[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.)
@Kyrie:
Ah, I see… Never mind then.
Thanks, David — in the future I will be more thoughtful about when NOT to quote.
And @red_locker, also thanks. I will tell Buster you think she’s adorable, and hope it doesn’t go to her head. 🙂
@red_locker: feminists are being fairly consistently misleading with their use of statistics on gender in relation to domestic violence and rape. Doesn’t really count as lying though – that implies intent which often just isn’t there.
@Cloudiah: I’m not sure it’s intentional as such, but it seems to be fairly systemic and consistent when taking about the gender of domestic violence and rape victims. Another trick is cherry-picking figures by using one survey known to underestimate the number of domestic violence victims in a way likely to be biased towards under-reporting male victims for the gender of victims, and using another not believed to have this problem for the total number of female victims in order to get the most favorable statistics possible. (Note that this criticism of the NCVS methodology – that it under-reports due to victims not perceiving what happened to them as a crime – is originally feminist rather than MRA.)
Also, even if their definition of rape does include women forcibly enveloping non-consenting men, pretty much all feminists use statistics on the gender of rape victims that don’t count this as rape even when the correct statistics are literally staring them in the face. Some are embarrassed when this is pointed out because they had no idea they were doing so, other times it appears any references to the more inclusive statistics are deleted as anti-feminist leaving only the ones that don’t count most male victims. It makes a big difference – under one definition men are a tiny minority of rape victims in the US and under the other about half of all rapes in the US are carried out against men.
What the hell just happened?…
Well, that was special.
Is it just me or do our trolls have an extremely short shelf life these days? Less than a week of posting and then the meltdown.
Wow. What the shit? There is not enough shame in the world to cover how ashamed “Roberta” should be feeling right now.
Bet yer really proud of yourself though, right “Roberta”? Fucking loser.
“It’s not often that a troll reveal to be a complete monster can still be so goddamn boring.”
She’s a living illustration of the concept that evil is banal.
“Nowhere in the world is 3 beers enough to make someone incapable of legal consent (unless you are incredibly tiny and a tremendous lightweight).”
Just over 5ft2, usually about a size 6. I don’t like beer, but 3 of any drink and I’m at the stumbling and babbling nonsense and will fall asleep soon stage. Lots of people like me in the world.
“I don’t know why people act like whether someone wanted to have sex is this grand unknowable mystery”
I do. It makes it easier to get away with rape.
Yep, Roberta is a scumbag. She was a scumbag on Jezebel too, and the pattern continues. Sorry that you had to see her trying to rationalise why the abuse that happened to you wasn’t, like, illegal or anything, LBT. I’m glad things are better for you now.
“Is it easy to talk about? No. Because the idea that I should/could have just kept saying no until she let me go to sleep… it’s still one that people like Roberta prattle on about. I assented. I didn’t consent. ”
It’s exactly that subtle but really quite clear boundary that people like Roberta want to blur so that rapists can avoid conviction.
“If I were male, I certainly would never sleep with a woman. It’s just too dangerous. No orgasm is worth your life. If I were a straight male, I’d just be celibate. It’s the only reasonable option left for hetero men in the 21st century.”
LOL. And yet most hetero men, including some right here, seem to manage just fine. Helps not to hate and categorically distrust women.
“Keep fucking around if you like. But I’d never stop looking over my shoulder if I were you.”
My name is Roberta, and I am here to make you paranoid. Are you happy in your current life and relationship/s? Well, stop that immediately. Be unhappy, be afraid, distrust women as much as I do. I won’t rest until you do!
“If you were empress of the world. Every het man in existence would be in prison.”
I’m a bisexual woman, and I don’t want to send any of my exes, even the ones I’m not all that fond of, to jail for rape. Because they didn’t rape me, and like most women I don’t do shit like that, and most men aren’t so awful that most women regret fucking them. Congratulations Roberta, you hate men AND women. No wonder you’re such a miserable excuse for a human being.
Also I’m just going to note that when she was still on Jezebel, Roberta was claiming to be a lesbian in a long-term relationship with another woman.
Sorry, David! I posted that last comment before noticing that you’d banned our fake lawyer friend, Feel free to remove any triggery comments I quoted.
Roberta is pretty fond of gaslighting. Of misrepresenting her opponents. Of lying about what has been said, by herself and others. Of pretending things which were asked weren’t asked.
It’s been a predictable pattern. Pretty fast for all that it wasn’t surprising. The level of arch, “so tell me what you think”, coupled to the arrogance in the appeal to authority about being an att’y pretty much set it up.
If I had to bet, it’s actually not a woman. The nature of the complaints are much more in keeping with a man. That’s just my opinion, as a guy who spent 16 years doing interrogations, and learning to spot things like that. I’d lay odds at 8:2.
Regardless… Roberta seems thin-skinned, prone to pointless personal attacks and logical inconsitencies which make Zarat and Meller seem paragons of rational thought.
Polliwog: It’s not MRAL, and certainly not Brandon. The odds of Brandon managing to keep on topic, even so well as Roberta has is right up there with my finding a Higgs-Boson in my breakfast cereal. Not least because I’ve been mocking her, in ways Brandon would reply to, and she hasn’t.
Roberta: Silence, insect. If i want your opinion, I’ll beat if out of you!
I didn’t know you were the internet tough guy sort of woman. I am sure we are all a-tremble in our boots, jiggling like a well-made custard at the thought you showing up to beat opinions out of us.
Me, should I ever find myself wanting your opinion, I’ll just shoot myself.
If you strike me down I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Oh, the self-grandiosity, the idea that we will be stunned into submission by this quotation.
Come on, give yourself the respect of coming up with original insults.
Jesus.
I actually hoped that she WASN’T as horrible as she sounded, just truly, truly so nearsighted that she DIDN’T KNOW that her argument over definitions was actually completely tearing apart something that, y’know. Happened to me in a horrible way back when I was a kid.
And… she DID realize I’m a gay man right? (Well, gay/ace.) RIGHT? And that me and my husband have amazingly consensual times all the time without anyone accusing each other of rape, right?
Seriously, what the fuck. That’s… the biggest load of vilebile someone’s vomited up on me in a long, long time.
What the hell, Roberta. (I know you’re not commenting, but you’re likely still reading.) It wasn’t that hard. Crying. Fetal position. MOST PEOPLE KNOW THIS IS NOT OKAY. WTF.
I see I was probably right in my supposition that Roberta is a male with consent issues. I suspect the plan was to get the feminists to “admit” that a woman has the right to “change her mind” after the sex is long finished.
Then pull an FF/IR/PP and quote us, showing how evil feminists are.
Sadly, we don’t actually think that.
@ Pecunium
Roberta was using an avatar that was a photo of a woman’s face on Jez. If she is indeed a man with consent issues, that adds yet another level of creepy – whose photo was that, and where did he steal it from?
I know I’m coming in a bit late here, but I want to point out a few things:
1) The prosecution has the burden of proof regarding all elements of the crime in criminal cases, to a beyond a reasonable doubt standard. If it were actually impossible to show that someone did not want the sex, and “wanting” were written into the law, this would not make it easier to convict rapists, it would make it considerably harder.
2) Wanting to fuck someone isn’t love. This is especially true if you are willing to fuck them when they don’t want it or don’t freely consent to it.
3) I actually do have a certain level of default suspicion against cis heteros and I will not date cis hetero men at this point in my life. And I don’t even think that every last cis hetero man is a rapist, a homophobe, and/or a transphobe. I can’t imagine why someone would think that the problem of there existing a woman who thinks all hetero sex is rape and yet seeks to have hetero sex is an issue that would really exist in reality (also, not all PiV sex is hetero or between heteros). A theoretical person who thought that all hetero sex was rape would seek to avoid hetero sex, wouldn’t they?
4) My pronouns are ze/hir or other gender neutral pronouns, not “she”.
RE: Darksidecat
I have no idea. I think Roberta was trying to elevate herself as, like, some super snowflake because she would never consider falsely accusing someone of rape? Which made her superior to feminists? Even though this whole damn thing exploded about MY thing, when me and the guy were male?
I don’t know, her train of argument vaulted off the track and choo-chooed off into the mist a looooong time ago.
Polliwog: It’s not MRAL, and certainly not Brandon. The odds of Brandon managing to keep on topic, even so well as Roberta has is right up there with my finding a Higgs-Boson in my breakfast cereal. Not least because I’ve been mocking her, in ways Brandon would reply to, and she hasn’t.
Oh, definitely not Brandon, if for no other reason than that I can’t imagine Brandon going for even a tenth as many posts as Roberta had without talking about Brandon.
By the end there, I was halfway wondering if NWO was branching out into suckpuppets (typo, but I’m leaving it as it’s rather appropriate). The massive paranoia + bizarre assertions pulled out of thin air + violent rage at Holly + insanely creepy rape fantasies combo seemed rather familiar. After the Star Wars thing, though, I find myself wondering if it was someone deliberately trying to imitate NWO’s style. I’m still a teensy bit suspicious of MRAL – he tried to be imitation-Antz a while back, and so playing imitation-NWO (with bonus “high-IQ” fake career) seems right up his alley.
Unfortunately, “Roberta” was probably just an entirely separate jackass, albeit quite possibly a jackass who was deliberately imitating some of our other jackasses.
NWO doesn’t have the self-control to sock. He’d lapse back into “man=bad woman=good” and “flouride” in one post. No way could he go several hours without turning back into himself.
MRAL is slightly brighter about socking, but not much; I think he can go a few posts without sounding exactly like MRAL, but not as long as Roberta did. Although the Star Wars meltdown thing sounded a bit like him. (And just the fact that Roberta chose to melt down in hilarious “things aren’t going my way, I’m going to kick my legs on the floor and hold my breath” fashion is very MRALish.)
But apparently “Roberta” has been trollin’ around for some time and on some other sites, so probably she’s a third asshole altogether.
Just on a guess, there are probably a *lot* of MRA Internet Warriors who quote Star Wars at particularly groan-worthy moments. Along with a lot of non-MRA Internet Warriors.
Roberta is lying about something:
Like I said, I’m a war veteran with PTSD who’s platoon was blown to shreds by a road side bomb in Iraq a few years ago. I have survivors guilt and am in counseling for it. Maybe that’s why the word struck a nerve with me. I also don’t consider survivor an empowering word at all. Some of my best friends, better men than me, died that day. I don’t understand why I walked away with nothing more than an injured leg and a few bits of shrapnel in my chest. To me, survivor is a dirty word. A word that evokes only guilt and shame.
There is some really nasty stuff she said comments above that one, it’s all here
And remember, she was also a cop! And then a lawyer. And then she apparently dumped her long term girlfriend and became straight, and we shall never speak of the ex again.
Or, you know, she’s just a troll.
A liar. Serial, and intentional.
The long term girlfriend she wanted to marry (before, or after her platoon was “blown to shreds”… Never mind that a platoon is about 30 people, and it would have made major news. I can think of only a couple of incidents which come close to that, and none of them were IEDs, but rather vehicle accidents, or firefights).
Anyone else notice the gender issues in that comment, “better men than me”?
If Roberta is indeed a dude, I’m still bothered by the fact that she was using some random woman’s photo as her avatar on Jez.