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.
Yeah you seem really bored….
This is really cute. Show me which part of what I wrote was filled with rage. Or explain to me hiw what I wrote was rage-filled, while Thomas Ball slapping a toddler so hard she bled must be recounted in atone of which you approve. What’s wrong with saying he beat his daughter?
LOL, “poster revolution.” The only thing these posters accomplished was a blip in a local news reel that was forgotten about by the time Joe Sixpack got a beer from the fridge during commercials. And these tools still haven’t managed an actual meetup.
If Occupy accomplished nothing else, thousands of people camping out and tens of thousands marching the streets across the country got the lazy-ass corporate-owned media to stop bleating manufactured hysteria about the deficit and actually talk about income inequality for a few weeks.
which is of course why you cant seem to stop talking about it…
Fuck off, you patronizing shithead. Seriously, crawl back to whatever rock you oozed out from under, and eat a bowl of bees.
^that was to some guy’s “check your meds dear” comment. My blockquote disappeared.
Also, actual revolutions take a lot more work than whining about your imaginary problems on a website no one’s ever heard of.
What Ball did to his daughter is deplorable, and I condemn it.
His account, and it’s been awhile, I don’t recall his ex-wife stating otherwise, is that he slapped his kid once.
The definition of “beat” on the web is a repetitive action.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/beat
1. to strike violently or forcefully and repeatedly.
2. to dash against: rain beating the trees.
I can’t condone what he did, and I think it was outrageous.
I think hitting a baby is outrageous and terrible behavior.
I don’t understand why that wasn’t sufficient for you or others and you had to demonize and is represent a terrible act even further by distorting it with the word “beat” which describes something Ball did not do.
this is kind of rich from the dude whos in a snit because he doesnt get to completely control the framing of a discussion of a third-rate terrorist and confessed child abuser
Here’s another one:
American Heritage Dictionary: beat
Top
Home > Library > Literature & Language > Dictionary
(bēt)
v., beat, beat·en (bēt’n), or beat, beat·ing, beats.
v.tr.
To strike repeatedly.
To subject to repeated beatings or physical abuse; batter.
To punish by hitting or whipping; flog.
Oh gawd, he’s changing into dictionary troll, the worst kind of troll! (Because the most boring.)
Hint to Mr. Ennui: Both of those definitions have sections that describe what Ball did to his child.
lol
‘thomas ball may have been a shit head but i’m still gonna whine endlessly about how mean you guys are being to him. no, i don’t understand why nobody takes my fake social justice movement seriously.’
More blatant hint, because I don’t think your reading comprehension is the best:
to strike violently
to punish by hitting
Oh, yay! Dictionary Troll is here.
Notice the c definition? “To punish by hitting or flogging.”
That is the definition people mean when they say “he beat his kids.”
Two dictionary troll comments and not one “Yeah, maybe it was just that he lost his kids.” Kinda sums up your “activism,” doesn’t it?
I’d say dashing your hand against the face of a toddler counts as a beating, but then I live in this fucking reality, so don’t mind me.
The hilarious thing is that while dictionary trolling, he ended up posting a definition that fits exactly what I was talking about.
I guess he hoped we were so bored with his comments we wouldn’t read to the end.
The sad thing is that he somehow thinks changing the word from “beat” to “strike so hard she bled” would change the substance of this discussion.
Totally off topic–but that might be what this thread needs–anyone read any good books lately? I feel a Kindle spree coming on.
Like Katz said, just about the only way anyone is going to understand the pear poster is if they’ve been watching the MRM through feminist sites. (And even then, the whole pear = rape thing makes so little sense that people who have the proper background knowledge have commented here saying that they still didn’t understand it.)
You know, if I were going to put up posters in order to raise public awareness or recruit people to support a movement, there are a few of things I would do, like:
1.) Make the posters simple and easy to understand. I’d use one or two sentences. Possibly three at the most, and they’d be short sentences.
2.) Target people who are undecided or who are sympathetic to the cause but don’t know much about the topic.
3.) Not expect my audience to have a lot of background knowledge. If the posters only make sense to the people who already know and care about a particular topic, then I’m not going to reach my target audience.
4.) Make sure that the posters make sense. If I absolutely have to rely on my audience have extensive background knowledge to understand my poster, then that poster had better not be incomprehensible to about half the people who actually have that background knowledge.
But then again, that’s just how I’d do it. I’m sure that the MRA method of doing the exact opposite is much more effective than anything my fluffy pink ladybrainz might come up with.
‘tired of flagrant society’s anti-child-beating bias? avoiceformen.com. come rage out with paul-e and the entire pretend internet tough guy crew.’
Yeah, you feminists are so unfair. How dare you say Ball “beat” his child! He merely hit her hard enough to draw blood. Clearly, by using the word “beat” you are exposing yourselves as rage-filled, illogical/hysterical women who need to be medicated.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beat
http://bit.ly/PKRCha
It’s really pretty hard to find any definition of beat that does not emphasize the repeated nature of the strikes.
Since feminists are intelligent and literate, the misrepresentation must be intentional. But why? That he hit is kid is terrible enough for most of us.
fuck
hellkell, Fiction? Non-fiction? Any particular genres? Can you name some books you’ve read recently and liked?
These days I am only reading non-fiction, mostly about civil rights stuff in the West. I can give you some good recommendations, but it’s kinda idiosyncratic… 🙂
hey some guy has anyone ever told you that your passive aggressive smarm is creepy as all fuck?