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.
He also sanctifies weddings with Mjolnir.
This involves putting it between the bride’s legs, apparently.
Yeah.
If he were just more loving she never would have yelled at him, but he insisted on pushing her buttons.(Pecunium)
I guess she should have married you, Im sure you would have been much more loving. Mind you, she probably would have laid a beat down on you for being such a …….nice man. 😉
…. How’d we get onto crocheting with Mew Mew?
Well, everyone knows Thor really likes weddings.
Bless your heart, JT sugar. Bless it real hard, now.
Thanks. 🙂
Jt: I’m not nice. The difference between me and the people GWW is praising is that I’m civilised.
It’s a very nice, but important, distinction.
This is SO DISGUSTING, esp. as I currently have a family member with a physically abusive husband. It was already clear that GWW is sick in the head and exhibits psychopathic symptoms, so her remarks aren’t even slightly surprising, even though it’s the worst thing I’ve heard from her so far. She thinks just like an abuser–the victim did something to deserve it. So is she saying that she would stay with a physically abusive man? Would she blame herself if she got hit, or sexually assaulted? She’s a woman afterall, so she would have to be at fault, by her own belief system. Then again, she’s probably the abuser in any relationship she gets into, so maybe no worries.
According to her, Renee, she says in an interview with Stefbot, I believe that she is partially to blame for her own rape. I have my own theories about why she’s like this, but… they’re useless, not worth uttering I think.
Renee, its not uncommon for abused people to start exhibiting abuser logic. Its how a person copes with a really untenable situation, and the abuser will grind you down until you believe you deserved the beatings and the verbal or emotional abuse.
You diagnose an abuser by their actions. So yeah, she’s spreading a lot of vile shit that would grind another woman who’s vulnerable and at the not-mercy of an abuser. However, I wonder if she’s pepetuating the abuse with people she knows, and this is where I really worry for her kids, particulary any daughters she may have.
In my family, it was the girls who were specifically targeted for abuse. And it lead to really weird shit where on the one hand, my uncles would swear up and down my grandmother wasn’t abusive and on the other, would proceed to tell me how much my grandmother had mellowed out over the years whenever she abused me.
Having been on the receiving end of both verbal/emotional abuse and physical abuse as a child, my experience has shown me that the verbal/emotional abuse was actually a lot worse. I’m not claiming that this would be the case for any and everyone but I doubt I’m the only person who feels this way.
And when I experience emotional abuse as an adult it remains incredibly unpleasant. I prefer to meet violent attacks in the street (I have never been physically assaulted in a meaningful way by a partner as an adult, but have suffered a couple of violent attacks.)
I don’t think we take verbal and or emotional abuse very seriously as a society, and that does include verbally harassing your partner, even if you’re partner is male.
It bothers me that I need to make this clarification, but it can’t be helped. My point here is not to justify the physically violent behaviour of… well anyone. Just to point out that verbal and emotional violence are (in my opinion) of equal weight.
Wow, I’m going to need a jackhammer to lift my jaw off the floor. Remind me to stay away from reddit for a while.
Feminists often say that if egalitarians/MRAs are concerned about domestic violence, they should join the feminist movement, since feminists fight against “patriarchy.” However, many feminists reinforce “patriarchal” views by portraying domestic violence as a result of “male privilege,” and something almost exclusively done by men, even though women initiate violence towards their partners as often as men. Feminists have trained police officers to use this ideology and have pressured the police to ensure that mostly men are arrested. Therefore, when MRAs try to raise awareness for male victims, they are doing so in opposition to the view pushed by the most prominent feminist groups. They have had successes, such as raising awareness of male victims in general, getting some gender neutral language inserted into the 2005 VAWA act, and winning the following lawsuit, where the california supreme court ruled that “State funding of domestic violence programmes that offer services only to women and their children, but not to men, violate equal protection” : http://www.scotsman.com/news/men-can-be-victims-too-1-1147032
So MRAs have been fighting so-called “patriarchal” views about domestic violence, and have been doing so by standing up to feminists.
all of this is dumb nonsense mras made up to feel like victims, fyi
yeah, im sure that was because of mras duder
VAWA always had gender neutral terminology (with a small exception for certain tribal resources.)
To claim that they “inserted it” is ignoring reality.
yeah, i suspected that was the case (because it would be really weird if it wasnt) but decided to go with the more obvious lie
I’m all about women doing martial arts! The rest of it is as shitty as a shit that shitted. On Jeezus.
I’ve heard far more feminists say that if MRAs are concerned about domestic violence, they should set up shelters or counseling hotlines. Even if you think feminists are conducting an insidious worldwide plot to secretly beat up men, whining about it on the internet isn’t helping anyone.
“… she followed him from room to room upstairs, stomping slamming things, throwing things, screaming [for an hour]” Sounds like domestic abuse.
Yes, irozayayox. And him slapping her in the face sounds like domestic violence. (Or to be more precise, that is what it sounds like both of them sounded like, given that the anecdote is from a not spectacularly trustworthy source.)
Did you bother to read any of the comments? That has been covered.
(Hi everyone! I’m basically a long-time lurker, first time poster under this name. I technically posted under “Atheist, A Feminist” a long time ago but I think the threads were dead by the time I got there. Oh, well. I changed what I am posting under because I was really only using it because I used it on Pandagon before it was Pandagon on Raw Story and I had stopped commenting. Plus, this one is funnier.)
The more I learn about GWW, the more I think she needs some serious therapy, like all her followers. She must really be enjoying all the money pouring in. This is the thing. How can an MRA, who is staunchly against giving money to those ‘gold digging bitchnez’ justify the money they are dropping all over her for her apparently false DMCA?
I mean, they go against their principles by sending her their paycheques. I find this hilariously ironic.
I spent about 20 of my 28 year years on this Earth being abused by women. My sisters, (not my mother, me and my mother have a great relationship) used to harass me constantly. They would cause arguments, yell, scream, throw things, punch, kick between the legs, spit and threaten to get guys to beat me up, One day one of my sisters pushed me too far and I snapped. I back hand slapped her about 12 times in a row, then she made me give her money to keep her from going to the police. I gave her the money because I couldn’t fight it anymore.
I’m not going to claim I was 100% of the victim 100% of the time, as I would be lying, but now I don’t need to see them anymore there is no violence, there is no abuse, there is just none of it. Meawhile, my sisters have all been in abusive relationships or are in abusive relationships. They are not victims, I know what they are like. I have heard them brag about how they would beat up their boyfriends. (One sister has had 2 boyfriends in prison for beating her up, yet I know for a fact she has done shit to them too) BTW, they all have multiple arrests for beating up on other women and have been in court multiple times.
Point is, you can’t just say a man can never hit a woman no matter what. There are loads of women who just don’t stop. They harass, abuse, lie and use their woman status to bully men with the government. The government doesn’t give men like me support, in fact, we are too afraid to call as we know how biased society and the police are. I know how fucked up the system is long before I got interested in gender politics.
duh? thanks for pointing out the obvious
no, sorry, this on the other hand is dumb made up gibberish. try again kiddo.
Almost sounds like a very familiar kiddo sockpuppeting again.
Yeah, well I gave you guys a chance, and you failed. And I’m supposed to trust you feminists with my best interests. eheh.
Hello all, long time peruser of the site, first time poster.
To the MRAs who condone the use of violence to ‘correct’ their wife’s/girlfriend’s behaviour: what counts as ‘misbehaviour’ in your book? Suggesting to your boyfriend that he make himself a sandwich when he complains that he’s hungry? Because that’s how it started for me. I was not screaming, shouting, throwing things, and I certainly wasn’t hitting him.
Outdated notions of what constitutes the male/female gender role are the problem, imo. The ‘real man’ as the provider/protector and the ‘real woman’ as the nurturer/domestic servant. No one should be hitting anyone. No person should be the authority in a relationship, it should be an equal partnership. The correct thing to do if your partner, regardless of their gender, is abusing you, is leave – and don’t look back. Hell, everyone has the right to leave a relationship if they aren’t happy for whatever reason.
If there aren’t enough support services for male victims of domestic violence then that is indeed a problem that needs to be addressed. Any feminist who insists that victims are predominantly female is very wrong, but it appears to me that MRAs exacerbate the problem by insisting that ‘putting your woman in her place’ is the manly thing to do – also very wrong and only serves to prevent more male victims coming forward.
Me? I’m a woman and don’t pretend that I’m perfect by any means. But I’ll be damned if I’ll buy into the “shut up bitch *smack*” mentality that’s still very prevalent amongst many men even today, any more that I would condone abuse in the case of a female perpetrator.