So the self-described “human rights activists” at A Voice for Men have found three more women to harass. Here’s the story, which for many of you will have a depressingly familiar ring:
Members of Men’s Rights Edmonton, a small group that is for all intents and purposes a local chapter of A Voice for Men, has been putting up pictures targeting Lise Gotell, the chair of women’s and gender studies at the University of Alberta. The pictures, which seem inspired by “Wanted” posters of yore, feature a large portrait of Gotell and the caption:
Theft isn’t black. Bank fraud isn’t Jewish. And rape isn’t male.
“Just because you’re paid to demonize men doesn’t mean rape is gendered. Don’t be that bigot.
Gotell’s crime? She was involved in what appears to have been a remarkably effective rape awareness campaign focusing on date rape and featuring the slogan “Don’t Be That Guy.”
A Voice for Men took exception to the campaign because, even thought it did deal with the male victims of rape, it didn’t devote equal time to the problem of evil, false-accusing “girls.” No, really. Men’s Rights Edmonton Activists put up “satirical” versions of the campaign’s posters with the slogan “Don’t Be that Girl.” Now, MR-E and AVFM, at least according to the “argument” advanced on their new poster, seem to be upset that the campaign didn’t devote equal time to the problem of female rapists. [Note: this paragraph has been corrected; see note at end of piece.]
Gotell spoke out against the posters, and now Men’s Rights Edmonton and AVFM are doing their best to smear her as a “bigot.” Because she doesn’t believe that women are responsible for half of all rapes.
Since this is not actually true — more on this in a later post — it’s hard to see how this makes her a bigot.
As a rule, I don’t support tearing down the posters of one’s ideological enemies. Free speech and all that. But these posters are different: they’re slanderous personal attacks designed to harass an individual. Were they posted in my neighborhood I would tear them down.
And evidently that’s what some people in Edmonton have been doing.
Indeed, one recent night, several members of Men’s Rights Edmonton claim to have caught two women doing just that. While they don’t seem to have video footage of the women tearing down the posters, the MRAs filmed themselves following the women down the street and angrily confronting them for this alleged crime.
They posted the video to YouTube, and AVFM posted it as well, under the typically overheated title “Men’s Rights Edmonton confronts fascists.” They screencapped images of both women from the video and announced their intention to uncover their personal information:
MR-E would like to know the names of these two women so that charges of destruction of property can be laid against them. Also, the world should know the identities of those who seek to silence and censor messages advocating for human rights.
Of course, this is ridiculous. Tearing down a poster that was almost certainly posted illegally in the first place isn’t “destruction of property.” No one is going to be prosecuted for this. The police have better things to do.
But of course that’s not the real intent here. The real intent here is to scare the shit out of these women and other feminists by exposing them to harassment online — like the woman labeled “Big Red” and countless other women who have been targeted by AVFM and other MRAs (sometimes completely erroneously).
AVFM’s Paul Elam gave the game away with an “editor’s note” added to the post:
[A] woman who vandalizes man’s property and then flips him off when he confronts her about it on a dark street at night only acts in this manner because she is certain she has absolutely nothing to fear. Feminists terrified of MHRAs? My ass.
Elam could not have made it any clearer: the main point of this kind of “activism” — which has become AVFM’s bread and butter — is all about intimidating women, not helping men.
AVFM, where terrifying individual women is “human rights activism.”
Here’s the appropriate response to that:
CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION: I rewrote the paragraph starting with “A Voice for Men took exception,” which confused AVRM/MR-E’s current objection to Gotell’s views with its original “argument” against the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign.
Another troll who says terrible things, and then clutches his pearls when hellkell unleashes the f-bomb. Makes me laugh.
Picture: Jason’s suddenly more acceptable quote in context.
/sarcasm.
No, Cloudiah, you’re just not thinking like a scientist. You have to consider every possible alternative in an instance of correlation. Causation is very hard to prove, anyone with an education could tell you that.
I know, cloudiah. I’d much rather be “eloquent” than stone stupid like Jason.
@Jason
Okay, so if you don’t go on reporting rape as a way to figure out how much rape is going on, how else are you supposed to figure it out? Mass-telepathy
Scientists look for EVIDENCE. You are dismissing the evidence because it does not mesh with your world view
Hellkell, you’re wrong about normal men being rapists. And our good friend Howard Bannister just posted a study rebutting that notion.
HAHAHAHAHA, no.
Too bad you’re not that person, innit?
Jason, it’s a real pity you didn’t understand the article Howard posted. I know, you’re just not that bright.
“Okay, so if you don’t go on reporting rape as a way to figure out how much rape is going on, how else are you supposed to figure it out?”
Anonymous surveys, perhaps? Here’s another stumper. If rape is massively underreported and you can only rely on reports of rape to determine rape rates, then how do you feminists know that rape is massively underreported?
Why do so many trolls misunderstand the scientific method?
Maybe the rate of rape went down because of FAIRIES. Maybe it went down because of SUNSPOTS. Maybe scientists released ANTI-RAPE SPORES INTO THE AIR DUCTS IN COLLEGE DORMITORIES. Scientists must carefully and logically consider all of these possibilities. STEMLOGIC.
That’s not really the stumper you think it is, Jason.
Actually, the standard ‘null hypothesis’ helps us understand why it’s a pretty powerful argument.
What happens when you run an education campaign about what rape is and how even grey areas are really rape?
What do you expect to change in whether women report rape?
Well, if they’re seeing society taking rape more seriously, shouldn’t they feel more empowered to report rape, even when it’s in so-called ‘grey areas’?
What’s YOUR working null hypothesis?
Or do you just like throwing the word ‘science’ around?
And, um, proving that one in 20 men is a serial rapist doesn’t hardly prove ‘normal men’ aren’t rapists, dumb-ass.
cloudiah: don’t be silly, it’s UNLEADED GASOLINE.
@jason
Way to miss the point. The point was it was still a significant portion. A little under 10% (sorry non-troll people, did I do that right? I’m bad a math.) Means 1 in every 12 to 15 (other people have said 20 so I’ll go with that) guys you meet probably is a rapist. And will have admitted to rape. The point wasn’t ‘all men are rapists’ the point is that we are living in a rape culture and that you cannot acknolewdge this. You think the mras posters were the same when few rapists ever actually serve time.
So no, I don’t think a huge portion of men are rapists, I just think the posters aren’t equivlent.
Reasonable thing to do here: Wait, peeing on bush makes you a sex offender? That’s ridiculous, we should work on changing that.
Unreasonable/ rape apologia thing: Mercy call for sex offenders!
Also, if you read the damn article there it’d be clear the person writing it wasn’t thinking peeing on bushes. Hell, it’s got in giant letters ‘when a man gets carried away…is it a social misbehavior or a crime’.
Okay, you did read the article,
that’s not a feminist myth, shithead.
And the fact that he still wasn’t arrested says something huge about the jury. He still should have gotten manslaughter if that’s true. You get manslaughter if you kill someone. FFS.
dang, why isn’t my mom home? She’s a scientist (microbioligist) , and I love her getting baffled by trolls claiming SCIENCE! on manboobz.
One in 20 is a small minority. 1 in 25 people is a psychopath, remember? 1 in 50 has OCD? If only men are rapists, then 1 in 40 people out there is a rapist. But probably not the ones you know, probably rapists are overrepresented at the lower echelons of society. (But rape is about power, right? It’s something men do to keep women in a state of fear?)
Jason, dude, are you aware that such victimization surveys actually exist?
I’m going to go ahead and call you a dumb-ass again.
No, I love the idea of one “get out of jail free” card. Do we get one for each type of crime, or just one we can spend on anything? Either way I’ll have to carefully think about who I want to murder.
hellkell – No, it’s the rise of SMARTPHONES.
I mean, it’s not like understanding what consent is and means makes people more knowledgeable on what is okay and what is not okay. It’s not like knowing that is bad causes people to not DO it, right?
Seriously, bad logic/science makes me mad and I’m not even a logician/scientist. Speaking of bad logic, I read an article in the Guardian that seriously made the argument that that UN study of rape in Asia was wrong because it included two areas that had recently experienced armed conflict. Because apparently, this little world we live in is SO peaceful, and armed conflict is SO rare, that including those areas skewed the survey results. It made me want to… THIS. And it was the fucking Guardian, where I expect a higher degree of logic than the Daily Fail.
Except some crimes a single card is not enough. I mean, you should get like one “run a red light” card a month. COME ON IT CHANGED WHEN I WAS HALFWAY OVER THE CROSSWALK!
HAHAHAHAHAHA. Being this much of a dumb-ass should cause you physical pain.
Insert [rapey action] into the last sentence of this comment and it all makes sense. Stupid WordPress.
THE PROBLEM IS IN THOSE DASTARDLY MARGINALIZED PEOPLE PRIVILEGED PEOPLE HAVE NO RESPONSIBILITY..
So why on earth do you think rapists are more likely to be in the “lower echelons of society”.
What the hell?
Pscyopathy: first, that’s not really a thing. Second, where do you get your numbers?
So, NOPE.
Again, no.
(these are all from wiki)
And where did you get one in forty men being rapists? Now you’re running away from the numbers I just posted, full tilt.