Well,I got carried away there. It’s not literally the whole world. Only a teensy weensy portion of it.
The fellows at A Voice for Men, you see, evidently stung by criticism that they aren’t activists, have begun engaging in real, honest-to-goodness real-world activism, by which I mean that a handful of them, some in Canada and at least one in Australia, have been putting up posters advertising the AVFM website.
In other words, their activism consists of putting up posters for a website whose only activism thus far has consisted of putting up posters for itself.
Well, eventually they’ll get the hang of it, I guess.
In any case, the A Voice for Menners have discovered something about activism: if you do things that are offensive enough, people will be offended. And so they’ve managed to offend some people in Canada and in Australia where their posters have gone up. In Australia, there have even been a couple of news articles written about them! For example, one in Melbourne’s Herald Sun says:
A MAN who is littering the city with posters promoting a website that encourages men to support rapists has declined the opportunity to explain himself.
The website, which the Herald Sun has chosen not to name, is campaigning to get men sitting on juries for rape trials to “vow publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true”. …
The website’s publisher, Paul Elam, told the Herald Sun he was too busy watching the movie Air Force One to be interviewed, but later said by email he stood by the campaign.
Ooh! How very, very alpha of him.
Other articles (see here and here) describe the posters as “hate posters,” because one of them seems to suggest that women provoke domestic violence against themselves. The text of the poster reads “Domestic Violence Women Are Half the Problem.”
In fact, Elam and company are trying to suggest that women instigate half of all domestic violence, and thus are “half the problem,” but they’re so wedded to the easily misunderstood “half the problem” slogan that they somehow cannot seem to get this idea across in poster form. (This idea is itself incorrect, but that’s a whole other kettle of angry dudes.) Elam and company don’t quite seem to understand that an important part of activism is actually conveying your ideas to the general public rather than simply provoking people.
You can’t buy this kind of publicity!
Well, technically, you could, but no one would, because no one would willingly pay money for a publicity campaign that makes them appear to be hateful assholes — and in fact, even a teensy bit more hateful than they actually are.
So, congratulations, I guess?
If anyone wants to help AVFM in its publicity campaign, the super-sarcastic poster below, and a number of other poorly thought out and badly designed posters, can be downloaded from AVFM here by “anyone who wants to print and distribute them.”
Note: THIS IS A REAL AVFM POSTER. I didn’t make it up. See here.
Party! Party! Party!
Hellkell: re books.
Debt, the first 5,000 years. 1493. Fear of Phsyics. Small things considered. A bunch of Nero Wolff.
How many trolls can simultaneously pull this lame “Oh you’re so boring, I’m so tired of you, that’s why I’m still trolling your comments section” schtick simultaneously?
@cloudiah
From your blog post:
Eh, blockquote fail. Also I’m now in moderation? I forgot not to mention Dr Don Fall.
Ugh, here is where you (or anyone) first used the word “beat”:
“Like, seriously what did you want the judge to do? “I know you beat your kids when you’re angry, and I know you have refused any and all counseling options, so here! Have custody of toddlers for several days a week.” Yeah, that would turn out great.”
Now, just a small gedanken experiment:
Q: Most english readers reading this paragraph would believe Thomas Ball has hit his children: A) One time in his life. B) Multiple times. C) Many times and whenever he is angry?
So not only did you first imply that Thomas Ball repeatedly hits his kids, but you have then spent the day insisting that a reasonable definition for “beat” is “hit only one time.”
It’s nonsense like this plus the usual misrepresentative pile-on that is approved by the cohort here, that keeps feminism like yours a mostly fringe movement with young women these days often saying, “I like what feminism does, but I would never call myself a feminist.”
My suggestion is you start being honest with others in forums, and one day you can be honest with yourself.
Enjoy your hate.
Cloudiah, do you mind if I link to your post in a quick post here?
Oh, totally agree there, Sir Bod; I do think we need it to be clarified, and perhaps the Constitution amended to reflect that. But the ‘free speech!’ ranters, here as in the US, are usually more about their right to hate speech than anything else (vis that arsehole ‘journalist’ Andrew Bolt whining about free speech when he was found guilty of racism recently). It rarely has anything to do with government.
Ha, even Banksy loses out here sometimes – one of his works in Melbourne was vandalised (despite being put under perspex by the city council) and another was recently destroyed by workmen who didn’t know what it was! 😀
Not at all, David!
@some guy bored with a stick
It’s funny how you never hear “I like what Men’s Rights Activists do, but I would never call myself a Men’s Rights Activist”, isn’t it? Oh right, you’d have to actually do something first, and no sensible people would like it anyway.
Oh – and you should know, “pear” is an anagram for “rape”. The author is satirizing the vile, misandrist, nonsensical logic behind many feminist concepts, such as “Schrodinger’s Rapist”. It is absurdist humor, requiring mental nuance I wouldn’t expect any of the disgusting individuals here to possess.
Well, sort of.
Steele has GOT to be a Poe.
When was the last time an MRM group set up a DV shelter? I’d like a list and compare it to the ones feminist groups have established.
Is frank the new vile?
@some guy
Sure, I should have said kid (singular), though obviously someone who admits to one act of child abuse is also more likely to commit child abuse in the future.
Happy? You have successfully split hairs on how much of a child abuser your movement’s hero was.
Now, what do you have to say about the many MRA blogs who intentionally mislead people about why he lost custody?
@pillowinhell
In my secret fantasy someone does claim these posters are hate speech, Elam gets called into court, and then he argues that they aren’t because they’re so poorly done no one will get them, and besides so one really pays attention to MRAs anyway.
It makes me giggle.
To put it another way, if you’ve spent this long arguing semantics with someone who is pro-removing children from an abuser, maybe you could spend just a little bit of time arguing facts with people who are anti-removing children from an abuser.
I hate child abusers. I can live with that.
Your movement hates people who protect children from abusers. Can you live with that?
The more relevant question is “has an MRM group ever done anything ever that demonstratably benefitted actual men in any way.”
It’s a surprisingly easy question to answer.
@Ugh
Well, it’s possible that some men who thought sexism doesn’t exist came across the MRM and went “golly gee willikers*, I didn’t think people hated women this much, I guess I should check my privilege”.
*they were also old-timey newspaper boys.
@Myoo
Fair point
@Yosei
Sorry if I came across a bit caustic. It’s been one of those nights.
Frankly, the feminist feline fanciers of Manboobz feel frankly, forthrightly, and fervently fantastic about the future prospect of no longer facing your frankly fallacious and frothy foolishness, to be frankly frank, frankly.
Wow, “some guy” sure has a big up his butt about the PRECISE WORD used to describe hitting a toddler hard enough to make her bleed.
Because heaven forfend we make it sound like that’s a bad or violent thing.
…Seriously, are you like this in real life? Someone tells a story about a toddler being hit and your first impulse is to pull out the ol’ Webster’s to argue that they’re using the wrong word? THAT’S what you think is super important here?
Hey, new MRM poster idea:
“It is a FEMINIST LIE that Thomas Ball hit his child.
The TRUTH is he only hit her hard enough to draw blood.”
See how many new fans that shit draws to your burgeoning movement.
Whew, yeah, Polliwog. His alliteration was giving me the red ass too.
Seriously, when words to the effect of “well, he didn’t make the toddler bleed THAT much, geez” are coming out of your mouth, it is time to fucking re-evaluate your life.