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!
Well, lucky then that every New England state I know the laws of doesn’t consider it rape, and apparently neither do the UK or Germany. Care to try again?
Pecunium, yeah, you’re gone, but you know me, can I resist fact checking?
There may be laws against rape, but there are plenty of prosecutors and judges and juries and cities and towns full of people out there willing to parse the rape and look for exculpatory “evidence” which always seems to hinge on the victim’s behavior.
“She shouldn’t have been out at night, or in that neighborhood.”
“He shouldn’t have agreed to be alone with that person.”
“Did you see what she was wearing?”
“Did you know he regularly drinks and/or takes drugs?”
“Did she say no? Did she say it more than once?”
“Did he try to fight?”
All of this, basically any response to a rape that begins “Yes, but…” and then seeks to “explain” the rape by recourse to the behavior of the victim rather than the perpetrator is part and parcel of rape culture.
Perhaps you live in the utopia where rape has been completely and totally eliminated because everyone agrees on what consent is and agrees that rape is completely and totally wrong, but there are plenty of parts of the world where people do think rape is “hunky-dorey” they just don’t say it like that. They will say that it’s not rape if you are married, or if you said yes on some previous occasion, or some other caveat that ends up meaning the same thing, that rape isn’t rape because the perpetrator said so, and is supported by their family and community in saying so. This, too, is rape culture, and in all too many places it is still firmly entrenched.
Do you deny that there are people who face no penalties for committing a rape based on the attitudes of their family, community, and the local legal system?
I see no contradiction.
Well… except for that 6.4%…
Other things that only 5% of people do:
Be allergic to insect stings.
Wash their hands properly.
Lose weight and keep it off.
And yet, we have cultures around avoiding allergies – Benadryl makes over $63 million a year, EpiPens are funded by several insurance companies, around washing hands constantly – employees are told to wash after bathrooms, hospitals encourage and are funded by people whose job it is to ensure proper handwashing, and around health and fitness – I don’t think I need to say how much money that industry makes each year.
I could cite more.
I’d actually challenge you on your statement that rape is widely condemned. It’s not. It’s not even close to being widely condemned. I’ll requote someone else: What is rape? If it’s any time that consent is not obtained, then how do you explain the media and its victim-blaming tactics? The media, which likely comprises less than 1% of the population, has a profound effect on society and culture. Do you think that the media doesn’t influence society? Because given that it’s (as you said) “just the media” you must really disbelieve that the media can influence society. The media is profoundly a part of influencing culture.
I don’t think rape is widely condemned. I think it’s pretty celebrated actually. Sure, if you ask someone “Is rape bad?” no one will say “No, it’s great!” (Well, actually, I take that back, I’ve seen it plenty). But it’s regularly used as jokes, as a punishment for other crimes, the victims are the punchline. People don’t identify rape the same way that you’ve defined it. There’s Rape rape, and then there’s everything else that actually is rape but that people find little ways to excuse, to justify, to avoid. There’s the victim-blaming, the questions about why the person was there, what they were doing, what the victim did to cause the rape. There’s the lack of education on consent and the pushback over trying to educate people about it. There’s the people who, when they first hear someone was raped, react with scepticism and distrust, and ask all those same questions. When others reveal they’re victims of other crimes, they don’t react in the same way.
BTW I wasn’t whingeing. So yeah, you wasted three years of your life studying something utterly useless. These things happen. Life is not a magic pony ride on the rainbow. I wasted a lot of my time in my life and got over it.
Lol. I didn’t waste my time. It’s been very useful in my profession since my profession deals almost exclusively in women’s health and women’s issues. And I like taking turds like you down on the internet. It’s not my fault that you’re going to hand wave away my response again, and try to avoid answering it like you did last time.
Just in case you were interested at all in having any sort of integrity, I’d be interested in seeing you rebut the idea that the media doesn’t influence culture profoundly, that rape isn’t celebrated because of the things I stated up above.
Well, maybe he’d call 911 to report a house on fire where books might be burned and argue that they have to be saved, even though Pierre and Poutine are on the second floor? Because it’s a tragedy and totally out of bounds if books were damaged, but if enemies were endangered, well all’s fair in high tea and war?
You don’t see the contradiction between continuing after withdrawl of consent not being rape and rape being excused?
You’re denser than a box of rocks.
Between what and what? We’re not the straw feminists in your head; we can’t read your mind.
Argenti – Cool, I’m going to have to learn how to use zie/zir. 🙂
Also, ahostileworld has got to be denser than a neutron star. Seriously.
Totally this.
Yeah, according to an ex (red flag much? wish I’d paid attention then…) you have 3 seconds in Canada to stop having sex after they’ve withdrawn consent…
And in Canada, thanks to the Alberta courts, if the rapist sincerely believes they have consent, they can rape whomever they want, regardless of the circumstances of the rape. The woman can be saying no, and if the rapist doesn’t believe her, it’s not considered rape under the law. Sigh.
Alice — in a sentence it’d be — ze said zir name is Argenti, that is zir comment // that comment is zir’s.
So in Canada the rapist gets to decide if he’s a rapist? You guys have a conviction rate up there? Or is it a flat 0?
That is one shockingly unsportsmanlike attempt at mischaracterisating Germany’s legal position and engaging in an unathletic exercise in mental gymnastics if I’ve ever seen one.
@Sittiekittie, yeah the whole ‘ the criminal gets to decide what consent is, not the person doing/not doing the consenting! *sighs*
Ah, well, if only 6.4% of men admit to being rapists, that’s not rape culture is it? Such a small proportion of the only population that counts, am I right? /sarcasm
Let’s look at the other statistic, shall we, Mr @hostileinateacup? 1 in 4 women is sexually assaulted in her lifetime.
1 in 4! ONE IN FOUR!
I have five female cousins, each one awesome in her own highly individual way. The stats say that at least one of us will be sexually assaulted during our lifetime. And you know what, I know at least one of us has, because she told me about it. By the plumber she paid to come to her house to fix her washing machine. In her own bloody kitchen!
1 in 4. ONE IN FOUR.
So next time you’re in a group of people, look around you. Count how many women you can see. In your mind’s eye, pick out one quarter of them. That’s them, the sexually assaulted & raped.
In your class at high school, how many girls? 1 in 4 of them? Raped or sexually assaulted. How many boys? 20 or so? At least one rapist, the stats say.
1 in 4. ONE IN FOUR!
Are you het? How many girlfriends have you had? More than 4? One of them sexually assaulted. And based on your casual dismissal of everything you’ve read here over the past few days, I’m betting she never told you.
ONE IN FUCKING FOUR! RAPE CULTURE, you fucking troll.
/rant
Watch for it, folks! Shockingly Unsportsmanlike, the new album by Mental Gymnastics. Preorder your copy though iTunes and receive a free download of the hit single “Unathletic Exercise”!
Unathletic Excercse in Mental Gymnastics – When The Mental Gymnastics play their instruments off-handed(that is, righties play left handed and vice versa)
Oh @argenti, my first Ninjad!, is that how you spell it?
And breathe 😉
RE: pecunium
He’s pretty much ignored all questions.
I am shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you.
RE: Argenti
my SSI hearing is next Friday.
Good luck! Fingers are crossed for you.
RE: ahostileworld
Life is not a magic pony ride on the rainbow.
The hell you say! If you don’t have a magical rainbow-farting steed, then what is the POINT, I ask of you?
RE: Brooked
Your handle has THREE letters and I still managed to mangle it. That’s impressive.
Don’t worry about it. These things happen. It’s not like that little acronym has much intrinsic meaning. I probably ought to change it, except everyone’s used to it now.
It got me. It finally got me. The blockquote monster…
Oh really? And why is that, I wonder? Is it because the victims hadn’t gotten around to reporting, or because the police hadn’t gotten around to arresting? We’re talking 120 men who admit to raping, 76 of which admitted to raping more than once. Did they commit those crimes the morning of the questionnaire, with the cops waiting right outside the door to nab them when they were done?
These were described as “undetected rapes,” by the way, meaning not reported.
Now why wouldn’t a rape victim file a police report? Given that there is no rape culture and rape is considered abhorrent by society and rape victims are always believed and given support and all that?
Thanks, gillyrosebee. (and all hail to the blockquotes monster).
‘Not reported’? What do you mean by that?