So the other day someone asked the Men’s Rights subreddit “Why do people think you guys hate women?”
There were a lot of ridiculous answers to that question, but one of the most ridiculous (and one of the most highly upvoted) responses came from our old friend John Hembling, the blabby Canadian videoblogger and A Voice for Men “Editor in Chief” also known for some dopey reason as John The Other. He explained:
![johntheother [-37] 29 points 3 days ago (36|7) They dont actually think we hate women. The accusation is a derailing tactic, designed to push the topic towards a defensive posture, and requiring proof from us (MRAs) that "hatred of women" is a false claim. When used, it takes the discussion away from real issues such as suicide rates, homelessness, infant genital mutilation and so on. It's very very effective, because it plays on the fact that almost all men, including MRAs are basically decent. And the social stigma of a public perception of hatred of women is painful. To overcome this tactic, it is necessary to discard a self image relying on consensus approval. Tough to do because we are social animals. But to disarm the attack of "you hate women" it's necessary to develop a strong self identity which takes no account of consensus conferral of approval. Be the "bad man", and let only your own internal compas of right and wrong guide you.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/jtohatewomen2.png?resize=580%2C246&ssl=1)
Really, John? Because I have something like 1200 posts on this blog here that would seem to suggest that, no, a lot of MRAs (and PUAs and MGOTWers) really, honestly, sincerely, and sometimes even proudly, hate women. (Ok, a certain percentage of my posts are actually about kitties, but still, I invite you to spend a month or so going through the archives, John; you may learn a thing or two.)
But, actually, there’s no need to take my word on the subject. Because if you really want to know why so many people think MRAs hate women, I invite you to take a look at and a listen to this video by a prominent MRA. Seems pretty obvious that this guy hates women, wouldn’t you agree?
Oh, by the way, this guy is you. [TRIGGER WARNING for people who are not John Hembling and who might be disturbed by a smirking asshole literally laughing about rape. Seriously. This is bad even by his standards.]
Oh, another by the way: Hembling complained about feminists “doxing” him long after he made the video that was excerpted here in which he gave out his name. That’s right, he put his name out in his own video, then complained that feminists were violating his privacy and basically terrorizing him by ever mentioning his name. Until he started going by his real name again.
Before I go, here’s another particularly inane contribution to the Reddit discussion:
Huh. MRAs certainly have a most unusual way of “walking on eggshells.” Indeed, to this outside observer it looks a lot less like “walking on eggshells” and more like “angry toddler having an endless stompy tantrum.”
Viscaria, no worries, not a big deal.
I think another part of this argument is that male is still default in society – so labelling something as “fem-*” automatically makes it “Othered” and “Not for men” automatically in many people’s minds. It’s a big part of gendered languages, and English is a pretty good bastardization of a lot of them. Think French, where groups of men are male-termed, mixed gender groups are male-termed, and female only groups are female-termed. It’s kind of subconscious, but still something that happens – I suspect that’s why there’s so much “Just call it humanist!!” stuff out there, because they think that something that is prefixed by fem *must* only be for women and not allow any other group dynamic, despite most feminists I know working on issues that affect both genders to a very large degree.
And yet you’ll never see Futrelle point out the many tu quoques, question beggings, and other fallacious bullshit that feminist pundits like Marcotte come out with on a daily basis.
Racoon kits!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEE FENNEC KITS!!
A voice for men has the rape issue completely covered now. First of all false rape claims are a bigger problem than real rapes and real rapes barely exist, mostly the women are “begging for it”, and also all the stats showing the huge extent of sexual violence must be cooked by biased lousy research, like the 2012 Pentagon report on sex assaults in the military .
Then John Hembling, the paid editor on the site, says in the video above, if a real rape is being witnessed, he as a good MRA won’t do anything to stop it.
Then Paul Elam says if the perpetrator comes to trial in spite of all these efforts to prevent it, the jurors should vote to acquit no matter what the evidence shows regarding guilt.This would normally require the juror perjuring himself to get on the jury in the first place, as during initial questioning the jurors are commonly asked under oath if anything would prevent them from following the law requiring them to convict if the evidence meets the reasonable doubt standard.
Then Hembling wraps it up by saying not to pay attention to social norms, celebrate being the “bad man” in the quote above. And these fools are the biggest MRA site, and they wonder why there’s a negative social perception of them?
One of the most intractable problems with bigotry is that bigots always consider themselves above it. They believe that because they have justifications for their bigotry that make sense to them, real bigotry must be somehow unjustifiable and tangibly evil.
When I was a child, my grandmother told me, among other things, that the Mark of Cain was dark skin; that miscegenation was a sin; that segregation was justified because coloreds were so filthy; that the Good Lord in His mercy would, on the occasion of His glorious second appearance, simply destroy the majority of the slaves outright rather than make them suffer because He knew they were too stupid to be capable of attaining the true faith; that the murder of the civil rights workers in Meridian, Mississippi, where she raised my mother, wasn’t really as bad as the media made it out to be, because “You don’t understand, those boys had no shoes when they came into town!”
And yet, when my younger sister once called her a racist over the holidays, she was aghast. Why, she didn’t believe in slavery, didn’t support lynching. How could she be a racist?
It’s virtual solipsism: “I don’t understand my own behavior and beliefs to be hateful, so obviously they can’t be.”
Thanks to you guys, and particularly Kittehs, this is now the only thing I can think of when the AVfMers/misters start in on their whining.
longshangui, they’re pretty much trying to change the laws so that what they’re saying becomes “technically true”, in that, if sexual assault wasn’t a crime, then those people who perpetrate would no longer exist. At least, in the eyes of the law. Then, they wouldn’t have to spend so much time trying to argue for it, it would free up their time for more important things, like
hatefree speech violations!Oh come on. They hate everyone who is even the slightest bit different from the tiny minority of people they consider ‘normal’. They hate ciswhitehet men that think short hair is sexy. Of course they hate women.
I only made it into the video as far as “my philosophical opponents on youtube”.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know who on AvfM’s staff actually gets paid for any of it?
Love the videos, SissieKitty. Definitely needed them after trying to watch that video. I only got halfway through, but it’s mostly him laughing obnoxiously about rape and insisting that “youtube feminists” MADE him stop caring about rape. He explicitly says that if he sees a woman being raped he will ignore it and blames that reaction on feminism.
But no, they don’t hate women. Only the ones who think they ought to be treated with respect and not treated as second-class citizens.
On the whole ‘humanism vs. feminism’ argument, my new go-to is to reply, “Feminism is humanism when applied to issues of sexism; likewise, anti-racism is humanism applied to issues of race, and so on. So when I say I’m a feminist, I’m already declaring myself a humanist, to anyone who happens to regard women as human beings. Does that include you?”
Maybe this should get a warning for abortion talk and revelations about the unbelievably stupidity that results from US abstenence-only education, but here goes…
I’m not sure if anyone else cares (especially those of you not tied by bonds of federalism to the “great state of Texas” as we are here in the US) but has anyone been following Perry and the Texas legislature’s anti-abortion sneak attack? Just when you think that US Republicans don’t get any dumber than Todd Akin, suddenly there is Rep. Jodie Laubenberg (perhaps channeling Mitt Romney).
See, we don’t need rape or incest exceptions to abortion laws because we have hospitals! And if you go to the hospital and tell them you were raped, “We have funded what’s called rape kits that will help the woman, basically clean her out. And then hopefully that will alleviate that.”
So between those handy kits to “clean out” rapist sperm, and the female body “shutting that whole thing down”, pregnancy virtually never results!
Of course, if it does, given all that our doctors and the human body itself do to prevent it, well, that’s a certified miracle, a gen-yoo-wine gift from Gawd, and we should be thankful, donchaknow…
I don’t wanna live here anymore, but since that Mars colony isn’t happening this year, do any of our overseas boobzers have a closet I can move into? I’ve been told that I’m so overwhelmingly attractive that you won’t even mind if I don’t pay any rent… 😉
Re: Texas fucking shit up, at least we’ve got this from @WendyDavisTexas: “The leadership may not want to listen to TX women, but they will have to listen to me. I intend to filibuster this bill. #SB5 #txlege”
More brain bleach.
We don’t think you hate women, John Hembling. We KNOW you hate women. Why even pretend you don’t when your words and actions tell the truth.
Everybody needs a cuddle sometime…
Meanwhile, this guy’s all “Hey, no fair! Where’s my meelks!?!”
Gillian — pecunium and I were just discussing that on twitter. So pardon me while I quote myself —
“How the fuck stupid do you have to be to think a D&C and rape kit are the same?! (Though, is plan-b offered? Can we maybe do that?)”
And since I copied the wrong thing the first time…petition to amend SCOTUS’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act — http://act.credoaction.com/go/974?t=4&akid=8236.6977940.8l4kOg
What’s hilarious to me is that the logic he uses is so saturated in the entire “alpha-male”, “superior guy”, “Being a man is being dominant” that the default position is this:
“Hey, you hate women?”
“I am immune to your generalized consensus requirement! I am a superior man and I have my own opinion because I make my own path by the power of my mighty penis! Your weak need for social approval is something I have long since curb stomped with my awesome testosterone!”
and not just, you know,
“Uh? What? No I don’t – Anyway, about male suicide rates…”
You don’t need to discard an image relying on consensual approval (Although, to be honest, doing so in a small part is not a bad idea – it cuts down on your worrying) just to tell people you don’t hate women.
What’s more fun is that he doesn’t actually take the time to point out they do not, in fact, hate women. He leaves it nicely up to the superior, aloof and internally guided menfolk whether or whether not they hate women.
So he does hate women. He just doesn’t want you to know, and would like you to also be aware that he doesn’t rely on inferior consensus morality to inform his actions. No pants, baby! NO PANTS!
( Sidenote: I wonder if that works for other things. Let’s test.
“Hey, do you want some ice cream?”
“I don’t need your approval! What if I want some french fries instead? I don’t need to rely on consensus approval to dictate my frozen snack habits!”
“Hey, do you like the colour blue?”
“I don’t need to rely on a normative defintion of standards to decide on my decoration choice!”
“Hey, do you happen to hate cats?”
“I don’t want to be The Bad Man and say I hate cats, because I know what the social view is on people who hate cats, and I’m just here to say that your weak posturing and attempt at conversation domination is useless on me, because I don’t rely on consensus approval to dictate my actions!”
“Hey, do you like art, that’s a neat painting!”
“Hah! I’m guided by my own internal ethos and whether or whether not I like art is not something I’m prepared to admit in a court of my peers at this juncture! I don’t need to rely on consensus approval to find out which paintings I like!”
“So you don’t… like the painting in your living room?”
“I never said, and I never said I did not, nor I have claimed to not claim that I don’t but I don’t need to agree with you! I’ll be the Bad Man and not like what I like because I like to not like things!”
“I’m leaving now. Goodbye” )
Argenti, we should be so lucky. I got wide spectrum antibiotics and a recommendation to come back for std and pregnancy testing, but maybe the situation is better now that there is no restriction on plan b now?
Oh, and the answer is (I wonder) maybe less stupid than deluded? I stand by my assertion that this crap is largely to be laid at the feet of abstinence only education, where it seems all they do is give you an asprin (to hold between your knees) and a copy of Bride magazine. The fundamental ignorance about how the body works (and willful misinformation about the same) is really horrific.
Going to the petition, brb!
I LOVE this. Standing ovation, etc.
Haha, this is fantastic.
Gillian, I never got the aspirin thing?? I didn’t have any sex education in my school, abstinence or not, (Catholic school) so I’m not sure what the purpose of this is supposed to be?
I mean, besides being able to take it once the awful ramblings of abstinence education give you a headache… So I suppose it does have a practical use, even if it was likely unintended.
Um, the whole thing is that it isn’t effective birth control–it’s an abstinence joke. “Hold firmly between your knees” = “naughty, naughty ladies, keep those legs shut!”
Here’s something I have been wondering for a while. There seem to be two main possible explanations for this mindset of “Anyone who says that anyone else is prejudiced is lying, so no one ever needs to listen to those people,” mindset.
There’s the lack of empathy: “It is the CLEAREST THING IN THE WORLD to me that I’m not sexist, so logically it must be the clearest thing in the world to everyone else! So, anyone who says different must be lying! Also, it hurts me when you call me prejudiced, and since the most important thing is what happens to me, your intention must have primarily been to hurt me!”
Then there’s the cognitive dissonance: “I don’t want to think of myself as sexist, and that happens when someone calls me sexist and means it. But I also don’t want to stop doing the things I do that get me called sexist. So, obviously, the solution is that no one who calls me sexist actually means it.”
But those don’t seem to cover the whole picture. I dunno what else is going on, here. I mean, I think it kind of also ties in to the Stuff White People Like phenomenon, where no one ACTUALLY has progressive values; people just act like they do for all the social capital it brings. Hm.
Eh, it’s a weird phenomenon, anyway.