Yesterday, we took a look at Ferdinand Bardamu’s manosphere manifesto “The Necessity of Domestic Violence,” a thoroughly despicable piece of writing that concludes:
Women should be terrorized by their men; it’s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps.
I decided to take a look at Bardamu’s post yesterday after running across a discussion of it in Reddit’s new FeMRA subreddit, a forum ostensibly devoted to what “women can do to advance men’s rights as women.” It’s a strange little subreddit, started by a man and dominated by some of Reddit’s most unsavory MaleMRAs, some of them banned in the regular Men’s Rights subreddit.
Recently one of the most unsavory of the bunch, calling himself JeremiahGuy this time, posted a link to Bardamu’s domestic violence manifesto, which he hosts on his website. Jeremiah naturally used the discussion as an excuse to post more apologias for domestic “discipline” along the lines of the quote from him I featured yesterday.
But I was a little surprised to see GirlWritesWhat, the blabby FeMRA video blogger who’s captured the hearts of Reddit’s Men’s Rights crowd, step into the conversation with something of a defense of Bardamu’s noxious views. After reading Bardamu’s manifesto – the one advocating that men “terrorize” their women to make them behave – GWW blithely concluded:
I don’t really find too much in the article that strikes me as seriously ethically questionable.
Have I taken that remark out of context? Yes. In context, it’s worse. Here’s the entire quote from her, and a further clarification of her position.
She wasn’t the only one in the discussion to get upvotes for suggesting that men slapping women around from time to time isn’t really such a big deal. MaunaLoona (a MaleMRA) wrote:
Lots of MRAs like to pretend that they care about male victims of domestic violence. But the Men’s Rights movement hasn’t done shit for them. And here, I think, is why: too many MRAs are less interested in helping male victims of domestic violence than they are in providing excuses and justifications for male abusers.
@Balance: Can you give one single example of a guy who merely raised his voice, the woman called the police and he was arrested? And can you give a single example of a men’s shelter-project that were supported by MRA:s and opposed by feminists?
I give you this: Lots of people don’t take woman-on-man violence seriously. It’s often treated as okay for a woman to slap a man, because, you know, she’s just a little woman, she couldn’t really harm anybody. However, the only people I’ve seen seriously discuss this problem are self-identified feminists: I think Ozy has written a piece about this, and two Swedish feminists called Hanna Fridén and Anna Svensson has written about it as well. There are probably many more examples.
When MRA:s write about the matter however, it’s not so much about violence being wrong, as about “men should be allowed to hit women who hit them or merely are really annoying”, and that’s a whole other matter.
@Balance — Every time you guys bring up the Becker case, you always link that exact same video of Sharon Osborne laughing about it. You know why? Because the vast majority of people were disgusted and appalled — not amused — by the story. So, you’re able to cling to your warped view “caused by a single traumatic experience” of seeing one woman laugh about it. Project much?
Also, Catherine Kieu Becker is not “getting off scott free.” We don’t know what her punishment will be because her trial and sentencing haven’t happened yet. But she was indicted in January of this year, charged with a felony count of torture and a felony county of aggravated mayhem, and remains behind bars with a $1 million bail. The trial is set for September 24th and she faces life in prison.
You’re full of shit when you say that women don’t understand boundaries. There have been women right in this thread discussing under what circumstances they were battered, but I doubt you even bothered to read those. You prefer to believe that men only hit after they’ve been endlessly “hen-pecked,” because to believe otherwise would mean admitting to yourself that you’re a complete piece of shit who gets off on seeing women get hurt.
I see Balance dug up the same tired MRA DV talking points. Bored now.
Besides, when somebody is a victim of emotional abuse I think it’s really rare for them to “defend themselves” through physical violence, simply because part of being an abuse victim is that you get into this mentality where you think everything is YOUR fault. I had a male friend who for some time had an emotionally abusive girlfriend. He’d never “defend himself” because he saw everything that happened as his fault, he just tried more and more to please her and adjust to her ideas. Me and my husband seriously tried to talk him into breaking up with her (I repeat: BREAK UP with her, not “defend himself” by hitting her), but he wouldn’t listen. Eventually she broke up with him, and like a year later or so when I’d repeat things she’d said to him he could finally agree that yeah, that was pretty abusive.
If you can’t stand the behaviour of your partner: BREAK UP. And in a situation like the one I described above, the problem is that the abused partner is too intimidated to BREAK UP, not that the victim is too intimidated to “defend himself” with violence.
Too long; didn’t read Balance’s illustrated screed.
I think the reason a lot of MRAs are so angry about the DV issue is that most feminists won’t even recognize that it is an issue for men, and they fight tooth and nail to keep things like a men’s shelter from being built.
Welcome to fantasyland everyone! Don’t eat the stripey berries, and watch out for the two-headed squirrelephant.
Sweet suffering Jesus on a pogo stick! She really said that women need to take karate so they will be more compliant victims when they are beaten?
There are no words. That’s the sort of shit I’m shunning Ruby because of. There really isn’t much Dave finds that sets my sense of outrage to the level of fury, but that; that pretty much takes the cake.
And this guy is just stupid: In fact, it’s right there in the deginition: “Domestic violence and emtional abuse are behaviors used by one person in a relationship to control the other.”
Meaning a woman in a marriage can do whatever the hell she pleases…”
Whut? Are women not person? Is there some secret clause in that sentence which says, “unless that person is a female”?
So he’s stupid, or lying.
ManUpManDown: Ok… While most MRAs, myself included, really like and admire GWW, and agree with a vast majority of what she says, nobody agrees with EVERYTHING she says. As such, she does not represent all or most MRAs when she says something that is, or seems if read in a way she did not intend it to be read, very controversial.
Prove it.
Show us that “most MRAs” disagree with this philosophy. It ought to be easy. Just find the “equalists” who condemn it, and show them. Show the people who tell the “traditionalists”† they are full of shit?
Because these “moderates” I keep hearing about, seem to be doing fuck all to moderate The Movement. If they were, I’d be a lot more accepting of the argument that, With that said, despite what ManBoobz would have you believe, a vast majority of MRAs are equalists (progressives who would be feminists were it not with the glaring and chronic problems with feminism).
Because it’s not that I want to believe the MRM is full of nothing but fuckwits, liars and apologists, it’s just that; in lots of looking, I don’t see many, if any, who aren’t.
Look at Varpole/Butthorn/Steele, who hated on Tom Martin, said he was a vile person, not fit to lick the shoes of a real MRM; declared him anathema.
That lasted two weeks. Then it was all as if the advocacy of punishing child prostitutes and forgiving the men who use them had never happened.
For those of you who really want to understand what MRM is about, I encourage you to be more open-minded and not judge the movement based on occasional anecdotes from sites like this. It’s easy to be dismissive and glib around a bunch of folks who already think the way you do; but it’s more constructive to expose your world-view to meaningful challenge.
That’s glib, but facile. You presume, on the basis of nothing, that we know nothing of the MRM but what we read here. Then you tell us the wealth of posts here are just the outlying fringe.
Ok ManUp, show us the evidence. Where do we go to find the non-reactionary, not women-hating MRM? Link to them, rub our noses in the error of our ways.
I dare ya.
† Interesting that you choose the slightly positive connotative word, “traditionalist,” rather than the more negative, “reactionary” or slightly more neutral, “conservative, socially” to describe them.
Oh my God. How hard is it to understand the concept that “you don’t hit people you love”? The solution to another person’s nagging, bullying, whatever else these idiots are claiming that all women in relationships do is a swift dumping, not battery. An emotionally healthy person who is not a piece of shit is not going to want to control their partners’ behavior, either through “nagging” or through a swift smack. Emotionally healthy people solve relationships that are making them unhappy and where there is no sign of change through leaving, NOT through abuse.
(Please note that I am not contrasting leaving to staying, as there are so many reasons why it can be difficult to leave an abuser, and nobody should be judged for having difficulty leaving a situation designed to trap them into staying. I’m contrasting leaving with active abuse).
Balance, please show me where MRAs are fighting tooth and nail to get DV shelters for men built. You all can’t even arrange a meetup, much less a couch-surfing network for men who might need it.
@pecunium
“Just find the “equalists” who condemn it, and show them.”
This from a guy whose very first words are, “Sweet suffering Jesus on a pogo stick!”
Find me the equalist feminists who ridicules any faith other than Christianity. Better yet, find me a feminist who condemns ridiculing Christianity. Aren’t you progressive! Look at me everyone, I make Jesus jokes, I’m so edgy! If you fired up with Jewish or Muslim slurs you’d be screamed at by the equalists who reside here.
Don’t fret. No one here will dare criticize you because they all share the same sentiment. On the manboobz animal farm, the pigs consider themselves quite superior.
@Hellkell
Balance knows that rather than setting up refuges for men, MRAs have been actively trying to get existing (women’s) ones shut down. And feminists are like, superbad so they must have been doing the same thing, but more.
NatFantastic: that’s what pisses me off. Not only do they try to get women’s shelters shut down, but they think they need multi-zillion dollar men’s shelters, when the reality is they could help other men very simply. But we all know that being a keyboard warrior and internet badass is so much easier.
Pfft. I have Power Attack.
Like, they make an ass out of themselves at a party and the host asks them to leave and they refuse to go?
No, they do leave, but then they come back in ten minutes later wearing a top hat and comically enormous fake moustache as a cunning disguise.
(If you think this is giving them too much credit, imagine the moustache has ‘ACME FAKE MOUSTACHES’ embossed across the front of it.)
@Kiki
If the MRM would really spend their energy campaigning for a men’s shelter and supporting male victims of DV that would be great. I mean, it IS a problem that men have trouble being taken seriously when they’re victims of DV because a real MAN wouldn’t have that kind of trouble to start with… And it would be great to have an MRM that makes something productive rather than just bitching about evil feminazis.
Clarification: It’s not MY position that a “real man” (whatever that is) can’t be the victim of DV, but there’s this widespread idea in our culture that this is the case.
For Meller, when he shows up, the man in GWW’s story knew just what he was doing. He was irritating her until she yelled at him, so he could hit her.
If he were just more loving she never would have yelled at him, but he insisted on pushing her buttons.
He installed a spring scale on David’s server to measure the server load.
He installed a rotameter at the end of David’s faucet to measure his water consumption.
So if a man stomps around and bangs things, I can punch him. Got it, thanks girlwritescrap.
He uses a seismometer to know if he has an opportunity to make a good “Yo Momma” joke.
[/late to the party]
It’s interesting (in a sad sort of way) how this coincides with the posts we were talking about recently where, “maintenance spankings” were needed to remind women of what would happen to them if they got really out of line.
And how women beating men was supposed to be some manifestation of God’s will.