November 25th is White Ribbon Day in Australia, a day devoted to ending domestic violence against women. This year – the 25th has already drawn to a close in Australia – there were reportedly hundreds of White Ribbon events held across the country, including a massive march in suburban Sydney that drew thousands of participants.
White Ribbon Australia, which describes itself as “Australia’s only national, male led Campaign to end men’s violence against women” calls on men to “swear never to commit, excuse or remain silent about violence against women.” It helps to coordinate events in schools and workplaces, and has gotten support from police departments across the country as well as from various branches of the nation’s military.
It’s also gotten the attention of the folks at A Voice for Men.
Not that long ago, as you may recall, everyone’s favorite Men’s Rights hate site set up its own phony White Ribbon website in an attempt to push its own noxious views on domestic violence, undermine real White Ribbon organizations worldwide – and to do a bit of fundraising of its own. (AVFM, perhaps fearing legal reprisal, has since taken down the “donate” button it used to have on the site.)
Now AVFM has decided to take White Ribbon Australia on directly, declaring November 25th to be “White Ribbon Fraud Day.” That’s right: the group that just set up a fake White Ribbon website is accusing the real domestic violence awareness group of fraud.
AVFM’s head boy Paul Elam declares in his typically overheated prose that
Profiteers have now industrialized battered women, reducing them to storefront mannequins for the sake of lining their pockets. …
One of the most deplorable examples of that in existence today is the so-called “White Ribbon Campaign.” … Their modus operandi is to paint a false picture of the problem, identifying its sole source as abusive men and its sole victims as helpless women. It is a calculated deception that flies in the face of virtually all known credible research on the issue, but it is a financial windfall because female-only victims and male-only perpetrators have proven to provide the best incentive for inspiring well-meaning people to give money.
Perhaps the worst of the worst in this worldwide consortium of con artists is the White Ribbon Campaign in Australia.
Never mind the actual domestic violence survivors (not mannequins) who show up and speak out at White Ribbon Day events. Never mind that Elam’s notion of “credible research” on the subject of domestic violence is considered by most DV experts as seriously flawed.
And never mind that Elam himself seems to think that the best “solution” to domestic violence perpetrated by women against men is for men
to beat the living shit out of them. I don’t mean subdue them, or deliver an open handed pop on the face to get them to settle down. I mean literally to grab them by the hair and smack their face against the wall till the smugness of beating on someone because you know they won’t fight back drains from their nose with a few million red corpuscles.
And then make them clean up the mess.
This isn’t the only time that the truculent Elam has fantasized publicly about beating up women.
So the idea that Elam is some sort of moral authority on the issue of domestic violence is laughable.
But let’s hear him out anyway.
Elam’s “smoking gun” against White Ribbon Australia? That after a cursory examination of the group’s publicly available financial records
we have found no evidence that White Ribbon Australia has ever contributed a solid nickel to a single service for actual victims of domestic violence. That includes female victims.
Well, Paul, that’s probably because THAT’S NOT WHAT WHITE RIBBON AUSTRALIA DOES. There are numerous groups in Australia that do provide direct support to victims of domestic violence; White Ribbon Australia links to many of them on its website.
But, as the group makes plain on its website, it doesn’t provide direct assistance. Instead, it “work[s] to change the attitudes and behaviours that lead to violence against women.”
What does this mean? Well, in addition to White Ribbon Day events (and other events held throughout the year), the group organizes programs in schools and workplaces, recruits and works with corporate partners, and trains Advocates and Amabassadors to speak out against violence against women.
The efforts of White Ribbon Australia and other DV organizations to raise awareness are bearing fruit; indeed, the Australian government earlier this year pledged $100 million to step up the fight against domestic violence.
A Voice for Men, meanwhile, has set up a phony website to undermine these efforts.
I think it’s pretty clear who the real fraud is here.
Yup. They won’t censor porny boobs, but breastfeeding ones? “Obscene”!
And even explicit violence and threats thereof? Fuggeddaboudit. I’ve noticed that they even let blatant Holocaust denial slide.
“Are you a straight male WASP? No? Then we don’t care what happens to you on our site, stop emailing us about it”.
Basically.
FB did, however, take down a page advertising gun safes (not guns… gun safes) that was violating… nothing. So figure that one out. Harrassment, racism, sexism etc is a-ok but by gawd, you will not advertise gun safes on FB!
I’m happy to see that Elam has removed the original ‘battered man’ image they were using, at the request of the man in the image. It was a guy who’d been beaten up in a bar fight – I found him on LinkedIn and let him know they were using his picture without permission, and he told them to remove it. Like, they can’t even be ethical about imagery, or be assed to care about the privacy OF A FELLOW MAN, fer crissakes.
Gun safes? As in SAFE STORAGE OF FIREARMS?
Oy. My face and palm are both getting a workout today.
And double-facepalm about the dude who got beat up in a bar and then (ab)used by Paulie to promote VAW. How utterly charming!
Do you even go here? You were asked not to do a thing, not double down on it.
……the term for sociopathy in the DSM is antisocial personality disorder, is it not? I gotta call bullshit on headcheese here.
Gasp! Not giving money directly to victims?! J’accuse! I missed the part where the AVFM White Ribbon clone even pretended it was going to use ITS donations for anything other that Paul’s manly foodstuffs and some conference lanyards.
It’s awfully gutsy of Mr. “All donations go straight to me, and I am the sole decider of where it gets spent, and no, I am not obligated to share any of that information with you” to criticize White Ribbon for pretty much any way they use their funds.
Much more so when their offense is simply not using their money for things they don’t claim to use their money for.
White Ribbon does a good job done here in Australia, but a lot of the credit for the increasing awareness and financial support has to go to Rosie Batty. Her son was killed by his father earlier this year and her courageous, honest and wise advocacy since has been nothing short of remarkable. Read her story if you are unaware, she is an amazing woman. http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2014/october/1412085600/helen-garner/mother-courage
A little double-plus ungood on the speech patrol there. Are we not supposed to have words to describe antisocial attitudes?
And no, sociopathic is a description of behavior. It’s not a diagnosis in the DSM, and hasn’t ever been. Yes, it’s used as an insult – because it’s a negative behavior. As is assault and harassment.
It’s mostly over-used. But Sherlock Holmes is described as a ‘high functioning sociopath’, for instance, but he’s a fictional character. There is no one hospitalized as a sociopath, alas, I certainly can think of a few who sure seem to fit the bill but instead have gone on to be runners-up for the job of President.
Shut up, Chrissa. We don’t do internet diagnoses here.
There’s a whole Doctor Who serial (written by none other than Douglas Adams!) about not-fake Mona Lisas. One of the cleverest plots, IMHO.
One of *the show’s cleverest plots.
@Woody:
I realize that whenever he’s caught being horrible, we can rely on you to show up and try the satire defense on.
Have you actually been trying to post all this time? Well, you finally got one through. Here, have a Coors and rest on your laurels.
It’s twice as satirical if you hit the caps lock key.
(gospellcheckmeinkampf.org? We seem to have run out of ways to tell Woody to shut up.)
oh no, everyone! yet again, this blog’s commenting standards don’t meet crissa’s personal approval, so the standards clearly must change! it’s not at all unreasonable for established trolls to demand that commenters comply with their whims!
is this really a single sentence? it almost made grammatical sense until the “porky pies” part, at which point it lost me. is that some kind of slang, or simple fat-shaming?
hey, idiot. nobody has claimed that men cannot be victims of domestic violence. nobody is stopping avfm from starting their own campaign to help male victims of domestic violence. they can even focus on only men! that would be okay!
what’s not okay is the simultaneous denial that dv is gendered, and demand that other organizations change their missions to suit your personal goals. avfm is too fucking lazy to tackle this supposed epidemic of male victims of dv, so they demand that everyone else do it for them. fuck you. white ribbon has a mission, and you don’t set it. if you think there should be a mirror campaign to end domestic violence against men, start one. i guarantee that white ribbon would happily partner with any such campaign. that’s how this shit works out here in reality, where people who want things done make an effort of their own, instead of whining about how nobody else is doing it for them so they can sit on their ass and do nothing
Oh, trolly, when will you learn? The man is not the purse, the man is the servant who carries the purse. Do try to keep up.
I think it might be a way to say blatant lies? There’s a danish expression called “election-pork”, the rich sultry meats people promise you in the months up to an election.
There are hundreds of words we can use without bringing mental illness into it. Strange how you don’t seem to know any of them. Keep this up and we’ll be sure to give you plenty of examples.
In the USA it’s a “pork barrel”.
Woody came back!? Tais-toi, Woosy!
Hopefully that French is correct. Sometimes Google doesn’t give the best translations.
At what point will MRAs recognize that a slap or a shove, while absolutely the wrong way to deal with conflict, is not the same as severe sustained abuse? If you look at who people hospitalized or killed by an abusive partner are, it’s overwhelmingly women with male abusers.
From the US government
Source http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/intimate-partner-violence/Pages/measuring.aspx
I’m guessing the statistics in other countries are similar or some even more skewed toward men as the ones committing partner violence.
It’s not feminists who ignore that men can be victims. It’s patriarchy. We’re not the ones who think men have to be tough and macho.
What’s stopping MRAs from raising money for male victims? Complaining about women not doing your work for you isn’t going to get it done. Neither is fraudulently co-opting the name of an already established group. Another think that doesn’t help male victims is insulting the people who are working to end violence against women. They’re not opposed to you or anyone else helping male victims. They might even be willing to help you. But you have to realize that it’s not a zero sum game. You don’t have to take away support for female victims to help male victims.
And the true motive for your rant emerges. Let me guess, you got divorced and your ex got primary custody (or whatever the terminology in NZ is) because she was the one who was the primary caregiver? I’ve noticed a lot of you guys want to have it both ways. When you’re married, the expectation is that most of the work involved with raising the kids will be done by your wives. But then once you get divorced, you suddenly decide you want to be the primary caregiver. Is it because you’re truly interested in cooking for the kid, chauffeuring the kids, helping with homework etc. Or is it because you want to punish the ex?
The only other time I’ve heard the expression “man purse” or “murse” it’s referring to a shoulder bag – usually a messenger style bag – carried by a man. This is the first I’ve heard of it being a synonym for “white knight.”
ShutUpWoody.tv