Category: actual activism

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Tom Martin’s “anti-male discrimination” case against the London School of Economics dismissed; he responds by calling his critics “whores.”

Hard wooden chairs: Enemy of men?

Tom Martin, a former gender studies student at the London School of Economics, recently became a minor celebrity amongst Men’s Rights activists and other angry men when he sued his alma mater for alleged sexism against men.

He’s now had his case thrown out of court. Let’s go to the Camden New Journal for details:

Tom Martin, 39, who lives in Covent Garden, claimed he suffered “anti-male discrimination” while studying for a master’s degree in gender, media and culture at the world-famous university in Holborn.

Representing himself at his application for a trial at the Central London County Court on Tuesday, Mr Martin complained of a lack of men-only sessions in the university’s gym and the preponderance of posters in the corridors advertis­ing services for women without the presence of similar materials geared towards men.

Mr Martin, who describes himself as a feminist, said “hard” chairs in the library were uncomfortable for men and that a “male blaming culture” was evident in course materials, which “ignored men’s issues” and focused on wrongs done by them.

Damn those misandrist chairs and their man-hating hardness!

The judge didn’t buy it, saying Martin’s case had essentially no chance of success. He threw out the case and ordered Martin to pay LSE’s legal costs.

Martin, welcome to reality.

On Twitter, Martin responded to the news by calling his critics “whores.” One of many examples:

But I was really discriminated against, you whores!

More examples here, and here.

And, yes, his Twitter handle is indeed Sexismbusters.org.

EDITED TO ADD: Actual headline today on What Men are Saying About Women:

Tom Martin Faces Slut-Feminist Judge, Motion Denied..

EDITED AGAIN TO ADD: Tom Martin has replied to this post in the comments. Some highlights:

My legal complaint did NOT involve a complaint about the seating. You have been misled by the press – The Times and the West End Extra/Camden New Journal both mysteriously got it wrong.

One year prior to joining the university, when visiting its library, I did complain, that the seating being hard created a greater disadvantage for men than for women, as men have considerably smaller weight-bearing buttock pads than women, and men are heavier too – so for men, on average heavier than women, have more weight bearing down onto a pad which is approximately four times smaller than women’s on average – according to a BBC documentary on the subject.

He then details his attempts to fight this grave injustice. Also, there’s this:

[S]everal comments here are confusing ‘whore’ with ‘slut’. A slut has sex freely, which I am all for. Freedom of association is the ultimate in humanity. A whore charges for sex. Even if a woman is a virgin, but is waiting for Mr Right to buy her something, she’s a whore.

It’s counter-intuitive, but a lot of professional feminists are whores. They expect the government and men to do them special favours. They make up stories to convince men and government to believe that we all owe women something.

But really, if someone were keeping a tab, then…

Women owe men five years pension.
Women owe men some National Service.
Women owe men some inventions.
Women owe men positive discrimination in university curricula.
Women owe men some child access.
It’s women’s round at the bar too.

For the whole thing, see here.

For more charming quotes from Tom, see this post on the blog Butterflies and Wheels.

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actual activism antifeminism drama grandiosity hypocrisy misogyny MRA MRA paradox oppressed men reddit terrorism

Oh, Men’s Rights subreddit, will you ever learn? (Probably not.)

Sometimes I ask myself: what is it that I really hope to accomplish with this website, aside from entertaining myself and my readers, and exposing misogynist assholes for who they are. There’s a part of me that still hopes that someday, something I write will cause some misogynist and/or Men’s Rightser out there to develop a modicum of self-awareness, look at what they’ve been saying or doing, and say to themselves, “I’m really kind of a tool, aren’t I? Maybe I should stop.”

When the Southern Poverty Law Center report on the Men’s Rights movement came out, I hoped it might have a similar sort of effect. Or that, even if it didn’t persuade any MRAs out there that they were wrong, it might at least convince a few that they were going about things the wrong way. Nope. On the Men’s Rights subreddit, at least, it seems to have sent many of the regulars into an indignant tizzy, and they have doubled down on their peculiar brand of politics-by-whining-online.

Consider this post:

Yes, that’s right. Some Men’s Rights Redditors seem to think that the best way to convince the world that they’re not part of a hate group is to continue to celebrate a self-admitted child abuser who urged men to firebomb courthouses and police stations and kill people.

Then there’s this post, currently the top post on the subreddit:

Wow, if the Men’s Rights subreddit had anything to do with that, that would indeed be a victory. As one regular put it:

Thing is, I read r/mensrights pretty regularly, and I don’t remember any campaign there to protect the rights of fishermen in New Zealand.

Turns out that’s because the campaign, such as it was, consisted of one post some months back, which got all of 11 upvotes at the time. The current post in which r/mensrights congratulates itself for its “victory” has gotten, last I checked, 120 upvotes, more than ten times that. Simplecosine’s self-congratulatory comment in the new thread has gotten 36 upvotes. The comment in the original thread asking r/mensrightsers to send an email to the US Secretary of State’s office got … one upvote. In other words, only a handful of Men’s Rights Redditors even noticed the original post, much less sent along an email.

Reading one of the linked news articles makes clear the real reason the State Department opened an investigation: a six-month long, three-continent wide investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek revealing abuses in the industry.

The Men’s Rights subreddit: Taking Credit for Shit They Didn’t Do Since 2008.

And then there’s this post:

I’ve got nothing to say about this one — it’s basically self-refuting — except that I’m sort of bemused by the notion that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a “semi-women group.” Uh, what is that exactly? A group with some women in it? A group that doesn’t think women are all a bunch of evil bitches? The horror!

Oh, Men’s Rights movement. You’ll never change, will you?

EDITED TO ADD: And speaking of never changing, here’s how one Men’s Rights redditor responded to my comments there suggesting that maybe, just maybe, MRAs should actually denounce and distance themselves from someone calling for terrorism:

Let me just highlight that bit at the end again:

[T]he cost to the establishment to maintain the status quo in regards to divorce, custody, etc. must be made so high that it’s just no longer feasible. If that means instilling abject fear into the hearts of judges, cops and legislators by making them think their careers and/or lives could be forfeit unless they change their attitudes towards men, then so be it.

Trying to instill fear for one’s life in your opponents: that is the very definition of terrorism.

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actual activism anti-MRA information antifeminism MGTOW misogyny MRA terrorism threats

The Southern Poverty Law Center takes on the violent misogyny so pervasive in the Men’s Rights Movement

[TW for the comments to this post; discussions of rape and abuse.]

The Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization devoted to tracking and exposing hate groups, has just published a detailed report on the misogyny and violent rhetoric so pervasive in the Men’s Rights Movement — as well as the actual violence inspired by this sort of hatred of women. It’s a piece you all should read, even though few of the details will be new to long-time readers of this blog.

Arthur Goldwag, an expert on conspiracy-mongers and the far right, argues (I think correctly) that the Men’s Rights movement is largely a backlash against the many successes of feminism over the last several decades:

It’s not much of a surprise that significant numbers of men in Western societies feel threatened by dramatic changes in their roles and that of the family in recent decades. Similar backlashes, after all, came in response to the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, and other major societal revolutions. What is something of a shock is the verbal and physical violence of that reaction.

[Thomas] Ball’s suicide brought attention to an underworld of misogynists, woman-haters whose fury goes well beyond criticism of the family court system, domestic violence laws, and false rape accusations.

The Men’s Rights Movement, as it exists today, is not a civil rights movement; it is a regressive, hateful reaction against a civil rights movement — that is, feminism.

Those who truly care about the rights of men, and who are not motivated by a hatred of women or feminism, need to repudiate the hate and the violent rhetoric of the Men’s Rights Movement as it exists today. Only then can there be a Men’s Rights Movement worthy of the name.

EDITED TO ADD: The SPLC has also put up a guide to some of the more hateful sites in the manosphere. Longtime readers will be familiar with most of them.

EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: And a piece debunking some Men’s Rights Myths.

EDITED TO ADD AGAIN, AGAIN: The discussion of the SPLC report on the Men’s Rights Subreddit is surprisingly reasonable, so far.  (I mean, compared to what I expected. Meanwhile, over in this thread, the Men’s Rightsers are behaving as they usually do.)

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Gucci Little Piggy: Sandra Fluke is a lesbian pirate because one of her fingers is longer than the other

Welcome to Day Three of the Man Boobz Pledge Drive. If you haven’t already, please consider clicking the little button below and sending a few bucks my way.

Thanks! And big thanks to all who’ve already donated. The response has been amazing so far. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming:

Leave it to the manosphere to further elevate the national discourse about Sandra Fluke. On Gucci Little Piggy, a blog loosely aligned with the alt-right/racist/PUA wing of the manosphere, blogger Chuck Rudd suggests that Rush Limbaugh might have been wrong to call Fluke a slut. Sounds good,eh? Not when you hear the, er, reasoning behind it:

I think the term “slut” is too arbitrary to have much meaning in a political context, especially when we don’t actually know anything about the so-called slut’s sexual history.  It doesn’t fit Sandra Fluke anyway as we don’t know for sure that she’s heterosexual.

Go on.

Fluke is not a “slut”, nor is she a “good citizen” which is what President Obama called her in a press conference held today.  Based upon readily observable behavior and on her beliefs about what she and her favorite groups have a right to grab from tax payers and employers, it’s best to call her what she is:  a pirate

Uh, what?

Apparently, in Chuck’s world, putative lesbians who suggest that insurance should pay for birth control that they personally don’t need to prevent babies, though they or people they know might need it to treat other medical conditions, are pirates.

Later in the post, Chuck links to a review of a book that suggests many pirates engaged in sodomy. Which is evidently proof in his mind that lesbians are pirates, or at least that it is hilarious to call them pirates.

Anyway, the best part of the piece is how Chuck, using the magic of SCIENCE, proves that Fluke is gay:

[P]eople who have a longer ring finger (4d) than index finger (2d) have more testosterone and, some argue, a higher sex drive.

Pointing to a news photograph that appears to show that Ms. Fluke does indeed have a long ring finger, Chuck concludes:

her ring finger is quite a bit longer than her index.  It’s almost as long as her middle finger.  In general, a low 2d:4d ratio in women indicates a greater proclivity towards homosexuality or bisexuality and greater tendency towards aggressiveness and assertiveness.  So, yeah, pirate fits.

Thanks, Chuck.

Most of the commenters to his article seem to agree with his basic thesis.

Stickman writes:

forget the fingers… shes got strait up MAN HANDS. But look on the bright side, if she survives the up coming second dark ages, I’m sure she will do a fine job of pulling a plow.

Note: The “coming second dark ages” is a familiar trope among manospherians; the idea is that men will get so fed up with the gynofascist matriarchy we evidently all live in today that they will stop working, civilization will crumble, and the ladies will be put in their proper place, behind pulling plows.

SOBL1 adds:

As a fellow Cornellian, my guess is lesbian. Cornell has a decent les population.It also speaks more to a les to demand free birth control as a hand out from the government speaking on behalf of all women when she has no shot of getting pregnant. That’s just the thing lesbians like to do: consider their opinions the worldview of all “womyn”. At a minimum, she was a LUG [Lesbian Until Graduation]. Her face and hair are so masculine, she could pass for a male supporting character in “All the President’s Men”.

Did he mention he went to CORNELL?

One free-thinking fellow actually challenges Chuck’s analysis. Nick digger writes:

This finger length analysis from candid photos is nonsense. There are too many knuckle-bends in all directions, combined with skewed camera position, to get an accurate measurement. There has to be some standard for this, such as hands pressed flat against a flat surface, with all fingers together, or each finger extending in a straight line from its source carpal (or metacarpal, whatever it is).

Having said that, she looks like a fat, ugly cunt — which is what Rush should have called her, as it does not imply sluttiness. He’s entitled, because libs call him a fat ugly cunt all the time.

Such is the nature of the discussion amongst some of the internet’s most steadfast advocates for the rights of men.

Chuck himself adds a few parting thoughts in a comment suggesting that Fluke’s biggest crime was that she didn’t ask for birth control coverage nicely enough:

When you ask for something from someone you don’t demand it and then demonize someone who doesn’t cave in to your demands. You ask and the other person chooses whether to reciprocate. All of this is akin to someone asking a stranger for a hitch across town and then screaming and yelling when rebuffed

It’s true. In the past, activists have always been extremely polite about their demands requests. You may recall the famous anti-war slogan: “Heck no, we would prefer not to go.”  The “Excuse us, fellas, but we would also like to be able to walk around at night” marches. And of course, Martin Luther King’s famous, “Guys, would any of you like to hear about this dream I had” speech.

All Chuck and his friends are asking is that fat ugly dyke cunts stop being so darn rude when they call on insurance companies to provide certain kinds of medical coverage. Is that really too much to ask?

–

I’d better put that blinking

gif here, just in case.

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actual activism MRA MRA paradox

Men's Rights in the real world: "No one showed up to the event but organizers say the lack of attendance is not due to a lack of interest."

Come early to get a good seat!

Sometimes it’s worth reminding ourselves that despite all the noise they make online, the Men’s Rights movement has basically no presence in the real world. The picture above is an actual photo of a men’s rights symposium at Montana State University. Here’s how the local NBC affiliate described what went down – or, more accurately, what didn’t go down:

The MSU chapter of the National Coalition for Men organized a symposium to raise awareness of problems in men’s lives.

The group geared the event towards fraternity students at the college and invited speakers to talk about things like men’s rights when it comes to sexual misconduct investigations on-campus.

No one showed up to the event but organizers say the lack of attendance is not due to a lack of interest.

You just keep telling yourself that.

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actual activism inspiring racism

What MLK stood for

It’s Martin Luther King Day here in the US. So here are some thoughts from the man, from an assortment of his writings, that seem to me especially appropriate today.

 

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon … which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

 

Now that we’ve had this serious moment, go take a look at Yo, Is This Racist, if you haven’t already. It’s fucking hilarious.

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Man Boobz: Bewildering MGTOWers since 2010. With kitties!

An MGTOWer-enraging Catbunny. Found on Reddit, in one of the few threads there not full of rape jokes.

The reviews are in! Man Boobz continues to confuse and enrage the Manospherians of the world. Over on MGTOWforums.com, Armageddon15 lays out this 2-point critique:

I went over to that pathetic excuse for a site to see what cherry picked articles they’ve been going through lately, and I have 2 things I’d like to bring up..

1. What the hell is it with that guy and animals? Posting pandas, cats, bears etc. Maybe he should post youtube videos about that full time instead of the shit he calls writing.

2. The comments on the articles are the most unorganized, random thing I’ve ever seen on a discussion board. I can’t even follow what the hell is going on. They go on tangents in every other comment in ways that don’t even relate to the original post. How do you even have a discussion over there? They got an end of the year troll award going on over there, but I don’t know how any troll has the patience to write on that site for any length of time without blowing his brains out.

Boogeyman is also bewildered by the comments here:

Yes, I’ve noticed he’ll get hundreds of comments from his hairy armpitted fans but only a small % have anything to do with the subject. His article will be about date rape and he’ll have 300 comments about coffee cake recipes and Lady Gaga’s fashion sense.

Huh. I think I missed that one. We did have one thread recently that suddenly veered off into a discussion of bra sizing. So there’s that.

But if what we’re doing here is causing so much consternation amongst the MGTOWers of the world, we clearly need to do more of it. And so, a video no MGTOWer can possibly rebut:

The rest of you: you know what to do!

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actual activism feminism inspiring misogyny MRA rape rapey sex sexual harassment sluts

Sady Doyle on “Fighting Sexual Assault, One Tweet at a Time”

Upvoted!

Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown fame has a great piece up at In These Times on the ways in which the Internet has helped to highlight virulent and violent misogyny — and inspire effective feminist pushback. It’s actually kind of … inspiring? (That’s a word I don’t use often!)  Here’s the opening:

When a history of 21st-century feminist activism is someday written, 2011 may be labeled Year Rape Broke. Sexual assault and harassment have, of course, always been key feminist concerns. But in 2011, sexual violence, exploitation, or intimidation were part of nearly every major story that fell under the heading of “women’s issues”–and the activism against it has been particularly widespread, focused and effective.

As we enter this renaissance of sexual assault awareness, it’s worth considering the ways in which new media has informed it–and, indeed, perhaps even made it possible. …

You can read the rest on the In These Times website.

Full disclosure: I worked at ITT for a couple of years in the 90s (yes, I’m old), and Sady says some nice things about Man Boobz in the piece.