[TW for the comments to this post; discussions of rape and abuse.]
The Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization devoted to tracking and exposing hate groups, has just published a detailed report on the misogyny and violent rhetoric so pervasive in the Men’s Rights Movement — as well as the actual violence inspired by this sort of hatred of women. It’s a piece you all should read, even though few of the details will be new to long-time readers of this blog.
Arthur Goldwag, an expert on conspiracy-mongers and the far right, argues (I think correctly) that the Men’s Rights movement is largely a backlash against the many successes of feminism over the last several decades:
It’s not much of a surprise that significant numbers of men in Western societies feel threatened by dramatic changes in their roles and that of the family in recent decades. Similar backlashes, after all, came in response to the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, and other major societal revolutions. What is something of a shock is the verbal and physical violence of that reaction.
[Thomas] Ball’s suicide brought attention to an underworld of misogynists, woman-haters whose fury goes well beyond criticism of the family court system, domestic violence laws, and false rape accusations.
The Men’s Rights Movement, as it exists today, is not a civil rights movement; it is a regressive, hateful reaction against a civil rights movement — that is, feminism.
Those who truly care about the rights of men, and who are not motivated by a hatred of women or feminism, need to repudiate the hate and the violent rhetoric of the Men’s Rights Movement as it exists today. Only then can there be a Men’s Rights Movement worthy of the name.
EDITED TO ADD: The SPLC has also put up a guide to some of the more hateful sites in the manosphere. Longtime readers will be familiar with most of them.
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: And a piece debunking some Men’s Rights Myths.
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN, AGAIN: The discussion of the SPLC report on the Men’s Rights Subreddit is surprisingly reasonable, so far. (I mean, compared to what I expected. Meanwhile, over in this thread, the Men’s Rightsers are behaving as they usually do.)
*ninja’d
Why, with all the interpersonal crimes that exist, do people always go for some violation of property rights bullshit.
For example, if I wanted to illustrate your ridiculous argument:
It’s like stepping in a ring, getting my ass beat, congratulating my opponent on a good win and then suing him/her for assault
PosterformerlyknownasElizabeth
I know! I learn the darndest things!! The way MRAs talk they’ve almost got me convinced I’m another species..oh wait didn’t we have some asshat here who couldn’t understand genetics and phenotypes? According to him every woman is a different species.
Okay, so the question now is: how many rape cases go down like this:
“Your Honor, I agreed to have sex with him, I told him ‘yes please fuck me now,’ but I didn’t mean it, and he should have known.”
I’m thinking approximately zero ever?
I think according to Roberta it was what, 75%? 😛
You’re right, holly. But’s that’s only because your definition is not yet the legal definition. If it were, we’d see plenty of those cases.
“I screamed: oh god, fuck me! the whole time but deep down I didn’t really mean it. He should have known that and he didn’t. So send him to prison for 20 years for rape.”
If you were empress of the world. Every het man in existence would be in prison.
Still don’t see research Roberta. I can only see three possibilities here. 1. Your “sources” are scientifically unfounded, run by individuals whose mere goal is to make headlines. This is increasingly common in the psychological field.
or 2. You read a single study and leap to a major conclusion, ignoring evidence to the contrary, and hand picking with what might support your conclusions. If it is a scientific paper, there is often a section that discusses the results. I suggest you read the whole thing, rather then glance at a single chart.
and finally 3. You are lying your ass off and haven’t actually done any research. With your current record here and failure of understanding, I see 3 as the most likely.
Because every het man has been some woman’s regret. Do you REALLY like men?
First off, I love that you implied that I’m a big ol’ slut based on a post which explicitly discusses my boyfriend and the fact that he no longer engages in casual sex. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a big ol’ slut, but it does kind of speak to your level of reading comprehension.
Second, no one but you is suggesting that “regret” has anything to do with it – that’s your own ridiculous, disingenuous strawman. One of my exes was an incredibly selfish lover; I definitely regret all the sex I ever had with him, because it sucked. That does not in any way make it rape. It makes it sucky sex. No one here would suggest it was rape, and on some level I’m pretty sure you know that. But the time when a guy browbeat me into saying ‘okay, fine’ after I’d said “no, I mean it” fifty times and then stuck his cock in my mouth while I sat there and sobbed? That’s another story. And don’t fucking pretend you can’t tell the difference.
And once again, why would it only be het men in prison? The standard is completely gender neutral.
Shadow, I think it’s pretty clear that Roberta doesn’t like men.
See, Roberta, this is what makes me think you’re full of BS. I’m not a lawyer and I don’t have any training in it, so for all I know your everything-that-isn’t-violence definition of consent is legally true.
But then you pull this uber-specific YOU MUST BE A HETEROSEXUAL HATER thing, and threaten us with sex bots. That’s just too perfectly the MRA party line for me to believe any other argument you’ve made.
I don’t mind telling you, by the way, Roberta, that I’m a rape survivor. And if it makes you feel better, it was “rape-rape,” the “real” kind, the kind where I screamed at him to stop and everything.
And I didn’t go to the cops. Even though I had been for real raped. Even then, the idea of going through a medical exam, multiple interrogations, legal proceedings, having to tell my friends and family what happened and deal with their reactions–and for what? Putting the guy in jail? That wouldn’t gain me anything, wouldn’t fix anything. I’d do it to protect his future victims if I thought I had a chance of a conviction, but I didn’t–we’d had consensual sex in the past and I wasn’t physically injured.
(I can thank people like you for the fact that I had no chance of a conviction there, by the way. People who are so eager to spread the seeds of doubt about any rape accusation that doesn’t perfectly fit their idea of the Scary Violent Stranger Rape.)
So my thinking is… if there wasn’t enough motivation for me to go to the cops after being really raped, why the hell would someone go just because of some vague sense of “regret”? Why would someone face all that just because of some “cognitive dissonance?”
I don’t fucking believe that happens.
I disagree, ‘wanting’ or not something is a fact. Emotions are facts. If I say “I’m angry at rape apologists”, I’m just stating a fact. Now, of course, it is obvious that these are very complex and very difficult to prove fact. Does change that they’re real.
So when a internet commenter tell “I was raped without threat of violence”, I believe them by default. Apparently that sound silly to you, because I trusted his emotion.
But if they was saying “I was raped with the threat of violence”, that would be a ‘real’ rape for you, because… what? There is no more evidence in the second case, just the word of a stranger.
In addition, your way has a strong chance of hurting this person and other victims who might not dare to speak up because of people like you.
@Hellkell
I don’t think she even knows men outside of the stereotypes that she hears about.
Oh boy.
This was a fairly interesting thread to follow but when shit like this starts happening:
All pretense is of arguing in good faith is lost.
Roberta, you should probably step away from the conversation for a bit. You’ve already, perhaps unintentionally, revealed some real inner-ugliness. And, once you start pillorying the completely fabricated arguments of your opponents it becomes pretty clear that you’re just angry and lashing out.
@holly
I’m so sorry for you. You were actually raped. Something only a tiny fraction of self-described “victims” were subjected to. That person legitimately deserves to be in prison. It’s a shame you didn’t report zir.
You are not all women, though. The fact that you would never report regretted sex doesn’t mean women don’t engage in such behavior on a regular basis. My BF is so lucky to be with me. I’m one of the few women who doesn’t think all sex is rape.
He knows that, and he shows me his gratitude in all kinds of ways.
I see that Roberta realized her bullshit about what constitutes rape has been completely exposed, so she tried dredging back up “feminists think all sex with men is rape!” to deflect the issue.
Did I miss anything else?
That was…. surreal
And now we’ve gone… somewhere very, very surreal.
Roberta, I’m a big ‘ol slut, who’s slept with guys in the double digits. And not one of them has thanked me afterwards by saying “Oh my god, I feel so lucky to have found you! Every other woman I’ve met thinks sex is rape!” Forgive me while I roll on the floor laughing.
WTF?
WTF?
Citations for both of these statements needed.
Ha, ninja’d by Shadow.
@kyrie
The difference is that anyone can claim that they didn’t really want it and no one could ever dispute them. Even if we had a video recording of the sex we couldn’t dispute the claim that they really didn’t want it. That’s an unfalsifiable proposition that has no meaning outside of the speaker’s head.
Whether or not they agreed to have sex is a matter of objective fact. If we have video of them agreeing to sex, we no that no rape occured. Due process has meaning with such a standard.
Under the standard holly advocates, we might as well just do away with trials all together. Just immediately jail anyone accused. Because there’s no way to dispute the “victim’s” completely subjective allegation.
You are aware, that more than a few feminists do actually enjoy the hum… intimate company of men? Even if we can’t convince you we’re not man-haters, maybe we can convince you we like having some men around? And maybe that some feminists are men themselves.
Why the obsession of straights anyway?
And Roberta, you seem to be missing the fact that you’re in a conversation with sex-positive feminists. They like sex, for the most part.
And one of the things they want to do? Change the adversarial model of sex (or whatever you feel like calling it) — the one that says that women lose something by having sex. Even if you’re correct in saying that women’s cognitive dissonance and regret causes them to falsely accuse men of rape, why do you think that tightening up on false rape accusations and keeping the narrow legal definition of rape is helpful?