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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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.
Argh! Curse you blockquote monster!
This is a business decision on Facebook’s part. They’ve decided that the negative feelings about their brand produced by their being associated with hate speech is more of a problem than potentially losing the users who keep posting the hateful comments. I suspect that the reason MRAs are so upset about this is that it demonstrates how publicly unacceptable some of their ideas are, especially given that Facebook isn’t exactly known for being feminist-friendly.
Seconded. Seriously – making a site is like building a house. Inside it, you can say whatever you want. That is freedom of expression. But if you come into my house and say stupid, hateful, harmful stuff, I have the right to toss you out.
cloudiah — oh for the love of cats! He specifically said he supports programs? One program in particular? That helps men like his father find help. Like, idk how much farther he could’ve been from “man bad woman good” without making a question about his mother into a question about how women can be abusive too. Like, that would’ve been real shitty of him. Could he have said something as a footnote about how if the genders where reversed he’d feel the same? Sure, but that wasn’t some grand speech on DV that he’d typed up in advance, it was a passionate off the cuff reply to a question about his specific situation.
Like, boy sees father abuse mother, boy goes to shelter with mother, boy grows up to support that shelter and DV resources, boy-now-a-man finds out his father was suffering “she’ll shock” // PTSD, man supports resources to help men like his father find help. Idfk how much more supportive of men he could’ve been while staying within the context of the question! (Also, bravo, I knew he was the only Star Trek captian I liked for a reason!)
I suspect that most of those images were produced for shock value by 4chan or some similar network. These guys make it their mission in life to provoke by posting child porn images, antisemitism or anything that upsets people.
By all means remove them but there are serious issues at stake and a rational conversation on gender issues must be held sooner or later.
I’m sure I can hear a mosquito buzzing. Has a pest got into the thread again?
When you guys plan on being serious and rational instead of delusional and cruel, we’ll be here.
We really need to replace the bug screens on the windows.
Serious issues about how men deserve sammiches, and women who don’t give them their sammiches deserve black eyes? Or actually serious issues? ‘Cuz you can have conversations about the latter without wasting time on the former.
Cassandra — I can walk on roofs if that screen is above a porch! (No, really, it’s how I put in the one by the plants)
“They’re just doing it for shock value” is about the weakest excuse I’ve ever heard. I don’t doubt the folks from 4chan or encyclopedia dramatica were the ones putting that garbage on facebook. The fact that they like upsetting people says a lot.
Dang it, I was defeated by the blockquote monster again. It is a worthy foe. I’ll try that second part again and see if I can fix that.
Well, them posting pictures of battered women with punchlines about “falling down the stairs” IS NOT the way to start a rational conversation on gender issues.
Yeah, seeing statements like this in conversations like these is bizarre.
It’s like punching a woman in the face, then complaining about hysterical bitches when she screams at you instead of calmly requesting that you stop punching her fucking face.
The blockquote monter is active today.
Black Chappy : Another thread you are going to enter as if you didn’t have unfinished business elsewhere?
I suspect that most of those images were produced for shock value by 4chan or some similar network. These guys make it their mission in life to provoke by posting child porn images, antisemitism or anything that upsets people.
And that matters because? Are you saying the people who posted them? Who used them in a way bereft of irony “didn’t mean it” (Oh, wait, weren’t you the dude who argued for taking everything as it was written…? Why the volta face now? Oh right, these are pictures of women getting beaten. That’s not any problem for you. Just good clean fun, a few harmless laughs).
By all means remove them but there are serious issues at stake
Yes there are, and how society reacts to violence against a group is one of them. When that group is women you seem mighty less than moved to give a shit.
Some brain bleach about how people are nice.
The problem with requiring public identities is that it basically impacts two kinds of people: Those making anonymous threats, and those afraid of being targeted with threats. (Leaving aside people who just don’t want companies getting more personal info or whatever, which I think is totally justifiable but not the most pressing concern.)
The people in the first group might eventually be legally penalized or dissuaded from making threats if it was impossible to do so anonymously, assuming the local authorities deemed it worthwhile. The people in the second group, on the other hand, are definitely and immediately placed in more danger, because we know there are people willing to stalk and harass and assault based on internet comments.
I do not think the small chance of bringing more of the first group to justice is worth the huge chance of exposing more of the second group to danger, and I think the most obvious effect of forced public identities would be fewer members of marginalized groups participating in large internet forums.
Oh, and isn’t it interesting how the MRA’s that are crying about a Samsung commercial are now telling feminists that Facebook pages about beating and raping women are “only for shock value”?
Let me get this straight now. A commercial shows a husband as a lazy couch potato, and that’s the worst oppression ever, but pictures of battered women are harmless fun? WTF?
Off topic but I thought this would be enjoyed. Here’s Megyn Kelly ripping into Lou Dobbs and Erick Erickson for misogynistic bullshit:
MRA’s are the kind of person that will whine about a hangnail to a person with a medical emergency.
What, feminists are upset about Facebook pages glorifying rape and domestic violence against women? They are so oversensitive! They need to worry about a bumbling dad on a shitty sitcom from 10 years ago!
Haha wow. Delurking to laugh about the fact that AVFM has 3500 fans on Facebook and they are worried about traffic. I have 5000 fans on my page, but due to Facebook’s weird rules, only somewhere between 50-800 of them will even *see* posts I make, depending on some weird popularity algorithm. I am guessing for AVFM that figure would be even smaller. Then there is the matter of the much smaller number of people who actually *click* the link.
Basically what I am saying is that is not a lot of traffic to AVFM in total, if that is where 10-13% of their total is coming from.
When even Megyn Kelly can’t stand you…
The Black Fedora is again correct. He did say “by all means remove them.”
Violence against women, and any support of it, is evil. What MRA doesn’t realize is that men’s violence against women is the reason why feminism was needed. If men were not so violent toward women, Christian patriarchal civilization would have been able to survive. Men’s violence against women has led to all other evil.
The post about Meghan Kelly proves that right-wing women are the true powerbrokers of society. If you want to be a powerful woman, it is best to be a conservative like Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Queen Elizabeth I and Meghan Kelly.