw consent, but he clearly understood that she withdrew consent. That’s close to impossible in a he said – she said case with plenty of plausible deniability.
If she physically resisted him, and he physically forced her to continue sex as she struggles against him, then all that goes out the window. There’s no doubt that her withdrawal of consent was clearly communicated by her and clearly understood by him.
WELCOME TO THE SORRY STATE OF AFFAIRS, IDIOT.
…………that’s an interesting response.
Rape can be hard to prosecute. It’s a crime that often leaves no evidence and typically occurs behind closed doors with no witnesses.
That sucks, but what’s the alternative? Until someone develops a perfect lie detector rape will always be hard to prove.
Asexual here. Not schizoid.
Well, I suspect they are an undue burden on lazy and incompetent lawyers.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mra
This is so funny, this is what they are whining about now, and are going to send over their members in droves. Get over there and vote! Does not require any registration, and don’t forget to go to the last pages where MRAs have submitted their own definitions, they need some downvotes.
I love you guys, but this thread is making you look really bad. Stop and take a deep breath. Remember that
1) You may not know as much as you think you do about a given topic and
2) Opinions can differ among reasonable people.
As an observer (and not even an impartial one, but one predisposed to be sympathetic to Manboobz commenters and unsympathetic to RobertaSandoval and NMMG) I would point out two things:
One, regardless of whether Roberta Sandoval is a criminal trial lawyer (and I’m reminded of Sean Connery’s line in The Untouchables – who would claim to be that, who wash naught?) she has been perfectly civil, has not called anyone any names, and has the sort of attitudes about the law that one would expect (and indeed hope for!) in someone who is a career advocate for those accused of crimes. Her position, while it may be wrong and even wildly wrong, is perfectly reasonable and could be engaged reasonably. This has been the road not taken.
Two, regardless of whether you think it’s a correct or useful way of characterizing the disorder, schizoid personality disorder is absolutely characterized in the medical books as being associated with asexuality. It’s just so tiresome to read people who obviously don’t know squat about something saying “maybe but I know oodles about this and I’ve never heard etc.” Listen, it’s not as hard as you think to tell when someone is bullshitting. Stop doing it.
Over at pandagon the commenting culture used to be really cool and I give Amanda Marcotte a lot of credit for that – she was tough on trolls and did a good job keeping things pretty clean. However, over the years it became a real drag because no one was really allowed to show up and say ANYTHING (much less disagree with Marcotte) because they would be shouted down by the regulars. Now I don’t even read the comments more than once or twice a month because it’s just too depressing. I hope that doesn’t happen here as I really enjoy y’all’s work.
Really not concern trolling; check my comment history. I’ve said some stuff people didn’t like, for sure, but I’m an ally. Cool your jets. A conversation has at least two sides to it, and dumbass MRA trolls don’t count.
So, tell me again how men are convicted only on the word of a woman? What you wrote above says clearly that it’s going to be hard to prove successfully.
It depends on what’s being alleged. If you alleged that someone held you done and forcibly raped you as you fought and screamed, then your word can be enough to convict. Because all of those questions of mens rea don’t apply to that allegation.
If you allege that you meekly told him to stop a single time and he kept going anyway, then that would be virtually impossible to prove. Because there are legitimate questions about whether or no the correct mens rea existed.
Once again you clearly state the problem! One of the things loony feminsts have with their wacky ideas of consent which you distorted is exactly this.
No other crime puts this kind of burden on the victim.
Changing the way we prosecute rapes? Putting the weight of the law on men to not rape people instead of on women to not get-raped? No shit there’s no easy alternative, but our legal system FAILS right now, and throwing our collective hands up in the air and going “oh well, rape happens, how’s that perfect lie detector coming along?” doesn’t cut it.