Men’s Rights, er, activists are waving their arms frantically in the air over what they see as a dire new threat to men and manhood: Facebook’s recent annoucement that it was going to try to do a better job of taking down violent images mocking victims of rape and domestic violence, and other kinds of misogynistic hate speech.
Last week, as many of you no doubt already know, a coalition of feminist groups launched a campaign targeting Facebook and its advertisers for tolerating this sort of content on Facebook — in many cases even after it was reported to Facebook moderators as clearly violating the site’s already existing policies against hate speech and graphic violence. (For many truly disgusting and possibly TRIGGERING examples, see here.)
Well, Facebook actually listened, and announced it would be making efforts to better handle “gender-based” hate speech, and would be “solicit[ing] feedback from legal experts and others, including representatives of the women’s coalition and other groups that have historically faced discrimination” — among them some of the groups involved in the protest. While Facebook’s promises remain vague, those behind the protest are hailing this, correctly I think, as a victory.
A lot of Men’s Rights activists, by contrast, seem to think Facebook’s new policy means the beginning of the end for free speech for men on the internet. And no one seems more worked up about it than A Voice for Men’s Supreme Commander Paul Elam.
In a posting he declared “probably the most important article I have ever written” — not that this is saying much — Elam attempted to rally the troops to fight against what he called “the greatest challenge the M(H)RM has faced so far.” Elam claimed that taking down images of brutalized women with captions like “women deserve equal rights — and lefts” isn’t the real goal here. No, he charged,
feminist ideologues are co-opting Facebook, and they will root out any and all opposition to their worldview.
But instead of lamenting this terrible alleged threat to the spirit of the First Amendment and Free Speech, Elam moves on — immediately, in the very next sentence — to an even more important issue:
That will include, at some point, the AVFM Facebook page and its nearly 3,500 fans (2,000 of which have come in the past two months).
How important this is? In a word, very.
Facebook accounts for roughly 10-13% of our traffic on most days, and with a rapidly growing fan base that promises to represent a continually increasing number of actual visitors to the site.
That’s right: FACEBOOK’S NEW POLICIES MAY REDUCE A VOICE FOR MEN’S TRAFFIC BY TEN TO THIRTEEN PERCENT.
And if feminists succeed in their dastardly plan to root out all non-feminist thought on Facebook — a plan which so far exists only in Elam’s paranoid imagination– then what?
Where do you imagine, if they are successful at eliminating men’s rights discussion from Facebook, they will go next? Reddit? YouTube?
How about Google?
Do you think they are above trying to have men’s rights websites de-listed from Google search returns?
If any of this actually happens, outside of Elam’s fever dreams of persecution, I pledge to literally eat my kitties. Or, at the very least, one of Werner Herzog’s shoes.
Of course, if Facebook simply does what it says it will do, and not what Elam imagines it will do, A Voice for Men’s Facebook page may find itself in a bit of trouble. Because a lot of what appears on AVFM — which continues to post an open call to firebomb courthouses and police stations on its activism page — can only be described as gender-based hate speech. (TRIGGER WARNING for what follows.)
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.
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It was Elam, after all, who asked, about women who are date raped after drinking with men at bars:
[A]re these women asking to get raped?…
NO, THEY ARE NOT ASKING TO GET RAPED.
They are freaking begging for it.
Damn near demanding it. …
[T]here are a lot of women who get pummeled and pumped because they are stupid (and often arrogant) enough to walk though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.
And Elam — like a lot of the misogynistic “humorists” on Facebook — is not above using a picture of a brutalized woman to illustrate one of his little “jokes.” Here is a screenshot from one of his posts; the text is his, as is the caption to the picture. (He has since removed the picture from the post, though the hateful text remains.)
Of course, even as AVFM tries to whip up outrage over the alleged feminist/Facebook plan to silence the menz, the regulars there are having a hard time even pretending to be bothered by the violent images of rape and brutality that the feminist protesters have pointed to on Facebook. (You’d think, at least for PR purposes, they’d want to position themselves against violent rape “jokes.”)
Indeed, in an earlier AVFM post on the Facebook fracas, someone called Victor Zen seemed to argue that glorifying or even promoting rape is fine so long as you don’t actually go and do it. See if you can make sense of this word salad:
Rape, it’s glorification? My experience has been that people who post images, videos and text that promote rape and violence are doing it because they know the value of shock. If you conflate their intention to deceive with their presentation of an untruthful reality you rob yourself of the truth. It is tempting for some to believe as they say, but in the end those that do are denied what is actually real. I doubt real rapists are publicly announcing their desire to rape. I want numbers because I am curious.
How many examples of hate speech that WAM! and affiliates moan about lead to proven incidences of rape or domestic violence?
I don’t even … what?
The Men’s Rights movement: Fighting for the right to shout rape jokes on a crowded Facebook.
I am somewhat alarmed if it is true AFvM Facebook likes have more than doubled in the past two months.
But on the other hand, they still have only .36% as many Facebook likes as Grumpy Cat.
Kitties are useful for having perspective.
I read Facebook’s community guidelines, but they were sort of vague. For comparison, what would you have to say about other groups to get it taken down?
@AK,
You wrote,
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@CriticalDragon, Thomas over at the Yes Means Yes blog refers to them as the “men’s power movement” or “men’s power activists” which I kinda like. It’s really a lot more accurate.
——————————————————————————————————————–
You’re right it is, it is much more accurate. I also like that description. “Men’s Power Activists” is what they should call themselves.
@thekidwiththereplaceablehead
Facebook has been good about taking down anti-gay bigotry and harassment and racist comments. They are also very quick to take down photos of women who are breast-feeding their children. That in particular is what really rankled the people who started this petition. A woman’s breast is vulgar but women being beaten and rape threats was just “edgy humor.”
A disgruntled employee leaked Facebook’s guidelines for Abuse Standards Violations in February:
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2013/05/30/facebook-finally-agrees-to-remove-posts-that-celebrate-violence-against-women/
FREE PEACHES!!! FREE PEACHES!
Although A Voice For Men (Human) probably won’t have its Facebook presence cut off, even though it really should, it’s pretty telling that Elam’s first thought upon learning that things like the “Tape her” image are going to be banned is “oh shit. I’m next.”
I hadn’t seen the, “threw her clothes out the window” part. No report of rape though.
But he is 20, she was 15.
Rape is an assumption on my part, without more details of the evidence (beyond the details that his “DNA” was found on her clothing, which were separate from her body). If you are fake kidnapping someone, why remove her clothing? Why remove the clothing from a body you’re trying to hide in the woods? Neither scenarios make any sense whatsoever, unless he also assaulted her.
Yeah, he’s a 20 year old guy who propositioned a 15 year old girl. After she rejected him, he created a fake Facebook profile and fished for her attention that way, and lured her out to meet his fake persona.
Yeah, he’s a piece of work. The clothes are odd. I think he planned to rape her, and she was dead, so he didn’t.
What’s interesting to me is this is the second case of something like this I’ve seen in the past month. A guy staged an attack (with a confederate), which ended a bit badly (there was a knife involved).
I don’t even buy the “staged kidnapping” and accidental death. I think he purposely killed her and is trying to mitigate his punishment by claiming it was an accident.
@Chie Satonaka
Thanks! Prohibiting the stuff that David linked to in the OP seems to be in line with the rest of their attempts to make Facebook PG13. Not sure why A Voice for Human Men is making a big deal out of it, mostly it seems odd that they weren’t doing it already.
The fact that people in the developing world are being paid $1 an hour (plus commissions) to moderate people’s Facebook posts makes me… sad.
Whatever happened to the troll here who whined that women whine incessantly while men complain in a totally justified, manly manner? Elam’s rather juvenile sounding reaction of “NOOOOOO! Don’t take away my Facebook!” is reminding me of that troll. Because, yeah, if this isn’t incessant whining I don’t know what is. While he’s prattling about how his whinge is “probably the most important thing he’s ever written” somewhere someone is playing the world’s saddest song on the world’s tiniest violin.
I’ll also just note that it seems like Elam is saying that Men’s Rights Activism consists of posting images of brutalized women on facebook. The “greatest civil rights movement of our time” does most of it’s activism via posting images of brutalized women and making fun of or glorifying them.
Some movement ya got there, MRAs.
That’s quite the slippery slope argument he’s made there. It’s like he’s trying to sound like Clarence Darrow from Inherit the Wind, except he’s fighting to keep rape and domestic violence jokes on Facebook. And the rest of his buddies at AVfM now feel oppressed that the misogynistic content will be taken down. Hey, having your rape and dv pictures taken off of Facebook is NOT oppression!
I’m disgusted that Facebook pays people so little, and that they took so long to admit that pictures and jokes glorifying rape and violence against women is hate speech. However, I am glad they have given it more thought and changed the policy. It took them long enough, that’s for sure.
I have nothing useful to add except that you should really watch Motty’s video. Stewart talks DV, the role of his father’s war trauma (not blaming his father, but supporting organizations that help veterans), how men are the ones who can really do something about violence against women, how violence is never the answer *standing ovation, teary Argenti*
Seriously, it’s worth the 8 minutes.
Rick Santorum couldn’t even get a site unlisted from Google; I think the MRM is safe.
I’m a free speech absolutist, and frankly wish Facebook would, instead of censoring vile quotes, instead work to remove anonymity and require people to post under their website own names (in all cases where there weren’t obviously bullshit legal charges like blasphemy or other victimless crimes). Still, it’s almost impossible for me to get overly worked up over a bunch of rapist fucktards being compelled to keep a lid on their more odious opinions on one website. So, thanks to the manosphere assholes for providing a good test case for my principles, and also, I hope they all die horribly.
Forcing Facebook to force their users to be allowed even less privacy than they currently are is a terrible idea. I’m generally a fan of free speech too, but stop and think about what the repercussions of what you’re suggesting could be. Not to mention the fact that if you’re suggesting that only questionable comments be treated in that way that would be a huge pain in the ass to administer.
Oh, for fucks’ sake. This may be the first and last time I ever say this, but right now I despise context.
Recent (yesterday) facebook status from a fb friend of mine:
“How do you control speech, in a country where “Freedom of speech” is respected?
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Easy: Call it hate speech.”
Which might be a purely coincidental post, except that it was followed today with this:
“I would love to stand on the middle ground and have cogent discussion with active feminists, but unfortunately critical thought and investigation is seen as “misogynist”.”
AUGH! If only these people would actually apply some critical thought and investigation to their strawman view of feminism. But that, of course, would be misandry.
Even if what the guy said is 100% true, It’s still a felony murder by Maine law:
http://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/statutes/17-a/title17-Asec202.html
“Tape her and rape her.”
Critical thought, MRA style.
Seconded. I heart privacy. It’s a primary reason I’m not ON Facebook.
That Patrick Stewart video got noticed on r/mr:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1feplq/patrick_stewart_its_never_the_womans_fault_in/
and
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1fcwln/sir_patrick_stewart_it_is_never_the_womans_fault/
It’s not their worst moment, to be sure, but there’s some whining going on. Sorry if this was already posted, I’m kind of hit-and-run today.
I’m all in favor of free speech, even for speech I find completely repulsive. However, if a company like facebook chooses to give a platform to hate speech, then I will judge Facebook harshly for it. By hosting it, they are showing they are at least indifferent to it, if not condoning it. I think facebook made a smart business decision here by saying that they will no longer shrug off pictures of violence against women. They could have stuck with the old policy, and then I would have used my own free speech to say it is a misogynist company.
I’m also tired of the argument that companies have to allow people to say whatever they want on their web spaces. Free speech as a principle means that the government shouldn’t be allowed to censor what people say. Individual websites and the companies that own them can limit what people are allowed to say in pretty much any way they want. Calling that censorship makes me want to hand people a dictionary.