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.
When’s the “debate” scheduled?
it reads like they ctrl-c/ctrl-v’ed instructions on how to hold a formal debate without thinking out how to fit it to what they actually wanted to accomplish
BAHAHAHAH!! those savages trying to tear the posters down…what a bunch of losers!! get a life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
JtO was also menaced at the UPS store.
I actually recognize the hipstery kid with the big glasses, as I talked to him a couple of times at Occupy Vancouver events last year. He’s a pretty nice guy as far as I could tell and about as threatening as a flip-flop, which makes the MRAs’ claims extra hilarious now that I’ve seen the video.
Gifs or it didn’t happen!
Every time I see the still shot from that GWW video, I read the ‘ncfm’ as ‘cfnm.’ If you don’t know what the latter means, google it.
So where’s the mob I heard so much about.
Censorship is something a government does not an individual. My posters get torn too. That is why I have extras.
BEST VIDEO EVER!
I can’t believe those feminists, they look very dumb!
“if you condemn a man for making an emotional argument, that’s SEXIST!”?????!!??. WOW!! most idiotic statement i’ve ever heard!!
THIS BLOG FUCKING RULES. YYYYYYYEEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH
I bet they are making false poster-tearing-down accusations. I bet they tore their own posters down or were asked politely to tear them down, and now they are upset about it and making false accusations. Misandry!
Damn, GWW is one super smug bitch!
Feminism fail.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say something I’ve been thinking for a long time.
Up until very recently, I never considered myself a feminist. I didn’t know what a feminist even was, having heard so many contradictory descriptions of them. They believe in equal rights for women. They’re all man hating lesbians. Etc. Etc. To be honest, I was not at all interested in feminism and didn’t really think it was important to my life. I could vote, drive a car, open my own checking account, live alone, and I was happy with this. I fortunately never faced a sexual assault or harassment.
Even to this day I am woefully ignorant of feminism. Even though I am college educated, I never took a Women’s Studies or Gender class. I have never read the great tomes of feminism such as The Feminine Mystique or The Second Sex. Although I was always interested in LGBT rights and issues, I knew almost nothing about gender issues. I had never even heard of the term “cis” until I became a regular on this site.
But one day I became acquainted with a little movement called “The Men’s RIghts Movement.” That sounds cool, I thought. I have a husband that I love. Maybe I can learn something. WRONG! I was instead bombarded with every manner of gender slur: cunt, cum dumpster, bitch, whore, simply for being in possession of a vagina. I soon became aware that there was no room for me in this movement, and that I was nothing but a hypergamous whore, my husband a white knight mangina, and FTSU and NAWALT blah blah blah. But even more shocking than the insults, was the notion that in this modern age, we actually have a group of people debating whether women should be allowed to vote.
It was after this experience that I realized I was a feminist, and that it would be dishonest of me to go on not calling myself one. Sometimes I feel like a very inadequate feminist, but even with all of my inadequacies, I will never NOT be a feminist. It is not my fault that others have co-opted the term and turned it into something insidious. But it is up to feminists like me to help change the perception. We are not ugly, sexless, awkward women who can’t get a man. We don’t hate men. In fact, unlike the MRM, which is obsessed with what women are and do, and is intent on punishing them somehow, feminism really is not about men at all. It is simply the idea that women are not property, our reproductive ability is not a resource to be traded, our bodies belong to ourselves, and no one is owed access to our vaginas. We are not animals. LIstening to the MRM, they still cannot accept these basic truths.
Sorry for the rant.
In a few years it will come out that GWW has been masquerading as the ultimate POE, and she is actually a hardcore genderqueer feminist. I can only hope.
@fembot, well done. Nice summation of the MRM as a whole, and why it deserves to be mocked. Not because there aren’t legitimate issues facing men. There are plenty, and they should be addressed. But because the MRM is based on hating women, hating women’s rights, hating the fact that women HAVE rights, and overall just being whiny assholes. I first encountered them on usenet years ago, and quickly realized that they are based on and steeped in hate, bitterness and a frustrated sense of entitlement. I do not identify as an MRA, and never will. I’ve got this silly notion that women are actually people, y’see.
Great post, Fembot, it sums up my MRA-inspired feminist awakening as well. Feminism really is an unstoppable Hydra, MRA hate group attacks on individual feminists just cause more heads to sprout. They realize this, but instead of giving up on their hate group like a reasonable person, they’re dialing up the violent threats (which isn’t going to work either).
At this point NWO and other tinfoil MRAs should be seriously investigating the leaders of the men’s rights movement for ties to the Femilluminati, because they’ve done more to strengthen feminism than many feminists.
@fembot
I think that’s a big part of their problem with feminism, that’s why when they come into a feminist space they try to turn the conversation around to what they want to talk about.
Wow, Ruby. In a thread where there’s a dumbass troll literally trying as hard as possible to say nothing at all and somehow attack feminism, your comment is what makes me sigh in frustration.
Ruby, you could say that GWW isn’t the only smug asshole around here.
If I was as hated as Ruby I would stop coming here. Or at least stop commenting.
It’s not like she ever has anything of substance to add to the conversation.