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.
I think we can file that one under “has no idea why women do anything”.
But the image of an angel itself becomes an angel!!
And, uh, maybe no one cares about his site cuz it sucks so bad I couldn’t get sucked in and I’m a sucker for true crime stories? Though I really can’t understand how he thinks…I mean, a list of female serial killers is hateful from the feminist perspective? I’m getting a sense of projection here, seeing how the MRM is allergic to facts.
Jesus, a dead infant in her purse. I’m not sure that in itself is a crime, but it suggests the person needs professional attention. Thanks for turning me on to Robert St. Estephe. I love me some true crime, especially when women are the perpetrators! (I know I’m weird, me with my collection of every-single-book-Ann-Rule-has-ever-written.)
@katz: What have you done? Don’t you know that weeping angels have a power over pumpkins which has never been mentioned before but makes a convenient plot device?
Also too and picture of an angel becomes etc etc.
Before you know it you’re going to be counting backwards from ten and taking over the Statue of Liberty.
@ katz,
That pumpkin is awesome. If I give you my pumpkin, could you carve Paul Elam’s face into it?
I love when woman characters have the same agency and capacity to do evil and wreck havoc that real “bad guys” have. Skylar White was so awesome for that. No doubt she got way more hate than Mr. White though. How dare women be as complex and capable as fellas!
BY THE WAY, MRA SHITSTAINS, THAT DOESN’T MEAN I ENJOY SEEING WOMEN HARM PEOPLE. WHAT I ENJOY SEEING IS MEN AND WOMEN PORTRAYED AS EQUAL IN CAPACITY AND COMPLEXITY. THAT INCLUDES DOING BAD.
Hey now, we want to scare the kids just a little, not give them nightmares for the next year.
And yeah, I don’t know that there’s anything illegal about carrying around human remains. Why someone is doing it leads to all kinds of questions though, some of which might lead to confirmation someone did something heinous.
That sounds utterly heartbreaking. I can’t imagine how awful that decision, and carrying through with it, would be… 🙁 I need brain bleach.
Having only watched breaking bad to the end of season something that I don’t remember but she hadn’t figured it out yet, wasn’t Skylar White actually fairly good? Especially at the beginning? Like, Walt was totally … psychopathic is the only way I can think to describe it (please yell at me if I’m being ableist there but I have trouble thinking of another term that shows such an utter lack of morals and empathy), because he was so unwilling to look at the consequences of his actions and fell into evil-doing pretty quickly.
3rd comment in a row:
HOLY CRAP katz, that’s phenomenal!!
I don’t think people loved their children any less at the time but I do think they were more numb to the reality of losing children. The impression I get from reading personal accounts is people tried hard not to bond with children until they’d survived a year. If they couldn’t feed a child I imagine killing them prior to strengthening the bond saved both parties suffering.
Oh yeah, Skylar starts off really good (so does Mr. White) but, for a time, becomes a willing participant in Walt’s dealings and takes satisfaction in their work. She reaches her tolerance threshold when her brother-in-law is the collateral damage. Then she can no loner stand idly.
Anna Gunn wrote a piece on rabid fan hate for her character Skyler White. Lemme share: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/opinion/i-have-a-character-issue.html?_r=2&
I think it’s great that she mentions other complex TV wives like Carmela Soprano and Betty Draper who receive far more criticism than their very unethical TV husbands.
Yeah, I’ve read that article. Fucking people who hate Betty Draper. Hers is literally the only storyline in Mad Men I even know, and that’s only because I looked up those people in the article and fuck anyone who sides with her husband over her.
Related note: I couldn’t get through Mad Men, I watched the first couple episodes and I thought it was both boring and I hated everyone – there was no character I cared about even a little bit and most of them were actively repulsive. And then I thought to myself “why the hell are you watching people you hate SittieKitty? This is such a waste of your life”, and then I decided I would not watch anything I hated ever again because fuck also wasting your life watching people you loathe.
I imagine that’s still hard, because most people who go through a whole pregnancy have bonded at least a little, not to mention having to labour. Plus, it’s so dangerous, with the way the body works and how likely childbirth was to kill you, to have wasted all that energy and effort bringing a baby into the world. I work in the baby industry, so it’s really sad to me 🙁
@LBT
Having visited his website, I’m pretty confident that he’s not trolling and is simply a very sincere anti-feminist crank. He all in on the fight against evil anti-man feminist forces, which seems to include feminists, governments, society and women in general.
This means he thinks his humorous “new way to identify rape” make sense as a joke or an idea, even though it’s goofy nonsense. It’s kind of endearing how proud of himself he is in that last post, he’s practically taking a bow because he’s convinced he’s killing it. “Take that Amanda Marcotte! Ha!”.
I’m gonna guess that carrying a corpse, at the least, is some sort of crime related to proper treatment of the dead — improper disposal of a corpse or similar. There, uh, may’ve been a corpse in a freezer in Pittsburgh with questions whether it was a stillbirth (in which case obviously not murder charges) or not, and if it was…it’s still improper disposal.
My first thought on hearing that someone was carrying a corpse around is that they were probably the one who killed the person who is now dead. To be walking around with it like that I’m guessing this may be a case where social services needs to be involved as well as the police, because that is a very odd thing to do, but I remain baffled as to why anyone would think feminists (or women in general) would be all “go team! infant corpses are the hot new accessory!”.
I’m sure he’ll find some way to circle this back to Sex and the City.
@Katz, cool pumpkin! If I had children I would love scaring the crap out of them with the Dr Who reboot.
@Argenti, I’m posting here quickly because I don’t want you to waste loads of time because of me.
I am really sorry, but I’ve had some horrible personal stuff happening here and so starting a blog at the moment, I can’t, I’m so sorry.
Didn’t mean to start something and then not follow through, but I did not see this coming.
Maybe someone else could start it with you, or maybe we could do it in a few weeks?
Bit garbled, just things are really bad. I won’t be on for a bit so I hope your SSI meeting goes well.
Sorry again.
Night everyone.
That whole Tentacle Grape thing … and the self-justification from the makers. “But it’s not about real rape! It’s a
nudge nudge wink wink in-joke for the dudesparody of something that’s totally just, hey, cartoons, y’know? Nobody’s adding to rape culture here, nossir!”All the hugs, Ophelia!
@Cassandra
I haven’t seen HBO’s Girls, but it’s a nice change of pace when people use that instead of SatC to critique contemporary women. If Girls doesn’t stick as a cultural touchstone then perhaps the next cable show with all female leads will after it debuts in 2026.
@ Brooked
It does make a nice change, but I’m not so sure that the addition of “one of the characters is fat, ew” is much of an improvement over “but they’re all so old”.
I don’t care for either show, so I remain as confused as ever as to why either of them is supposed to tell us much of anything about women as a group.
@Ophelia, So sorry. More hugs if they’re wanted. Let us know if we can help, even just by being sympathetic listeners.
@katz, Supercool pumpkin.