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.
Ugh for the record, most posters were torn down by MEN I know a few of them, they swept Whyte Ave tearing them all down. We don’t want this in our city. Gawd I just love living in the bloody MRA capital of the world.
RE: Marie
Sure, at random times ALL posters are ripped down around town. I haven’t figured out the rhythm, so we can avoid them.
@Feminist Bees, I just had a mini revelation, actually. They probably don’t think their views all the way through because they view their movement as being exclusively a battle between men and women. The notion that everything, even human rights, are a “battle” that must be “won” is a genuinely harmful standard that the patriarchy holds men to, and the MRAs would be doing real good challenging that standard except *they completely believe in it.*
@LBT
That sucks. How could one hate pet sititng posters?
(tell me if I’m bugging you Idk why I got fixated on this. I’m not sure why. BUT PET SITTING IS AWESOME HOW COULD THEY DO THAT?)
I love this comment on the AVFM post:
“I do have one thing to say at what one of the guys said to these cretins. He said the word ‘ladies.’
I think it’s high time we stop using that word when talking to these lowlife cowards who espouse the destruction of men’s lives.
They are not a lady’s backside in my opinion. For a woman to be eligible to be referred to as a Lady, she will need to behave in a much better manner than the vast majority of women do today. She must be respectful of men and boys equally to females and she will never place herself or her sex above the opposite sex.
Knowing the above. It is my opinion that the overwhelming majority of females on this planet are not eligible to be referred to as ‘ladies.’
Just sayin, is all!”
I wonder how these guys would react if feminist speech was filled with this kind of attitude towards males.
Just sayin, is all!
@totlent,
You’re right. If someone regendered that comment to make it about ‘gentlemen’, then MRA’s would be in an uproar and doxx a dozen random women in retaliation.
@DireSloth, that is certainly true. The way that AVFM writers take to their issues and opponents, the goal is to maintain gender conflict.
Take feminist men as an example, MRAs love finding them and using their gender and self-identification a feminist as a prop to solidify the appearance of the conflict. For these MRAs, the idea of “compassion for men and boys” flies out the window when the men and boys in question are feminists. It’s an essential part of their discourse to reinforce the idea that being a man and being a feminist are in conflict. This requires them to demonize feminist men using special gendered language (the very kind of language they accuse feminists of using towards all men).
Male rape of women being a crime in the legal sense, even though it has so much cultural support, is probably one of the things that burns these guys. I’m pretty sure they think it should be one of the go-to ways for men to legitimately control and punish women for breathing out of turn and so on.
Oh noez, not eligible to be referred to as a lady?!? Whatever will I do? I fear I may come down with the vapors. *swoon*
Fuck off, AVFM. And double fuck off for the apparent goal of your organization being to make me terrified to walk at night without a male escort. Human rights my fat ass.
Fine by me if they don’t me a lady, I’ll just keep calling them what they are: assholes, each and every one.
I would describe the way they act is like they’re just playing a game. If you discuss an important issue with them, they are more concerned with creating gotcha’s and “checkmates” than actually learning from anyone else. I think they read this and took it to heart.
Thanks everyone for the rebuttal posts. 🙂
totlent – MRAs and CAM apologists are the same, in regards to hypocrisy. They’ll cry fowl when their despised enemy (feminists, “Big Pharma”) do something like call all males “too inferior to be called gentlemen” or pay off politicians/cover up studies unfavorable to them. And yet they’ll happily accept, even condone, the same behavior when they do it themselves.
Their lack of self awareness and sense of irony makes me want to laugh and cry.
@Bionic Mommy, right, and the reason they treat it as a game (albeit a very serious one) is because they’re too privileged to realize these issues are actually important to some peoples lives. The only thing they have to loose is face, which they seem determined to defend past the point of reason.
Does that mean they’re beak-ering again?
This might not be sufficiently straightforward misogyny for this website, but this has been making the rounds on facebook today, and making me crazy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10316807/Sorry-daughters-your-parents-will-never-approve-of-your-partner.html
I teach evolution– this article couldn’t be worse science writing.
[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.
Or she’s, y’know, brave. I understand courage is an alien concept to these guys, inasmuch as mild rudeness from a woman they’re trying to bully reduces them to Jell-O.
This is a much more respectable poster battle:
Although short, balding and rotund, Coombs was pompous and vain, and thought himself to be a ladies’ man. He believed this formed the basis of his dispute with Emperor Norton. Norton had torn down some posters that Coombs had put up in Montgomery Street and Coombs reported him to the police. As it was not a criminal offence the police told him they could do nothing, so in an attempt to raise funds for a civil action he sold his story to the Alta California newspaper. When the reporter asked him why Norton would have done such a thing Coombs replied that he “was jealous of my reputation with the fairer sex.”
Manosphere fallacy one-o-one. Comparing marginalized groups to a privileged group. Face palm.
But then I forget men are oppressed because they can’t get all the sex they want.
@Emily
I’m too embarrassed to read that article because after reading just the first couple sentences I assumed it was going to be full of science failures and my mom (the scientist) is sitting right next to me. Also, you already said it was misogynistic..
Yeah. As a male survivor of sexual violence, I can’t say I’ve EVER felt that the MRM gives a shit about me, except as a blunt object to beat women with. In fact, since a man was my rapist, I get the sense they consider me a failed representative–they need (1) a man who’s a surivor of rape from a woman, and (2) who generalizes that experience to women as a whole. I do not fit their bill.
Men.
Females.
smh.
Well, if they referred to us as women and girls then they might have to acknowledge that wanting to have sex with the girls is a bit creepy and/or illegal.
Cassandra, they’re pretty open about wanting to have sex with young girls. Remember, Judgy Bitch clearly laid out how girls lead men on? MRAs eat that up with a heaping dose of evo psych.
I still think that using “females” for everyone is partially an attempt to blur the boundaries.
Shaenon – ermagerd, I’d never heard of Coombs (though Emperor Norton has all the win).
Coombs, the man PUAs everywhere could look up to.
cloudiah – I don’t know what’s scarier: the thought that should I open my own blog that I’ll be doxed for speaking out against MRAs, or that MRAs really, really, really want to fuck kids.