In an apparent attempt to prove that they’re not misogynists, the folks at A Voice for Men have decided to take a temporary break from their practice of vilifying individual female activists to vilify a male activist – University of Toronto Student Union VP for University Affairs Munib Sajjad.
As far as I can tell, the folks at A Voice for Men decided to target Sajjad, perversely, because he told Toronto’s CityNews that he was afraid he was “going to be targeted” after announcing publicly that he thought a campus Men’s Rights group should be banned. The A Voice for Men post about Sajjad is a typically long-winded, and largely content-free, rant from the excitable John Hembling (“John The Other”).
But what’s more disturbing than Hembling’s empty bloviating on Sajjad is the way A Voice for Men has framed the attack. “Munib Sajjad, it’s your turn in the barrel,” the headline declares, and Hembling repeats the phrase “your turn in the barrel” in the post itself.
I wasn’t familiar with this phrase, so I looked it up, and found that it derives from a rape joke. Here’s the definition of the term, from Urban Dictionary:
To say someone is “in the barrel” or “taking a turn in the barrel” means it’s their turn to do an unpleasant task or to suffer an unpleasant experience.
Click on the “definition” link above to see the gang rape joke it’s derived from.
Rape jokes aimed at men — even men you don’t like — are certainly a, well, counterintuitive way of showing “compassion for boys and men,” as the A Voice for Men slogan has it.
EDITED TO ADD: Looking again at Hembling’s piece, I realize I hadn’t noticed his, er, argument that the term “mansplaining” — which I find useful from time to time — is somehow equivalent to the incredibly offensive term “[racial slur redacted]splaining,” which Hembling has just made up. (The slur in question starts with an “n.” You can figure it out.) This is ridiculous on its face, not to mention that it’s frankly racist not only to compare the alleged oppressions of men — who are not systematically oppressed — with those of black people — who are — but also to use a racial slur in doing so. Of course this isn’t the first time that A Voice for Men has used the n-word in an attempt to suggest that men, collectively, have it as bad as a historically disadvantaged and still systematically oppressed group.
Rape jokes and racial slurs: A Voice for Men has it all!
Depdends on the gun – I’m pretty sure any of us would fit into Mons Meg.
Depdends? I can’t even blame an autocorrect for that one!
Well, you don’t know just how much chocolate I need to cut down on!
But not that much, no.
Just as well – that would be a lot of chocolate!
I really want some chocolate, suddenly… shame the shops are shut.
*drops bag of Halloween candy in thread*
It’ smoothlyit’s mostly chocolate.>>
<<
Candy? What candy? No, I don't have noticeably bulging pockets, what are you implying? And I've always had that funny brown stuff around my mouth, it's a condition!
The “reference” seems to me a bit of a stretch, Futrelle. It’s the sort of aphorism that JTO might have just picked up somewhere, without being aware of the meaning.
Kevin, it’s more likely that people use aphorisms precisely because they are aware of their meaning. That’s kind of the point of using aphorisms.
Even allowing for Hembling et al being fucking morons, it’s a safe bet that when they make allusions and jokes about rape, they know exactly what they’re saying.
I dunno… I’d be willing to believe they’re just parroting shit they heard once with no understanding of what it means, nor inclination to figure it out. They’re not exactly renowned for their skeptical credibility.
Doesn’t really matter though. Ignorance is sometimes an excuse, but when your tagline is “compassion for men and boys” (and/or “fuck their shit up”) it’s not really forgiveable to show an utter lack of compassion for men or boys. Not even if it’s just because you’re completely ignorant of what you’re saying.
Hembling isn’t a moron- it could happen to the best of us.
Here’s what I think happened: this was at a time when Hembling was making a lot of videos, no? So he’s moving at a fast clip, writing his scripts in a day or less, and he just calls this saying back from the ether, without really considering the implications.
Errm, no, it couldn’t happen to the best of us, because some of us a) don’t make rape jokes and b) don’t use aphorisms when we don’t know what they mean.
You’re defending a man who says he’d walk past a woman being raped and not help.
Which makes me wonder why.
Okay, seriously, threads that trollish people need to stop necroing all the time:
1. This one
2. All the other ones
Ayup.
RE: Kevin
You apparently have much lower standards for your creators than I do. As a writer, if I say something really stupid, I want my audience to call me out on it so I don’t repeat the mistake. I don’t want my audience to say, “Aw, he just wasn’t thinking when he made that typo.” No, I’m a creator. I make money on my work. Ergo, I ought to make it as good as it can be.
Note that I have churned out short stories on a daily basis at times, and yet somehow, I’ve managed to avoid making rape jokes by accident.
…prove it.
Let’s see … Hembling puts up posters; two-three people take them down; one uses a box cutter to do so. Hembling turns this into being attacked by a group/mob/rampaging horde of feminists attacking him with box cutters.
The photographic evidence that the first version is true, rather than the second, comes from Hembling’s own video of the “event”.
Evidence suggests that yes, Hembling is a moron.