I was going to write up something today about International Men’s Day, the me-too what-about-the-menz holiday that’s so meaningless that even Men’s Rights activists can barely remember to celebrate it. Do we really need a day to “celebrate [the] achievements and contributions” of men? Don’t we get quite a lot of that already? Do we need a day given over to “highlighting the discrimination against [men]” as if this is really a thing?
But then I discovered that today was also World Toilet Day, and realized it was probably more worthwhile to promote this event, as the lack of toilets and proper sanitation — a widespread problem in parts of the developing world, particularly in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa — can have devastating public health consequences.
Some disturbing facts, from the UN, which I clipped from this CNN story:
- 2.5 billion people — one in three people in the world — do not have a toilet or access to sustainable sanitation
- Diarrheal diseases are the second most common cause of death in young children in developing countries
- They kill more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and measles combined
Learn more at the official website. Also, Al Jazeera has a useful infographic.
And just a note to the MRAs who have somehow concluded from this post that I am comparing men or men’s issues to toilets (!?), let me try to make my point very clear: I am contrasting a sharply focused activist campaign aimed at a very real problem — lack of toilets and proper sanitation in large parts of the developing world — with large consequences — disease and death, of adults and children alike — with a badly thought out International Men’s Day that seems largely driven by jealousy that “women get a day so why can’t we have one too.”
How halfassed is International Men’s Day? Here’s a screenshot of the International Men’s Day website’s “resources” page.
Generally speaking, you would expect a “resources” page to list facts and figures and possibly link to relevant other groups. All you get at the International Men’s Day site are some posters made from stock photos.
What I found on the site’s “about” page was much more troubling. The site was put online by a group called the Dads4Kids Fatherhood Foundation, working with the founder of International Men’s Day, Dr Jerome Teelucksingh. The Dads4Kids Fatherhood Foundation, as I discovered with a bit of Googling, turns out to be a virulently homophobic and transphobic organization that is also behind a site called Gendermatters.com. A quasi-manifesto on the site titled 21 Reasons Why Gender Matters asserts, among other things, that:
Transsexuality signals a deceptively fierce disorder. Elective castration, mastectomy, hysterectomy, etc., are futile non-solutions. The cruel, permanent disfigurement of so-called gender reassignment is not the answer. Transsexuals need psychological and spiritual insight that frees them to celebrate the chromosomes they received at conception.
So, yeah, a halfassed men’s “day” that’s associated with transphobic assholes. Not exactly a winning combination.
Look, if you’re concerned about making a difference in the lives of men, pick the issue that matters most to you, and work on that. If you want to increase funding for prostate cancer research, work on that. If you want to raise money to help male victims of domestic violence, work on that. Actually do the hard work of activism. Don’t just have yourself a “day” and pretend that it means something.
EDIT: Rewrote part of the first paragraph and added all the stuff after the Al Jazeera link to clarify the point of this post, because clearly some people have missed the point entirely.
I was going to add it as evidence of hilarious fail, but I guess harassment works too.
Won’t she be surprised if/when the banhammer drops on her pointy head. From all her yelping about censorship, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess she’s been shown the door at several other blogs.
Katz: you are GENIUS for that line-dancing snake drawing. I want that on a t-shirt.
hellkell – I wouldn’t be surprised either. It must hurt, being told that no one is above criticism.
Eh, she’ll just come back with a new sock, they always do.
True, and then we can laugh because that’s a pretty sad life.
Actually, who was the guy who got banned a while back because zie called us mentally deficient? Not accusing Mona of sock, but still.
Alice: I can’t remember, they all turn into a big ball of troll mush in my head after a while, except the classics like Al, Pell, and NWO.
Me either, they just become faceless assholes.
Meller is still my favorite vintage troll because he’s just so weird. Sorry, new trolls, until you start making homemade perfume for your collection of Madame Alexander dolls you just can’t compete.
How could I forget Meller?
The “men want to fuck Hello Kitty, and women are jealous of their cats because men want to fuck those too” moment was also a classic.
Top that, newbies.
Wow, I missed an epic meltdown. Does Mama Sita own stock in a shovel factory? I really hope she doesn’t come back.
WTF?
I mean, I know it’s a post about World Toilet Day, but that’s no excuse to be leaving turds in the thread.
The stick figure post? It’s going to sit tight for a bit since a post of mine just went up and I don’t want to put up two in a row.
Katz — no, I meant…I am doing the thing you discuss in it?
Dammit, I’m working solo today and missed the Moma Sita Meltdown of 2013. I never get to have any fun.
For the record, this particular troll was fond of using the “Kernel of Truth, Mountain of Bullshit” method, coupled with “Zoom-Control.”
Kernel of Truth entails including a small, actual fact in your huge wall of text, and then pretending that any attacks on any portion of that wall are somehow refuting your one true point. In this case, it’s true that in other countries, as in America, intersectionality causes women who do not appear to be ‘local’ to be targeted more by predators, who rely on in-group thinking on the part of authorities to partly shield them from reprisal. In nations that are not white-majority (or more accurately, white-dominant; it certainly wouldn’t have applied in South Africa during apartheid), this is going to include the targeting of white women. (Note the point where she begrudgingly mentioned that black women would also be targeted in this fashion and then never mentioned it again, preferring to play up the image of a white blonde being targeted by a swarthy horde.)
Of course, the situation is still more complicated than even that, since there’s ample evidence that the history of colonialism has created some degree of white privilege even in such nations–skin-bleaching isn’t something that happens because women want to be part of a marginalized class.
“Zoom Control” is an attempt to manipulate and channel the conversation by controlling the level that it happens at. It’s true that globally, HIV infection is (or at least was, I admit I haven’t seen recent statistics of the global HIV population) a heterosexual condition. In America, of course, it’s disproportionately focused on the gay population, because of so many unique factors in its propagation here that it’s hard to pin down which had more effect.
At the same time, she wants to “zoom in” to national levels (and zoom into the nations SHE wants to zoom in on) in order to defend the blonde rape thing (BTW, did she present ANY evidence of ‘rape riots’ targeting blonde women? I did a google for the phrase and only found stories about the infamous bus-rape and other events that led to riots in protest of the authority’s inaction. If you look globally, I’m pretty sure that white privilege on this matter is still a real thing (in part because in white-dominant nations, there’s large numbers of non-white immigrants; white women in non-white nations are far more likely to be tourists, which usually entails a certain degree of economic privilege–yay, intersectionality!).
That said, I’m not QUITE ready to declare Moma a troll. I think she’s just a really, really bad feminist.
Yeah, I’m just gonna have to go ahead and disagree with that mountain of ‘splain topped with the nugget above.
What … I missed quite a discussion.
You mean drawing a woman with hair and stuff so you know she’s a woman?
Not unless you also have a generic character who we’re supposed to know is male.
She’s hallucinating race statistics and white oppression in America.
The rape crisis in Egypt, India and other non-Western countries is almost solely victimizing non-white local women and this “rape riot” white oppression intersectionality is fucking horseshit.
Troll is as troll does, I say. If you harass people, throw fits, scream “censorship” whenever anyone disagrees with you, and make demeaning comments about mental illness, then you’re a troll and I don’t care if you’re a feminist or not.
Was this the thread that had the line-dancing snakes? ‘Cos that was wonderful.
I assumed she was talking about the rape of Laura Logan, but she didn’t say so. Also, she may not have come here intending to troll, but she sure as hell turned into one imo.
Is there a picture of the line-dancing snakes? I missed those.
Line-dancing snakes.