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.
> How does it help men to have fewer services for same sex couples,
> Aboriginals, and immigrants?
It helps everyone to not set in stone special rights for birth groups.
No, that’s their talking point. Their actual position, as shown by their opposition to the increased protections of VAWA, is that as few abusers as possible should experience any consequences for thier actions. If they wanted to expand services for male victims, they wouldn’t oppose expanding services for male victims.
The only “rights” that VAWA would have extended would have been “The right to not be abused and to have your abuse be taken seriously by society.”
If that’s your idea of a “special right,” I don’t know what to tell you, champ.
Again, MRA is about abusers, not victims. That’s why they think it was wrong for a court to take children away from an abuser, and why they actively fight against abuse protections for men.
> No. You can thank NCFM and their friends the GOP for that.
Citation needed.
I mean, the real logical failure is that, if there was no discrimination in legal protections and services for lgbtq, Amerindians, and undocumented immigrants, then provisions saying these people need to be covered as well wouldn’t have any policy effect. So there would be no reason to oppose them. It never hurts to have the same thing written down in two separate places.
The only reason to oppose them is that MRAs know they’re not covered, and they know that coverage would help people leave abusers, and they support abusers too much to want that to happen.
> Citation needed.
Citation needed to prove that NCFM specifically had a hand in that.
I’ve already given you some. I know you’re not super awesome at logic, but VAWA is the only federal body of law and policy on domestic violence. So, if all of VAWA as it is written is about naturalized heterosexual men and women in nonfederal, nonAboriginal land, there are no protections. Where else would it be?
I already gave you one, but here it is again: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/16/national-coalition-for-men-backs-gop-version-of-violence-against-women-act/
“The National Coalition for Men has endorsed the House version of the Violence Against Women Act.”
Classic line of the privileged, calling yourself a civil rights movement while trying to step on minorities.
“There is no discrimination against minorities! That’s why making laws against disciminating against minorities should be prevented at all costs! Valuable ink could be consumed!”
> I mean, the real logical failure is that, if there was no discrimination
> in legal protections and services for lgbtq, Amerindians, and
> undocumented immigrants, then provisions saying these people
> need to be covered as well wouldn’t have any policy effect.
That’s simply not true. When there is no discrimination, then special legal provisions for birth groups will *cause* discrimination. Equal status quo + unequal law = drift towards inequality. Unequal status quo + unequal law = bidirectional inequality that doesn’t cancel out.
Wow, this is what a royal smackdown looks like. Incidentally, Pasta, it’s pretty poor form to barge into another group’s blog discussion and demand citation on subjects the people there are intimately familiar with. Especially after proudly admitting your ignorance on a subject. No one here is responsible for your education,and google is just a click away. It’s like a creationists tapping furiously on the shoulders of paleontologists discussing some fossil or something, demanding they stop that discussion to prove evolution happened. Again. And with every intention of dismissing the many credible sources provided. You need to look something up, do in yourself.
Kinda like how anti-murder laws, in a society without murder, would themselves cause murder! This is some serious Minority Report shit.
It’s a real shame that all the levy construction down in the South keeps causing those floods.
In general though, it is pretty insane that you think a real problem with the US is that gay men have too many DV protections.
How’s the abuser lobbying working out for you?
And the people who originally advocated for legal provisions to counter discrimination? Before all those provisions existed that actually created the discrimination (which must exist after all, with all these provisions we have to counter it)? Why do you imagine they wanted these provisions in the first place? For a laugh? Because violent oppression and years of advocacy to get those provisions in place was fun and easy?
Hey look, more abuser support!
http://ncfm.org/2012/09/activities/ncfm-vp-marc-angelucci-representative-akin-had-good-reason-to-use-the-term-legitimate-rape/
Bullshit. You know next to nothing about feminists, as evidenced by your knowing only of Solnas and Daly, and I’m sure when you encounter feminists, it’s because you’re trolling feminist spaces. It’s not like you’re here in good faith and want to learn anything.
I know all I need to know about surgery from watching Grey’s Anatomy!
@Ugh: you just re-pasted the VAWA link, but we were talking about *existing laws* independent of VAWA that penalize such discrimination by state agencies. You told me that there are no such laws independent from VAWA, and that NCFM among others had a hand in preventing such laws from being enacted.
I find it hard to believe that there are no such laws in the US, given that for what all I know, European laws of this kind are modeled after US legislation. I am asking you to demonstrate to me that there are indeed no such laws in the US (repeat: independent from VAWA), and that NCFM is complicit in this state of affairs.
Well gee, if you find it hard to believe, by all means produce one. That works. As in no clear need for additional measures. Unless you expect Ugh to produce an absence of laws for you- shall he just hit the space bar a million times to symbolize the lack of laws? Stop expecting other people to do your research for you, you lazy thinker.
Find one.
Haha, what do you want me to do, send you the entire legal code of the United States? How about you try to find one law that would prevent such discrimination.
They opposed passing the only law that would have prevented this discrimination. If they wanted there to be legal domestic violence protections for gay men, they would have supported the only law in history to state that gay men should also recieve protections.
Also, how do feel about the NCFM defending Akin’s comments on rape and pregnancy?
Almost like they’ll just do or say anything that supports abusers, huh?
Wow, you’re so wise and mathematical.
I never knew before there was no discrimination against lgbtq, Native Americans, and undocumented immigrants, but that misandry was real and systematic.
You must be in STEM.
Haha I’m pretty sure the argument that there is no lgbtq discrimination in the United States is stupider than creationism.