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.
Well, I stand corrected.
Now, apart from helping to deny DV protections to gay men, what has the ncfm actually done?
The NCFM also heartily endorsed a man who thinks that it is not victimizing to have sex with a child prostitute: http://manboobz.com/2012/07/13/tom-martin-leading-uk-mens-rights-activist-pedophiles-who-pay-children-for-sex-are-not-really-rapists-because-the-child-understands-the-nature-of-the-contract/
It would appear that Doyle has started numerous groups in various media so like minded people can have space to agree with each other on certain issues, OK. I don’t see the actual activism, though. He wants men to be fairly represented in court — OK. But what did he do, aside from complain about it openly?
They also criticized Rihanna for talking to the police. And their only successful court case to date was the sueing of a strip club for offering free cover to women on ladies’ night. http://ncfm.org/2011/01/uncategorized/ncfms-huge-landmark-sex-discrimination-case-now-final/
Truly they are addressing the issues of our times,
http://standyourground.com/forums/index.php?topic=16635.0 – this, for a good keeping-going. How found: NCFM website -> about -> advisors, picked a name (Marc Angelucci), googled for MRA Marc Angelucci. There.
Oh word, you can tell that systemic misandry is a thing because everyone congratulated Sharon Osbourne and also because no one has ever heard of Sharon Osbourne. That definitely makes sense and isn’t at all contradictory.
Haha you might want to look into that court case a little bit.
Here are some highlights:
http://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/content/features/detail/897/
“The Justices noted that they have no evidence that any state programs do not currently offer services to men”
“It says in a statement: “Since the majority of domestic violence victims seeking services are women who have been abused by men, the presence of men in shelter facilities could pose yet another barrier to victims obtaining the help they need. CPEDV is pleased that the Court chose to uphold shelters’ rights to protect the privacy and safety of their residents.”
“In many ways, this ruling is an affirmation of what violence prevention and victim services programs in California and across the country already do,” said Family Violence Prevention Fund President Esta Soler. “We work to stop domestic and sexual violence in all its forms, and serve all the victims who need help. But there is no question that women are the majority of victims who need services.”
Essentially, what happened was the ncfm launched a court case arguing that men should also receive domestic violence services. The justices agreed. Because men already received domestic violence services, no policy changes were made.
A quick walk over to NCFM’s site shows them…engaging in shitty rapist apologetics for Akin. And a bunch of other supremely offensive stuff.
Still a hate group, Basta.
Also, how do you feel about the NCFM explicitly supporting the GOP’s decision to deny domestic violence services to gay men?
Also, if the only productive thing you can dig up about your entire movement was a lawsuit that resulted in no policy changes whatsoever 4 years ago, and everything else is just hateful bullshit, you might want to re-evaluate some life choices.
Yeah, NCFM is fucked. They’re in love with all the misogynist hits; women are responsible for breaking up the fabric of scociety because they’re allowed to divorce. They seem to think women have complete reproductive freedom without any interference from state laws…and of course, the rights of men have been downgraded, making them second class citizens. And blah blah blah……whiney whine, legalize rape so there are zero incidents of false accusations. Blargitty blah. Shit. Bored now.
I love how BASTA thinks we have some kind of an obligation to do Google research to find out more about his hate group. Like, the second a group starts defending child abusers, I feel pretty okay about writing them off as hateful idiots.
Quibble, because I’m a bit anal about this sort of crap.
Oh goody, another round of MRA Show & Tell: Horrible Things People Say About Men, Edition #4235266.
You know, we’d probably listen to you more if your “movement” didn’t say worse things about men on a daily basis (and that’s not even getting into the things they say about everyone else).
Things I’m not anal about: closing blockquote tags.
Speaking of people who didn’t lose their jobs, did you know that Mike Tyson has gone on to have a successful career in film after being convicted, not merely accused, of rape? As in, he actually served time. In prison. For raping someone. And public opinion still finds him a funny guy and not a pariah.
But your “civil rights” organization officially believes that the victims of crimes should be the ones put on trial, lest the people who violated them be inconvenienced. Compassion: yer doin it rong.
> Oh word, you can tell that systemic misandry is a thing
> because everyone congratulated Sharon Osbourne
> and also because no one has ever heard of Sharon
> Osbourne. That definitely makes sense and isn’t at all
> contradictory.
I said “system”, not “everyone” – a vast difference. And I said “patted her on the shoulder”, not “congratulated” – a more subtle difference but still. The system quietly patted Osbourne on the shoulder and did its best to keep the shit under the rug, which is why it is possible for Shiraz to not have even heard about the whole thing.
> Like, the second a group starts defending child abusers,
> I feel pretty okay about writing them off as hateful idiots.
I’m still going through the links you guys provided for actual evidence that everything the individual named Tom Martin writes is automatically NCFM’s position. Is Tom Martin apparently a malicious idiot? Yes, based on just one quote, no need for Manboobz filter to say that. Should NCFM throw him out, repudiate him, and expunge all his writings from their website? That depends, among other things, on whether academic feminists are ready to expunge all of Solanas, Daly, etc. from gender studies curricula.
Oh, PASTA!, do you not understand the difference between studying something and endorsing it? Like, if I am interested in studying 20th Century German history, the curricula is for shit sure going to include stuff about actual Nazis. In fact, I am right now involved in preserving some primary source materials generated by Nazis before and during WW2. Does that make me a Nazi?
You are really an idiot if you don’t understand the difference between academia and advocacy organizations. Just amazingly dumb.
“@DeadHand: thanks for Godwinning yourself to the gutter.”
You do realize that Godwin’s law does not state “First person to bring up the Nazis loses the argument” right? I stand by the comparison. The entire reasoning behind the MRA movement echoes the Dolchstoßlegende. There’s this pervasive myth that men didn’t *lose* their rightful status as the rulers and directors of society but rather they were cheated out of it, betrayed by “manginas” and “white knights”, victimized by conniving and evil women out to humiliate and debase them. You talk about traitors who need to be rooted out and dealt with. You praise acts of violence and hint that it’s only the beginning if you don’t get your way. You speak of working to improve the lot of your fellows but the only work you excel at is spreading fear, hatred and lies. You speak of a future when you’re once again ascendant, in charge, as it was before and as it was meant to be. It’s the same shit in a different bag. You authoritarian-minded folks are pretty much constitutionally incapable of coming up with an original idea for your movements because it always comes back to the same themes: we’ve been betrayed, our birthright was stolen and anyone who disagrees with us is not just wrong but evil and they must be dealt with as harshly as possible. Now I’m sure that you’re going to take that and try to twist it around like you did with the whole “you don’t get to define what a civil rights movement is, we do” bullshit but anyone who’s taken a good long look at authoritarian groups will see both the parallels and the usual attempts at projecting their worst behaviors onto others.
Err, Solans never called herself a feminist.
> Speaking of people who didn’t lose their jobs, did you
> know that Mike Tyson has gone on to have a successful
> career in film after being convicted, not merely accused,
> of rape? As in, he actually served time.
Ah shit. I hoped you would omit that last tiny detail and make a complete idiot of yourself. Instead you only reached the level of imbecile by completely overlooking the importance of that fact. Yes, in Mike Tyson’s case the punishment was actually dealt, and we seem to have this philosophy that when you serve your term, you are clear and deserve a new start as much as anyone else. Or do we not? Is the judge only kidding when (s)he says “6 years incarceration”, and what (s)he really means is “6 years incarceration and lifetime of ostracism”?
Oh by the by, I don’t watch shows where people try to out sing one another, or talk shows. Also, I don’t read tabloids. I’m thinking I didn’t know about Sharon-gate *snicker* because my TV watching habits lead me to premium cable on most days…not a massive conspiracy or cover-up.
I’d take them saying “he was wrong.” That’s what most feminists say about nonfeminist crazy people like Solanas.
However, that’s not the only child abuse ncfm glorify: http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fncfm.org%2F2012%2F09%2Factivities%2Fncfm-member-elijah-ward-on-family-court-corruption-thomas-ball-the-committee-on-redress-of-grievances-a-serial-how-we-began%2F&ei=Y2xTUO28AYjYywH_zIHgDw&usg=AFQjCNH4tS-eOn4gJAxDtVdWtuvjS7fz0A
A defense of admitted child abuser Thomas Ball.
I’m still waiting on your thoughts about the NCFM supporting the removal of gay men’s domestic violence protections.
> You are really an idiot if you don’t understand the
> difference between academia and advocacy organizations.
I understand exactly where that difference is present within the academia and where it is not. In particular, academic feminism *is* pure advocacy.
PASTA, are your noodly arms tired from all the goalpost moving you’re doing?