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!
That’s like philosophy 101, stuff we explain to students as soon as free will is brought up…
Determinism: Whatever happens was determined by what happened before. Ultimately, everything that happens was determined by the distant past and the laws of nature.
Fatalism: It doesn’t matter what I do, the end result is gonna be the same anyway.
Determinism=/=Fatalism.
Athywren — “you shall have no other gods before me” comes close (Christianity, and, I think, Judaism)
@Argenti, this is true… but “you shall have no free will before me” doesn’t really scan well. I know most religions have the “believing other things is naughty” clause, it’s just how they word it.
Yep, all three Abrahamite religions have the “there’s no God but God” clause.
The issue of free will in the Quran is, erm, well…you know how at the very beginning it says that this book is free of contradictions? Not true.
@ Radical Parrot, thank you for sharing your story! Lots of hugs in the variety you like best. Me, I prefer cats
(bonus: kitten bellies)
Yep, all three Abrahamite religions have the “there’s no God but God” clause.
From my conversations with my rabinnically trained partner, and her father the rabbi, this isn’t really true of Judaism.
Judaism has a pair of tenets, 1: God is God, and all other gods are to be abjured. 2: Other gods are real, in some sense, but they aren’t God.
This is, so I am told, the reason that having a “false” god’s blessing put on grapes/grape juice/wine makes it unclean. IT has been dedicated to another, and as such it puts that god before God.
This, so it is explained, can only be the case if we accept the existence (but not legitimacy) of those other Gods.
It’s complicated.
Yeah, it’s apocalypticism for the irreligious. A mythology by which all the sh*tty things that happen in the world are revealed to be part of some Grand Plan and all suffering is redeemed when those perceived as the Evil Enemy are subjugated in turn and the Rightful Balance is brought back to the world.
(Erratic capitalization brought to you by the purveyors of this wish-fulfillment nonsense)
Argenti: Oh, whut? Everything feminists do to help men is because we’re bowing to the MRM?
I need coffee, I can’t make sense of that.
It’s post hoc cargo cultism.
Accepted, a priori: Feminism hates men.
Posited: The MRM is working to help men.
Observed, Feminism doing something which helps men.
Assumed: Feminism is reacting, defensively, to some outside pressure they need to deflect/co-opt/neutralise.
Concluded, that force must be the MRM.
Argued: The MRM is gaining traction, because The Almighty Feministas are doing things to keep from getting credit for the “work” it has done.
Re: John Anderson? Yeah, no. Just no. Though, give him credit, he’s upfront about it.
As with ahostiledoodooface, if “accomplishment” and “MRA” mean exactly what he says they mean at any given moment, no matter how that might contradict what he said/says at a previous or future moment, then sure, sitting around in your mom’s basement and filling up the comment sections of websites with blather about how the feminazis and the Canadian government killed Earl Silverman is accomplishment, and all those other folks don’t worship him as their spokesman, so they aren’t “true” MRAs. Q.E.D.
Oh, well other than the fallacies, that makes sense, in it’s own world.
Bit late but:
@Radical parrot (Great name by the way, I have a budgie who is somewhat impassioned.)
I’m so sorry you’ve been through such an awful experience, and I hope I didn’t say anything during my drunken ramblings to make you feel worse.
Really hope you’re feeling a bit less blah now. I’m not doing a good job of saying the right thing at the moment, but I just wanted to say something at least.
I think you need brain bleach.
Mrs Doyle is feckin’ awesome, but Mr M says I probably sound a bit more like Jen in the IT crowd.
http://youtu.be/dwVmgrhxe2M
(Hope no one finds that offensive, Denholm is meant to be a bigoted asshat.)
@sittiekittie, I really hope you feel happier soon.
And thanks so much everybody for letting me ramble last night/this morning (depending on time zone.) it really did help.
Oh and @radical parrot, call me Ophelia. 🙂
Sorry, Radical Parrot.
Gonna stop commenting tonight, over thinking it. 🙂
Moar hugs all round for anyone wanting ’em!
To Ophelia and Radical Parrot and everyone: you don’t need to apologise. Telling our histories (“story” bugs me because it sounds like it means fiction) isn’t dominating threads or taking over or anything. It’s part of the conversation, part of what makes us a community. This isn’t “cool story bro” Troll Tales. It’s us and it’s important.
Everyone who thinks “Oh I shouldn’t be saying this, I’m being selfish/self-pitying/derailing” – think about it: do you feel that way when someone else is sharing something? No, you don’t, you offer hugs and sympathy and advice where wanted, because you’re good people. That’s good as in lovely, kind, smart and caring.
So, that being said – why should X feel they can’t speak, when X doesn’t say that about anyone else? Jerkbrain, that’s why, the message we’ve probably all absorbed that we’re not worthy or shouldn’t seek attention or whatever.
Pffft to that. (If only trolls had that “shouldn’t seek attention” thing working!) You’re not rambling, not butting in, and there’s nothing to apologise for.
This is my feeling on the matter, obvs, but I’m betting I’m not alone. I wanted to get this out there.
I also want to say I would never have thought pouring tea from a pretty china pot could be sexy. The things you learn.
Seconding everything kittehs just said, because it is exactly yes.
Thank you!
Especially the teapot bit. 😉
@katz
That’s ridiculously cute :3
@auggz
No, no, no, you don’t understand. The world’s not Disneyland only when it works in ahostileworld’s favor. Otherwise you guys are just being meany poos 😛 Or trolling.
@ophelia
You are not an arse. And internet hugs from me, if you want them 🙂
@argenti
🙁 Good luck. Internet hugs, if you want them.
@fi
That sucks 🙁 (not the puppy part, the depressive part. duh.) Internet hugs, if you want them.
@titanblue
He sounds familiar. Has he been here long?
@radical parrot
I’ll keep that in mind then :3
That’s horrible 🙁 All the internet hugs you want.
You didn’t sound self-pitying to me :3 And I really can’t complain about long posts. (see: every time I try to catch up on a thread. …oh look, that’s now XD)
@argenti
Yep. I definitely remember that from Christianity, though idk if I’ve learned the phrase before.
@kittehs
That is a great picture :3
So much seconding.
And, more internet hugs for anyone who I missed and/or wants some. :3
Marie – thank you! 🙂
I was thinking of you, too, young lady, when I wrote that screed. ::peers over glasses at Marie::
@kittehs
Well, I’ll take that as a compliment 😀
I have to say, it really confuses me how ahostileasshole found it reasonable to decry addressing him in a comments section as the equivalent of street harassment… I mean, clearly, by that logic, street harassment is a bad thing and a problem! But not rape culture, no, there’s no such thing as societal problems like women being considered objects that exist for the sole enjoyment of men who just want to tell them how nice their tits are and what they’d like to do with them while enjoying a complete lack of consequences of such… harassment… on… the… street……….
Really, I just cannot wrap my head around the sheer willful ignorance and disingenuous, poor-faith arguing that went into that asshole’s screeds. Truly, it boggles the mind.
Deste, I’m still trying to figure out why he labeled you and you alone as a troll to whom he refused to reply (except to tell you that he wasn’t going to reply). I mean, you asked lots of pertinent, polite questions, whereas half the time I was just mocking or baiting him and he still answered me.
katz, maybe ‘cos deste used EVIL CAPS at trolly mcasshole, which no Lady would do?
I, meanwhile, will just twirl my Tom Selleck moustache.
Okay, big old love in here, turn away if you don’t like my hippy dippy Buddhist shit. 🙂
@Fi,
I am so sorry. I really did try to send hugs earlier, but I changed a bit of my last comment and the bit between Radical Parrot and SittieKitty got chopped out when I added the Denholm disclaimer.
Trouble with reading things so many times is it blurs and I get in a panic that I’m saying it all wrong, then, inevitably, I screw it up.
Anyway all the hugs coming your way, hope you feel happier soon. 🙂
@dustydeste, thank you for being so great about all of the ableism stuff, it really made me feel better. 🙂
@Marie, you are always spot on, Kitteh’s right, you always get it right but worry too much.
Yeah, I’m a hypocrite, a hippy hypocrite 🙂
@katz, that last picture was brilliant! When I lurk Mr M and I never miss a Pierre. 🙂
All the cutes, a poor naked Sebastian:
http://youtu.be/YRJlj8bkx4c
@Kitteh, I really am having trouble with my words, but thank you, for the emails too. You’ve no idea how much you’ve helped.
http://youtu.be/Czsj679dk_c
And yes, hippy dippy me uses plenty smilies :). I am not apologising!
Okay…sorry ’bout the smilies. 🙁