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.
Thanks for the welcome package, Michelle! Hope you are feeling better.
LOL!
Too true, Michelle.
Related — don’t get high in the theatre if you’re in the play.
@Michelle
Reminds me of Wyrd Sisters…
“Who hath done this foul and nasty deed?”
“HE DONE IT! We all seen it, clear as day!”
I don’t think they really have any trouble understanding the difference, they’re just acting innocent because they don’t realise how transparent they are. Although, maybe I spend so much time pretending to be just like them (in terms of gender, not opinion) for the sake of not explaining my identity to every tedious one of them that I forget that they might not see the things that are so obvious to me?
@Argenti
“Psst! Watch closely, this is a good bit – it’s where I come on!”
“…errm?”
“*munches popcorn*”
Michelle, your “little liar” comment (towards Mordred) made me think of Elizabethan theatres, at which I am sure the groundlings made similar remarks. Ditto Athywren’s cite of Wyrd Sisters.
Welcome fluffypeony! 🙂
Athwyren — I was thinking outside, because dude really? You’re the lead and on in 2, get your ass in here!
But yours is definitely funnier!
*athywren
Sorry!
^This
I’m a little bemused that people who are–in my reading of comments in other threads here–are usually careful about making distinctions between concepts, perhaps unintentionally, conflated sexuality with sex acts by seemingly reducing the former to the latter. There may be context I am missing here.
@Athywren – “acting innocent.” Yeah, I guess that explains the whole “But it was a coooompliment! You should be graaaateful!” act. Personally, I always just thought they were too full of themselves to be able to know they were wrong, but maybe they actually do know they’re wrong, and are just acting as if they don’t.
Which somehow just makes it worse.
@Michael McG – I didn’t even bother trying to parse the whole rape-gay connection. Far too wibbly-wobbly for me.
I love the Wyrd Sisters.
I tend to think of “but it was a compliment!” is just as likely to be gaslighting as stupidity. When it comes to harassment and doubling-down, I’m not inclined to give the benefit of the doubt.
I originally read the OP thing as meaning men are forced to turn gay!!!!1elventy!! because evil women demonise male sexuality and force them to pervert it because there’s no other way those poor boners will get serviced. But yeah, I can see he’s doing something else: conflating a real problem (male homosexuality being demonised) with a nonexistent one (male heterosexuality being demonised).
@kittehserf I think male sexuality is demonized while female sexuality is denied in many ways. The assholes who toss around the word slut while trying to have sex with virgins help build this predatory notion of male sexuality. The MRAs yell and scream about how feminists think all men are rapists while telling rape victims they should have been more careful do the same thing.
Tldr MRAs blame feminists for demonizing male sexuality when the MRAs are the ones who believe sex is something men take from women.
I heard the, “this is good, it’s where I come on” as being Peter O’Toole having gotten toasted and decided to take his friend to a play.
opium4themasses – you mean as in the misogynists are the ones demonising male sexuality? Yeah, that makes sense: they paint men as natural rape machines that wimminz shouldn’t be complaining about (at the same time as screaming NAMALT! every time misogynist behaviour or crime is mentioned).
I was thinking in the broader culture: I don’t see men’s (het) sexuality demonised at all. There’s no slut-shaming for them.
Whoops, your order of magnitude.
Funnily enough, I was just googling through the archives trying to find a specific post I’d made to see if there were any replies, and I encountered a long-forgotten thread with a long-forgotten troll pulling the same song and dance, downplaying every statistic in every study he didn’t like by an order of magnitude and playing up every statistic he wanted by an order of magnitude.
The shit never changes.
It’s hard to believe they aren’t intentionally doing that.
I know this fool personally and the fact that you have devoted so much of your time and energy trying to discredit this moron is crazy. First of all as he states they get 30,000 views a day which I’m positive has only gotten to that level because you have brought so much attention to them. And to try to somehow pin this fucking nut Roger to them makes you look so desperate. Stop giving them attention and fight them on the real issues that need to be addressed. Like this, even if his wacky figures of only 1 in 50 women being sexually assaulted is correct then what would his reaction be if 1 in 50 men got their dicks cut off? It’s that easy to punch holes in their empty arguments. So stop reaching. And most importantly, stop making a dude who has no real job, lives in a room with piles of dirty clothes and dishes, doesn’t wash with soap, and is a drunk make any sort of impact in this world.
A concerned roomie
so concern
much advice
wow
…OK?
Subtle nym
Totes in character
Impressed
Honestly I was amazed at all the time that this fool wasted on AVFM but to find out that there are other people wasting as much time and energy to combat him is fucking CRAY CRAY. You all read or heard his interview, and you’re concerned his ideas may spread? Lull zzzzzzz’s
What does it say about you that you live with this fool?
(In an imaginary world in which this is totes real.)
It just says I need a roommate to pay half the rent because I choose to work as little as possible, and live my life. And that I don’t care what people believe, no matter how foolish or disgusting. He doesn’t hurt people, and even if I thought his mindless rhetoric might inspire someone to violence, that’s on that person not an idea. If you’re too mindless to understand that then you;re a bigger fool than him.