Men’s Rights Activists continue to make strategic use of the media attention they’ve gained as a result of the Elliot Rodger killings. Yesterday, Al Jazeera America ran an interview with A Voice for Men’s “US News Director” Robert O’Hara in which he touched upon numerous important Men’s Rights issues, like the fact that he doesn’t hate women because his mother is one, and how it was totally an amazing publicity coup for AVFM to be singled out as a misogynistic hate site by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Let’s look at some highlights from his Q and A. (The block quotes are direct quotes from the man, the legend, himself.)
Men aren’t having a giant patriarchy party all the time:
The idea of male entitlement is almost entirely a fabrication of feminist ideology. The idea that men kind of run the show – this patriarchy theory – and that we’re having a big huge party at the expense of women is really a hateful idea.
I don’t have the statistics with me but I’m totally sure that rape almost never happens:
We hear all these silly lies: there’s a rapist behind every corner; all men are potential rapists. …
I don’t have the exact statistics with me right now, but you’ll see it’s usually around 2 percent of women in their lifetime will have some kind of problem with sexual assault. …
[T]his whole rape things has been used by feminists to garner political power, lots of it, and money. The whole thing has been used as a scam.
(O’Hara’s claim about the rareness of rape was such a whopper that Al Jazeera felt obligated to note that a recent large-scale study by the Centers for Disease Control found that one in five women in America had experienced rape or attempted rape. Not one in fifty.)
When feminists talk about rape it apparently causes homophobia or unhealthy gay sex or something:
There’s no doubt that male sexuality has been demonized in our culture. And that’s a real shame. I think that inhibits a lot of men’s sexuality to the extent where it’s not healthy – especially homosexuals, especially gay men.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is totally irrelevant and besides they did us a favor by calling us hateful:
The SPLC, they’re not a credible organization, not like they once were. And I think the whole this of them listing us, or targeting us as a hate group didn’t work out too well for them. It worked out much better for us [in terms of publicity] than it did for them.
All you need is love:
I love women. My mom is a woman. … What I do not like is that we live in a culture and in a legal environment where if you do choose to have a relationship with a woman, it makes things very complicated and oftentimes dangerous.
Great job, Bob! Another flawless victory for the Men’s Rights Movement!
All mocking aside, I have found video proof of this last claim. Marriage can be very dangerous for men. Heck, they don’t even have to be the one getting married.
That’s a cute little rhetorical trick there. Package something reasonable with something absurd, and then reject them as a whole. And it’s technically correct, it’s just massively dishonest. It’s like saying “The idea that white people kind of run the show – this racial discrimination theory – and that we’re always riding around on our unicorns laughing at the expense of people of color is really a hateful idea”.
OK, so I seem to be missing some of my pain pills.
I think this O’Hara dude took them. DUDE! Don’t do interviews when you’re high!
Speaking of high – I had to take two pills tonight, and I went to see “Camelot,” and I just wanted to march on the stage and spank Mordred. It was theater in the round, and I was front row, so I totally could have done it, too.
Except, my sister was supervising me, so I couldn’t.
Dude was standing right in front of me, saying, “Don’t attack me. I’m unarmed,” while grabbing his dagger from behind his back, and I said (probably too loudly), “NO, he’s NOT! The little liar!”
Don’t go to the theater when you’re high.
I’ll add it to the list.
Seriously, though, this guy thinks this is GOOD PR? What an idiot.
@daintydougal
“Stupid ‘words’ with their stupid ‘meanings’.”
Darn. In the time it took to quote you, I forgot what I was going to say in response to it. I think it was something deep and meaningful.
Like the stuff O’Hara keeps saying.
HAHAH.. I really did forget. I’m gonna stop now. It’s just… Even as high as I am right now, I can recognize the stupidity! WHy, in Heaven’s mane can’t. they?
@cloudia – A pedicab driver?
I got this mental image of a person getting in a taxi, and sticking their feet up over the back of the front seat, and asking for purple toenail polish.
Hi, Michelle, how’ve you been? Missed you the last few days. 🙂
I’m loving the guinea pig story.
LBT – I was told by the jerks who sexually harassed me, “Oh, no, Michelle. We would never hurt you. We LOVE you! If you would just do what we want, we wouldn’t HAVE to hurt you.”
Yeah, “love.” I like BEll hooks’ definition better, too.
Welcome Fluffypeaony.
Welcome package: http://artistryforfeminismandkittens.wordpress.com/the-official-man-boobz-complimentary-welcome-package/
Thanks, kittehserf. I got completely offline for about a week, at the suggestion of my sister, since the whole Santa Barbara thing. I only played Sims, and otherwise avoided the computer.
Then, when I was mentally able to face online, I hurt myself again. Well, actually, it was more like my spine decided to pop out of whack. My massage therapist notices the bulge in my spine, and was able to manipulate it back into place, but it HURT, and then, just as I was about to go back for therapy, I got the gurgle guts and they do not mesh well with physical therapy, so I had to wait for the next available appointment, and then I got a boil in a very awkward place, so that put the kibosh on the therapy, and…
I can’t just LIVE on the pain pills, so whenever I can deal with it sober, I do. I bought tickets for the play tonight, but when I realized I’d be in too much pain to go sober, I gave my ticket away. My sister felt sick to her stomach, and gave the ticket away. My friend couldn’t go, and gave away her ticket, and Mom just decided “whatever” and gave away hers.
The show started at 7:30.
AT 7:00, I got a text – Sorry for the late notice, but we’re worn out, and can’t go to the show.
NO WAY am I letting sixty bucks and four seats to Camelot at my fave local theater go to waste, so, I took a pain pill, told my sister to take some stomach medicine, told Mom we’re going, and told my nephew to meet us at the theater. ITw as great! I was high, and laughed at some things that weren’t funny, and didn’t get all the funny parts, but it was GREAT!
Also, my friends at the theater are very understand,ing about my pain, and my pills, so I never feel judgense ore embarrassed there.
Before we left for the theater, I took a pain pill. An hour later, it hadn’t kicked in, so I took another one. I’m allowed to so that. But not three.
I am now feeling groovy enough to face misogyny. And I can almost type!
You know, it’s sad that I feel like I have to be high to be able to face reading what these guys say. But they can really be painful, you know?
The sheer “WHAT?!” ness of what they say… It hurts.
Ditto about bell hooks’s definition of love!
Another thing about me geeing high in public. I notice pretties. I mean, I REALLY notice anyone, or anything that is pretty, and I say so. And yet, nobody seems to think I’m street harassing them. They just smieln and say, “Thank you.”
Yes, dudes, women CAN gtell the difference between catcalls and compliments! It’s so blatantly obvious. Why can’t you guys get it?
Also, David, I love this picture for the post. Those old comics are fun!
The argument “I love my mother,” doesn’t really hold water, etiehr. I mean, lots of people love their mother, and still hate women, because their mother TAUGHT them to hate women. Basically, the mother things of all women as competition, and so teaches her son misogyny.
And lots of people love women, but don’t love their mother, because they were saddled with an abusive jerk for a female parental unit.
Uh oh. Gotta get offline. I’m seasick from seeing too much. Hopefully, I’ll be on again tomorrow.
Love you guys! Bye!
Oh dear, Michelle, I hope you feel better! But this made me LMAO:
Michelle, I thought you might be offline because of all that shit. Good to see you back again!
Taking on Mordred at the theatre would have been awesome. Embarassing, but awesome. 😛
Speaking of Mordred, since we were talking about hot dudes in the other thread, here’s David Hemmings in the role in 1967, and Franco Nero as Lancelot.
OK, the queasy has passed. I hope it stays. I keep two vomit bags in my room at all times, one in my pocket when I go out, and a stack in the living room.
I went into the kitchen to get something to settle my stomach, and saw that someone had put thin spaghetti in the regular spaghetti container, and for some reason, *I’m blaming my pain pills* that made me think “It’s a CALAMITY!” and I had to alert my sisters to the horror in the kitchen.
My sister laughed.
Anyway, bready stuff often settles my stomach, as does Coke, although it keeps me awake, so I’ll probably be bouncy for the next few hours.
S[eakingk of hot guys, the guy who played Mordred tonight is definitely HOT. He’s also a real sweety. I told him that I wanted to boo him, at curtain call, but he came out with someone I had to cheer, so that was darned sneaky of him! Also, I told him he was deliciously evil, and he just gave me the most adorable grin!
Is it creepy that I want to date the bad guy? Oh, no! I’m choosing a bad boy over a Nice Guy (™)!
REally, though, David is a sweetheart. Mordred… Well, Let’s just say I’m glad he got it at the battle of what zit.
Also, Sir Lionel is really hot, too, but he has a girlfriend.
Thanks, katz! I do feel better, at the moment.
Kitteh – I LOVE THAT MOVIE!!!!
Also, Hans Matheson does a great job of Mordred in “The Mists of Avalon.”
kittehserf
If I remember that film correctly, I hated the direction and the general style – but it was good to look at.
I saw Camelot not that long after it came out – at a drive-in, iirc! – and might have seen it in the cinema since, but it was a loooooooong time ago. I loved the look of it, wasn’t old enough to really understand much of the love story, and certainly knew zip about direction.
There was a film of Mists of Avalon? I didn’t know that; I’m one of the, um, maybe three people on the planet who didn’t like the book at all. 😛
I compliment my co-workers when they’ve had their hair done, or they’re wearing something particularly stylish. The worst I get is them not accepting the compliment (oh, I’ve had it a while, you know that sort of not-quite-acceptance). And then I say, it doesn’t matter, it looks really nice.
It’s like being positive a bucket. Negative comments drain the bucket, and compliments help fill it. So hopefully people have days where positives out-fill the negatives. And I think that in NZ, we don’t be positive enough to people, but are too quick to be negative.
And it’s so sad when people are so accepting of negative comments, but bat away compliments. Culturally, emotionally, and cognitively, that’s not good.
I’d compliment my co-worker if he had nice shoes or jeans on (he wore uniform shirts) and he’d do the same to me. Simple passing compliments without the “now fuck me” attachment: not hard to do!
Yeah. “Hey, baby, nice ass!” or “I’d tap that!” are not compliments.
So, after we got home from the musical, my sister wanted me to see the trailer for the new ABC musical, “Gallavant,” and I got sucked into You Tube videos. It started with kitties, then went to reactions to the Red Wedding, at Game of Thrones.
So, now I’m watching Game of Thrones on Amazon instant view. Wow. Sad, but gripping.
I think I can buy Season 4 in September? And no one knows when the books will be complete. Sigh. I HATE getting sucked into an incomplete series.
Mists of Avalon – I liked the movie, but couldn’t finish the book. I don’t know how close it is to the book, but even within the first 100 pages, there were noticeable differences.
I just hated the fact that every time a woman ate, it was pointed out that she “ate sparingly.” EVERY SINGLE TIME. OK, only in the first 100 pages, but still, every time in that first 100 pages, she ate sparingly. What’s up with that? And it wasn’t because “Morgana wasn’t feeling particularly hungry just then, so she just sort of picked at her food, to be polite.” No, she simply “ate sparingly,” as if she had the appetite for more, but refrained. Something about the way it was written made me think that every woman was on a constant diet, and it just bothered me. Maybe it’s because if the woman actually ate her fill, but it didn’t take much to fill her up, if she simply did not have much of an appetite in the normal course of her life, then she wouldn’t have “eaten sparingly.” She simply would have eaten her fill, which didn’t take that much. The word “sparingly” wouldn’t have even been mentioned. So, it seemed to me, as a reader, that every woman, at every meal, denied herself.
I don’t know, maybe I missed a time when a woman simply “ate” her meal, but “ate sparingly” was mentioned often enough for it to just BUG me, and I stopped reading. I was just getting into body positivity, and learning to stop hating my body for not being the model of “beauty” and “health.” OK, health, yeah, but I’ve always had health issues, since that mystery illness when I was a baby, and I wasn’t fat then, so it’s not because I’m fat. The fat just came along later. It’s not the CAUSE of my bad health, and losing the weight wouldn’t cure my bad health, either. And even with all my health problems, and the susceptibility to every cold, flu, and bug that comes along, and the dizzy spells and headaches and slow-tipping-over days, and being “drunk” even without having consumed anything that could make me drunk (since I was a teen, and hadn’t ever even taken a pain pill beyond Tylenol), and the seeing stars, and the weak-almost-fainting spells, and the innumerable doctors’ visits and tests that never say what the heck is wrong with my body or how to fix it, there is still SO MUCH RIGHT about my body! I can walk and talk and blink and breathe and all of it unassisted! If I sit down and list all the things that my body CAN do, all the amazing things it DOES, all the time, I’d be amazed! So, I decided to stop hating on my body, just because it doesn’t fit the mold of current conventional beauty, and start loving it, and myself. And diet talk is kind of triggering, so I put the book down.
But I do quite enjoy the movie. So, if you were turned off by the book, don’t necessarily avoid the movie. It all depends, I suppose, on why you were turned off by the book.
Actually, now that I think about it, I’m glad I did put the book down. Five years ago, I would have just sucked it up as “the way it is for women,” (none of the men ate sparingly), and swallowed my discomfort at it all, because I’m fat, and deserve to feel uncomfortable about it, and women HAVE to diet to look thin and beautiful for men, and yadda yadda yadda. Now, I’m strong enough to say, “Forget that stuff! There are plenty of other good books to read,” and just put it down.
I’m strong enough now, to just walk away from painful things, and not feel obligated to put up with them, and the pain they bring me. Because I used to think I deserved the pain, and if I were better, I wouldn’t even feel the pain. Now I know better. Now I can tell society, and the individual people in it, who hurt me, just “No,” and walk away.
It may seem like weakness, from the outside, but it really does take some strength to say, “No,” and be truly aware that I DO deserve peace, and I have the right to refuse to put up with that stuff, and to claim that right and use it.
And when I feel like fighting, and can do that, too.
Feminism, for the win!
Also, fun fact – I started dieting at age 10. I dieted for 30 years of my life. At 40, I stopped dieting. And at 40, I stopped gaining weight!
I truly believe that the weight-loss industry is a branch of “the patriarchy,” with the goal of keeping people so obsessed about food, exercise, and trying to force their bodies into this mold that some marketer created that they simply do not have the strength or mental energy and focus it takes to actually fight the patriarchy. I mean, think about it. When you’re on a diet, can you really focus on anything else? How productive can you really be? Oh, sure, you can get your work done, but can you be MARVELOUS? Can you be AMAZING? Can you be a real mover and shaker and warrior? Nope. Because you’re too busy counting calories, logging exercises, and lying to yourself that those aren’t really hunger pangs, and that the pain is “good for you.” It’s the patriarchy, in disguise, and using it as a stealth operation to keep women down! And if it takes a bunch of other people down, along with it, well, that’s just collateral damage.
Feh.
I’m gonna have another Coke.
Sorry for the teal deer, there. I got on my pet peeve.
TL;DR: If you didn’t like the book, The Mists of Avalon, you might still like the movie. They’re different. It all depends on what you didn’t like.
Note – if you’re having Coke and aspirin, do not put the aspirin IN the Coke!
Just saying. Messy.
I do like BC powder, though. It works fast.