It’s sort of reassuring how bad Men’s Rightsers are at communicating with those outside their tiny movement. I should amend that: how bad they are at communicating what they want to communicate — that is, that they are the 21st-century version of the heroic and in many ways successful civil rights movements of the late 20th century. What they tend to communicate instead is what they’d rather the world not see: how blinkered and reactionary and hateful so many of them really are.
Browsing through the Men’s Rights subreddit last night, I ran across a batch of graphics one MRA had prepared for other MRAs to freely use, whether as online graphics, dorm room decoration, or posters to wheatpaste on the nearest family courts building. While avoiding the hysterical misogyny of so many of the graphics up on the Artistry Against Misandry website we looked at recently, CAGeorge’s posters reveal a bit more about himself and the MRM than he perhaps intends them to. Take this poster, ostensibly a call to “resist feminist bullying.” How exactly do you resist such bullying? Apparently, with a giant fist.
Huh. Your movement is known for its violent rhetoric, for downplaying and whitewashing domestic violence against women by pretending that DV affects men and women equally, for promulgating a sort of false-rape-allegation hysteria in no way proportionate to the actual extent of false-rape allegations. In some circles, it’s labeled, fairly or unfairly, as “the abusers lobby.” Do you really think putting this fist on this poster is going to help?
Apparently not. Apparently that fist ISN’T GIGANTIC ENOUGH. Meet MEGA FIST:
So, yeah. Also, FYI, that particular version of the old clenched-fist graphic has been used by the far-left International Socialist Organization (ISO) for several decades. Take a look at the little ISO fist to the right here. Same fist. You may want to switch that out, dudes, lest you inadvertently convert potential MRAs to Trotskyism.
And while I have to give CAGeorge a few points for avoiding the crass misogyny of Artistry Against Misandry, he doesn’t do quite as well avoiding racism and homophobia. Hence this poster, apparently an attempt to scare potential false accusers by suggesting they could end up sharing a cell with a scary and probably dark-skinned dyke.
Naturally, CAGeorge’s artisty won mostly plaudits from the Men’s Rights redditors who stopped by to look and comment.
EDITED TO ADD: Woah. Strike that last sentence. Returning to r/menrights I see that a real, critical discussion of the flyers has erupted. Many of the regulars are unhappy with various aspects of CAGeorge’s choices. Numerous commenters are critical of the fist imagery, including ignatiusloyola, one of the subreddit’s mods, who objects in one highly upvoted comment. One person even mentions the ISO!
Our old pal Sigil1 (a.k.a. the legendary banned Man Boobz commenter Eoghan) is especially critical of the “roommate” poster, and for a good reason: that it essentially threatens prison rape for false accusers. (He doesn’t mention the racism or homophobia.) But he still can’t help but blame the posters on a conspiracy of evil “false flag” feminists trying to make the MRM look bad.
Paul Elam of A Voice for Men, naturally, thinks the posters are fine and dandy.
CAGeorge, meanwhile, defends his poor choices. Here he is dealing with criticism of the “roommate” poster:
The bit about “nullification” is of course a reference to Elam’s infamous suggestion that MRAs should undermine the legal system by voting “not guilty” in trials involving men charged with rape, “even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.”
Still, this is a real discussion. If the Men’s Rights movement has any chance at all of transforming itself into something really resembling a real progressive movement, it’s going to need to have a lot more discussions like this — and those who really do want to improved the lives of men instead of simply demonizing women will need to make clear that Elam and his ideological comrades are no longer welcome in the movement.
EDITED TO ADD, PART 2: Now the legendarily cloddish MRA videoblogger Bernard Chapin has made a video attacking the posters and the dude who made them. He’s not worried about the violent imagery, or the racism, or the homophobia — as I pointed out recently, he is himself a bit of a homophobe. Nope. He’s mad about the use of evil leftist imagery, and accuses the maker of the posters of being a sneaky Marxist infiltrator trying to co-opt the MRM with evil Marxist symbolism.
Gosh. Paul Elam said he liked the graphics. Is he a secret Marxist infiltrator too?
“Telling men that rape is bad doesn’t seem to have worked. In fact, they will either deny that rape happened, or say that it isn’t important. Either way, rapes continue. Women’s lives are destroyed – don’t you understand? …all I want is for one rapist to see something he hasn’t thought of before…that there are consequences for his actions.
This is a war. We didn’t start it, but now we’re here”.
FTFY.
Thanks for the images. please do something about your own hatred and ignorance,
You should see the new posters. We’ve got loads, and we’re just getting started. Plus, ours looks better than these ones, to be honest.
Why Celebrate International Men’s Day? – Men Are Human
Actually, DV DOES affect men and women equally.
Why Celebrate International Men’s Day? – Men Are Human
The Men’s Rights Citation List – Men Are Human
Also, just for added measure:
The Hypocrisy of Attacking Shelters for Male Victims of Domestic Violence – Men Are Human
@ acid kritana
I’m not sure that’s correct. Certainly the peer reviewed literature doesn’t support that anyway.
That’s the same whether we just look at number of incidents (where both a slap and a stabbing count the same) or the severity of the violence and its effects.
These are the official figures from the UK.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/domesticabusevictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2019
And this is a study on a global level.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)61030-2/fulltext
I have it in my head that you’re from the US. So here’s the stats from there. Apologies if I have your location incorrect.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2968709/
Note also this finding:
And certainly if we look at the number of homicides, then women and girls are disproportionally victims.
https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/gsh/Booklet_5.pdf
@Alan Robertshaw
Plenty of peer-reviewed research does indeed show this. After I’m done looking at your research and have posted this comment I will compile a large list (which will of course be incomplete due to how much there is), and it will look at male-female and male-male couples, as well as a small bit on trans men too (just for good measure).
I know. Severe violence has also been found to either be slightly/somewhat more female, equal, or far more male. And I would like to mention that while the majority of studies that look at injury rate generally point to higher rates of females being injured (for example, one study found that only 38% of the interviewed injured from domestic violence were male), several have found either equal or higher rates of men being injured due to domestic violence (which was actually a surprising finding, but I guess not, considering women are more likely than men to use a weapon against an intimate partner).
I shall review them in a bit.
I shall also review that one.
And I shall review that one.
But I wonder if it actually uses statistics?
Because I’ve come across at least 2 studies that not only found that self-defense was a low occurrence in domestic violence regardless of gender (except for one study), men were more likely to use self-defense as a reason of assaulting their partner than women were in both studies.
That is only homicides. However, when you include suicides caused by domestic violence, men far out-number female victims in domestic violence casualities.
Domestic Violence-Related Deaths (californiamenscenters.org)
I recommend reading the whole thing. It’s short, and it provides several areas of evidence, including one study verifying said finding and another by the CDC that looked at how many suicides are caused by domestic violence, possibly.
Note: I shall provide all the other sources for the claims that I have claimed so far, and include more as well.
@Alan Robertshaw
Studies 1-5 (more is coming) (studies titles quoted to show where they are easier)
________
Short summary:
Study 1 shows female dominance is more strongly associated with physical violence/abuse, and that in most of the 32 countries studied women were more violent than men, in both any physical violence/abuse and severe physical violence/abuse.
Study 2 shows trans men face high rates of victimization, and higher rates of DV and dating violence than trans women (especially dating violence).
Study 3 shows that DV against gay men has been well-underestimated, and that gay men face higher rates of DV than previously thought (up towards 45.6% of gay men).
Study 4 shows that men were more likely to be the victims of abuse in 4 forms of abuse, while being slightly less likely in 1 form of abuse but pretty close.
Study 5 shows that women are 70.7% of the perpetrators in one-sided DV and initiate the majority of two-sided DV, as told by both men AND women.
_______
Long summary:
Study 1: Female dominance was more likely to be be associated with violence perpetrator by either or both genders: strong association with male violence, female violence, and both violence, with female dominance being a stronger factor in female and both violence while being an equal factor in male violence. Male domination was only strongly associated with male violence, as equal a factor in male violence as female domination was. There were 28 cases including female violence domination (24 female-female, 2 female-male, 1 male-female, 2 female-both), 6 male violence domination (2 male-male, 2 female-male, 1 male-female, 1 male-both), and 3 both (2 female-both, 1 male-both). Women committed more severe violence and more violence in generally, and female domination was more associated with physical violence against an opposite-sex partner.
Study 2: Trans men experienced equal or higher rates of victimization compared to trans women, and faced higher rates of DV and extremely higher rates of dating violence.
Study 3: Gay men face higher rates of domestic violence than previously thought: when couples are interviewed, the rate goes up to almost half of gay men (45.6%), and many gay men faced high rates of emotional (33.6%) and monitoring abuse (20.3%), also facing a large amount of physical/sexual abuse (9.7%) and controlling abuse (6.8%). Internalized homophobia increased the risk of both being victimized and perpetrating abuse/violence.
Study 4: 94.2% of men and 87.8% of women reported experiencing at least one form of violence; men were more likely to experience coercion (79.2% vs 62.81%), detachment (74.91% vs 62.81%), humiliation (63.64% vs 55.17%), and physical abuse/violence (26.55% vs 10.74%), while women were slightly more likely to experience sexual abuse/violence (29.55% vs 27.64%). Even though men were more likely to be victimized, they were less likely to recognize that they are victims (even though both had a hard time recognizing it), and were less willing to reach out about the violence than were women. Men experienced a violence rate of 26.55%-79.2%, while women experienced a violence rate of 10.74%-62.81%.
Study 5: Out of 23.9% relationships being violent, 49.7% were reciprocal/two-sided; out of the 50.3% nonreciprocal/one-sided, 70.7% of the perpetrators were women and 29.3% men. Both men and women mostly agreed. Out of reciprocal cases, women were more likely to initiate or perpetrate reciprocal violence against men than vice versa: 2.30 vs 1.26. While women in general were more likely to be injured or report injuries, men were more likely to be injured in reciprocal violence than a woman was in nonreciprocal violence: 25.3% vs 20.0%. Women were more violent and were 70.7% of perpetrators in nonreciprocal-one-sided violence (29.3% male perpetrators), and women were more likely to initiate reciprocal/two-sided violence, but women were in general more likely to be injured than men, except for one group of men was more likely to be injured than another group of women.
________
I’ll start off with dominance, then get to the rates reported in each country. This was only based off of reported physical assaults, by the way.
Male violence was associated with a dominance rate of 2.293 for males and 2.629 for females for any physical violence, while for severe it was associated with 5.147 for males and 5.010 for females. Meaning that it was generally equal, but slightly more female for any and slightly more male for severe. This was the only type of violence associated with male dominance equal to a rate to female violence, while there were no sections associated with male dominance more than female dominance.
Female violence was associated with a dominance rate of 1.965 dominance for males and 3.425 for females for any physical violence, while for severe it was associated with 1.678 for males and 4.344 for females. Female dominance was more strongly associated with female-only violence than male dominance was, and the gap grew for severe when compared to any physical violence. This was the largest gap of any group.
Both violence was associated with a dominance rate of 3.098 for males and 4.215 for females for any physical violence, while for severe it was associated with a dominance rate of 4.497 for males and 5.708 for females. Female dominance was associated more strongly with both being violent than male dominance was, though the gap wasn’t as strong as for female violence. However, it had the strongest association to female dominance out of any group.
Based on these results, it’s possible to say that since female dominance and male dominance were basically equally associated with male violence, male violence is a possible react in many of the cases of female violence and/or dominance. Female dominance was the least likely to be associated with male dominance and was strongly associated with female dominance, meaning that it’s much more likely that it’s female violence for reasons to dominate, while female self-defense was much less likely (according to this group). For the both violence, it was more strongly associated and was the most strongly associated with female dominance and was also associated with the highest rate of male domination, but was still smaller than female dominance by a noticeable amount. It’s possible that, since studies have found that women are more likely to initiate double-sided domestic violence, that men are generally responding to women, but there are also a sizeable amount of female self-defense. However, it’s also possible that men and women in both violence are also trying to gain control over the other, but it would only be up to 3.098-4.497 at the most, leaving still a sizeable amount of female dominance without male dominance involved.
Here were the results:
Note: All countries had higher rates of both violence than male or female violence for any physical violence, but this changed for severe physical violence, with several being out-numbered by the male or female violence.
Male violence any, both violence severe: Iran
Female violence any, female violence severe: Mexico, South Africa, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Lithuania, Belgium, India, South Korea, Russia, Romania, Netherlands, United States, New Zealand, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Guatemala, Hungary, Singapore, Australia, Malta, Israel
Male violence any, male violence severe: Tanzania, Greece
Female violence any, male violence severe: Venezuela, Portugal
Male violence any, female violence severe: Brazil
Female violence any, both violence severe: Japan, Sweden
Here is what they are in terms of numbers:
Male-both – 1
Female-female – 24
Male-male – 2
Female-male – 2
Male-female – 1
Female-both – 2
Totals:
Female: 28
Male: 6
Both: 3
A 2011 poll asking 1,005 trans people if a specific form of violence had happened – rather than if they thought it was because they’re trans and left it at that – found some surprising results, outlined below.
“While the overall attempted suicide rate for all the Injustice at Every Turn respondents was the commonly reported figure of 41 percent, for those who had experienced physical assault it rose to 61 percent. Sexual assault survivors had a 64 percent attempt rate and 65 percent of those who experienced domestic violence had attempted suicide.”
320 individuals, or 160 male-male couples
Any form of IPV – 45.6%
Physical/sexual – 9.7%
Emotional – 33.6%
Controlling – 6.8%
Monitoring – 20.3%
Internalized homophobia increased the risk for victimization and/or perpetration.
759 students, 63.9% (484) women, that means 275 are men.
Type………………………..Men………Women
1 or more violent………..94.2%……87.8%
behavior victimization….258……….425
Coercion…………………..79.27%….62.81%
……………………………….218……….304
Detachment………………74.91%…..67.36%
………………………………206………..326
Humiliation……………….63.64%……55.17%
………………………………175…………267
Physical…………………..26.55%……10.74%
………………………………73…………..52
Sexual…………………….27.64%……..29.55%
……………………………..76…………….143
Men were more likely to be victims of coercion, detachment, humiliation, and physical abuse while women were slightly more likely to be victims of sexual abuse. Overall, there were more male than female victims.
Women were more likely to believe that they were abused (but both men and women under-believed that they were abused), and men were less willing to seek help from all the listed groups: friends, family, professors/advisors, and specialized resources.
Men had a higher average mean of experiencing coercion (2.52 vs 1.62), detachment (2.46 vs 2.27), humiliation (1.43 vs 1.27), physical (.48 vs .19), and total abuse/violence (7.50 vs 6.13). Women had a higher average mean of experiencing sexual abuse/violence (.75 vs .59).
Men had a lower religious identification than women did (2.56 vs 2.66).
“The participants with MLV: low scores in religious identification and high in overall victimization increase the likelihood of perceiving themselves as abused.”
Out of 11,370 individuals who reported having (a) heterosexual relationship(s), 5,219 were men and 6,151 women.
Women reported slightly more victimization (28.8% vs 24.8%) and much higher rates of perpetration (35.5% vs 17.3%) than men. 26.8% total were victimized and 26.5% were perpetrators.
23.9% of relations were violent (76.1% were not violent), of which 49.7% was reciprocal (two-sided) and 50.3% nonreciprocal (one-sided). Of nonreciprocal/one-sided cases, 70.7% were perpetrated by women and 29.3% by men. Both men and women mostly agreed with small variance: 74.9% of men and 67.7% of women reported female perpetrators, and 25.1% of men 32.3% of women reported male perpetrators.
Men were more likely to report nonreciprocal/one-sided violence (53.1% vs 48.5%) and women were more likely to report reciprocal/two-sided violence (51.5% vs 46.9%).
While women generally experienced higher levels of injury than men (31.4% vs 25.3% reciprocal, 20.0% vs 8.1% nonreciprocal), men were more likely to experience reciprocal injury than were women to report nonreciprocal injury (25.3% vs 20.0%).
Women were more likely to experience low frequencies of violence than men were for reciprocal (64.0% vs 57.2%), while men were more likely to experience low frequencies or violence for nonreciprocal violence (75.0% vs 69.0%).
Men were more likely than women to experience medium frequency levels of violence for both reciprocal and nonreciprocal than women were (29.1% vs 22.1% reciprocal, 18.9% vs 17.6% nonreciprocal).
Men were almost identically likely as women to experience high frequencies of reciprocal violence (13.7% vs 13.9%), while women were more likely to experience high frequencies of nonreciprocal violence (13.4% vs 6.1%).
Women were more likely to initiate or perpetrator reciprocal violence against men than were men to do so against women: 2.30 vs 1.26.