The self-described ‘Men’s Human Rights Activists” at A Voice for Men have shown time and time again that they have approximately zero interest in actually promoting human rights, but would rather devote their time (and the more than $100,000 the site collects in donations annually) to attacking feminists and women in general.
The latest bit of evidence? The “meme” above, designed not to actually raise awareness of child abandonment but as a sort of “gotcha” aimed at one of their favorite targets, the “Don’t Be That Guy” anti-rape campaign that has been credited with significantly bringing down the incidence of rape in at least one major Canadian city.
AVFM’s Paul Elam introduces the “meme” with this little bit of vitriol:
For those unfortunates who did not get the memo that the Don’t be That Guy meme campaign was offensive because it painted all men as potential rapists, then perhaps this meme will drive that point home. Remember, Don’t be That Hypocrite.
If we pretend for a moment that AVFM’s meme is intended to address a real social problem — child abandonment — do Elam’s claims of hypocrisy make any sense?
Rape is widespread; roughly 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. Men (outside of jail) also face the risk of rape, mostly from other men, though the numbers are much lower; the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign addressed that issue as well. (Incarcerated men — and women — face a much higher risk of rape, at least in the United States, where prison rape is treated as a joke; LGBT prisoners are disproportionately targeted.) Most rape victims know their attackers, making the “date rape” focus of the awareness campaign doubly appropriate. RAINN reports that there are more than 200,000 victims of sexual assault in the US every year.
While the number of rapes is obviously higher than the number of rapists, there’s still a tremendous number of rapists in the general population — and a lot of people who witness rapey behavior, and who might be inspired by the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign to step up and step in to stop it.
Child abandonment, while horrific, is not widespread. While solid data on the actual number of babies abandoned is scanty, the numbers reported tend to be in the hundreds, not the hundreds of thousands, per year. One 2011 story in the New York Times, for example, noted that 63 babies were abandoned illegally in Illinois over the previous ten years. One article I found on the Columbia Journalism School website cited “an unpublished 1999 report by the Department of Health and Human Services [that] found that 108 infants were abandoned in 1998 out of 4 million births.”
In any case, anyone who was truly interested in reducing the numbers of babies illegally abandoned, quite possibly leading to their deaths, would have provided information about “safe haven” laws (which exist in all 50 states in the US) that allow parents to legally give up their babies while ensuring that they will be cared for.
Rape is a crime of entitlement; child abandonment is a crime of desperation. Providing young mothers who are feeling overwhelmed to the point of panic about an alternative to dumping their baby illegally seems a somewhat more sensible approach than shaming them. AVFM’s meme graphic of course provides no such information.
That’s no surprise. As Elam’s intro makes clear, he and his fellow “Human Rights Activists” don’t actually give a shit about abandoned babies. The comments about this new meme are, well, instructive in this regard. For most of the commenters, it seems, this dead baby joke of a graphic is a most hilarious form of human rights activism.
Some selections from the comments:
And apparently only the thought of me “twisting” their words kept some of them from making even more blatant dead baby jokes.
Truly the most important Human Rights Movement of the 21st Century.
o.O
Is this supposed to make the memo clearer? Does this paint all women as potential baby-abandoners?
Oh, right, projection… I forgot.
How are we expected to react? Oh, yes… HOW DARE YOU ACCUSE ALL WOMEN OF THROWING THEIR CHILDREN IN THE TRASH AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!! YOU’RE LITERALLY WORSE THAN HITLER! AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!
How was that, Mr Elam?
An impressive example of using a logical fallacy and failing at even that. I think it’s supposed to be a “tu quoque” but it fails at even that because there’s no equivalence in rate. Sort of like a serial killer defending themself by saying “I may have killed and eaten those twelve people but I know you had a hamburger for lunch. Murderer! Murderer!”
Abandoning children is misandry, even when mothers abandon their daughters who presumably would be quite likely to identify as women (and maybe even feminists!) later in life.
Good message. Make perfect sense.
At first I thought they were making an anti-abortion statement, rather than talking about the dumping of actual babies. I think they should take some lessons in advertising before they make these posters. Mediabistro do good, low cost ones.
Yeah, I thought it was something of an anti-choice thing because I was silly enough to think, “Surely they wouldn’t make a huge social issue out of something as uncommon as child abandonment…”
I have to remember to keep the bar low.
Best to bury the bar somewhere due south of rock bottom…
Tod Kelly’s blog post follow-up to his Daily Beast said the “MRM needs more Victor Zens in its ranks.”
To spread messages like this?
I feel sick.
I think Ray nails it in his comment in the OP. The great injustice is not that babies are abandoned — sometime in horrible locations, sometimes in hospitals — by women, but that women “get” to do it with no repercussions.
If women can abandon their babies, why can’t teh menz? Misandry!
BTW: This is my first post after too much lurking.
But that would be awful!
He was Austrian.
I think they are offended by the anti-rape campaign because they still view ‘rapist’ as an identity, like the shady dude in the bush (or the updated ‘women rape more than men’ version). The problem is, a large proportion of AVfM writers and commenters demonstrate again and again that they are confused as to what constitutes consent.
I do believe anti-rape campaigns should raise awareness on rape targeted at other demographics than the young white cis woman. I’m not sure how caring about men victims leads to baby dumping jokes though. Somehow, it looks like they don’t actually give a shit about men victim of rapes.
On the baby dumpster joke (exhibit z of my upcoming evo psych book “Why MRAs Aren’t Funny”)… Do they actually think women don’t go to jail for killing their child? One abandoned baby is one too much, and a stronger social net can address that problem. On the other hand, I am not sure how the AVfM-style libertarian dystopia would help. The likelihood of the baby going Galt is effectively 0.
auggz — idk what country you’re in, but the US, afaik, doesn’t follow up on births. Yeah, the two other people in the room are both parents (one is my mother) and they confirm this.
I already heard about this one through clicking on what our friend Alisdair from the previous post has to say on Reddit. This is how he feels about the baby dumpster:
Absolutely genius activism. I can’t wait to do some of this myself. It needs to be pervasive. Like if you see a feminist with a baby or with the intent to have one you go “a lot of women dump and kill their babies, you really ought not to do that ” while being really concerned and accusatory.
You know, MRAs, if you’re thinking that the original “don’t be that guy” campaign was referring to you, and you then extrapoliate that to ALL men, what does that say about YOU?
Sorry, one of these days I will master the blockquote.
@babsbeaty
Right! That angle escaped me. I didn’t realize it was advocating for equal rights for men to abandon their child. Silly me, I thought they cared about the babies.
In other news, women are jailed as murderers for miscarrying in El Salvador. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24532694
I guess if you miscarry in El Salvador you might want to keep it to yourself rather than going to the hospital, for fear they will think you induced an abortion. Great healthcare plan.
So, the thing is, in all the states I’ve checked “Safe Haven” laws are gender-neutral, so men already have equal rights to abandon their babies. And since the actual process of handing a baby in to a Safe Haven facility is anonymous, you just have to present yourself as the “parent” of the baby. But most have been written so that the parent(s) can only legally abandon the baby with no consequences fairly close to its birth date. In California, it’s within 72 hours of birth. Infants that appear to be less than 3 days old are accepted with no questions asked, and the infant and the surrendering parent are giving matching ID bracelets in case the parent changes his/her mind within 14 days. 25 babies have been surrendered so far this year in California.
The thing is, when I see educational campaigns around this, I’m not offended at all. I’m glad. Anything that lets scared, desperate new parents know there’s an alternative to unsafely abandoning their baby is a good thing.
What gets me is that this isn’t even a “men’s rights” issue. Like, you could maybe sorta see it as one if you squint real hard and kinda tilt your head to the side, but they’re not even pretending to care about legit issues anymore, they just want to go “gotcha!” at feminists.
I think it comes back, once again, to child support.
The obvious non-parallels between two parents surrendering a child and one parent deciding NOPE and abandoning the other parent and the child seem to escape them, however. They get all hung up on “What do you mean, I can’t not see the child for 12 years and then swoop in with ice cream, cake, and tickets to Disney World?”
Like if you see a feminist with a baby or with the intent to have one you go “a lot of women dump and kill their babies, you really ought not to do that ” while being really concerned and accusatory.
Is this a common thing? Because while I’ve encountered a beating in person, and plenty of sexual harassment in person, plus one of my then-roomies getting roofied, I’ve NEVER encountered a baby abandoning. And also, seriously, how many of us have walked up to a guy with a girlfriend and went, “lots of guys rape their girlfriends, you shouldn’t do that?” Like, how does that help anything? Education isn’t the same thing as accusing; these guys don’t seem to get that.
And MaudeLL, please. Like they DO care about male rape victims like myself.
First, does Ray think that safe haven laws are gender-specific? I haven’t researched the specific law in every US state, but from what I’ve read, they keep the person dropping off the baby anonymous. Meaning that yes, fathers can do it too.
Anyway, this is what’s really bugging me: They think that “Don’t be that girl” is going to be offensive to feminists, because we’re going to be appalled at the idea of taking some responsibility for other women’s actions. But personally, I’ve never met a feminist who’s opposed to safe haven laws. I have known a couple who actively promote better awareness of them and education about how they work. My point being, feminists are generally in favor of changing society to fix societal problems. We’re generally not the type of people who will say “I’ve personally never done that, so it’s not my problem!”
Unlike, say, MRA’s.
Took so long to write my comment that I got ninja’d by cloudiah!
Unless you have a reason to have a guilty conscience on the subject, maybe then it would feel like accusing?
But you added a good point about how feminists, similar to other human rights movements, actually want to make the world a better place by addressing things like child abandonment. This is how you can tell AVfM and their brethren are not a human rights movement.
RE: cloudiah
This is how you can tell AVfM and their brethren are not a human rights movement.
I thought it was their complete lack of doing anything? A movement actually requires, you know. MOVING.