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.
Someone needs to make a sitcom about what it’s like to live in a dodgey sharehouse, where everyone is constantly broke and they don’t necessarily like each other or know each other before they move in.
There is so much potential for over-the-top humour and drama and interesting characters.
Has anyone read the novel He Died with a Felafel in His Hand? Or seen the play? They made a movie of it, but it was terrible and nothing like the book because a movie is just not long enough. But a tv show based on it, or on other ‘true’ anecdotes would be a great way to show that missing middle ground.
Oh, and speaking of UK shows showing money differently, how about Keeping Up Appearances? Or The Good Life? (I rewatched that recently and it’s still funny and holds up really well despite the strange 70s clothes)
Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine is set in San Francisco, and the main character’s sister is a divorced woman with two kids who bags groceries for a living, yet she lives in an enormous apartment in the gentrified Mission district. We are supposed to view her as working class because the apartment has tacky decor, but rental costs aren’t set by the taste level of the renter. Bugged the shit out of me.
Girls fun fact: People who live in the Brooklyn neighborhood it’s set in, Greenpoint, blame the show for cursing it with an influx of hipsters and jacked up rental prices.
@Katz: I have different theories about why, in American movies and TV, the “middle class” is pretty wealthy and the upper class live in comically opulent mansions. The first theory is that Americans tend to define the rich as people who have more money then they do; successful people in the movie industry think millionaires are comfortable and the rich have hundreds of millions.
The second theory is that in America the “old money” upper class don’t exist outside of Edith Wharton novels at this point and wealth is associated with extravagance and excess. The Middle Class is anyone not spending endless money on luxury goods.
The third theory is that being working class may be a point of pride in Britain but it’s seen as just depressing in the US.
I think Friday Night Lights does a good job of showing realistic depictions of people. It’s set in a small town which helps, but all the people do seem to have houses and cars comparable to their incomes. They also never seem to resort to contrived misunderstandings to create drama, which is refreshing.
@ Kim, re the sharehouse – The Young Ones?
My theory is it’s the “upward mobility” idea; I think we like to pretend that if you’re poor (ie, you don’t own a four-bedroom house and two new cars), that’s a temporary thing and it’ll be better later. So we think of that portrayal as an accurate portrayal of ourselves, even though we don’t live that way and never have, because it’s how we assume we will be living and that’s our actual “normal” state.
auggz – let me get this straight: pedobear started as mocking pedophiles, but has been taken more or less as their mascot instead, is that right?
I’m not really sure what you’re driving at, I have to admit, but I have a pretty much “joking about pedophilia in any way = not funny” feeling, because it’s always going to end up hurting the victims, isn’t it?
I think you made a typo here – “*I’m not saying it’s ok, I’m just saying that a rape or suicide joke is not comparable to dead baby or holocaust“
I feel like most of the jokes I’ve seen people make about lolicon have been along the lines of “lol, people who’re into lolicon are pathetic losers”. Maybe I just don’t hang out with the sort of people who would make that into a joke about the victims of child abuse?
Which is part of why the tentacle grape thing is so baffling to me, because it basically reads as “I’m a sad loser and proud of it, now let me give you way too much money for this overpriced soda. Please rip me off!”.
(Hoping this won’t turn into an argument about how lolicon is actually awesome and not problematic at all like it did last time this came up.)
(BTW before some angry lolicon loving dude comes along and yells “misandry”, yes, I think shota is creepy too.)
I’m not sure Pedobear is mostly used by pedophiles per se, but it’s definitely gone from a thing you post if someone is acting creepy to a meme with no punch line other than “he’s a pedophile!”
I think some people use it to mock and/or shame people and some people use it in a “lol that’s hilarious” way.
I’m sure tentacle grape is just a stupid pun some entirely earnest anime fan thought up and it’s meant to be harmless and he just hasn’t ever thought “hey, some real people have been raped and I bet that when they hear a pun on the word ‘rape,’ they don’t think it’s very funny.”
But I’m equally sure that if you tried to get him to think about it, he’d just throw a fit about how you’re taking the whole thing too seriously.
The sense of persecution that a lot of geeky guys feel plays into this too. You’re just calling him out because you hate anime nerds and men not to be allowed to have sexual feelings, and so on (and on and on).
Lawyers: My cousin is one and works 70 plus hours a week. She makes good money though,.
@cassandrasays
I agree with you on geeky guys feeling persecuted. I’ve been hassled far too much at conventions to feel sorry for them though. I don’t understand why “cosplaying is NOT an invitation to touch” is so complicated for them. Sexual harassment continues to be a problem for me at conventions.
The problem with a lot of the guys who are into anime is that there tends to be a disconnect between seeing women as people. Being awkward is fine. Not listening when you are told to respect someones boundaries is a whole ‘nother ball park.
@ Kim
I quite liked fresh meat , it was on channel 4 in the UK about students living in a shared house. Though even in that their house was a lot nicer than many shared houses I’ve lived in, especially when I was a student.
In my experience of US/UK tv, US tv just seems to have more of a gloss on everything. Like the classic joke about British people have bad teeth, I’m sure there are plenty of Americans with ‘bad teeth’ they just wouldn’t be allowed in front of a camera!
My favourite illustration of the difference between UK and US tv-shows are the ones being shown daily on Swedish television. Emmerdale (most watched afternoon show on Swedish tv!) is about normal looking, mostly average-to-poor people in rural Yorkshire, while The Bold and the Beautiful is about rich, good looking people in LA. The difference is rather stark. I love Emmerdale, by the way.
I sort of assume most of the “large flat”-thing has to do with it being more easily filmed.
While 2 Broke Girls is hella problematic for loads of reasons, said broke girls wear the same clothes a lot of the time, are mostly seen at work or at home and generally seem to live like they have a limited income. (Apart from the fantasy aspect of having a horse in their yard, of course…)
Speaking as a geeky-type person (…why am I a member of so many subcultures that are full of this misogynistic shit?) I get really pissed off by this. “No! I can’t be in the wrong here! I was bullied at school!” So fucking what? You don’t get tokens. Five years of being treated like shit in your youth doesn’t give you a free pass to treat others like shit for five years in adulthood. And how the fuck does it seem like it should? Did you idiots learn nothing from your tormentors?! Ffs, you know how that kind of treatment hurts, then you inflict it on others? Fuck that. And then to paint criticism of your behaviour as “demonisation of natural male sexuality.”
Dislike.
“Objectivity is very convenient for the straight white middle class male gamer. Videogame culture encourages him to see his own subjectivity as the standard, as objective. He’ll invoke science, economics, statistics, and all manner of folk wisdom to defend his little kingdom. He’ll decry any challenge as ‘politics’ or ‘bad business’ or ‘whining’ or ‘here we go again’. He never considers how often objectivity is a cover for a dominant subjectivity, for a subjectivity that stays in power by not being recognized as such. He fears what will happen if the established order breaks down and the Vox take control”
This is from this review
http://tevisthompson.com/on-videogame-reviews/
It’s really well written, and hits on a lot of things about video games, gamers and the stagnation of imagination due to privilege.
I’m not caught up, but I wanted to tell Ophelia not to worry about the blog, I can get the start of something up on my own, even if it’s just a sandbox for now. Also, I hope everything works out, and thanks for the well wishes on my hearing. The barrel of hugs is around if you want some, I think there are cute animals lurking in there too.
Do ‘they’ honestly think rape isn’t really a thing and that it never happens or are they just trying to persuade others? This is why I don’t comment on serious threads. My confusion sounds stupid.
@daintydougal
Some of them are predators. People who are trying very hard to muddy the water so they can continue to get away with the behaviors they want to get away with. (see also: PUA, Roosh, etc.)
Some of them are dupes. They’ve bought into the hysteria and the hyperbole.
Don’t spend too much time trying to parse who’s who. A person’s intentions only count for so much; in effect, they’re all rape apologists.
@daintydougal
Your confusion doesn’t sound stupid, it’s the natural result of belief in human decency. It’s a good thing.
I think most of them are, in their terms, “useful idiots.” Among the people who “all know that rape is a terrible thing,” but don’t understand what rape is, and who buy into all that nonsense about feminism being about destroying men and subjugating their sexuality. It doesn’t really matter though because, as Howard says, whatever their private, internal moralities, they’re rape apologists in practice.
>>>In the UK you could still call a person who has a lot of money and lives in a huge house working class, if that’s the class they were born into
Ugh.
Yeah I noticed that during the Julie Bindel + other apparently well-known feminist in the UK’s transphobia affair. They were trying to claim that they were solid working class, unlike all the Tumbler/Twitter “bullies” who were just academics (even though I know some of them are WoC and/or working class). Dude, if you’re doing talks and writing articles for a living, you’re petty bourgeois at the least. I don’t care where you were born.
Sorry. “Petit” bourgeois. I should not be making that mistake, considering the amount of time I spend correcting Anglo Marxists who misunderstand the definition of that class by failing to realize that it comes from the French for “small” and not from the English for “petty”.