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.
katz –
Two people meet up in a back alley in a city somewhere.
1: So we’re doing this, right? We’re really going to do this? We won’t get in trouble?
2: Of course not, you scary cat. Remember, we have the “get out of jail for dealing” free cards, remember? They can’t arrest us!
1: Oh yeah, I forgot. Oops. You have the goods?
2: Yep, You have the payment?
1: Yes. A “get out of abduction” card, a “get out of rape” card, a “get out of first-degree murder” card, and a “get out of arson” card for fifty “get out of smoking pot” cards, and fifty “get out of possessing pot” cards right?
2: Correct.
Both trade.
1: counting cards Ah, good, they’re all there. Say, what did you need those cards for anyhow?
2: Don’t ask, don’t tell.
End scene.
Fuck off, Jason; you truly make the world worse by merely existing.
Gotta go. Have fun batting this utterly clueless troll around till the flounce!
@jason
::snickers::
Dude, you’ve been straight up horrible the whole time you were here, that’s not really picking.
HAHAHAH—feminists had to pick at him to make that asshole say something offensive?
HAHHAHAHAHAHAH
Pull the other one, it has bells on.
Jason, why do you think you deserve better answers than laughter and derision? Entitled much?
And this is over the line, shitstain:
@howard bannister
have fun wherever you’re going, assuming it is a fun thing!
Ps I should clarify my snickering was at the amazing atheist being brought up. I can’t respond to that. I mean, he’s constantly horrible.
“I wouldn’t hit my girlfriend if she didn’t provoke me.”
LO-fucking-L.
Say not so, Cloudiah! Say not so!
Jason, we didn’t MAKE you say anything nasty. You made a CHOICE.
Nice abuser logic, fucknut.
Alice: Nice! You are going to be a valuable asset to the MBZ comics club.
You know, when I did hold my tongue and respond reasonably, you didn’t exactly make it easy for me then, either…
With the way Jason thinks, no wonder he’s trying to defend rapists.
I mean he’s been picking at us, and somehow we’ve managed not to say anything worse than “Fuck off.” I guess that’s because we’re not abusive shitstains.
Jason: we’re not here to make things easy for you. Fuck off.
Well, you said some equally nasty things to me, I just finally retorted. Kind of like a woman who hits a man over and over and over and over and over, and when he finally hits her back she calls the cops and gets him thrown in jail. (More common than you’d think.)
Aww, did I miss him? Damn, this seems to happen every time I leave the house in the middle of blogwatching.
So anyway, does anyone else find it cute that his argument against tearing down posters singling out an individual as a terrible person is to derail from the issue entirely? I mean, ignore the fact that the argument is a false equivalence to begin with. Ignore the misrepresentations of the “don’t be that guy” posters as anti-male hate speech. Ignore the downplaying of the rape apologia inherent in arguing that being too drunk to consent to sex, while someone was having sex – whatever we may think of the sense of getting that drunk – with you isn’t rape. These are all red herrings, they’re strawmen, they’re distractions brought up for the intellectually dishonest purposes of winning an easy debate, rather than communicating, and the poor guy can’t even get that much right!
They’re direct attack at a private individual. They’re a photograph of a person, against whom a great deal of hatred is directed, essentially calling her a paid shill for… I don’t know… big all-men-are-rapists-a, calling her a bigot. These are the lowest of the low tactics, they are an outsourcing of violence with a thinly plausible deniability. These gutless worms intend harm, but lack the courage to take responsibility for it. I mean, that’s understandable, I’m used to those kinds of tactics – I watch American political campaigns – but they’re using me to justify it, claiming that their hate is in defence of my rights.
Men are being demonised here, definitely so. Not by posters that give both men and women cause to think about how they act, but by a movement that uses us as an excuse to intimidate people on the streets.
In summary, (that means tl;dr) Jason…. how about you pay attention to what feminists are actually saying, rather than blindly accepting the bile that’s sold to you by the morons of the MRM? The MRM say that we cannot control ourselves, that if we’re gonna rape, then we’re gonna rape no matter what, because rapists are slavering beasts, so it’s up to women to stay indoors and hide from us all their lives. Feminists say we are human beings, and can behave as humans if we truly wish to. I want to behave as a human. Why don’t you?
cloudiah: and there’s much clutching of the pearls when we do tell him to fuck off.
How many mean comments before you shove a banana up your butt?
(Sorry, sorry, I know we’re not supposed to talk about that, I just couldn’t resist!)
Oh, do fuck off.
Jason – “Well, none of you assholes ever have to worry about rape…”
Whut? I don’t have to worry about rape, ever?
So I can totally walk to Target in a T-shirt and jeans in the middle of the night to buy some Raid, and I don’t have to leave my iPod at home, hold my keys in a fist, avoid dark spots, making sure that my pathway was full of open businesses so that if I needed it I could run in and call 911, or worry that maybe that’s not ever enough?
I never have to think about “what if there’s a rapist on campus?” when I walk home from a late night exam in a lecture hall that’s some distance away from my dorm? I don’t ever have to worry that someone’s hiding behind a tree or something waiting to rape me, a female riding her bike on her own?
I never have to worry about people actually wanting to abduct and RAPE me, even though someone has made a public rape threat towards me online?
Really?
Your statement doesn’t just burn with stupid. It burns of mansplaning and obnoxious asshole. And it burns with the fury of a billion suns.
How…. scientific.
Takes stance not backed by research. Makes supposition based on said non-proven claim. When asked why he takes said claim points back to unsupported stance. Strikes a blow against feminists for science!!
In the imaginary backwards land where Jason dwells, certainly.
Jason’s argument (for such a “smart” guy): YOU STARTED IT, HARPIES.