The bad publicity bonanza for Men’s Rights activists continues — and it couldn’t happen to a worse group of people.
Yesterday, the Daily Beast published a long-awaited piece on the Men’s Rights movement, and it’s a doozy. If you’re a regular reader of this site, trust me, you’ll want to read the whole thing, like now. The piece, by R. Tod Kelly, is long — some 6000 words — but worth it.
It’s mostly on the money, but with a few notable flaws.
Here’s what it gets right:
1) It captures the pervasive misogyny of the Men’s Rights movement in general, and of A Voice for Men in particular.
2) In an extended section, it profiles AVFM’s John Hembling, and tears apart some of his most blatant lies — including the now legendary box-cutter incident, in which Hembling claims to have stared down a mob of 20-30 feminists brandishing boxcutters.
As Kelly notes:
Vancouver police records show that there was indeed an altercation in September of 2012 between Hembling and others seeking to tear down men’s rights posters. However, according to the police, Hembling was arguing with two or three people, not being accosted by a “mob” of any size. When questioned by the authorities, neither Hembling nor witnesses mentioned seeing any weapons. …
Curiously enough, Hembling actually videotaped the events and had his AV4M Radio partner Karen Straughan post it online. The discussion with the police has been conveniently edited out, but the rest of the video clearly matches police records and not Hembling’s story. There are only a few young men taking down Hembling’s posters, and the video shows them choosing to ignore him except when he engages them in conversation. One of the men is seen using a box cutter to take down the flyers, but at no time does he use it as a weapon, raise his voice, or threaten Hembling in any way.
Kelly found some troubling, er, discrepancies in another story told by Hembling. Kelly writes:
According to Hembling, sometime around 1995 he was on his way home at 2:00 am after working a night shift when he came upon [a sexual] assault in progress. He says he used his steel-toed boots as weapons to chase off the perpetrator. When the victim was too distraught to speak with him, Hembling says he contacted the police, waited until they arrived, and then quietly left without speaking to them. He says they later tracked him down at his home, where he gave a statement.
It’s hard to know whether this event actually occurred or not. There is no record—at least, not in the Vancouver police files—of Hembling being a material witness to a rape, and police blotters from that time period do not show a crime that matches Hembling’s description. However, this does not necessarily mean the event did not occur. Vancouver police did not fully computerize their data until 2002, and it is possible the police never reported the incident. Hembling claims the incident took place at a specific hospital, where he says he worked as a contractor for 18 months. The address he gives, however, is for a different hospital in a completely different part of the city. This raises the curious question of whether Hembling forget the name of the hospital he contracted with for 18 months, or whether he forget what part of the city he worked in for that same period of time. The real truth of the matter is anyone’s guess, because Hembling wouldn’t comment to The Beast on that or any other matter.
In other words: Cool story, bro.
3) Another thing the story gets right: it makes clear just how little the Men’s Rights movement does to actually help men — and how in many ways it can actually be terribly damaging to men who need real help. As Kelly writes,
the movement’s radicals might … do … immediate damage to those who most desperately need the MRM to succeed.
“When we talk about recovery from trauma and abuse, there were two things that helped me,” says Chris Anderson, executive director of the male-victim advocacy group Male Survivor and a sexual abuse survivor himself. “The first was realizing that I’m not alone; the second was hearing that recovery was possible.” Anderson is quick to dissociate himself from the men’s rights movement: “In [the MRM] people get that first message, that they’re not alone. I don’t know that they ever get the second message. And when they don’t get that second message, it turns into an endless feedback loop and eventually they say, ‘Oh my God, all of society is f**ked.’”
Indeed, Kelly writes:
It is telling to note that of the professional male-victim advocacy organizations I spoke with, every single one specifically asked that I not allow readers to think they were in any way related to the MRM.
But there are also some things that I think the article gets wrong.
1) I think it gives Men’s Rights activists way too much credit for their supposed good intentions. While there are some MRAs who do seem to be motivated at least in part by a sincere desire to help men, most of the MRAs I’ve encountered in the 3 years of doing this blog have clearly been motivated primarily by anger and hatred of feminists — and women in general. They don’t really seem to give a shit about doing anything to actually improve the lives of men — and the paucity of their accomplishments reflects this. In its relatively brief lifespan, AVFM has raised many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Has it set up any shelters or hotlines or helplines for men? Not a one.
2) It wildly exaggerates the importance of Hembling to the MRM — especially ironic given that Hembling has been more or less AWOL in recent months, producing only a few short videos and one article for AVFM.
3) It paints a picture of The Spearhead’s WF Price as a Men’s Rights “moderate.” Really? While it’s true that Price is not an AVFM-style hothead given to rants about “fucking your shit up,” his views are anything but moderate. This is a guy who thinks higher education is wasted on women, who blames the epidemic of rape in the armed forces on women, who celebrated one Mothers Day with a vicious transphobic rant, who once used the tragic death of a woman who’d just graduated from college to argue that “after 25, women are just wasting time.” He published posts on why women’s suffrage is a bad idea. Plus, have you met his commenters?
I was, however, kind of amazed to learn that Price is married … and to a feminist. No, really.
4) The article, while solidly researched, contains some small errors and simplifications that will no doubt give MRAs and others the excuse they need to dismiss the whole thing. Kelly refers to Reddit subreddits as Reddit “threads!” He refers to Matt Forney as an MRA! Oh no!
Still, whatever its flaws, this is an important piece, and one that tells a lot of truth about the Men’s Rights movement. Again — go read it!
Look, if you can use google translate you can google ‘GCSE’.
Market forces. Also fictional?
I’ll take your (pretend) incredulity as a compliment on my English. Thank you.
Wait – is Hostile Pooflinger perhaps schooling us in the ways of art interpretation AND activism by artfully flinging poo in an attempt to prove that 1) anything can be art and 2) any attention, be it negative or positive, is good for “the cause”?
Nah, that still fails because even though 1 can be argued that trolling is an art form, this troll is still doing it badly and 2 he didn’t manage to do anything with the negative attention he garnered aside from make himself look stupid.
What was it Pooflinger was saying again about pointless internet activism?
McGee: My nationality. This ophelia individual has been sniffing around it for I don’t know how long.
No, that’s actually not the issue; it’s the tactic. The issue is your level of veracity. The question of your nationality is just one of the more obvious tokens of it. That it’s so needless is what makes it probative.
“But, since you ask, I didn’t attack you for your, putative, nationality. I questioned your underlying veracity. No hypocrisy involved. You implied (when you said, you ought rather have used, “sheila”) that you were Australian.* You then announced you were German.”
That was starterlifesydney, Pecunium, not doucheyhostileknickers.
McGee: As for the talk shop about WW2, you are now trying to divorce the Allied victory from the bombing campaign
Nope. I am taking you at your words, that RAF Bomber Command and the Red Army are why the Allies won the war.
(pro-tip, some of us have memories longer than one sentence, also, we can check them against the actual words)
Absurdly enough, you mention ‘loss of manpower’ that incurred Germany’ eventual defeat. May I ask who lived in those cities? People perhaps?? Who provided…manpower???
Not absurd; read for context: the loss of manpower was in trained soldiers (units don’t have combat experience, individuals do). Furthermore, by the time of the Dresden, Cologne, etc., bombings, the males of military age were already in uniform, and the aged-out reservists were being recalled.*
But the issue wasn’t, actually, the strategy and tactics of the allies, it was
why [are] you are so well versed in the ways of Strategy and Tactics that we ought to take your word as dispositive
I’m betting you still won’t answer it.
*I see you aren’t much clearer on the issues of manpower logistics and training than you are on grammar and logic.
McGee: ut the issue wasn’t, actually, the strategy and tactics of the allies, it was
why [are] you are so well versed in the ways of Strategy and Tactics that we ought to take your word as dispositive
And the reason I keep asking is because you demanded a standard of experience from us. I’m just holding you to your standard:
Athywren –
I know, wasn’t it precious? 😀
Looks like hostilehissyfit does feminism the way he does art – it’s only feminist if he says so and it’s about something he likes, and the words only mean what he wants them to, because context and common usage don’t exist.
D’awww, are we going to be lectured on what atheism is? How cute!
Now if only the troll will aquaint zirself with the dictionary.
wait atheism means not believing in concepts? That’s awesome! I’ve been tired of paying for these ‘student loans’ but I’ve never SEEN them, just papers that talk about them! They must be fake!
Whoof thanks, hostiley, you just saved me tens of thousands of dollars~!
@ahostileworld
Rape culture isn’t some abstract idea, dude. It’s not like just because you can’t touch something it doesn’t exist. Gah. someone be more elegant than me, but my main point is talking about social forces =/= religion. People can talk about socialization. It’s not like boys naturally don’t like to wear pink, it’s that lots don’t (in america) because it’s been socialized as an inferior, girly color. Same with rape culture. People blame the victim for their rape (something you can see) few rapists are actually convicted (something that can be studied/quantified). Paying attention to how people respond when they’re talking about rape isn’t the same as religion. I mean, idk my brains kinda scrambled right now? But that was just a really weird inaccurate comparison.
It’s true, internet sex is EVERYWHERE! Even when you don’t know it, you’re doin’ it!
LOL now trolly’s trying to do “irritate atheists on site by talking shit about that for a change from talking shit about other stuff”.
Definitely trolling for the lulz, this one. Sock, maybe?
@inurashii
I know. If that’s the case,I should be an atheist XD
inurashii – Wait, but that means that I only have $7 to my name, since all the rest are invisible numbers. Noooo, how am I supposed to buy food today?!
Ah… the smell of necro in the afternoon. I just got (on my blog) a Zimmerman Defender.
Best part, it was more cogent and interesting than our Prolific Teuton.
Lol. Teuton. uh uh uh [Butthead laugh].
Sorry. Being an immature French Canadian dude.
At this point, I’m starting to think that Asshole McGee there is actually one of those heuristic AI bots. Zie recognizes questions and responds to partially acknowledge, but not answer them, and has slowly started to simply throw responses back in a garbled but still recognizable form.
It’s the Hostilitybot 2000, folks! Programmed to cull the internet for factoids and to interact with real humans on the level of a precocious but over tired toddler. Those latest posts aren’t much better than yelling, “Nuh-uh!” and “I know you are but what am I?”
(“Totons”, which sounds close enough to Teuton in the Quebecois vernacular, is basically our word for “Tatas”, i.e. vulgar and somewhat corny reference to breasts, usually in a sexualized manner.)
Student debts have real life effects, because the bank is short on money that it has given to student for them to pay off in installments over the years. Money and market forces have real, detectable effects in the real world. Rape culture, sin and prophecy only manifest themselves in the world as a result of the moral panic, alarmism and fearmongering the proselytisers and prophets whip up.
Interestingly, the religionists on this website use the same arguments that Christian religionists use elsewhere – ‘I don’t believe in god, never seen him, never detected him’ –
(And now, imagine the look on the face of someone who is about to deliver what they think is going be the *ultimate* stumper)
‘WELL DO YOU BELIEVE THAT MONEY EXISTS?’
Religionists are nothing else if not similar to each other.
Personally, I’d like to know how the self-described feminist, who apparently out-feminists all of us, can dismiss rape culture as so much cultish fear-mongering. It almost sounds like our self-described feminist hasn’t actually read anything feminism has to say about the rape culture.
Cause here in the US, the rape culture sure as hell ain’t some abstract delusion designed to strike fear in the heart of women. Here, it’s real. Of course, maybe ahostileworld is like Mrs. Price, raised in an egalitarian paradise, and unable to comprehend the vile level of rape apology and victim blaming that occurs elsewhere.
Or perhaps ahostileworld is full of shit.
I’m going with option B.
@pecunium A Zimmerman defender? Jesus, you’re better than me, I’d just be reduced to expletives, then there’d be the smashing of the room, and then I couldn’t have nice things.
Nope, nope, nope, disingenuous asshats fine, fucking murder apologists argh!
‘It almost sounds like our self-described feminist hasn’t actually read anything feminism has to say about the rape culture.’
Yeah, I never read the whole Bible, either. Hence, I should believe in god.
Ok, we’re going to need you to explain how you’ve misunderstood rape culture, because the effect that feminists refer to with that word has real, detectable effects in the real world.
So… go: What do you think rape culture means?
We have enter the “whutlite” zone. Cultural effects on men, totes real. Cultural effects which harm women.. totes made up.
Lack of knowledge = grounds for belief.
I think it’s more a case of Prolific Tootin’.