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.
although I’m not a fan of strip poker or other stripping games so I think we should leave this element out. Otherwise, run with it. I think this fantasy novel/game thing could work. /silly
Oooh, I see where you’re going here. Instead of rolling dice, we use skill at tiddlywinks to determine damage etc. I like it – a mixture of skill & luck. This is a great idea.
Does this mean there’ll be cake? Tell me there’ll be cake. A fantasy roleplaying game, including transformer weapons, crossed with tiddlywinks plus added cake. Where do I sign up?
titianblue: I think I prefer Dread‘s use of “pulls” from a Jenga tower. Of course, that’s a horror RPG, and the idea is to steadily amp up the tension by making it harder and harder to succeed.
@freemage Jenga would work too. Just need to keep it well away from the cake. Jenga-squashed cake – not a good thing. 😉
Well, unless you did it a little differently… I’m now imagining a Jenga tower made of Kit-Kat segments. You’d need to keep the room chilly, though, or melting chocolate would make pulls get a LOT harder, fast.
And now I want cake. Thanks, troll! ::growls::
Adds “Multipack of kitkats” to shopping list …
Oh my stars and garters…. Pharyngula has linked to another MRA site, and it’s… glorious in it its pomposity. Gentlefolk, I give you… Thumotic!
For extra fun, look at this takedown of the very name of the site, by Pharyngula’s excellent poster, cartomancer:
We actually had a visitor from Thumotic.
Skater, from this comment. http://manboobz.com/2013/10/25/attention-seeking-manosphere-guru-roosh-v-posts-article-on-why-you-should-beat-your-kids/comment-page-2/#comment-368316
But if the kit kats were melty enough, the goo might help hold the tower together.
But then the tower will topple if you try to pull one out. The game wouldn’t last long if it melted. It also wouldn’t be great because you can’t eat them during the game ;_;
Freemage: I love that site already. David hasn’t written about that beautiful graph yet, has he?
katz: I don’t think so, though I know some folks here mentioned the original Pharyngula article about it.
How did a miss that gem of a post from Kronos?
Pithy?
Thanks for the laughs Kronos and have a Happy Halloween!
Give me an “E”!!!! “E”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Give me an “A”!!!! “A”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Give me an “L”!!!! “L”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Give me a “M”!!!! “M”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What does it spell?!!!! *crickets*
* L before A, obviously *slinks away embarassedly*
spells male backward if you L before A
@shadow
Don’t worry, Kronos checked Alexa and found out no one reads this site because they are in the thrall of Paul Elem and his crack staff.
We already knew that David didn’t get any traffic because Pell used his leverage as a major ISP shareholder to install a keylogger on David’s server.
(For all you whippersnappers.)
I totally read that as legos.
Thumos, Eros,
LegosLogos and sidekick@sittiekitty
It’s why I’ve always thought that Elam was an alias. Now, I think he was created for the sole purpose of WATMing
@Brooked
A cracked staff would explain his constant grouchiness
What’s WATM, Shadow? All I’m getting on Google are ads for cranes. 😛
But… it’s a server, what keystrokes is it going to log?
Don’t try to make sense of Pell’s word salads, it’ll make your brain melt.
…but it’s a server!
My nose sure is running a lot suddenly…
::hands Athywren bunch of Kleenex Man-Size Tissues::
Did Kronos try to do an appeal to popularity as an argument? LOLOLOLOLOLOL
I thought we were all David (or cats or ferrets in David suits, or David in a variety of cat and ferret suits). This site actually has no traffic at all, because there is only David, posting and then commenting as hundreds of sock puppets. It’s exhausting, I must confess, especially when David comments from all around the world, all day and all night. I never sleep.
It’s scary new kitty gravatar day! 😯
kittehs – MEROW. >:D
Eeeeeeek!
The best to scare away MRAs with. *nodnod*
Feminist Halloween kitty!
what about the menzing kitteh
@Kitteh
I is a vampire cat!
I thought you might be, Athywren! 😀
… though aren’t all cats vampires?
Aren’t you a cute kitty ::pat pat pat:: OW!
Vampire kitteh rises from the grave
@kitteh’s
Like sittiekitty said, What About The Menzing
Vampire Kitties!
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/13/db/18/13db1875867507497eac66cdc87469b3.jpg
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/34/eb/da/34ebdab05876c1bff761cc797d0d952b.jpg
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/64/5c/f2/645cf27e4ebf0e7464ba80d516014cd2.jpg
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f6/42/53/f6425367f97ea2607616cd66ed11be2e.jpg
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/0b/12/c2/0b12c26f46ff388cfff47bbdc5024c13.jpg
neuroticbeagle winz the pics again!
I wish I had a pic of Offie (RIP) that showed his maginificent vampire fangs. You can get a glimpse of one here. Between them, his general looks and his voice he was one scary cat, but he was a sweetheart.
That cat has ears like a bat. He was a vampire!
PS “Offie” was short for Off Licence. Don’t ask, his dad never did say why he gave him that name! (Yes, I know what an off licence is. I lived on chocolate biscuits from one when I was in Edinburgh.)
Hey, one of my besties from high school had a cat named Stir Fry (because the cat tried to climb into a wok full of same as a kitten).
Ears like a bat and the voice of the banshee, typical Oriental cat, that boy! 🙂
This feller (called Bela!) is quite like him:
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3105/3196707989_1e18867f4f_z.jpg
STIR FRY oh dear! 😀
he’s beautiful kitteh, did you know the breed? almost looks havana, but not brown…
He was an Oriental Black, as far as I knew. No idea whether he was purebred, but that breed certainly predominated. He was a lovely boy, though; I wish I’d had time to meet him again (I was with him for a few weeks flat-sitting). If you Google “Oriental black” the images that come up are just like him.