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2012: Year of Triumphs for the Men’s Rights Movement

Come early to get a good seat!
Come early to get a good seat!

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?

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kamilla1960
kamilla1960
11 years ago

There is another problem we face…the lack of understanding of different forms of art. Opera and ballet are really the highest forms of stage art.

katz
11 years ago

^If you liked Mrs. Lovett, you’ll have to watch this just for Helena Bonham Carter.

katz
11 years ago

Sorry, that was a reply to Kitteh.

katz
11 years ago

There is another problem we face…the lack of understanding of different forms of art. Opera and ballet are really the highest forms of stage art.

Yeah, that’s a serious problem we face, people’s inability to recognize that the art forms you practice are just plain better than all the others.

Oh wait, that’s completely untrue and the reason everyone things opera and such are just for snobs.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Oh dear, we have a culture snob. I am so not in the mood for that conversation right now.

Short version – not liking something doesn’t mean you don’t understand it.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Ninja-ing is the highest form of internet artistry.

katz
11 years ago

*high five*

kamilla1960
kamilla1960
11 years ago

Sorry, I think it may be goodbye for me.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

I’m just heartbroken about that.

katz
11 years ago

That really was the highest form of flounce.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Pure artistry, it was.

katz
11 years ago

OK, I shouldn’t harp, but because I’m still awake and bored: How does one reconcile “opera is better than everything else” with “there are no good or bad books, only well written and badly written ones?” The latter suggests judging individual works on their own merits and on how well they accomplish what they’re trying to accomplish, quite the opposite of pegging entire genres as better or worse than others.

The Kittehs' Unpaid Help
The Kittehs' Unpaid Help
11 years ago

Pfft okay, so I must be one of them dunces wot doesn’t unnerstand Opry and Ballett.

Pardon me, but I simply prefer that, say, wholly word-based works like Shakespeare are performed with words, not as silent dance. And the extreme artificiality of the operatic artform just doesn’t appeal.

::adjusts flat cap, takes whippets out for run::

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Ballet I quite like. My problem with opera is that I find a lot of it really cheesy. Guess I must just be too working class and low-cultured to get it.

kamilla1960
kamilla1960
11 years ago

I have lived for many years on a very low income and often in danger of homelessness.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Shame that the experience didn’t teach you any common sense.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Also, why do they always fail to stick the flounce?

Ranter (@socialrants)
11 years ago

The more I read, the more excited I get to see the movie. I’m one of those people who thinks the original (for me) is always better. If I see the movie first, the book will bother me. If I read the book first, the movie will bother me. And any song is always best by the original performers. LOL So, I’m a bit snobby that way.

thenatfantastic
thenatfantastic
11 years ago

Well the MRAs (sorry, an MRA) has decided that he’s going to set up a political party in the UK, and the Daily Mail in all its glory, has decided to cover it like it’s an Actual News Story and not the result of a conversation at the pub.

I know the guy in question, he used to try and comment on my blog. I got off quite lucky, I know a couple of women who’s websites he just stalks constantly, demanding that him and his ideas be the centre of attention. He’s a genuinely nasty piece of work, and quite obviously his idea of a ‘Male Rights Party’ to challenge women that he’s decided have too much power won’t come to any fruition, because he’s just an attention-seeking, woman-hating, reality-denying, nasty old goat.

With apologies to goats.

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

“With apologies to goats.”

And fish named goat? (Yes, I really have one, long, funny, story)

Opera’s always struck me as being some strange formal ritual of feigning interest in something you don’t know the words to. Ballet I’ve been known to like, and my hatred of musical theatre comes from having worked in it, no one mention Kiss Me Kate, please. That show was So. Much. Fail.

As for “high culture”…*waves an electric violin at the thread* some Beethoven, some Brahms, some Irish jigs. I guess jigs, and other dancing music, isn’t exactly refined.

Also, fuck you. Nearly homeless and paying for the opera?! I remember not knowing if I could put together bus fare to get to my psych – *that* is nearly homeless, if you’ve got money for transportation to the opera, and admission…either you lived next door and had a student pass / discount hours, or I have questions.

Sorry for that rant but I have a hard time believing that anyone counting found quarters for bus fare is using them to get to anything in the “entertainment” category. It’s either BS, or we have a performer here.

And yes, I am touchy on this topic, thanks for asking! Can I interest anyone in a Russian folk dance? Gotta at least enjoy our low brow art!

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

So, there’s this metal band who I’ve worked with in the past, and they have some songs with hilariously vulgar lyrics about things like fucking standing up, but they also have a classically trained pianist and a violinist. Are they low brow or high brow?

(Part of the reason this amused me so much is that a lot of the time “classic” or “the pinnacle of art” just means “has been around for a really long time and is currently very much enjoyed by rich old white people”. Or just “is enjoyed by rich white people” in general. Is jazz low-brow or high art, and how much is your answer to that question influenced by your perception of what the average jazz fan looks like?)

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

These guys are also fun to throw out if you’re dealing with a snob of the “classical music is high art and everything else is crap” variety.

carnation
carnation
11 years ago

@ Nat

The Daily Mail seems to be giving airtime to any wingnut with an MRA point of view lately. Buchanan’s website is classic MRA, Ghandi quotes, list of his blog, links to Elam’s articles.

How could I contact you?

thenatfantastic
thenatfantastic
11 years ago

@carnation If you use Twitter, I have the same username as here. If not, you can go to my all-but-defunct blog and leave a comment which I won’t publish but will be emailed to me.

Kiwi girl
Kiwi girl
11 years ago

@thenatfantastic, I went to your link and then googled Mike Buchanan and found http://fightingfeminism.wordpress.com/about/ and http://therightsofman.typepad.co.uk/the_rights_of_man/2012/02/feminism-the-ugly-trusth-extract-by-mike-buchanan.html

In your link, it said “A bookish fellow from Bath, full of statistics[1], he has recently given evidence to a parliamentary select committee[2].” And grrr to that site for making me type that.

[1] Pulling numbers out of one’s arse == full of statistics.
[2] If the UK is like NZ, then any person who has made a submission to parliament for an inquiry or bill can present their comments/thoughts/beliefs in person (they have to self-fund this) to a parliamentary select committee.

Not seeing any evidence of shining intellect for this dude, from that paragraph.

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