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.
I was actually calling you out on “classical,” but you know what? You’ve spent an hour singing the praises of an organization that wants to prevent many men and women I know from having access to domestic violence services. I have no fucking obligation to be nice to you.
“Omits provisions”? Since when is denial of special treatment an attack?
It’s denial of any treatment. There is currently no public funding or legal framework for same sex or Amerindian domestic violence protections.
Even if it was special treatment, so what? If MRAs were not actually a hate group, wouldn’t they applaud any expansion of DV services to help more men?
Thomas Ball struck his young daughter so hard she bled and refused anger management therapy. His loss of custody is literally his fault. Meanwhile you idiots happily hold up a child abuser as a martyr and promote his terrorist manifesto as activism. You’re all absolutely disgraceful.
Shorter BASTA: “Men need more domestic violence protections! But laws that extend protections and help more men are EVIL!”
PASTA, thought you were taking your balls and going home.
Like, I know you’re too busy argued ad infinitum that a child abuser deserved to keep having access to his children without any guarantee of not abusing, but really, how will opposing extra DV services for some men help men in any way?
Shorter BASTA!: Why is Sharon Osbourne at all employable for making a single joke? And why shouldn’t a convicted rapist be in the public spotlight, after all he served his timez rite guize.
@Tulgey
Nailed it.
Basta, sweetie. Marx is on my gender studies curriculum, so is my tutor a Marxist? Mill is on there too so is she also a utilitarian? She once recimmended a Beckett play so she must be a modernist. She also set us some anti-suffrage texts so i guess she’s a misogynist too. Awkward.
I also have no idea why you think Daly or Solanis (lol) would be at the centre of gender studies curricula.
> There is currently no public funding or legal framework
> for same sex or Amerindian domestic violence protections.
Why should there specific provisions for these groups? Aren’t these people US citizens? What would prevent them from benefitting from VAWA funding and legal framework as US citizens? As far as LGBT people are concerned, the answers are resounding “there shouldn’t be”, “yes they are”, and “nothing”, respectively. As for the minorities, these are genuine questions I am asking you right now. Sadly I happen to live in one of the most racially uniform European countries, and I humbly admit to knowing as much about US internal race/minorities politics as Hollywood teaches me.
@Myoo, thanks, that was an awesome sum-up of what I thought it might be caused by too.
And the MRM? Well, you can’t polish a turd. No matter how many claims of activism or justice-seeking, it’s a hate group, through and through.
If they could provide proof of one thing they have done to benefit men, ALL men, from start to finish, I would find them less hilarious/offensive. As it is, though…..
As, obviously (since Pasta! is not familiar with), the victim-blamey “cop from Toronto” made worldwide front page news. But some Reality TV star who said something offensive about men sure as heck musta made worldwide front page news, since Pasta! is familiar with that story. Must be due to systemic misandry.
Academic feminism is advocacy, pasta? I wish it were that simple.
Where did you study gender studies? Cos obv no one should be making sweeping statements unless it’s from experience…
1. Cops don’t often give a shit about domestic abuse. They give much less of a shit if it is a gay couple. The VAWA that MRAs oppose would force cops to take male-on-male DV seriously or be subject (in theory) to lawsuits.
2. Domestic abuse is virtually unprosecuted on Aboriginal land, because, again, cops don’t give a shit. The VAWA reauthorization would have increased shelter access and legal options for aboriginal men and women.
3. Many government organizations and law firms don’t care about same sex domestic abuse, becuase they don’t think they can win the case. The VAWA reauthorization would ensure that it is legally possible to prosecute these.
4. Undocumented immigrants, men and women, have virtually no legal .
Are you seriously so naive as to think that everyone in the United States is treated equally under the law and covered by the same set of services?
The better question is, why shouldn’t there be these protections? How does it help men to have fewer services for same sex couples, Aboriginals, and immigrants?
Again, how does it help men?
> Where did you study gender studies? Cos obv no one
> should be making sweeping statements unless it’s from
> experience…
I observe the effects of gender studies on human mind whenever I interact with feminists. That’s enough data points for me.
I humbly admit to knowing as much about US internal race/minorities politics as Hollywood teaches me.
You also seem to know about as much about lgbtq issues and domestic violence protections as your pro-child-abuser hate movement teaches you.
“Funny, I would be tricked if somebody told me that the words above were penned by a Goddess-feminist or a gyn-eco-feminist.”
Just in case anybody missed the stuff you redacted right before what you quoted:
“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.”
That could’ve been a pit full of great big honking spikes with a neon sign over it blinking “DON’T GO HERE” in letters sixteen feet high and you still would have tap-danced right into it. Do you know why? Because authoritarians are constitutionally incapable of coming up with new ideas. Even though you had the perfect opportunity to avoid doing exactly what I was just talking about by not even responding to it, you couldn’t help yourself. All you saw was the opportunity to say “NO U” in response. And you expect us to take you seriously. Or better yet, actually be *afraid* of people like you. You’re bullies, as shown by your admiration of a man who smacked around someone smaller and weaker than himself to show his authority. And like all bullies, there’s a thin and fragile skin of bravado over a core of pure cowardice. One good hit and it cracks.
Oh, us evil feminists, always trying to extend domestic violence protections to more men and arguing that child abuse is bad. We are so crazy.
BREAKING NEWS: MRA continues to be baffled that feminists don’t talk about Solanas and Osbourne all the fucking time, reveals he has never heard of any actual feminists.
> 1. Cops don’t often give a shit about domestic abuse. They
> give much less of a shit if it is a gay couple.
This is wrong, but isn’t it covered by existing laws? And why do you think this happens? The MRM position is that the gender of the *victim* dwarfs all other factors, and provisions that forbid denying assistance to male victims would effectively address the problem.
> The VAWA that MRAs oppose would force cops to take
> male-on-male DV seriously or be subject (in theory) to lawsuits.
Wrong. The VAWA that MRAs want would force cops to take *-on-male DV seriously, *including* male-on-male.
Breaking news: MRA heartily supports taking DV protections away from millions of men, as if he was just some kind of knee-jerk conservative reactionary who supports abusers.
You say that, but they don’t. The only difference between the VAWA that NCFM supported and the VAWA that the dems support is that a lot fewer men and women are covered. That’s it.
It’s almost as if your movement is less about helping men and more about helping abusers, huh?
Basta look up ‘formal equality’ then ‘substantive equality’, OK?
No. You can thank NCFM and their friends the GOP for that.