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?
OH did someone say serial killers? I’ve been on a marathon for months now watching crime investigation programs on You Tube.
Scrapemind. I can assure you there are female serial killers. A serial killer is defined as a person that premeditates more than two murders over time. There are many women over the years like this. The ones I saw were related to killing wealthy husbands. Women that do serial killings are mostly scam artists. Check out you tube, there are hundreds up.
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OH yeah, the coffee thing.
Companies are putting those on coffee to be snarky. The famous Mc Donalds case was actually an elderly woman that got product that was WAY in violation of restaurant code. She actually sustained injuries and only wanted her medical bills paid for. People can really hurt themselves putting something scalding hot in their mouths. There are temperature gauges next to coffee pots in restaurants because there are laws about this.
Also the location in question has been in violation previously and does nothing about it. People had been injured including small people, toddlers that had inadvertently swiped a drink onto themselves. I believe the owner was an immigrant that did not like codes and regulations. Culture clash. That’s how it was explained in the article I read, so don’t hold me to it. Could have been someone using veiled racism/xenophobia to make the point.
indifferentsky — idk about the owner of that McDonalds, but I do remember the case well enough to say that yes, she was seeking medical bills and lost wages, which is standard in an injury case. What tends to make people scream is that the coffee was in her lap, like we don’t all do that? Iirc though her pants basically melted into her skin, she was burnt badly — so badly, and in such an egregious manner, that she was awarded more than she was seeking. It was a rather large pay out in the end, but iirc that was the judge deciding McD’s needed a bigger lesson, not her being greedy >.<
"The ones I saw were related to killing wealthy husbands." — they're called black widows, and seem to just be the most popular type to report on (again, I assume cultural bias) — other ones I can of currently targeted patients in hospital (men have done that too) or infants in their care (idk of any men with that MO). Sorry if my note about prison rape made it sound like I was saying there are *no* female serial killers, my point was just that there aren't as many as male serial killers (though, I do question how much that's cultural bias, given the Victorian era assumed women just couldn't kill, poor fragile wilting flowers and all that).
Speaking of wilting flowers and serial killers, the only evidence against Lizzie Borden was that she didn't faint when she found the bodies? Idk if that's true or wtf I was reading was twisting the situation to make a point, but it certainly does make a point if true. (Does that sentence make sense?)
It’s trying to play on a lot of fears. Women of color, “butch lesbians,” people with body modifications, etc. But I am personally not afraid of any of these types of people so the poster isn’t effective on me. The people it would deter are people who are racist/homophobic/afraid of what they perceive as “not normal.”
IR/FF/PP: You use the word “stupid” a lot, Shar, but you never elaborate. How are you my intellectual superior?
The use of facts?
The use of actual argument in response?
Other little things like that.
That, or not thinking pregnant woman beating each other into an abortion to get money from a man isn’t actually a good idea for a videogame.
That one probably trumps all the rest.
Nanasha: Since most of these things are public record, wouldn’t it be easily quantifiable to figure out what rape accusations are false rape accusations?
No. If everyone agreed what was, “false” then yes. But there isn’t a common definition, with some people saying any case which doesn’t go to trial is a,”false” allegation”,or that an acquittal means there can’t have been a rape.
Or that a false ID = false allegation. Seriously, there are people who say that discovering the wrong person was convicted for a rape, which ended in the victim being murdered, means there was a false rape allegation.
IR: I am stupid because you think anyone intelligent has to agree with you and anyone stupid must disagree. It does not matter how much more they’ve accomplished than you, intelligence and possibly the value of their lives are just a matter of what movies they watch, what music they listen to, and what blogs they read.
Ok, you made an argument.
Can you support it. i.e. show that we think people are stupid for those reasons?
You can’t. Mind you the only one of those which is relevant to your actual charge is the first.
The value of a life (whatever that means) has nothing to do with intelligence. What books/movies/TV shows/plays/cars/motorcycles/roller coasters/breeds of cat-dog-hamster-snakes-guinea pigs, etc. they think make good pets/poets, etc. have nothing to do with intelligence either.
They might (strong emphasis on might) be markers of group identity, but that’s not intelligence.
So go for it. Show that mere disagreement equals us calling someone stupid; as opposed to the actual arguments they do (or don’t) make.
re the McDonald’s Case: I’ve talked about this one a lot.
She was the passenger in a parked car.
The coffee spilled when she opened it to add cream.
She suffered third degree burns to her inner thighs, and groin; about 6 percent of her skin was affected.
She asked for her medical costs to be covered (about 20,000)
McD’s denied it.
It was discovered McD’s knowingly kept it’s coffee at a temperature which was not capable of being consumed without causing burns.
They had more than 700 claims from coffee related burns over a ten year period.
The damages the jury awarded were 200,000 in compensetory damages (reduced because they found her to partially at fault) and 2.7 million in punitive damages.
The punitive damages were two days coffee sales.
On appeal the punitive damages were reduced by a huge amount, about 80 percent. So she got about $500,000.
And what are punitive damages?
The only pain a corporation can feel.
How else do you punish an out of control corporation? You can’t send it to jail, after.
(these are thoughts that were put in my head from hearing you go around once on this before, and I thank you for continuing to put that right out there, Pecunium)
The thing which annoyed me about the case is how small, as a real value to McD’s the damages were.
That they entered into a secret agreement, after the trial, and before the appeal (i just took a moment to look up the details again.., her total award was 480 punitive, plus 160 actual, for a total of 640,000USD) so we don’t actually know what McD’s paid out, because it had an NDA built into it. I suspect it was less than the award since it’s rare for a an appeal to lead to a larger award.
And McD’s could have avoided it all, by paying the medical bills…. skipped the cost of the trial, the weird publicity, the unpleasant facts revealed in the trial/discovery, the loss in courts, the payout they had to make.
It’s been 20 years, and people are still talking about the case.
On the other hand, from McD’s point of view (now) they probably see it as a win, since most of the time it’s used to show “how crazy juries are” and, “how much the system is broken”.
Sometimes I despair.
Pecunium — thanks for that info, I discussed the case back in civil law in HS but that was a decade ago now. It annoys me to no end that people hear the 2.7 million part and assume she was seeking that much, when she wasn’t, she was just seeking actual fucking costs. That she was awarded more makes sense too though, because Howard Bannister’s right, how else do you punish a company?
“Sometimes I despair.” — this is when I break out the Men in Black quotes, namely:
Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.
Rather irrelevant, but I have a bizarre image of Paul Elam hunched in his chair hitting the keyboard and screaming on his mic about feminism while this song plays in the background:
…Yeh.
Oh, I get it, you’re saying he’s mentally ill. That’s hilarious.
Argenti: It’s only momentary, but it does happen. The, “throw acid in their faces” thing was amazing. Not that he said it, but that he thought he could get away with it. I hope my sending an upset email helped, but that it took days for him to resign was bad.
That he had to resign was worse. He should have been fired.
Pecunium — you mean that republican staffer? That he said it was bad enough really, I have trouble dissociating the VoxDay shit from that considering the timing. I have no idea what that has to do with this thread, but I think I solved what you meant, maybe. He should’ve been fired, yeah, but I’m still glad he’s gone — can’t unring a bell though, and the “bell” here is fucking acid attacks.
*grumble* I’d prefer he had simply not said it, given he did, I don’t care how he and his job parted ways, so long as they did. At least he did resign, the republicans were willing to keep him? I shouldn’t really be surprised, but that means he could’ve gone on like he never said it if he hadn’t resigned. The republican party is a gigantic disaster and I gave up expecting anything remotely humane from them years ago.
Argenti: I think VD chose that metaphor because of that staffer. It’s not coincidence, but intentional repetition. It’s part of why I don’t credit the, “satire defense”. VD thinks (from previous writings) that terrorising his opponents his good practice,
Just to clarify a point about asking for damages, in many US jurisdictions, if the plaintiff’s attorney asks for monetary damages lower than those the jury elects to grant, unless they fall under narrow exemptiona, the plaintiff’s malpractice insurance picks up the difference. So typically, the plaintiff petitions for more than they think they will ever receive. So, if X sues Y for five million, this often means that X actually wants a number far lower and X’s attorney doesn’t think any award over that number is at all likely. Also, in some jurisdictions it is a common practice for appeals courts to lower very large awards, trial courts know this and so they often inflate the award so that the end result after the appeals courts lower it will be what the trial court would have wanted in the first place (NY Courts are known for this, I’ve heard more than one lawyer joke about it). Outsiders sometimes look at these large asking numbers and large trial court awards and don’t really see the procedural contexts around them.
h
Oh, about the Liebeck case, here’s a Journal of Commercial and Consumer Law piece about the case which contains facts and citations to the record, for those that are not yet aware of the actual facts of the case vs. the media myths that McDonalds and their corporate goons pushed http://www.jtexconsumerlaw.com/V11N1/Coffee.pdf
pecunium: the acid attack reference actually came straight from the PZ Meyer post that VD was attacking, so I think it really might have been a coincidence. Which is all the more disturbing in a way.
Psychodan: I’ll have to go look at pharyngula. I suspect the topicality is related; just at a remove, which does remove intention from VD.
That pharyngula post does explicitly ask about acid attacks, and VoxDay is properly presenting PZ Meyer’s questions. Of course, the original questions also include links, this one being the one for that question. So while the original question was posed before the staffer went and said that shit, the answer to 5 (How does stoning rape victims benefit women?) seems to suggest VoxDay is capable of seeing that some things are actually not beneficial. Idk, maybe his answer about acid attacks isn’t remotely related to that staffer’s comment, but I don’t think he’d have been so brazenly in support of the idea if not for the apparent support of at least one member of the republican party.
That’s also the part that includes “If PZ has turned against utilitarianism or the concept of the collective welfare trumping the interests of the individual, I should be fascinated to hear it.” — so it does seem to be more than a one off point, but idk. For reference, this is wtf that staffer said:
“Listen to Tom. What a little bee he has in his bonnet. Buzz Buzz. My question today … when is Tommy boy going to weigh in on all the Lilly Ledbetter hypocrites who claim to be fighting the War on Women? Let’s hurl some acid at those female democratic Senators who won’t abide the mandates they want to impose on the private sector.”
That one does stand out as being both particularly violent, and having nothing like logical support (not that letting women die to save fetuses is logical but that “logic” is a common enough “pro-life” fail that it’s not surprising to see it). I’m not buying the satire defense because he hedges is all the wrong ways.
He specifically says “It’s important to understand that one need not find these answers to be absolutely conclusive or even convincing to recognize that they are scientifically valid answers…” But then goes on to present his answers full of “does PZ wish to claim” and “…he’s quite clearly not thinking rationally at all.” — Way too many personal attacks for satire.
VD has, IMO, a bit of a problem with not getting the recognition he thinks he deserves, in any of the arenas he chooses to spend his time in. He’s fortunate enough that he doesn’t seem to need to work to live, and yet he’s not lauded to the skies as a brilliant thinker.
Ann Coulter gets more press than he does (and always has). He never got a specific smackdown from William F. Buckley (Coulter did, it was a thing of beauty… Buckley demolished, “Treason” or whatever her book on Clinton’s Scandal was).
Nope, VD has to toil away in the darker corners of the internet and feel put upon that PZ won’t make an exception to his non-debate policy, just for him.
I think I found their inspiration http://archnophobia.deviantart.com/art/Fist-Brushes-98828766
@pecunium
that was ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’
no, ann coulter is not good at titles
Better at titles than content.