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?
And even if you actually get raped–which is rare, because woman lie all the time–MRAs will keep on walking by and let you get raped. Then when you bring your rapist to trial, the MRA on the jury will vote to acquit him just to spite you.
What a lovely bunch they are.
Actually, literally no one showed up except the organizers and press:
http://manboobz.com/2012/02/19/mens-rights-in-the-real-world-no-one-showed-up-to-the-event-but-organizers-say-the-lack-of-attendance-is-not-due-to-a-lack-of-interest/
Hahaha, I remember that one woman from Beyond Scared Straight. Now if only the girls they brought in on that show were there due to false rape allegations instead of running with gangs, getting in fights, and doing drugs. That would be a real MRA victory.
@Ponkz:
And the thing is, the people who whine the loudest about health and safety gons madz would generally be the first to get litigious if there WAS an accident. In everywhere I’ve worked, I’ve always got the impression that the stringent safety regulations and training stem from the employer’s fear of being sued as much as genuine concern about employees getting sliced in half.
(Yeah, the conkers incident was about ONE SCHOOL that banned conkers, the Daily Fail turned it into OPPRESSIVE ORWELLIAN NANNY STATE DECLARES WAR ON INNOCENT CHILDHOOD PASTIMES NATIONWIDE)
Oh absolutely. I know lots of the rules in place at my former jobs were direct results of lawsuits. I used to work in the jewelry department at a bigger store and we could only change the watch batteries of the watches that we sold, that didn’t need to be specially sealed. The reason we couldn’t change the batteries of other watches was because too many people brought in expensive watches that were either unable to be sealed properly by us (and we did not have extensive training to know the difference) or were already broken, and then blamed us for breaking them. We’d have to pay full price to replace their watches, unlike if we were to break one we sold and could get it at just above cost.
Still, we had customers begging and pleading and claiming they wouldn’t hold us responsible. Uhh, something tells me the type of person who thinks they are above the rules and who puts an employee in the awkward position of repeatedly refusing them because they could get in trouble for breaking the rules is the same type who would hold us accountable for any damage done.
And I really don’t feel for a second that the corporations care about my health and safety. The people making the laws, sure, but not the corporations they’re enforcing those laws on.
Feminism; defending and excusing false allegations, manipulating statistics. For equality!
>>>MRAs have officially gone total Red Scare now? XD
I’m pretty sure they started that way. The first time I heard about MRM back in the late 90s, the entire thing was about ‘cultural Marxism’ and how feminism was a communist plot. All the core activists were anti-socialist reactionaries.
BlackBloc — that’s their issue with the affordable care act then? Nothing to do with women, just good ol’ anti-socialism? That’d make way more sense… (which probably means I’m wrong, given nothing in the MRM makes sense >.< )
Jessay — my favorite warning labels are always the ones that make you go "shit, so someone sued because they did this?!" (and the Ikea ones that act like adults climb bookcases…)
“defending and excusing false allegations”
No one here is doing this. As for manipulating statistics, that’s your job.
With all this talk about Bernard Chapin I actually had a dream about him last night. Thanks, manboobz.
This kid needs to take Psych 1. You have to laugh at the hand-phallus growing, growing….it’s so firm! So huge! What can stand against it! And it can beat women up!
Sounds good
Bullying is the only thing Western feminists are good for these days
Let’s at least keep the feminism isolated and contained in decadent Western countries.
Said without irony while proudly defending racist and homophobic shit. Ah, anti-feminists XD
A wild NWO appears!
NWO used Blatant Lies!
The attack was ineffective.
Feminists used Logic!
NWO used Dodge!
Watch oiut! He kills you in your dreams!
Oh wait, that’s Freddy Kreuger.
NWO, every time you try to do your “math,” you manipulate statistics. Poorly, I might add.
@Blackbloc, sure, they’ve always had the anti-communist fervor of your average right winger in the 1950s, but it’s not total Red Scare until you start doing internal witch hunts for “sympathizers” and trying to purge them.
I did this into my teens, when I had a wobbling scare and got clonked on the head by an Artemis Fowl book. Someone does this stuff. Not that I sued. It was a Billy bookcase, btw.
The best warning labels are unused biohazard stickers. *evil giggle*
I know someone who bought a fairly cheap metal shelving unit and was using it for textbooks, paperback novels, and china unicorns. It fell over on her in the middle of the night one night. I think one of the unicorns was broken, but she was okay.
We ended up with the disassembled shelf and I think we threw it out a couple of moves ago. I just found what I think are the nuts and the bolts from the kit in a baggie in a box the other day. Strange what flotsam we accumulate in our lives.
I saw that false allegations poster, and I didn’t realize they were implying prison assault/rape. Ok I must be tired, everyone else got it.
@falconer THAT sounds like the end of a Douglas Coupland novel. Getting hit in the head with your own unicorn fallen from a unstable weak platform and breaking apart.
I’ve always looked at warning labels and thought of the many disabled adults that I knew and worked with . There are all kinds of people in the world. Also some of the ‘Darwin Awards’ pissed me off when I heard them. Some of them, to me, suggest the person was disabled.
GASP AT THE THOUGHT OF BERNARD CHAPIN IN MY DREAMS.
MY CONDOLENCES.
Everything seems to disturbing to me today. I might go back to bed.
I just realized ignatiusloyola is my ex. Small world.
It is difficult to read prison rape into the false allegations poster, even though it was intended. It assumes the background information that women rape women in prison. That’s something that happens in exploitation movies to titillate male audiences, but it seems improbable in real life, given women’s low propensity for sex and violence. There are scarce any female bathhouses, nor are there many female serial killers.
Yeah, what I got from that poster was not so much rape, but the threat of “scary women of color gonna hurt/kill you” which is just as fucking wrong in a racist way. I guess I just don’t fear women as potential rapists, so the thought of going to women’s prison is not scary in that regard. More that, while I’ve held my own in fights (not many, mind you, but it has happened), a prison fight is COMPLETELY different than anything I’ve ever been involved in, and I’ve never fought someone as bulky and muscular as that woman is. So yeah, the idea of going toe to toe with a woman at least twice my size is unnerving, but still it’s not an effective ad campaign against false rape accusations. At least for me, I would never do something like that. Would it deter me from dealing drugs or something? Very possibly.
And with the warning labels, of course there is the standard, “warning, this coffee is hot.” Like, really people? REALLY? And that warning doesn’t even protect against the original lawsuit if I remember correctly. Something about the coffee being scalding hot and the woman sustaining sever burns from it. Hot means it would sting if you spilled it, not you would be hospitalized.
NWO — “excusing false allegations, manipulating statistics” — I’m still waiting for those statistics you wanted me to look at. Post either of the two studies saying ~50% of reports are false and I’ll just tear their methodology apart again. Or, you know, you could try not manipulating statistics, either way. I gave Arks’s statistics a fair chance, I don’t know why you think I’d treat your statistics any differently. (footnote correction on the wording of that math)
creativewritingstudent and Falconer — you’re making me glad the Billy next to my bed is well balanced thanks to being used by a law student (the bottom shelves probably way more than I do, not that I’m going to climb the thing)
scrapemind — While you’re right about female serial killers (and I’d imagine bath houses as well), the DoJ found appalling rates of sexual violence regardless of gender, the study is available here — take a look at the numbers on page 12 though, in sheer numbers more men are assaulted, but calculating for the percentage women have a higher risk of inmate-on-inmate assault (men higher a risk of assault by staff though).
I don’t see the poster as even particularly scary, just fucking racist, I read that as the woman in the top left trying to give scary face (ala “get this camera out of my face”); top right being maybe about to get into a fight, or maybe not; bottom right isn’t even threatening if face tattoos aren’t inherently threatening, she’s just sitting there, having a conversation or something (so scary!); and bottom left they almost look bored >.< I'd not want to step between the women in the top right, but they seem to have their own thing going on, not just be randomly threatening for the hell of it (and there's also the possibility that stare down ends without a fight). But I guess I'm supposed to inherently find women of color threatening or something, which means I've got no argument against calling that racist.
Kind of laughable that those women are supposed to be oh so scary considering the one photo that might turn into a fight also has someone who looks like she might be playing mediator. Those photos might be like a Rorschach of racism though.