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!
No, if you don’t count the Wycliffe translations (which were from the Vulgate rather than the original texts), the first major translation would probably be the Tyndale Bible (1526), followed by the Geneva Bible (1560), both extremely important. The KJV was the unofficial official Bible of the Church of England, which of course did a lot to popularize it, but it’s really endured so long for the reason people have already mentioned: It’s a fucking gorgeous translation, to this day still probably the most fluent and lyrical English translation.
And its endurance and place in tradition is, of course, why that demographic thinks of it as the only “real” English translation. Nothing more to it except that they’ve heard the KJV version of the Lord’s Prayer a million times and got the idea that that’s what the Bible sounds like. And, really, these guys are hard to find. Never met one IRL and the only one I can think of online is Jack Chick.
Hey, the Mister’s and my back garden is huge and we’ve just finished all our spring planting, so yez’re all welcome to come visit us! 🙂
Cassandra: I know knitters. I could enquire after their interest in commissions.
Ooh, Kittehserf, France! I’ll bet it’s lovely there right now. Will there be wine?
@Marie: Someone brought up creationism and bananas, but no one seems to have posted the source yet:
The Australian guy is Ray Comfort. He has since recanted the banana argument because the video blew up on the Internet and people were laughing at him.
The guy sitting next to Comfort is Kirk Cameron, Former Child Actor. His career peaked with Growing Pains, he found Jesus, made himself a pill to everyone on the show, and has since made a living shilling for creationists. He has not recanted his most famous “argument,” that evolution isn’t true because ducks don’t suddenly grow crocodile heads.
@Falconer
Wow. I’ve never seen the whole banana argument before. I had to love the ‘bananas are atheists worst nightmare’ thing XD My former rant about bananas still stands 😉
As I recall, the KJV obsession is about making a “virtue” out of a necessity: most of the modern translations were still under copyright, the KJV was not.
clairedammit, there will certainly be wine for anyone who wants it! And cider (Louis’s favourite). And what I can only call apple wine, it’s sort of sparkly but lighter than the cider I’ve had (which is nonalcoholic).
Plus of course there are our nine doggies to get underfoot and ten kitties to be patted/steal food/ignore eveyone.
@Kittehs: As long as it’s mostly apples, I don’t think people will mind.
@Falconer:
I saw what you did there.
Speaking as an atheist myself, my worst nightmare was being attacked by a vicious dog while I was peeing on a fence.
On the other hand, I quite like bananas.
Oh no–bananas cannot compare to atheists’ crippling fear of peanut butter. And this is why atheists hate Elvis.
Should I be glad I have no sound, so I can’t succumb to the temptation to listen to why atheists fear peanut butter? I don’t know if my brain could take such an influx of stupid.
@katz
…I…I have no words. Creationists* don’t make any sense to me. He does know that evolution took a loooooonnnnngggg time right? And that this analogy is ridiculous. I mean, I’m still trying to find my words here. It’s not so much as offensive (in this situation) as baffling.
*that’s what they’re called, right?
@kittehs
Atheists fear peanut butter because the fact that life does not grow in our peanut butter without outside interference proves evolution does not exist. Apparently he thinks the theory of evolution was that the earth was sealed like a jar of peanut butter with no outside interference.
Even if life did evolve in peanut butter jars, it would be too small to see with the naked eye. They have to know this. When they were talking about evolution in the simplistic terms of matter + energy = new life they seem to think it is, they showed a cell or something through a microscope! So they obviously know that life can be too small to see!
@opheliamonarch
In the wake of all the bullshit racism and islamophobia that came about, it was like a healing balm to see it.
I can’t help but wonder if this is Kirk Cameron’s worst nightmare
Damn you html!! this
@hellkell
No worries. It was a long time ago at this point.
Weirdly enough, some Christians would probably say Jesus was “negging” me. Only they would use the word “testing” instead. Far be it from me to understand what the purpose of such a test would be.
Actually, in more recent years I’ve come to suspect that it’s not that Jesus didn’t want me, but that he couldn’t have me, because I’d already been claimed by Someone Else.
@shadow
Are those gorillas eating bananas god designed for our hands!!!!eleventiy!!!! The horror!
The funny thing is that the spontaneous generation of multicellular life is a belief that goes back to Aristotle, and which was accepted by Christian thinkers for hundreds of years.
I remember reading Isaak Walton’s ‘The Complete Angler’, in which he discusses not only the subject of fishing, but also his Christian faith. Oh, and he also claims that eels are formed by the action of the sun on river mud.
@Marie
Even worse, she’s wearing the smirk that God designed for OUR face while doing it!!!!!!!!!
@Cassandra
I can find anything Habs related out here. And since my best friend’s a womb-to-the-tomb fan, I’ve been innoculated to supporting the enemy once in a while 😛
Damn, and here I was thinking it was going to be that peanuts don’t spontaneously evolve into peanut butter, or something.
@Shadow, love that photo – especially gorilla mum’s expression. “Am I gonna give the kid this banana and stop the complaining, or eat it myself and put up with even more whining? Decisions, decisions.” 🙂
He already has a jersey and a hat. And a Barcelona jersey. Oh noes, feminist married to a sports fan!
As long as he doesn’t make me watch football games with him we’re cool. Not because ew icky macho sports, just because football is too slow for me.
@Kitteh’s: Oh, they’ll go on about how Coke cans are made at a factory, therefore God QED if you let ’em.
@Marie: It’s an ongoing, kind of simmering debate over whether creationists are liars or are just stupid. Me, I’m a both/and kind of guy. Fortunately there are plenty of Christians who accept all the evidence for an ancient universe.
Me, I don’t think I could ever become a young-earth creationist. Their God is so small, responsible for a single planet in a single solar system that lasts for a handful of millennia, and then everybody goes and sings hymns to Jesus for all eternity. Plus he’s a liar if they claim that he created a young universe that looks old.