So if you’ve ever wondered what sort of activism that Men’s Rights, er, Activists do when they do do activism, take a look at this little ACTION ALERT from A Voice for Men.
You may recall Paul Elam getting all worked up the other day because Facebook, responding to a campaign launched by a coalition of feminist activists and groups, announced it was going to try to do a better job removing “gender-based” hate speech from its site. You know, like this [TRIGGER WARNING] sort of thing.
Naturally, Elam and other MRAs interpreted Facebook’s announcement as the first step in the End of Male Speech on the Internet, or something.
Anyway, now the MRAs are ACTIVATING! AVFM has announced that it’s going after the groups that signed onto the feminist Facebook protest. Because, well, I’m not sure I get why exactly.
Here’s their explanation:
It’s time for action. The AVFM community has scrambled to look beyond the fine print of WAM!’s ultimatum to Facebook and into the signatories. We are finding that some of them are tax-exempt, and even government funded. We now know that government funded institutions have endorsed a harmful double standard that results in the censorship of men.
But, if we discover that even one cent of government money touched WAM!’s campaign, we will be exposing a whole new dimension of hypocrisy.
Uh, ok. I’m just really having a hard time finding the hypocrisy here. If you look at the names of the groups that signed onto the open letter, you’ll find a number of general feminist groups, groups concerned with the representation of women/gender in the media, and groups organized against sexual assault and other forms of violence.
They didn’t sign a petition demanding that all men posting on the internet be banned or, I dunno, kicked in the balls. They signed onto an open letter demanding that Facebook remove
groups, pages and images that explicitly condone or encourage rape or domestic violence or suggest that they are something to laugh or boast about.
That doesn’t seem hypocritical to me. It seems rather in line with what these groups promote.
And the only men who will be censored will be men posting this sort of hateful shit. If women post this sort of shit, they’ll be banned too.
Apparently, AVFM and its “activist” fans are so divorced from reality that they think they’re going to be able to publicly embarrass rape survivor support groups … for standing up against crude, hateful rape jokes on Facebook featuring images of brutalized victims.
Still, at least this sort of surreal, self-defeating activism is better than firebombing courthouses and police stations, as that infamous manifesto posted in AVFM’s activism section so enthusiastically recommends.
EDIT: I forgot the link to the AVFM alert; added it inthe first graf.
Answer fools according to their folly. Are these guys fools or what?
Okay, I see. The MRAs are entering their paranoid phase (“The government’s out to get us!”). It’s only a matter of time before they start accusing each other of being feminist plants, a la the Truthers.
That is such a great cartoon to illustrate this story. Have you been saving that up for just such an event? 😀
They are fractally stupid, activating their flying monkeys to defend the right to make light of rape and intimate partner violence on Facebook.
Just more proof that MRAs care more about hurting women than helping men. If it was the other way around, they’d be campaigning to get images that promote harming men removed, as well. Instead they’re basically admitting that hating women is such an integral part of their movement that banning jokes about raping/beating/killing women would harm their traffic. Do they honestly believe that masking it behind some fake outrage about FREEZE PEACH is going to fool anyone?
@ Andrew Johnson – oh, they do that a fair bit already. There was a troll in one of the recent posts who claimed that everybody on r/mensrights who made unsympathetic comments to a male rape victim was secretly a feminist.
If these guys were really just against policies that are misandric, shouldn’t they try to do something similar like get FB to remove pictures of men/boys getting kicked in the groin or slapped by women? Instead, they get upset that people won’t be able to post disgusting pictures of rape/abuse victims…because it somehow means they are being censored.
Has anyone told them that they’ll only be censored if they post crap like that?
MRA’s have shown their true colors. At its core, the movement really is a protest against the fact that they can’t legally abuse women.
Gosh, firebombing is one thing, but in that post you were referencing he was advising everyone to go smash the nearest woman’s face into a wall and make her clean up the mess.
I read the pictures that were being posted… What the fuck…
Sometimes me and a few friends do parody rape apologist thinking*, but not like that. There’s nothing satirical in those photos.
*For example, we were once talking about those anti-rape condoms, and we joked about how “Bastard was just asking for it” in the rape apologist tone, since the rapists actually were “asking for it”.
But banning the groups for sex ed and for lactation is just fine, of course.
In any case, their notion of free speech as something that can’t be criticized or removed on private property (such as facebook) is laughable. If facebook decides that allowing group violence against one’s race, sex or gender tarnishes their reputation, that’s up to them (and it’s kind of a no-brainer). I think they’re trying to say that if a petition signatory received government funding, it becomes government “censorship.” I guess political concepts aren’t easy to grasp for everyone.
I dream of a day men’s rights “activists” start working on men’s issues. Their obsession with group hatred of women has become pretty intensively scapegoatey.
Poor Paul Elam. Bit by bit, everything he loves is being taken from him.
Honestly I really don’t understand how there are “moderate” MRAs anymore. I have yet to run into an MRA site where they don’t just sit around and say really stupid things about feminism.
Sure you could say that “There are radfems, and there are radical MRAs, not all of us are like that”, but the difference is that the founders and founding websites for the MRAs are… fucking horrible, and I have yet to meet an MRA that tries to stop that shit on there.
Sorry if that was off topic, but I read some article on FreeThoughtBlogs about JudgyBitch defending Jimmy Saville. He criticized her for the obvious reasons, and then said that he wanted her out of the MRA movement. At that point I was like “huh?”, since there’s a lot worse things that come out of the center of the MRA movement…
@Andrew
Entering?!!! These dudes can’t enter MRA city without Paranoid Phase passports
It’s not paranoia if the feminazi-controlled govmint really IS out to get you!!!!!!! XD
Grumpy Cat discusses mras:
http://media-cache-ec4.pinimg.com/736x/54/d5/a9/54d5a97ffb463f42af5d0ec18174fdb7.jpg
I apologize for the typo. That should say “guvmint” of course.
@auggz
I’m not sure if I’m misreading you, but are you referring to Avicenna’s blog? He’s a pretty consistent feminist and anti-MRA, with his ‘a voice for me’ posts criticizing AVfM. I read your comment as saying that he’s an MRA kicking her out of the ‘movement’.
But it’s possible that you’re referring to something completely different and that I misunderstood you (I do that sometimes). 🙂
Their outrage really is ludicrous. FEMINISTS ARE COMING FOR THEIR POLITICAL MANIFESTOS…sorry, for their HORRIBLE PHOTOS OF DEAD/BEATEN WOMEN WITH EVIL CAPTIONS THAT MAKE LIGHT OF TERRIBLE VIOLENCE!!1!!!
What is freezepeachflavoured about a photo of a badly beaten woman with a lulzy caption? No one is suggesting silencing a political opinion – which a private company is entitled to do, anyway – but while ‘Women should be maimed and killed’ is definitely an opinion, it’s not exactly a political stance.
I’m adoring the car illustration you used here. It makes me really happy.
@emily
The central issue here is the dishonesty of the feminist lobby. They take a selection of (admittedly disgusting) images that were NOT created by MRA’s but by a group called 4chan. This is not a political organization but a bunch of teenagers out to shock.
The feminists then decide to use these images to suppress the wrong target because MRA’s are making reasoned arguments that some people listen to.
At base it is an admission that the feminists do not have reasoned arguments of their own.
Disgusting.
@Maude LL
When there are men’s rightsers who find their way out of the woods and start to fight for the rights of men, they will find most of the feminists were there the whole time.
@Maude LL, Oh… well fuck. Yeah it wasn’t an MRA. In the article it suddenly said something about wanting JudgyBitch out of the MRA movement, however I think I misread, so I assumed that it was some MRA actually calling her out. The comments did also agree with the article but some were using the “alpha/beta” language in a serious manner, so I assumed it was MRA stuff.
Sorry I’ve been struggling reading comprehension lately…
And I’m sad that fedoras are becoming a faux pas thanks to MRAs…
Um, who, besides the MRM, decided this was about the MRM? The targets of the protest where the groups themselves, they could be created by saints for all it matters. Violating ToS is violating ToS.
@Argenti
Well this is the implication of writing about it on an anti male rights site is it not?