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.
@seleukosnicator10
I was just going to post that video!
As far as the CDC study goes, I get why they didn’t call female on male rape “rape,” but don’t agree with it. I have zero problem with people pointing out that that wasn’t fair. But nobody is helping that case by lying about what the study actually shows. Sexual crimes are horrible and any amount of them is too many, you don’t have to inflate the real numbers for shock value. It seems to me that the people who started manipulating the study didn’t think there was enough rape going on to give a shit about. You don’t have to win or tie with women with rape for it to be awful, this isn’t the Rape Olympics.
And, yea… I’m starting to get really nervous about all this doxxing bullshit. I really think somebody they doxx/try to doxx is going to get hurt one day.
@saintnick88
I wasn’t trying to draw distinctions between left and right wing MRA ideology – as far as I can tell, there’s very little variation no matter where you’re coming from. There’s a guy I know, on whom I haven’t yet given up for some reason, who’s pretty outspoken about the importance of social safety nets and financial support for those in poverty… rants about welfare queens getting pregnant just so they can leech off the government. The point is that the other ways in which they identify themselves seems to determine their rationalisations.
I think it’s pretty clear that the MRM is socially conservative, at least with regard to gender relations, but the people who subscribe to it come from apparently all walks of life, and they seem to use their primary identification to build their rationalisations. Hence the left see feminism as right; the right as left; the religious as atheistic; the atheistic as religious; the libertarian as authoritarian… etc. Whatever an MRA is, feminism is the opposite, and any feminist who fails to fit their view of feminism is just “a kindly schoolteacher who calls themselves a nazi.”
You know, I don’t mind when they do that when there are free spaces around. It’s a bit obnoxious, but whatever. What bugs me is when they pick the seat next to me, and have a good ol’ spread there. I’m already as compact as is comfortable anyway, and now I have dudebro molecules attempting to share a location with my own molecules. Blargh. If your balls are really so big that you can’t close your legs for fear of that awful testicle pain… maybe sew a pocket into your pants for them? No, stop whining about girly stuff, sewing is manly. My socks are in one piece and I can pretend I’m James Bond in comfort, confident that my toe isn’t going to push through a hole, cutting off blood supply and giving me a tingly foot just as I’m about to get into a length parkour chase scene. Sewing is manly. I think I got off topic…
I suspect this is one topic where the old truism comes to the fore. When someone goes to the extreme right the person they’re most likely to meet is someone from the extreme right. Which is probably why you often see the confusion/conflation of communism with fascism.
To people younger than me – that’s most of you – that often seems a bit strange because the modern tendency is for left leaning people to be anti-racism and at least give lip service to pro-feminist views. That wasn’t always true.
“Right-wing MRA” sounds like an oxymoron. I just refer to leftist guys who spout off sexist crap as misogynists, which pretty much covers it imo.
Left-wing MRA, I mean. They’re all right wing, whether or not they’re willing to admit it.
Anyone with a spare “left” can use it to replace one of those “right”s I doubled up on above.
@ mildlymagnificent
Oh yeah. My dad used to be a union guy in the UK and he has some hair-raising stories to tell about racism within that movement back in the day. Even just a few years back some of his old union buddies were openly outraged about the fact that his boss at the time was Chinese.
I have plenty of left to spare, help yourselves!
*puts lefts in a bowl with a sign: “If you need a left, take a left. If you have a left, leave a left.”*
I try to let people label themselves and go from there. A left winger spouting misogynist crap is just a left wing misogynist, but if they self identify as an MRA, I’ll take them at their word and wonder how they hell they make the two things work together. I’ve had more trouble when skeptics identify as MRAs, but then the core recognition of skepticism is that people can be fooled, so that’s really just a failure of my own skepticism. (But damn it, guys, don’t you see the fallacies? Don’t you see them!?)
I can’t think of any response to someone who claims both to be a skeptic and to believe that women are all evil hellbeasts from the planet Misandry other than “LOL”.
That’s about right, Cassandra…though I tend to write out my reaction phonetically, so as to avoid giving the impression that I am merely chuckling and fully communicate the level of derision inherent in the laughter, which involves the loss of my bottom.
So the MHRAs in Canada have learnt something – if you goad women until they lose their cool, film those women losing their cool & then post it on You-tube, lots of unpleasant & nasty men will watch the film & then post nasty & unpleasant things about the women. Who knew? /sarcasm
Bernard Chapin is absolutely correct when he says that MRAs are libertarian by definition. If misandry was as widespread as Elam and co demand, then a framework exists for this to be redressed.
It would involve coherant activism, though, so MRAs won’t do it.
Bailierene, I read the article linked by Becausescience and it mentions two cases where women were doxxed (by an ex husband and an ex boyfriend rather than by mras) in one case fifty men came to the womans house one tried to break in and another tried to undress her daughter the second case was worse I don’t think I should go into the details. Anyway people have already been harmed by doxxing not by the mrm yet as far as I know but by misogynistic assholes just like them.
Sorry for spelling your name wrong that should be to baileyrenee
(Points up)
This is why when people say they support doxxing in certain circumstances I wonder if it’s because they haven’t thought the potential consequences through or because they just don’t care what might happen. Either way it’s a pretty damn irresponsible position to take.
Fibinachi – OMG they’ve taken Foul Ole Ron aboard!
Mind you, it’d increase their overall intellectual level, especially if he brought his Thinking Brain Dog with him.
I liked The Woman in your script. I got the distinct feeling she was Pierre’s sister – baffled, but polite.
Reblogged this on iheariseeilearn.
Awwww, poor little girls got caught and confronted (oops, I mean “harassed”). It’s hilarious how you always try to play a victim card. Your pathetic, kittin boy, go fuck yourself. That would be the appropriate response for you.
It’s funny how the way you choose to frame a situation can determine whether it sounds serious or frivolous, isn’t it?
“Dude, they picked you up – for free – and took you to a camp? Even gave you free food, new clothes and helped you lose weight? Man, I would *love* that! I remember I went to camp once, it was summer, we did archery, it was totally cool. Didn’t get any new clothes though.”
(No, that’s not a false equivalence, I’m not implying a similarity between concentration camps and street harassment, just making a point about framing.)
Poor jonatma420. If David Futrelle upsets you so, maybe you shouldn’t read his blog.
@katz,
Re: Pierre on the bus, he can also be an example of a more reasonable way for men to sit. Once the guy goes off on his tear, maybe he can interject something like “If they’re that sensitive, maybe you should see a doctor,” which prompts the guy to start shrieking about “pussifying” medical care.
Taking interest in the ‘is rape of males is under-reported’ discussion.
I’d just like to point out that in my country a man can not, by legal definition, be raped, rape is such a strong word you see, so the law prefers ‘indecent assault’.
@jonatma,
You know what’s pathetic? It’s the coward who chases women on streets at night with a video camera and then gets on youtube to start a witch hunt.
@baileyrenee