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.
Yeah, BlackBloc, they also defaced The Haywain. I don’t think much of their actions or their cause (yeah, I’m perfectly happy living in this monarchy, also I don’t think much of a fellow Australian’s art being defaced by some gobshite).
And they say that they’re totally not privileged. *eyeroll*
On the other hand, I found an article on the Spearhead the other day mansplaining privilege and saying why white men don’t have it. Article.
Cassandra – their woes seem to come down to “this isn’t Gor!” even if they’ve never heard of the books.
I am now down with the defacing of famous artworks as a protest, regardless of the reasons behind it. There are ways to protest against things without destroying valuable cultural artifacts.
Also as a Brit I’m going to ask anyone who is not British who thinks they can decide which of our cultural artifacts can be destroyed depending on whether or not they deem the cause worthy enough to step back right now. It’s not your heritage, so you don’t get to decide whether it’s OK for it to be defaced.
Not down, I mean. My typing tends to suffer like that when I’m pissed off.
@ kittehs
Even if they made it to Gor they’d be complaining that the slave girls weren’t pretty enough and had too much power.
Oh my god when I saw 11 pages I was nervous but I am laughing my ass off at all of this. There is so much to say but everyone here pretty much nailed it.
But you can see it all comes full circle. What he really wants is women to “marry down,” translation: “I want super models to fuck me.
Also, “Man up” in regards to being a parent is NOT the same as when your bro douche friend is telling you to go fight that guy at a bar. It’s a request to act like an adult and take care of your responsibilities. Man referring to your adult-ness, not your male-ness. It’s miss-used by guys suffering from toxic masculinity to encourage them to behave in destructive ways as if that requires some sort of bravery.
Women may not be told to “woman up” with the same frequency than men are told to “man up,” but in regards to parenting, it’s the same thing. It’s grow up and take care of the children you helped created. It’s not a matter of sexism, it’s a matter of ensuring that a helpless child doesn’t die.
translation: I want women to stop taking plea bargains so they get longer sentences, I want more women to get hurt at work, I want more women to commit suicide, and I want women to die sooner.
LOL LIFESPAN! OUR BODIES SHITTING THE BED AT DIFFERENT TIMES IS MISANDRY!
We have to go slay a mythical creature in order to end misogyny! Let’s do this feminists!
Women know how to kill themselves. They could do it properly if they really wanted. (I’m not a misogynist, so I don’t believe women are stupid.) In many cases, a suicide attempt is a plea for help. That’s very different from a completed suicide.
I’ll tell you why I would never shoot myself. My mother’s friend when I was growing up had a voice box because he tried to shoot himself in the head, he missed and lost his vocal chords. The second time he missed and blinded himself. Imagining disfigurement is terrifying for a sex that is raised from birth to believe that their worth is tied up in their appearance. The thing I fear more than life when I enter my most depressive states is causing permanent damage to myself that would make my life harder. Sure most people who shoot themselves succeed, but part of my depression is a focus on the fact that, in my life, everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and I can’t convince myself that I won’t wind up disfigured or physically disabled in some way if I were to ever attempt. But write off my suicidal thoughts because I’ve never completed the act.
As for most of my suicidal female friends, their fear is leaving their children and loved ones to fend for themselves. It grosses me out that their sacrificial nature is looked at as if their depression COULDN’T POSSIBLY be as serious as a man’s because they put their families before their desire to end their own pain.
After reading some of the most recent comments, I have to say this again –
MRAs & other misogynists are making me want to become a recluse.
Fuck you, you MRA assholes.
Tristian – Feminists going their own way? Oh shi—
MGTOWs and FGTOWs—feminists going their own way—meet each other in a field in the middle of nowhere
MGTOW: Ahh, this is man paradis—
sees feminists
MGTOW: What the fuck? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?!
FGTOW: Going our own way. We’re sick of mens’ rights activists and misogynistic assholes, so we followed your example and went our own way.
MGTOW: But but but but but
FGTOW: So how is it being away from women? Mind showing us how you do it?
MGTOW: OHMYGAUSHTHEYAREINVADINGTHELASTMALEONLYSPACEONTHEPLANET!!1!
MISANDRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!11!1
FGTOW members looks at each other as the MGTOWs collapse in horror as their final resort towards the “woman problem” collapses in the presence of feminists.
FGTOW 1: What’s up with him?
FGTOW 2: I think we made them implode.
FGTOW 1: … oops?
End scene.
Cassandra – well said, re: cultural artefacts. I’m not a Brit but the whole “British history and culture is fair game” shit pisses me off, partly because it’s my background, partly because of the reasons you mentioned, and partly because I doubt that sort of thing would get thrown at any other countries.
Also, LOL, yeah, even on Gor those morons would think they were oppressed, didn’t have the best slavegirls, weren’t appreciated enough, etc, etc, etc.
Alice – love it!
Making MRAs, PUAs and MGTOW implode in my vicinity would be a really good superpower. Especially if it wasn’t even something I had to do consciously.
kittehs – I know right? I mean, I might feel a little bad, since they’re humans after all, but it would be hilarious to watch nevertheless.
Slavegirls only want the most alpha masters! Misandry! Also they insist on not dying when they hit 23, just to make the boners of masters sad!
And yeah – mitts off my cultural history, non-Brits. If you want to make a point about something then do it using your own historical works of art.
Or not, because really, what does that accomplish other than there being one less piece of art in the world? It’s petty, and does nothing at all to damage the target that you claim to be aiming at. Really, regardless of which culture we’re talking about, my preference is for preserving art. Destroying works of art or cultural significance to make a point? Well, if the point you want to make is “we have more in common with the Taliban than you might initially think” then sure.
Ha, I’m nasty enough that I wouldn’t be too upset at making ’em explode. Though it would be terrible messy.
I wonder if they’d melt like the Wicked Witch of the West? “I’m melting, all my wonderful dudeliness, ohhh, who’d have thought a mere female could end it ooohhhhhh…”
That’s exactly the example that came to my mind.
Where does it stop, anyway? Most of the world’s surviving art was created by groups or institutions that were politically powerful or objectionable (they tend to go together). Should the Taj Mahal be defaced or smashed because one doesn’t approve of the Mughal regime? Does dislike of the Catholic church mean it’s okay to wreck the Sistine Chapel? Bad enough when it’s your own cultural heritage in question, but another country’s? Piss off with that. I loathe iconoclasm. It takes me straight back to the horrible things done (up to and including descration of graves) in the Reformation in Britain, or the French Wars of Religion, or the French Revolution.
kittehs – Melting dudebros. Hm, I should make a script for that one. 😛
But I just got inspiration for my own poetic work, damn it. >:(
Poetry before dudebros (melting or otherwise)!
Exactly! Poetry before dudebros!
*writes furiously*
*finishes*
Now I am happy. *nod*
As long as it’s not “poetry from dudebros”.
CassandraSays – Dudebro poetry:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Your ladybrain won’t understand these words of FUCKING GOLD
And I don’t give a shit about you and your unicorn pussy.
*nod*
::dies::
“Which would need to be the case in order for someone to believe that a partner leaving them or a random woman they want to fuck saying no is the worst thing that could possibly happen.”
One of these is not like the other. The latter is always a load of shit as “worst thing ever”, take a dose of deal with it. The former can be terrible depending the circumstances — when the gaslighting narcissist…ended…our relationship he took nearly all my friends and indirectly my job with him, and (in no small part thanks to him pushing that I could totally afford the apartment, he’d pay part of it!) got evicted.
So yeah, the idea that getting dumped, full stop, is the worst thing EVARRR is a load of horse manure, but I’m really not okay saying that the end of a relationship being the worst thing that has happened to you means you’re privileged (I mean, you might be, but it’s also possible it wasn’t anything like a clean “you got dumped, deal with it”)
Haha. I like Alice’s poem.
I was totally going to make it rhyme, but then I said “screw it”. *nod*
Dudebro poetry part deux:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I promise to fuck your shit up you feminists
While fapping on the thought of you getting beat up.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I don’t have a girlfriend
And it’s all feminism’s fault
There should be a name for this new form of poetry. The
BeatFap Movement, maybe.