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!
Also, here is the silliest brain bleach I could find:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr1wc4khkGM
Asshole:
That trick (gaslighting) doesn’t work when the things you are trying to deny is in writing.
But… let’s use that metric.
You are an anonymous user*
You are possibly contaminated by personal animosity
You are unchecked for personal bias
Your representative status cannot be determined.
That’s before we deal with the lies, logical failures, inconstistencies in position, significant contradictions in arguments (often in the same paragraph, once in the same sentence).
So, a disinterested observer ought to believe you because?
Oh right, you are opposed to feminists.
*I say this because there is only, to apparent evidence, one instantiation of this username here; it has no persistence, so it remains in the “anon” category. The regulars here are pseudononymous; there is an important distinction in that difference.
“I’m a classical music guy” is usually code for “I’m an insufferable fuckwit.” Kind of like the people who look down on TV as some lowbrow, cretinous medium.
Dammit, one didn’t turn into a movie!
So… MRA acquaintance guy, when explaining why Rebecca Watson was an evil misandrist and quite possibly Hitler reincarnate… “she called me a rapist.”
It’s really bad that I haven’t tried to clarify that, isn’t it? I mean… it could be that he’s running with the “attraction is objectification” line that they like, right? But… I totally understand why people want to deny that this is a problem at all right now. Not why they’re willing, but… fuck dissonance.
McGee: I just told you *again* why your ‘proof’ had to be dismissed.
Nope. You dismissed it because you didn’t like it.
From an epistemic standpoint it categorically disproved your contention (i.e. that no one had ever been helped by the concept of rape culture).
When someone tells you of their emotional experience, it is, (unless you have actual evidence to impeach the claim) presumptively true.
You really don’t logic, and you think no one else does either.
So what does it mean for all those people who said that it helped them… were they just mistaken and were not helped at all? Because wow, even the not helping them because of this thing that apparently doesn’t exist helped!
Pseudo anonymous is too forgiving — your nym can, if you try (and not too hard), be linked to your legal name; mine requires a bit more digging, and some lucky logical guesses, but it could be done. We can’t be the only ones whose nyms are tied to us across the net and, in some obscure way, to our legal names.
And amazingly un-German.
Oh dear, you really are having considerable difficulties understanding the concept ‘burden of proof’.
This shit again (is the Third Time The Charm?
(I didn’t close the window, I was ready)
@kittehserf
Got it in one.
Any dude who spends this much time arguing about rape and what it is and isn’t, etc., is likely doing it because he doesn’t want to admit he’s raped at least one person.
So not worth my time either. I will instead go flail about how awesome “Arrow” was tonight. 🙂
Athywren – hypothetically, this is altogether possible. What is required here is a double-blind survey of one or several rape victims and their opinions about the usefulness (or lack thereof) of the term rape culture.
A what?
A double blind study… so the rape victims don’t know if they were really rape victims?
What is your control group? Victims of, “real rape”?
How do you know it was real rape? (the only answer to that which works, is repugnant).
This is gibberish. It’s pseudologic, meant to make it possible to dismiss any study which has results you don’t like.
Translated from the German this means, “I will never admit I am wrong, so I win”.
Athywren:
I’m now imagining you saying “So … are you?” and watching the resultant frothrageexplosion. Very skeleton-in-the-closet stuff, very telling, those reactions.
pecunium, SittieKitty – of course they weren’t helped, because rape culture doesn’t exist, and they weren’t raped anyway if they didn’t go to the police and the rapist wasn’t convicted! After all we know that unreported/undetected means didn’t happen. We also know emotions are bad, and worthless, and not Science, and why should superiorbrainzman believe anything that doesn’t suit him?
It’s not like he’s emotionally invested in this, or in getting a reaction with his trolling.
The really annoying thing is that they make it so hard to admit to liking classical genres. I’m a really big fan of some, I particularly like the Planets suite, but it feels dirty talking about it with people who don’t already know you well.
I’ve never understood anyone who’ll only listen to one type of music though. How sad it must be to deny yourself so much culture. I won’t let anybody take my Bach from me, but that doesn’t mean I’ll refuse to listen to this –
or this –
drst:
THIS.
I have knitting to do, and I swear the synthetic yarn I’m using is a better member of society than rapeytroll will ever be.
Athywren – d’you like early music, too? (As in mid-seventeenth century or earlier.)
Love me some Renaissance stuff and early Baroque. The change in style in Sir’s earthly days is so marked.
Athywren: I work with two classical experts, one with a degree in composition/conduting, no less, and they never act that way. They also appreciate and like other forms of music.
It’s the posers you gotta look out for.
I know someone who’s not averse to bashing out Springsteen classics on his lute. 🙂
You’re not wrong. First time I walked into a roomful of Pre Raphaelite paintings (at the Tate?) I was all “WTF guys, keep your skeevy fantasies to yourselves, ‘kay?”
(This coming from someone who does almost entirely prefer European art, lol. Portraits are my faves!)
Pollock’s name will probably be forever associated with Blue Poles here after the government coughed up wads of cash for it in the 70s. 😀
Yeah… I’ve had that imagined conversation. I really didn’t like the outcome… I’ll ask him tomorrow… (snooze x317)
I think by the time I could take the answer I suspect I’d get, I’ll be ready to just cut all ties anyway. I mean, why would that have been said? Either he asked her a direct question about whether what he did was rape and she said yes, or he read or heard something she wrote or said about what makes an action rape and it was something he’d done, or it’s that typical misrepresentation thing. I have a hard time wanting to see any of those options be true. At least the last is merely dishonest.
Well, I suppose, massive benefit of the doubt to him, and throwing Führerin Watson under the bus yet again (I often concede that she truly is the reincarnation of Hitler, just so we can actually get on to relevant topics.) there’s the possibility that she called him a rapist, just because she’s an eeeeeeeevil feminazi. Doubtful.
I haven’t heard a lot of Renaissance music, though I like a decent amount of most styles and periods. To date, it’s only that free form noodly Jazz that I dislike more than I like… I’m sure it’s fun to play, but so much is just tedious to me.
Do you have any suggestions for particular pieces I should listen out for?
That must be fun! :3
My brother has a music degree, though it’s more the recording/mixing stuff that I can’t remember the name for… music tech? Maybe… dunno. Anyway, I’ve had some incredibly interesting discussions, and heard some incredibly interesting music because of spending time with him.
Hey look, I found a ‘tache to really upset snottytroll:
incognito
Athywren: It’s probably Audio Engineering he got his degree in.
Just what is considered modern art anyways? Cuz please put me in front of Mondrian’s compositions. (I’m also immensely fond of sumi-e, but that’s obviously not modern art [dear gods those brush strokes! the confidence that requires! the knowledge of the subject *swoons*])