This just in: Men’s Rights Activists are some of the most gullible nincompoops in the history of ever.
The latest evidence of this? The regulars on the Men’s Rights subreddit were fooled by an obviously fake “screenshot” of an article from Jezebel that had been altered to make it look like a Jezebel staff writer thinks that paternity fraud is justifiable as a way to fight patriarchy.
No, seriously, the Reddit MRAs actually thought that Anna North of Jezebel had written that “the ability to lie about your children’s parentage is one way to break the rule of fathers.”
Here’s the “screenshot.” And here’s the original thread, which has been deleted from the Men’s Rights subreddit but which is still up, just not reachable from the subreddit.
The irony in many of the comments is off the charts. “It’s Jezebel, of course they think this way,” writes Riesea. “Wow,” says actorsspace. “If Jezebel had a sense of humor, I would suspect them of trolling.”
Blueoak9 — what happened to the original eight? — is stunned that even the evil feminists would sink so low:
There are, of course, a few teensy clues that North’s supposed quote about “break[ing] the rule of fathers” is a big fat fake (as are some of the others in that “screenshot”).
One is that nobody at Jezebel writes or thinks like that.
And second, there’s the tiny fact THAT THE REAL ARTICLE IS UP ON JEZEBEL AND IT DOESN’T SAY ANY OF THAT SHIT AND ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS GO READ IT FOR FUCK’S SAKE IT’S RIGHT HERE.
In fact, Anna North, the author of the Jezebel article, makes an argument that’s the exact opposite of the one attributed to her in the “screenshot.” Challenging a writer in the London Times who had argued that “the ability to pass a child off on a man was a potent female weapon,” North countered that such a stance was not only morally questionable but also pretty antifeminist:
I’d rather “make male claims to omnipotence absurd” by, say, being economically and politically equal to men — not by making them raise babies that aren’t theirs.
Now, you might wonder why exactly the Men’s Rights crowd on Reddit was reading a screenshot of a Jezebel article and not an actual Jezebel article. Well, that’s because the Men’s Rights subreddit has banned all direct links to Jezebel and other Gawker media sites because the MRAs are still mad about that Violentacrez thing.
Yes, the subreddit that links in its sidebar to a site — A Voice for Men — that not only has offered thousand dollar bounties for the personal information of its feminist enemies but that also carries an open call to firebomb courthouses and police stations in its “activism section” is still pig-biting mad about Gawker’s “doxing” of the man who helped to ruin the lives of countless teenage girls by founding and protecting Reddit’s Jailbait subreddit and dozens of other noxious subreddits.
And so someone was able to use this fact to exploit MRA ignorance and paranoia about feminism and make the inhabitants of the Men’s Rights subreddit look like fools.
Again.
Or some MRA with zero ethics wanted to make feminists look bad and failed utterly. I think this is less likely, but with MRAs, anything is possible.
When you’re done reading the original discussion of the fake article on the Men’s Rights subreddit, you can read the discussion there about how they were trolled. Including the comments from this person who thinks that “even if it’s a troll… so what? It’s still presenting an opinion that many a feminist has held.” Straw feminism is REAL! And this person (with dozens of upvotes) who thinks they should just ban all links to all feminist blogs because, hey, what’s the point in knowing anything at all about something you talk about constantly?
EDIT: Thanks to the AgainstMensRights subreddit, I was able to find the link to the original banned post, and so I’ve put the link (and some comments from the discussion) into the post above.
Why in the world didn’t they just say “We’re roommates?”
Seriously.
BTW, I have been roommates and cross-posted to some sites with people. There’s no real way I could have proved that I wasn’t them. Except that, y’know, we were totally different people with different posting styles and likes.
@Katz:
That site is so funny. Those cats are soooooo mad.
@LBT:
Basically, unless you know how to hide it, you’re giving away your location everywhere you post, to everybody you e-mail. Basically.
MRAs, lying about easily checked facts, yet again!
WE ARE TOTALLY NOT THE SAME PERSON YOU GUIZ!
ALSO WE ARE NOT ROOMIEZ.
I’m a little bemused that they’re next door to each other rather than actually in the same house; either way they were trying to distance themselves from each other and lying about it, though.
Yeah, the evasiveness kicked in almost right off. I mean, if you wanted to sell that one, you totally could.
But they didn’t even try. 11km!!!
Or connected through 1. Own internet and 2. Neighbour’s stolen wi-fi, thinking that that’ll fool an ip check.
Wow. Just, wow.
What just happened? 😀
RE: katz and jefrir
Aw, don’t ruin it! I was having fun imagining one person dashing from house to house!
Cloudiah, an MRA meltdown AND a special bonus socking! Or roomies dumb enough to pretend they are not posting in the same room!
Funny either way!
This has been a Very Special Episode!
Bionicmommy – “It’s unethical, but it’s not a crime, at least not in the US.”
Well, that explains a helluvalot. Clearly society is socialised to think of this as no big deal.
Paternity fraud, like all fraud certainly is a crime.
It’s theft.
It’s emotional abuse, of bio-father, substitute-father and child.
It deprives the not-bio-father of informed choice about his relationships and lifetime love / time / money / effort investement.
It deprives the bio-dad of the knowledge of / realtionship to his child.
It deprives the child of knowledge of their bio-father, which besides the emotional loss, is also an issue with preventative healthcare (predicting what illnessess you are likely to be susceptible based on.
Hospitals take great care to match up the right babies with the right mothers, and when this fails it’s a terrible trauma for the families involved. Equal care should be taken to match up the right babies with the right fathers.
Paternity fraud is a heinous crime and it should be put into law as such.
Together with mandatory testing so that men will not be man-shamed by their partners / feminists / women / society in general into not getting the test done.
Mandatory testing will also avoid any man having to torpedo his relationship in order to find out whether or not any baby is actually his.
As things stand any man even mentioning Paternity Testing will get the “You don’t trust me! You don’t really love me!” emotional blackmail from his pregnant or has-just-given-birth partner. Which is of course exactly what a liar would say. Unfortunately it’s exactly what a fathful woman would say to, so it leaves the man screwed if he does and screwed if he doesn’t – unless the test in mandatory and then it’s out of his hands.
Furthermore, many jurisdictions require the mother’s permission for a Paternity Test to be admissible before Secret Family Kangaroo Court.
That has to change too.
It’s not the Bronze Age anymore, Western women are not deflowered on their wedding nights, with bloody sheets as “proof”. None of that is necessary, to assure paternity, thank technology! – just a simple, harmless parternity test at every birth is all that’s required.
The strength of resistance to this concept by Team Woman, is quite honestly a huge red flag that it’s clearly needed.
(*for the obtuse. I am talking about post-birth testing. NOT testing while the child is still in the womb. No.)
“It’s also not a crime for a husband to impregnate his mistress.”
Red Herring! Perhaps you can get together with all the folks pulling the “you insult adopters and step-parents” and open a Red Herring fishstall together. None of these three things have ANYTHING to do with mandatory Paternity Testing.
There would be nothing to stop a woman’s partner applying to adopt the child he knows is not his bio-child after the test came up negative, IF that’s what he volunteered / they chose with the full knowledge of the test result.
Mandatory testing at birth does not preclude that at all.
In fact, it makes it LESS likely that such families will break up acrimoniously later, because the adoptive father will have become a father with his eyes wide open – choosing to make the gift of his love / time / effort and money to a child he knows is not his. And his partner and children will know the generosity of his gift.
Contrast that with the backlash of resentment, pain and anger that arises from deception.
BLAHBLAHBLAH, I’m Joe and I have the rage, HEAR ME BLOVIATE.
If I had a parent — biological or adoptive — who talked like Unca Joe, I would expunge that motherfucker from my life as quickly as possible. People aren’t commodities. You are disgusting.
@Bionicmommy – of course you don’t understand why this matters, you are biologically incapable of being a victim of this crime! *facepalm*
You will always make your parenting choices in the full and informed knowledge that you are either:
a) bearing your own bio-child
(unless you are acting as a surrogate post IVF, but then you’re not choosing to be a parent, just to be pregnant and give birth)
b) adopting a child of known / not known relationship to you.
I get that pretty much everyone here is constitutionally incapable of sympathising with men, so try this:
Try looking up some of the stories of those rare cases where women were given the wrong babies after birthing in hospitals and only found out months / years later – read the anguish in those reports.
THAT. That pain is the risk men routinely (30%) face.
A dude like Joe would think his time is a gift. Well, it’s a really shitty gift from someone like him.
Citation needed.
Hey Joe. 70% of the time it doesn’t happen.
Pathetic commentary from Hellkell and inurashii.
Especially the “commodities” bullshit. You pulled that straight out of your own arse.
Schoolyard garbage.
A dude like Joe would keep a ledger of money he spent on his kid that he’d pull out whenever the kid acted ungrateful. “Don’t forget: I made you, I paid for you, you owe me.”
No, dude, we pulled that from what you said. Unlike you, we can read.
Now go get me that 30% citation.
Oh no, one of our most pathetic trolls called me pathetic and dismissed my commentary. How sad.
How much do I owe you for wasting your time? I can convert it to troy sterling.
@hellkell – “70% of the time it doesn’t happen.”
So. Fucking. What.
We don’t ask women to gamble on whether or not they are the bio-parents of their kids born in hospital, by e.g., randomly swapping kids around in the maternity ward, because: that would be horribly cruel. – why the fuck do you think it’s A-OK to have a 30% risk of that for men??
(other than you obviously hate men, and don’t give a shit about them)
Why do you think that whether or not something is evil, bad and wrong somehow diminishes with the frequency of it’s occurrence? That’s another Red Herring, which you keep banging on and on about. It just makes you look real stupid.
Murder is hella rare in the UK (something like 600 a year, which is like 0.1per 100k pop… except for the year they caught Shipman) but I’ve never heard anyone, anywhere argue that it’s infrequency makes it less bad, because: it’s bad in and of itself.
And everybody gets this. Except you, and a bunch of other Manboobzers, apparently.
Oops my bad – converts to roughly 1 per 100k pop. Doing arithmentic in my head after a month of very little sleep.
Make it several rolls of tinfoil, because Joe clearly thinks there’s some huge conspiracy of lyin’ ass bitches out there.
@inurashii – here’s what you owe me.
Take 5minutes and try to imagine the anguish a man suffers when he finds his partner has cheated and lied to him, and that he’s been trapped into pouring all his life and love into a that lie.
Seriously, try to fucking imagine dealing with that breathtaking level of betrayal.
HEY! it’s the MRA theme song!