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.
I sure hope that the only lesson you feminists learn from the Hugo Schwyzer incident isn’t “Men suck, we should have fewer of them around.” But I expect that’s the case…
By the way, trigger warnings are stupid. They’re the most misogynistic thing imaginable – the 21st century equivalent of smelling salts for damsels in distress. I think women are strong enough to deal with life. Too bad so many feminists disagree…
Still talking, huh?
But, you know, I can kind of sympathize with the women who were pissed off at Hugo. It must be pretty fucking annoying for a man to start talking about women’s issues like he’s an expert. That’s what we men experience all the time, when feminists start womansplaining about how the problems we face as men all stem from a sense of patriarchal entitlement…
Jason, of course our lesson isn’t “we should have less men”. We WANT more men to be feminists. We like men, that’s why we’re feminists. 😛
OMFG I can’t even……
So the answer was no, then.
themaskandrose, I am responding to the “argument” being made ON THE POSTER ITSELF. If you say that “rape isn’t gendered” that means that the perps and victims of rape are equally male and female. Which is something that AVFM argues all the time. Yes, that is different than what was argued on the “Don’t Be That Girl” posters. So, yes, AVFM/MR-E is attacking a woman who disagreed with them on the “Don’t Be That Girl” poster on a different issue. Which sort of suggests that the issue is less important to AVFM/MR-E than the opportunity to attack a feminist woman.
Rape not being gendered doesn’t mean that it has to be 50/50 male/female. Suicide is very male-leaning. Would you say that suicide is “gendered”? Child abuse is very female-leaning. Would you say that it’s “gendered”? We MRAs acknowledge that rape isn’t 50/50 (domestic violence is a different story) but we argue against the notion that rape is something men do to women to “keep them in a state of fear” as Susan Brownmiller said. It’s that sort of gender conspiracy theory that we’re arguing against.
You know who also needs trigger warnings? Male rape victims who suffer from triggers. Countless male soldiers who suffer from PTSD. And male victims of abuse who suffer from triggers. And the list goes on.
Yeah, how about you think about the shit you say before you open your mouth? And for that matter, how about you learn to have some fucking compassion for people who suffer from triggers and so need trigger warnings for some content?
Thank you Ally, as I got my first real glimpse at just how many varieties of booze pecunium has after that comment us about us being unrapeable. And am quite glad I am here and not at my parents since, you know, he’s about a million degrees safer than my father (and whenever he gets to this, THANK YOU)
And he’s right, I should really just stop reading this thread. But I’ve never once done that here and am not going to give into Jason’s asshatery like that (stubborn, I am it)
Okay, perhaps I should amend myself slightly. People who have gone through traumatic experiences – people who have a problem with being triggered – they might need trigger warnings. But even with such people, the eventual goal is recovery, and being able to face their fears. And there are trigger warnings EVERYWHERE in feminism, like the mere mention of the word “rape” will send your average woman into hysterics… Creating safe spaces might be important. But creating free spaces is important, too.
Well, Brownmiller’s statement is inaccurate in that there’s no conscious conspiracy here (and most third-wave feminists share this view). But male-on-female/male-on-male rape is definitely used as a tool of the patriarchy.
But you don’t understand what trigger warnings are used for. They aren’t used as a band-aid or a crutch. They are simply acts of courtesy. That stuff about facing one’s fears is something for a therapist to handle, and no one is going to be helped by intentionally exposing hirself to triggering material in the wrong state of mind. You talk about “eventual” goals, yet trigger warnings are merely used to help people decide when they want to read triggering material. They don’t impede free speech, either – it’s just a little warning at the top of an article. That’s it.
And so what if the word “rape” is triggering to some women (no, not the average woman you ignorant dipshit)? Different people are triggered by different things.
Jason, literally nobody here thinks that all, or even some subset of men conspire together to use rape and threats of rape to keep all women in a state of fear. There is no ‘gender conspiracy theory’ among mainstream feminists.
What people DO believe is that some men DO use the threat of rape as a weapon against women, and that society’s shitty attitude and denialism regarding the realities of rape have the EFFECT of making many women afraid of rape. It’s not a conspiracy, just the effect of society letting men get away with it, and blaming victims when they do end up ‘getting themselves raped’ (ugh).
If you can’t see the difference, you’re a moron. I figure you’ll just continue to claim that feminists think that all men are out to hurt all women, because that’s the MO of ideologues like you. You fight against strawman versions of your opponents, and when people point out “You realize that none of us actually believe that, right?”, you simply ignore it and go on to insist that they ACTUALLY believe what they just told you that they didn’t.
It’s like right-wingers claiming that liberals ‘hate freedom’ and want us all to be enslaved to the government.
Fabulous first comment, gemcutter. Here’s your welcome package! http://artistryforfeminismandkittens.wordpress.com/the-official-man-boobz-complimentary-welcome-package/
Welcome gemcutter!
Here it is! (It’s just a little recycled-art comic; I probably won’t be able to do any more of them just because my style has progressed so much. But those phone callouts are fun to make.)
katz – LULZ. Now I want to know what was on the other side of the “do not enter” sign!
Alice – Jason would be an arsehole whether he was atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Sikh, pagan, you name it. He’s just another shitstain MRA rape apologist.
I know USian atheists get the splash damage from those who are Asshole Atheists™, and get the bullshit of atheist = awful/wicked, so I thought I’d throw in a “nope, he speaks only for misogynists” while I’m catching up with the thread.
/deistspritualistceilingcatworshipper fistbump
He is in one of those high altitude mountain facilities that gets so much snow that the ground-floor doors get snowed in, so they have doors on the second story so that you can still get out in the winter.
Anyway, that’s my explanation.
@David:
“Jason makes me want to take up religious belief of some sort. I think I might go with something a bit “indie.” Marduk seems cool.”
WUT
DO YOU NOT WORSHIP BASEMENT CAT
WHAT SORT OF A DARK LORD ARE YOU
kittehs – I know that he’d be an arse no matter where he comes from.
The problem is that since I’m an atheist in the US, there’s a large segment of the population that automatically thinks that we’re all immoral, nihilistic assholes who only want to destroy God-fearing ‘MERICA. It really makes me sad, because I DO have morals and ethics, just that mine don’t come from the Bible. And I try to not be an ass, and when I’m an ass, I own up to it.
It just sucks that we’re stuck with misogynistic leaders for our “community”, because I KNOW that we can be (and are!) better than that. We can be atheists and not be assholes.
katz – This makes total sense. *nod*
I suspect that a significant portion of the atheist community doesn’t see those men as leaders. Pretty much all the atheist groups I’ve ever seen have been almost all men. And the atheist women I meet have mostly said that they don’t like those groups because they aren’t treated with respect there. I’ve met atheist men who don’t like them either. That crowd just happens to be a louder part of the atheist community. And I think they tend to put folks like myself and my friends off being part of any organized atheist movement.
Hi, clearly fine with reading the word rape, cuz yo, I just typed it! Not fine with being told I don’t have to worry about being raped when I’ve two rapist ex’s.
Just fucking dandy talking about rape in the abstract, or as a thing that has happened // happens to other people. Make it personal and I request alcohol in my coffee. (Relatedly, pecunium makes excellent mixed drinks, ended up tasting like slightly burnt coffee, almost Starbucks like…but alcoholic…and I can do Starbucks, was my only convenient option for a lot of my time in Pittsburgh)
——
The “do not enter” sign is on the exit door of a kitchen. The idiot is fine, other than being covered in soup and having ruined his phone. 🙂
Alice – yeah, I know, and it’s not much help having an Australian saying “I know yez aren’t assholes!” 🙁 Just wanted to say it anyways, because the atheist = horrible idea is so stupid (and yes, way too prevalent).
Couldn’t agree more about how cringe-inducing it is that so many prominent self-proclaimed”leaders” are raging misogynist douchebags, racists, and general scum of the earth, though. It’d put me right off movement atheism were I atheist. (I’m secularist, but movement atheism is not a safe space for me despite the things in common.)
katz – perfect! I pictured Jason falling off a cliff or into a ditch or something when I read your script.