What a year!
The Men’s Rights movement, the most important human rights movement of the 21st century, got 2012 off to a flying start in February with an event in Bozeman, Montana that was quite literally attended by no one. After that, the year was a whirlwind of activity. Let’s go to the timeline:
January: The Men’s Rights movement rests up to prepare itself for the year.
February: The Montana State University chapter of the National Coalition for Men holds a lively and well-attended Men’s Rights event in Bozeman, Montana. Sorry. When I said “well-attended” I meant to say “not attended at all.” As the local NBC affiliate reports, in what may be my favorite sentence ever written about the Men’s Rights movement: “No one showed up to the event but organizers say the lack of attendance is not due to a lack of interest.” You can read more here at Man Boobz, or watch the NBC affiliate’s report here.
March: The Southern Poverty Law Center, an important and influential watchdog of hate groups in the United States, profiles the Men’s Rights movement, describing it as “an underworld of misogynists, woman-haters whose fury goes well beyond criticism of the family court system, domestic violence laws, and false rape accusations. … Women are routinely maligned as sluts, gold-diggers, temptresses and worse; overly sympathetic men are dubbed “manginas”; and police and other officials are called their armed enablers.”
March: British Men’s Rights activist Tom Martin has his “anti-male discrimination” lawsuit against the London School of Economics thrown out of court as a “hopeless claim.” Martin responds on Twitter by calling his critics “whores.” He then comes to Man Boobz and calls people here whores. Eventually he announces that female penguins are also whores. No, really. Read more about Tom’s visits to Man Boobz here: 1, 2, 3, 4. (TRIGGER WARNING for links 2 and 3, which deal with Martin’s reprehensible views on child prostitution.)
April: Thousands of Men’s Rights Activists converge on the National Mall in Washington DC for “Sink Misandry,” apparently some sort of protest against the lifeboat-boarding policies of the RMS Titanic, which sank in the North Atlantic one hundred years ago. (There was a movie about it.)
Sorry, correction: When I said “thousands of MRAs” I meant to say “none.” While the Sink Misandry protest was announced with great fanfare in December of 2011 on A Voice for Men, it was later called off due to unspecified logistical problems. Understandable, given how difficult it is to get to our nation’s capital, inconveniently located on the sparsely populated East Coast and served by a mere three airports.
May – June: The Men’s Rights movement has lunch and takes a little nap.
July: Seven Men’s Rights activists make it to the steps of the Capitol in Washington DC, evidently for some sort of anti-circumcision protest. On Reddit, one MRA blames the poor attendance on the machinations of the “Government and the Fem lobby.”
August: In order to more effectively harness the activist energies of MRAs on Reddit, Paul Elam of A Voice for Men sets up a Men’s Rights Activism subreddit alongside the longstanding Men’s Rights Subreddit. Only a handful of MRAs subscribe, possibly because Elam seems more interested in banning people he doesn’t like than in organizing anything, and the subreddit is abandoned by its founder and everyone else within a month.
September: In Vancouver, Men’s Rights activists hold a lively, well-attended debate with feminists on the question “Has Feminism Gone Too Far?” at a local used car dealership.
Oh, sorry. Another correction: After being announced, and cancelled, then resurrected and reannounced, the event is ultimately cancelled after the organizers lose the venue for the event due to a weird turn events that involves an MRA car salesman being removed from his place of business by police after some sort of dispute with his business partner. Also, the MRAs never bothered to round up any feminists to take part in the debate with them. You can read the whole complex and confusing saga of the Great Vancouver All-MRA Debate That Wasn’t in these three Man Boobz posts: 1, 2, 3.
October: Recess
November: Artistry Against Misandry holds a lively and well-attended concert and fundraiser in Nashville to celebrate International Men’s Day.
Whoops! One more correction: The event never happened. Apparently the organizers lost their venue, and were unable to book another one, as Nashville isn’t really much of a music town and musical venues there are as scarce as … wait, no, it’s fucking Nashville. NASHVILLE. Music City. The home of the Grand Ole Opry. I’m pretty sure that every building that isn’t a house or a restaurant there is a musical venue.
Also, the Artistry Against Misandry website seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. Might I suggest a visit to Artistry For Feminism and Kittens instead?
December: Christmas shopping.
I should note that when not organizing, then cancelling, events many MRAs have been busily harassing individual women online and posting many very angry comments. A few have also been putting up some very badly designed posters. So there’s that.
With a year of such triumphs behind them, how will the Men’s Rights movement manage to keep up such a blistering pace in 2013?
I had Web of Trust red warnings flash up all over when I clicked on that link. I’ll leave it at that, I think.
Please tell me that’s a real picture of an MRA meeting.
Steph, yep. That’s the event in Montana that had no attendees. (The people listening to the talk are the people who organized the event.)
When I first read about Potential Prostitutes the other day, it sounded like something from the mind of Tom Martin.
Not that I agree with setting up outing websites like PP, but why are the johns getting off scott free? Last I checked, buying sex was as illegal as selling it in the U.S.
It is an extortion site. Nice little reputation you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it. A pretty basic variation on the protection racket.
Some days I am like, ‘This is a job for Anonymous!’
ooh,niceguys ofokcupid made such a succinct and quotable quote I needs to share: ““political correctness” is a bullshit concept popularised by people who can’t stand the idea of being even a little sensitive about groups who’ve been – and still are – so incredibly marginalised to try and make upholding the status quo by dehumanising them seem subversive.”
The article here http://boingboing.net/2012/12/27/potential-prostitutes-site.html talks about that site, and how its claims of having been sued and won are lies, as is pretty much everything about its setup.
Kitteh’s: yeah, I read that the site has only been registered for the past couple months, so there’s no way that their victory laps are legit.
The site reads to me like it was created by bitter little men who got caught, and instead of taking responsibility for their actions, want to shame women.
It’s doubtful the postings are even from users – the site appeared with content already, seemingly. It looks like most of the stuff, and its “likes” on Facebook et al, are just put there by the owners.
I hope that lawyer is right and their claims of being protected by some act are wrong. It’d be nice to see them doing time for extortion.
The whole thing is very MRAish, isn’t it? Conflating “sex worker” with “sex offender” in order to make women and girls wrong. How long before My Arse Hurts Martin wants to put up photos of child prostitutes?
There is a problem with jurisdiction. The parent location seems to be Sweden, but they are targetting people in the USA.
I wonder what Sweden’s laws on that sort of thing are …
@ kitteh- that’s heartening.
Yeah, let’s hope the site gets closed quickly and someone is able to prosecute the owners. Google brings up quite a few articles – HP and the Daily Fail have even covered it.
I think that in this case jurisdiction would be where the damaged party is, since the website reaches out and targets women in the US and the people who run the site expect these women to be affected. I also suspect that the statute they cite wouldn’t help them, since it would only cover information provided by third parties, and truly damaging thing about the website is information they’ve created themselves (the name of the site, frex).
If they are actually in Sweden then getting a judgement is harder, because Sweden has to extradite them.
It may be possible to shut them down, but actually getting justice is perhaps not possible.
I don’t see why Sweden would need to extradite anyone, but it is true that enforcing an injunction or a monetary award against a foreign national would be more difficult than against a US resident.
Fraud and extortion are crimes. It’s really hard to get an in abenstia trial. Civil Judgements, maybe, but to bring them up for felonies would be pretty hard.
Or, okay … unless a DA brought an extortion charge, which I guess could be possible.
They may or may not originate in Sweden, but their host company is here in the us: http://www.enom.com/ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENom). See more about them here (explains a lot): http://hostexploit.com/blog/14-reports/3516-cybercrime-goes-to-wall-street.html. I know people who had political hot-button web sites who went overseas to get hosted because complaints within the US got them taken down, but putting pressure on their hosting companies.
I think the adress in Sweden is a red herring. The site makes references to US law, and AFAIK if they want protection under swedish law, the site needs to have responsible editor who is strictly responsible; Newspaper editors have been convicted for things that were written in the comment fields in online versions of newspapers. Also I think that the PUL (Personal Data Law) generally forbids online publishing of personal information, with certain exceptions.
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talacaris: You are missing the point. They refer to US law because 1: Their hosting company is in the US. 2: Because they have a plausible sounding defense under an aspect of US law.
But they have gone to the effort to have a line of personal defense which moves them; as people, not as a legal fiction, out of the US.
Which speaks to evil intent.
“Which speaks to evil intent.”
Extortion (which the site generally seems to be about) speaks also of evil intent.
Are you thinking that the people behind are in Sweden? The PO Box could as well just be false data on the registration intended to prevent tracking the people behind down.