So I’ve been mostly avoiding writing about the whole Men’s Rights postering controversy in Vancouver, because it’s such a tempest in a teapot. The tl;dr: Some posters got torn down, and some of the people tearing them down yelled at the blabby MRA videoblogger and A Voice for Men second fiddle known as JohnTheOther.
MRAs: Given that virtually none of you have any experience as actual real world activists, you may not be aware of this, but POSTERS GET TORN DOWN. It’s annoying, and I don’t support it myself, but it happens all the time. Sometimes, you may actually run across people tearing down your posters, at which point there is usually some sort of awkward confrontation that may include yelling.
You know what you do when this happens? You put your posters up again. You know what you don’t do? Compare the experience to rape. Because, on the list of the grand injustices of the world, having posters torn down is pretty far down the list, somewhere around “stubbing your toe” and “kitten farts on you.”
That said, here are a few new “developments” in this ongoing epic.
1) Jezebel has posted a piece about the controversy. The most interesting thing about it is the following quote from, you guessed it, JohnTheOther, who apparently had this to say to someone from a local “community-driven news” website. The topic? False accusations of rape.
Maybe it’s a mistaken accusation, she doesn’t remember who she had sex with because she was drunk at the party or whatever. Some make accusations that have nothing to do with being raped; they’re angry, or they got stood up, they wanted to have sex with a guy but he said no. The fact that our society doesn’t have a balance for this is a major problem. I’m not suggesting every woman you meet is a loose cannon, but every woman you meet has the potential to be one, because for those few who are nutty, there’s no disincentive for them to go, oh, I was late for work. I know, I’ll just say I got raped.
Now, if the Men’s Rights movement were an actual civil rights movement trying to better the lives of men, this quote would be a public relations disaster. What real civil rights movement would want to have itself associated with someone who seems to think that women make up rape accusations willy nilly, when a date stands them up or when they need an excuse for being late to work?
Of course, the Men’s Rights “movement” isn’t an actual civil rights movement at all; it’s more like a collective tantrum. While MRAs are eager to “spread the word,” the more spreading they do, the more damage they do to themselves. No one is better at making MRAs look bad than MRAs themselves, which is why on this blog I spend so much of the time letting these (mostly) dudes make themselves look ridiculous with their own words. So, JtO, thanks?
2) And speaking of Mr. TheOther, we can now see video footage of the supposed dramatic confrontation that JohnTheOther had with what his AVFM boss Paul Elam called “a gang of 20-30 assholes on the street, some wielding box cutters.”
GirlWritesWhat, one of the Men’s Rights movement’s few non-dudes, has put up selections of video footage from Mr. TheOther in her video below.
As you’ll see – unless for some reason GWW has decided not to post the most incriminating parts of the video — there was no gang; it was a small group of people. No one was “wielding box cutters” in a threatening manner. The whole thing took place in broad daylight on a busy street.
Some posters were taken down. There were some raised voices. That’s it. That’s the sort of shit activists deal with every fucking day of their life.
Here’s the video:
Am I missing something here? This non-event is the alleged confrontation that AVFM has been hyperventilating about all this time? This is the evil anti-MRA harassment that Elam says “makes getting bestially raped by Richard Dawkins sound kinda funny.”
Leave it to Mr. Elam to add a rape-joke cherry to this bullshit sundae. Once again, MRAs are their own worst enemies.
Kvetching to get IPV shelters shut down and whining on the internet about not being allowed to hit women being a totally massive contravention of your
fee-feessorry, human rights =/= ‘putting real pressure on institutions…to recognise male victims’.Happy to help (unless you can point to an incident of a self-identified MRA legitimately campaigning for this and working with IPV/rape crisis/etc. centres to advance his causes rather than just threatening women and simultaneously excusing male abusers while demonising all women who have ever existed, but I won’t hold my breath).
So what happened to being ‘prior activism’? Either you’ve actually made achievements with your activism, or you’re not ready to do anything yet, with good reason*. Pick one.
(*It’d have to be a really good reason, activism is not hard. You make some placards, print out some leaflets, get some people together and go make a fuss. I’ve done it like three times this week.)
Sorry, should have also asked to see evidence of TEH EEBIL FEMINAZIS campaigning to stop these centres being developed as well.
Seeing as this blog is entirely about mocking stupid hateful shit, it that’s your idea of “activism,” I think your movement might be in some trouble.
BASTA, you write like a 14-year-old trying to sound like a Victorian super villain. Jesus. I used to be an English tutor, and when certain students tried sounding smart by writing things like, “That one I trust you won’t deny,” I just felt embarrassed for them — then broke out the red pen.
On the other hand, you avoided David’s questions (allegedly because of “operational secrecy” *snicker*) like a champ. Just try to remember, you’re not V in “V is for Vendetta.” ‘Kay?
Gosh, I don’t think rape crisis centers are in the habit of turning men away. But I think there are some posters here who have worked at places like. They’d know better.
*Ahem* Owl? You’re not even trying any more, are you? Women who have abortions are like Charles Manson? Yawn. Boring. Most of the people here have heard that one before. Nope, it didn’t enrage me…it just made me think you need some down time to get back into the swing of things. Try some vitamin B-12. It works wonders.
@Shiraz
To be fair, women who have abortions and Charles Manson have killed the same number of people…
(This is top in ‘sentences I never thought I’d write today’, with ‘I love you more than cats and falafel’ coming a close second. I shouldn’t be allowed to write birthday cards while sleep deprived)
Heh, thenatfantastic, true that.
> Ah, I see the game is going to be “Appropriate other people’s
> achievements as our own”.
Ideas are nobody’s own, and “Men’s Rights Activist” is a descriptive term. It describes everyone who does activism for men’s rights per se.
> Dude, you were talking about AVFM on this same page, do you think we can’t scroll up?
Thanks for re-quoting what I said about Futrelle’s deliberate, selective blindness to the actual activism going on.
So even people who explicitly condemn the MRM would be MRAs if PASTA! deems them so.
PASTA! logic is so noodley.
@thenatfantastic:
> Kvetching to get IPV shelters shut down and whining on the
> internet about not being allowed to hit women being a totally
> massive contravention of your fee-fees sorry, human rights
> =/= ‘putting real pressure on institutions…to recognise male victims’.
The trick is – it worked, so we no longer need to care what you call it.
> Happy to help (unless you can point to an incident of a
> self-identified MRA legitimately campaigning for this and
> working with IPV/rape crisis/etc. centres to advance his
> causes rather than just threatening women and simultaneously
> excusing male abusers while demonising all women who have
> ever existed, but I won’t hold my breath).
Thanks for the offer, but stuff that needs to be done cannot wait for you to work over your hateful prejudice.
> So what happened to being ‘prior activism’? Either you’ve actually
> made achievements with your activism, or you’re not ready to do
> anything yet, with good reason*. Pick one.
Yes, we’ve made *some* achievements, even though feminism still has decades of advantage.
@Shiraz:
> BASTA, you write like a 14-year-old trying to sound like a Victorian
> super villain
Eureka! Perhaps because I’ve only been speaking English for about 14 years? English is my late-learned second language, and I have never lived in a Germanic language speaking country, so get off my ass with your accusations of “sounding like a Victorian super villain”. I don’t know a fuck about how that sounds (nor about English style subtleties in general), so I cannot possibly be trying to imitate that.
> Gosh, I don’t think rape crisis centers are in the habit of turning men away.
Yeah. Misandry don’t real.
> So even people who explicitly condemn the MRM would be MRAs
> if PASTA! deems them so.
No. Read my definition again. It contains an important limitation you overlooked that effectively excludes “those who explicitly condemn the MRM” (i.e. feminists). Hint: pay attention to two words that might look like a stylistic embellishment but are in fact meaningful.
No, I think you’re capable of appropriating Dig Dasterdly’s voice. Your lastest post was, more or less, in standard speaking English – with a little bit of street tough thrown in. Your earlier posts sounded different.
Systemic misandry isn’t real…but bad things happen to men too. And no one here wants bad things to happen to men.
And this:
“The trick is – it worked, so we no longer need to care what you call it.”
What worked?
I call it ‘doing less than the sum total of fuck all, to the point of actively harming male victims, then declaring at a victory against feminism when feminists do it for you’.
You disingenuous fucking toad. I mean jesus fuck, how stupid are you? What are you going to claim next? “The MRM put a man on the moon! I mean, sure they didn’t say they were MRM but it doesn’t matter what you call it because it worked!”.
Well I wrote all the books in the British library, it doesn’t matter that there’s evidence that they weren’t written by me and most of them have been there since before I was born but they’re there, aren’t they?
Check. Mate.
My favorite bit of MRA activism is when they declared themselves trans allies, proceeded to take credit for shutting down a radical feminist convention (or something) and then afterwards threw trans people under the bus.
> I call it ‘doing less than the sum total of fuck all, to the point
> of actively harming male victims, then declaring at a victory
> against feminism when feminists do it for you’.
… and it still doesn’t matter what you call it.
> No, I think you’re capable of appropriating Dig Dasterdly’s voice.
I didn’t have the pleasure. If I am still capable of appropriating his voice, then I must clearly be psychic.
> Systemic misandry isn’t real
I know better. I’m psychic.
BASTA, can you just answer the question?
“The trick is – it worked, so we no longer need to care what you call it.”
Once again, what worked?
(Note: I replaced your wack-ass bracket quotes with actual quotation marks, because I wasn’t sure if the brackets would frak up the blockquote formatting.)
So it’s a matter of “objective reality” that commenters on a blog about mocking misogyny are “the establishment.”
Well, THAT sure seems like an uncontroversial claim! Is it even worth the time to explain that appealing to “objective reality” is less than useless, because there is vast disagreement about what constitutes objective reality?
I’m psychic too…
I know you’re skirting the issue.
After you answer my first question, can you confirm that you know what “systemic” means?
Am I being a quotation bigot here or something? Like, are there keyboards that don’t come with quotation marks? Because it’s really the easiest thing in the world to use those bad boys. I can understand not wanting to deal with the hassle of blockquotes, but c’mon, dude. Put in the SLIGHTEST bit of effort to make your posts comfortable to read.
> Once again, what worked?
MRAs putting pressure on institutions to acknowledge male victims and male vulnerability. “It worked” was of course a simplification justifiable in the original context. Actually it just relatively recently *started* working *somewhat*, but we are slowly gaining ground and the future looks promising, petty dogs barking or not.
> (Note: I replaced your wack-ass bracket quotes with
> actual quotation marks, because I wasn’t sure if the
> brackets would frak up the blockquote formatting.)
(Note: I will keep using the “wack-ass bracket quotes” until the blog owner finally stumbles upon the idea of adding markup format hints under the comment textarea).
OK, you answered my question…sort of. But I’m going to need specific examples. Because you could just be confusing “MRA activism” with legislations that Republicans/social conservatives have successfully lobbied for.
BASTA: BASTA! So what, specifically, are you doing to help better the lives of men?
Do you want names and addresses with that? Because, you know, disclosing current operational information to each other is EXACTLY what political opponents do.
The Fuck? So let me get this straight… You belong to an activist movement, trying to raise awareness of the plight of men in the modern world.
Ok, I can accept that there are people who think this is needful.
But you won’t tell anyone what you are doing to promote this cause because we don’t agree with you.
How is this going to persuade people of the rightness of your cause?
I am talking about MRM in general, you narrow it to AVfM. Shifting goalposts much?
Slight mistatement of the facts there (/understatement). When Dave asked for examples, you told him it was all on AVfM. Now you say he’s wrong to look there?
– it was MRAs, so self-identified or not, who a few years back started putting some real pressure on institutions like rape crisis centers to recognize male victims.
Taking credit for other people’s work. That’s good. Sort of the, “no true scotsman” in reverse. Anything the MRM agrees with was caused by the MRA’s, even if they didn’t think they were MRA’s.