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?
@ Starla- I find myself guilty of unnecessarily kicking around trolls now and again. I often feel like a bully and I wonder what it accomplished. Sometimes people have clearly never heard a good heartfelt ‘shut-up’ in their lives and they desperately need one, but that doesn’t happen nearly as often as I pretend it does.
Yeah…people do tend to have very little idea of what it’s like to be an abusive relationship, unless they’ve been in one, or have been close to someone else who has (or have witnessed it repeatedly first-hand in the course of working as a police officer / psychologist / etc). I understand most women in abusive relationships *do* try to leave their spouse (multiple times), but it’s much harder than it can seem. Emotional manipulation and abuse are par for the course – people who’ve been put down for a long time often feel like they’re not worth anything, that their abusive partner is what they deserve, or that they can’t function by themselves outside of the relationship…
It’s incredibly sad. I can understand people making such remarks as the ones I highlighted as the result of being ignorant and misinformed…but I do wish they would at least make an *effort* to comprehend the situation, instead of stubbornly digging in and sticking to the same routine of victim blaming.
@timetravelingfool
Yeah…I’m guessing that was a result of “this is the way the world is and it will never change” mentality. It’s unproductive but in this day in age when a single person has so little power over the way things are done who can be blamed for thinking like that? ( on the mentality, not the general acceptance of domestic abuse and rape)
Melissa, apologist troll,
Do you think that you’re on a roll?
When it’s victims you blame
and victims you shame,
you can fuck right off back to your hole.
I feel sorry for your “friend,” and anyone else who has the misfortune to know you.
Fuck off and stay gone.
Had a friend who came *this* close to ending up with an abuser. She was strong, and clever, and very sure of herself (she’s the only woman I’ve ever known who can be the foreman on a construction site even though she’s 5’5″ and weighs 115 pounds), and I’d have never thought she could have it happen.
She didn’t think he was isolating her, she just thought he got anxious around new people.
She didn’t think he was emotionally repressed, she thought he was complex and deep from some childhood trauma.
She didn’t think he was destroying her self-esteem to make her more controllable, she just thought he was a perfectionist who cared about her.
She didn’t think he tended to blow up when she challenged him, she just thought he was sometimes overcome with emotion.
It wasn’t until after she dumped him that it all started to come together in her memory. He’d been chipping away at her self-image so gradually that it wasn’t until we were sitting around drinking a bottle of wine after the fact and, when she told me the story of her breakup and was greeted with a wide-eyed stare of shock from me (since I was apparently her third friend to react that way) that she started realizing.
Also, Melissa the Troll reeks of psych-student syndrome to me. Related to med-student syndrome, where you think you have every disease you study, psych-student syndrome causes you to diagnose personality disorders in everyone you know. Ahh, fond memories of being utterly convinced one of my uncles had Narcissistic Personality Disorder my sophomore year.
I thought it was fantastic (and wrote about it at great length)! I’m a big fan of both the book and the musical and this film does both of them proud.
I haven’t see it yet, but I have high hopes. Anne Hathaway has a great voice.
Melissa: What is wrong with me? I see the world as it is, and tell it like it is.
Sure ya do. And the way it is means women are to blame.
Now granted there are a minority or abusers who can pass themselves off as decent people
that is a minority of cases in my experience.
Which is, of course, universally shared, and completely dispositive.
Or… you are full of shit, pulling it out and using it in lieu of fact.
First of all I am not an MRA, nor a FeMRA, or part of the “Men’s Rights” Movement in any way. But what ever, make assumptions about me if you wish.
From observed fact, you are misogynistic.
I’m just telling it like it is.
I didn’t have time to read those links in detail, but I did skim them. Here are my thoughts.
Didn’t have time? Bullshit. You have all the time in the world. If you take an extra hour… if you take an extra day to actually know what the fuck you are talking about that’s to the good.
This isn’t what I did. It isn’t even close. I drew a clear distinction between blame/guilt/deserving and avoidable consequense of choices.
“the avoidable consequence of choices” is blaming the victim. You are saying women who get beaten are suffering the consequence of going out with abusers; and that it’s avoidable.
Anne Hathaway is spectacular.
Off topic, but a perfect example of misogynistic priest (or is that redundant..):
No. There are a lot of them, but it’s not required, and the assholes get more press.
I’ve known a lot of non-misogynist priests.
Melissa: Where the hell did you get that I think I’m perfect.
Here: What is wrong with me? I see the world as it is, and tell it like it is.
I repeat, again, that I have always placed fault/blame/wrongdoing purely with the abuser.
Except for those women who didn’t choose to “avoid the predictable consequence of their actions.
Reasonably sure, but I did not “diagnose”. I showed my friend information on Anti-social PD and compared that with her own descriptions of her partners traits – the conclusion was obvious,
I see, you didn’t “diagnose” you just looked at the literature and came to the reasonable conclusion, and decided to point out to your friend that this must be the case.
A fine distinction, to be sure. One in which I can’t see the difference between the one and the other.
Nope. How is this relevant? It’s hard to estimate numbers but I suspect most abusers are emotionally messed neuro typicals
So why is it you think women ought to be able to see and avoid abusers?
Damn… Blockquote fail.
Don’t forget this gem:
“I let her made own judgement on the matter rather than rely on my own authority.”
I do hope the “friend” (if said person actually exists) told Melissa to stick it.
I think Melissa did deserve everything she got, actually. At the most generous reading, her attitude reeks of a kind of naivete about how abusers and predators work that is dangerous, and she needs to unlearn it now. (Binjabreel put it very well up above, so scroll up if you didn’t see that comment.) With a less generous reading, she is nothing but a troll.
If Melissa showed signs that she was actually trying to educate herself, I would have been more patient with her. Still, what she said is incredibly hurtful, and she is saying it in a place that has multiple survivors of abuse who don’t deserve to have some asshat tell them they are partially responsible for that abuse.
And, for some women, “honor” (choke) killings after they leave their abuser:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/12/2012121614107670788.html
🙁
The other thing wrong with Melissa’s “sticking a fork in an electric socket” analogy, sticking a fork in a socket is an *active choice*. It is double plus fucked up if that’s how she’s framing the victim of domestic violence, as someone who is actively putting themselves in harms way, rather than the reality of a predatory person actively seeking a victim.
Ditto to that, Cloudiah. Melissa’s already been here defending a misogynistic little slime and trying the oh-so-innocent “but this comment wasn’t misogynistic, why are you all so mean to him?” line – ignoring as long as possible that the comment in question could only come from misogyny. She’s shifted goalposts and gone on at length defending MRAs and, this post, blaming women who are abused. I think she deserved everything she got.
Binjabreel – that was an excellent comment, you demonstrated so clearly how abusers act. I’m sorry your friend went through that, but very glad to hear she got away.
Curse you, html! “This” was the only word supposed to be in italics there.
I never got past the whore penguins. Yeah, flightless fat waterfowl are exactly the image that comes to mind when I think of sex for sale.
So this is terrible. It’s basically another Register-Her.
@Cloudiah and Kitteh
I never saw the comment where she defended MRAs, that must have happened much earlier than what I saw. The first comment I saw by her was when she started talking about her friends fiance. As for blaming abuse victims, it was an incredibly ignorant thing to do. But as I said earlier she clearly has no experience with abuse victims or abusers themselves, so I thought maybe nobody had ever sat her down and explained it to her (I’m having a very difficult time figuring out how old she is, my mother explained abusive men to me when I was 12) but if she was in fact acting like an asshat before this then fire away. I was not aware of this. I apologize for any confusion of offense I might have caused.
Great article, but I’m waiting for the MRa version of history. Their 2011 year in review post on reddit was delightful.
Starla, just to be clear, you didn’t say anything offensive; I just wanted to explain why I was hard on Melissa. For my part at least, you have nothing to apologize for.
And now with link
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/nr0op/the_best_of_mra_2011/
Starla, echoing cloudiah again – you’ve no need to apologise. There was a bit of “were we too hard on her” conversation and this was just part of it.
Melissa’s defence of a misogynistic little twerp was in the Spermburgling thread a day or so ago. If you can put up with reading her nonsense there, you’ll see why I’ve lost patience with her before she got started here.