The MRA hissy fit over Facebook continues. Over on A Voice for (Human) Men, our old friend John “The Other” Hembling offers up his take on the whole controversy, which has roused the usually torpid MRAs to “activism,” and somehow manages to be even more overheated and incoherent than even Paul Elam before him — and at times nearly as ponderous as the legendarily ponderous Fidelbogen as well.
His argument, if it can be called that, is as follows: by demanding that Facebook remove violent images of rape and abuse posted as “jokes,” the coalition of feminists who recently got Facebook to agree to ban violently misogynistic images are therefore endorsing what Hembling has decided is the “strongest signifier of fascism” — censorship.
Now, censorship is not actually the “strongest signifier” of fascism, merely one of many ingredients in the fascist souffle — alongside such things as, you know, authoritarian rule under a powerful dictator, nationalism, racism, etc. (Also they tend to have a thing about uniforms.)
And Facebook’s removal of rape “meme” pictures and the like is not exactly akin to a one-party dictatorship taking over the media and orchestrating massive book burnings. (Heck, I’m not exactly sure what exactly is supposed to make Facebook’s “censorship” any different from A Voice for Men’s recent announcement that it was clamping down on comments that Paul Elam thinks are too “distracting.”)
But even setting all this aside, Hembling’s charges against “Laura Bates, Soraya Chemaly, Jaclyn Friedman, and every their [sic] signatory to their open letter” don’t make a lot of sense. Here’s his grand summing-up of his would-be indictment:
It is a letter calling on the largest social networking site in the world to institute a program of demographically selective censorship; to institute the practice that is the strongest signifier of fascism.
Bates, Chemaly, and Friedman are not merely endorsing violence against those most impacted by it.
Um, how exactly does asking Facebook to take down pictures depicting violence make someone a proponent of violence?
Hembling doesn’t bother to explain this, and blathers on ahead to his melodramatic conclusion:
They are not merely ignorant or indifferent to the foundational nature of free speech to the establishment of all other human rights. They are not merely content to propagate false, fraudulent models of domestic violence which continue the conditions and causes of domestic violence. They are not simply adherents of an ideology of hatred and violence, wrapping itself in the increasingly transparent veneer of false and pious humanism.
Dude, you’re sounding like a stuck record here. You’ve already accused them of promoting hatred and violence — heck, you accused them of promoting violence at the start of this very paragraph!
Hembling — recently hired on to a paid position as AVFM’s Editor in Chief — desperately needs an editor himself. (Not to mention a proofreader.)
Laura Bates, Soraya Chemaly, Jaclyn Friedman are successfully promoting the signifying feature of fascism. They are fascists, and if you support their cause, that of censorship, you may be a fascist as well.
*looks at self*
No, I’m good. Pretty sure I’m not a fascist.
Hembling ends with a surreal:
Thank you for your kind attention.
Dear readers: let me just ask you to ponder the question I find myself pondering every time I read something by Mr. Hembling: Can there really anyone who reads posts like this from him and says to themself, “this makes sense!” Because his posts all seem like histrionic grandstanding to me, filled with startling leaps of illogic I think would be even too much for dedicated MRAs to make.
I can only imagine that Hembling’s MRA fans really only pay attention to the invective, and don’t bother with the (lack of ) logic, and that for them this whole post basically comes down to: feminists are fascists, feminists support violence, feminists hate men, these three ladies are bad.
They certainly aren’t checking his facts — indeed, Hembling’s piece includes numbered footnotes in the text, but he left out the actual footnotes, and links, that were supposed to run at the end of the piece, as is AVFM custom; his post has been up for several days, and no one there seeems to have even noticed the missing footnotes.
Also, Mr. Hembling, if you’re reading this, here’s a little PROTIP for you: if you want to pretend that you guys are, you know, actually against violence, you might want to think about removing that terrorist manifesto from your “activism” section — you know, the one that calls on MRAs to literally firebomb courthouses and police stations. Not really good PR for an alleged “human rights” movement, that!
Vai via, is, I think, the phrase.
Oh, he left already…
Let’s see if Father Guido Trollducci sticks the flounce.
BTW I didn’t know that I was planning a trip to Rome tomorrow. Thank you, kind sir, for letting me know! I’d have hated to miss my flight.
I’ve read and undesrstood explanations, This is not a respectful place. You are more committed to seek for new trolls than to talking with new guests. I go. Bye.
Poor muffin.
Flounce counter initiated.
2
Respectful place? Dude, this a place for mocking misogyny, and you rolled up all “What about the men?”
Guit, after you said this:
” I find outrageous the sentence given by feminism to justify fb double standard: men are less sensitive to hate speech than women. ”
and accuse us of this:
“I think that by a individual point of view, you’re not really interested if socially more women or more men are affected by something, It strikes you and that’s enought.”
How did you expect to be treated?
Asking for directions in an unfamiliar city is just like having a discussion about gender relations. Yes indeed.
Damn Telstra! I had a fine long reply written and my internet fell over. One phone call later and I’ve got techs coming out in the next week to dig up the front lawn, ‘cos the underground cables are faulty. Aargh! Dodgy internet, do not want!
Wow. I didn’t know we were expected to provide free English lessons. I charge 20$ an hour for that Sparky. 10$ for an online session, since I can simultaneously watch cat videos.
Wow, you convinced Telstra to send someone to fix it with just one phone call? What are you, some kind of wizard?
Yeah, I know my husband wouldn’t mind some extra spending money, and the guy he was doing translating for seems to have disappeared. Though I mean the piece to be translated was a book about the cult of the Golden Dawn, so I mean, who’s really surprised that some cult-y guy disappeared off the internet.
I almost wonder if Mr. Hembling really has a thing for alliterating “feminist” and “fascist” since both words continually appear together in his writing. Perhaps he is trying to preemptively invoke Godwin’s Law? If so, he failed to get the last word.
Ha ha ha, I wasn’t even trying to be mean. If I wanted to be mean, I have an Italian friend who has taught me some rude phrases.
Ya know, my English is pretty good, as I’m a native speaker, but often misunderstood in person because I have a fairly heavy Southern (USian) accent. My Spanish is pretty decent (much less so than my English) but often misunderstood because I have a heavy Castillano accent. My French is pretty bad, but I did spend years learning it, so my vocab is decent, but my French teacher growing up also had a heavy Southern accent, so my French accent is so terrible it’s incomprehensible.
Because of this, when I try to communicate in other languages I’m very careful about what I say and how I say it. When people tell me I’m communicating poorly, I try to clarify.
I do not tell them they’re being disrespectful for trying to understand me.
Then again, I’m not an MRA or a flouncer either.
Kim – yes! Pointy hat and everything!
Actually I think it was the power of the Great Furry Ones.
Yeah, I know some really imaginative swears and insults in Italian. And if he had really really needed to know something, I would’ve at least tried to get a decent not-Google-Translate translation. But hey, some people just want to be martyrs. Like, y’know, every MRA.
He was the classic whiner – article about outraged responses of MRAs to rape memes being taken down from one website, and he comes on all “I had problems with my mother!”
@ Guit: Here’s what you claim feminists said:
Here’s what the article you posted actually said:
Nowhere in the article was it said that men are “less sensitive” to hate speech than women. Your claim is incorrect.
Furthermore, this was a campaign organized by women’s groups who were frustrated with Facebook’s tolerance of pages glorifying and making fun of violence against women. Women’s groups are obviously going to focus on issues that are of importance to women. Claiming that this is a “double standard” is essentially the same as claiming that lgbt organizations are operating under a “double standard” for not taking up straight people’s issues.
Do you know what is a double standard though? People like Paul Elam and John the Other whining about Facebook censorship, when Elam “censors” his own site and removes content he deems inappropriate, which frankly is his right to do, but it also makes them massive hypocrites.
Considering the whole matter of those gosh darn frozen peaches, I’ve found the whole “Yelling ‘FIRE’ in a crowded theater” explanation to explain things perfectly.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was a brilliant guy (maybe even as smart as his dad), but that’s a problematic opinion.
The problem with, “clear and present danger” (which is the standard) it that it leaves the legislature (with the courts as corrective recourse) to decide 1: what constitutes such a danger, and 2; (which is the tricky part) what things can be endangered.
The attacks on wikileaks are possible, in part (leaving out, for the nonce; because it’s tangiental… in that it touches on the question of self-censorship addressed above, the Bradley Manning prosecution), because there is, “A clear and present danger”, and the gov’t is using that to pressure journalists by threatening them with prosecution under those rubrics.
Guit: “Online harassment affects women and men differently”
Doesn’t mean what you think it means. It means the social context isn’t the same.
It doesn’t say men are less affected, but differently affected; and that the social context means women are more, socially, affected (because the violence against women is more prevalent, and more tolerated).
I really just came back here to post another adorable picture:
https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/7522471680/hCA716D2E/
Poor puppeh!