Thursday 3 May 2012

Who are the men's rights activists?

Today I saw a BBC article titled Who are the men's rights activists?. It contains interviews with several MRAs on the so-easily-refutable-it's-dull pressures they perceive themselves to be facing thanks to the lady-fascist gynotopia they reckon they're living in, including 'men always lose custody of their children' (no they don't), 'men are more likely to be victims of violence' (at the hands of other men), and 'men are more likely to be conscripted into the military' (by other men because women are perceived as too weak).

Special mention has to go to the seemingly indefatigable Tom Martin, the man who spectacularly failed to sue the LSE for 'sexism against men' earlier this year. Tom's got some fairly interesting ideas when it comes to discrimination against men, including 'hard chairs are a feminazi conspiracy against men', 'Saudi Arabian men are victims of the lazy whore Saudi women' and 'women who don't know who their baby's father is should be sent to the gulag'. Believe me, I'm missing a lot of his other views out there, including 'female penguins are whores' (see second link). So, what utterly traumatic event happened to young Tom to make the scales fall from his eyes to realise we're living in a whoriarchy (his word!)? Well, brace yourselves:
He says he was radicalised while working as a barman in a club in Soho. "I could see that male customers were being abused at every point," he says.
Men had to queue and often pay while women got in free. They were goaded by bouncers to leave, while women were treated with respect. But worst of all, he believes they were used by women to buy drinks.
THE HORROR. I mean... I.... the POOR MAN. Where will the scandal of women being allowed into clubs free because they're seen as bait to entice men in end? If you thought it was with the poor lads offering to buy women drinks in order to get into their knickers, you're sadly mistaken. As Tom continues:
"Since the pill, women have been told they can and should be having orgasms. And because they haven't been, they categorise that as men's fault."
He concludes that "it's women's job to make themselves sexually happy, it's not a man's burden.
Those bitches, wanting sex to be enjoyable for all concerned. Those evil, evil harpies. Now, far be it from me to pass comment on someone's sexual prowess (but I'm totally going to), it's not a conspiracy against Tom that he apparently can't make women come. Most people, if they realised their partners weren't enjoying themselves, would talk to their partner and discuss what their needs were. See if there was any way they could improve. Work on their techniques. Maybe get a new partner who they were more compatible with. But no, Tom just (apparently) screams 'FUCK YOU, YOU WHORE. THIS IS YOUR PROBLEM, NOT MINE', and that's women's fault. Somehow.

Now, it should be pretty self-evident that Tom Martin and those of his ilk are boring, self-entitled whiny nitwits who couldn't argue their way out of a paper bag filled with scissors. But do I think that's true for all of those campaigning for men's issues? Of course not. Big props go to the seemingly only sensible man mentioned in the BBC's article, An Broc, who is founding a men's refuge in Ohio. That's great. Men can be victims of intimate partner violence and they shouldn't be afraid to speak up and get help. The fact that this is apparently the first men-only shelter in the US is a scandal (as far as I'm aware, usual procedure is for women's shelters to provide a man with a hotel room, which gives him an escape but doesn't get him access to other services provided by the refuge).

But people like Broc are a tiny, tiny minority in the festering bog of misogyny known as the 'Men's Rights Movement'. This is literally the first positive thing I can think of someone described as a 'men's rights activist' having done. Because all I have ever seen of them is a group of laughable bigots who think that not holding women as property is the biggest affront to human rights since WWII. A check on Manboobz.com provides daily updates of the streams of hatred towards women - often so extreme that the SPLC have named the MRM as a hate group.

The MRM as a whole manages to hold extremely hypocritical, disgusting views on women - we're apparently simultaneously entitled cunts who steal men's jobs and should be kept in the kitchen or the bedroom, and lazy bitches who are living off our partner's dime while he breaks his back at work. Sluts who are ruined after our first encounter with cock and so deserve to be raped, or teases who torture men by not sleeping with them and deserve to be raped. Women are demons who will 'murder' or 'kidnap' men's children and not give them any custodial access but also spermjacking hags who trick men into impregnating them and then live the high life by 'enslaving' the men into child support payments. Women secretly control the world and all the governments in it, all while being ridiculous, hysterical, over-emotional vagina-babies who are too stupid to breathe on their own, for the most part.

I wish I was making this up. It's not even the half of it. I haven't even begun to mention 'all rape claims are false/women can have men locked up FOREVER on a whim' and shit like that. This is what they think 'men's rights' are. A gender war for the right to get their dick wet on demand. And the fact that the BBC is reporting them - a fucking hate movement - with any sense of legitimacy is fucking disgusting.

When your fight for 'rights' boils down to 'WHY CAN'T I STARE AT WOMEN IN THE STREET WITHOUT BEING CALLED A CREEP?!? THAT'S SHAMING LANGUAGE, YOU MISANDRISTS', frankly you deserve to be laughed at. When it's 'PUBESCENT GIRLS DEVELOP EARLY JUST TO ENTRAP MEN INTO SLEEPING WITH THEM AND SEND THEM TO JAIL', you probably should be in jail. When your 'moderate' sites advocate that 'female babies should have their voiceboxes torn out at birth'...well, fuck. But no one in the MRM bats an eyelid. They all goad each other on instead. If a feminist blogger came out with this, they'd be condemned straight away - by other feminists.

I'm all for tackling some of the shit that hits men. Western cultural notions of masculinity, like femininity, are pure bullshit. We should be tackling the endemic problem of prison rape. We should be offering help to men in danger of suicide. We should be fighting for shared parenting to become the norm. But it's not feminism or women's rights that's causing these things, it's the bullshit 'GRR I AM A MAN I DO MAN THINGS, MAN NO HAVE FEELINGS LIKE STUPID BITCH WOMEN' trope that lies at the fucking heart of the dolts in the MRM.


TL;DR - until your movement actually pretends to give a shit about men instead of just whining on the internet about how rights should be taken away from women, you're not 'men's rights activists', you're whiny, nasty misogynists.

All links in this post, except the SPLC one, are from Manboobz.com, a site dedicated to mocking misogyny. There are two reasons for this: 1) it's a great site, with a brilliant set of well-informed and funny commenters, who are well worth reading, 2) I don't particularly want the scum I quote to find this blog and put me on the feminist equivalent of Redwatch (it does exist, it's called Register-Her and is dedicated to providing details of women they don't like to be used for harassment/stalking purposes). The links I have provided contain links to the original sources.

34 comments:

  1. Dear Nat,

    I'm afraid you're wrong on quite a few points - far too many for me to easily address - but allow me to just take some of the main ones:

    1. "We should be fighting for shared parenting to become the norm. But it's not feminism or women's rights that's causing these things, it's the...MRM".

    No it's not, I'm afraid it's feminists who campaign against shared parenting and equality in parental responsibility. Here are two links, to the US National Association of Women, and the Canadian NAWL, which provide their formal position.

    In short, that is that after a relationship breaks down, the father should pay support to the mother, the mother should have sole custody, and it should be at the mother's convenience that the children see their father. The father should also pay for childcare if the mother feels that is neccessary.

    US: http://www.nawl.ca/ns/en/documents/2009.08-BillC-422brief.pdf

    Canada: http://www.nownys.com/leg_memos/oppose_s1349.htm

    Although there are no UK feminist groups of the same size, scale and lobby power of their North American cousins, British feminists seem to broadly agree:

    UK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIniOCpk3r0

    2. "When your 'moderate' sites advocate that 'female babies should have their voiceboxes torn out at birth'...well, fuck. But no one in the MRM bats an eyelid. They all goad each other on instead. If a feminist blogger came out with this, they'd be condemned straight away - by other feminists."

    Well first of all, we all know you get all kinds of unhinged nonsense on the web, like this for instance: http://thefemitheist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/allow-me-to-introduce-myself.html

    Secondly, I wouldn't dream of calling out someone for that particular phrase, as I would be sensible enough to see that it was an example of hyperbolic rhetoric. If you want to see some completely batshit crazy stuff just visit RadFem sometime, or the London Feminist Network.

    3."the SPLC have named the MRM as a hate group".

    No, no they haven't: http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-mens-rights-hate-group-splc/

    Cont.

    ReplyDelete
  2. 4. "...the lady-fascist gynotopia they reckon they're living in, including 'men always lose custody of their children' (no they don't)".

    The link under 'no they don't' actually takes you to a Guardian CIF piece which argues against shared parenting because if a women has taken the decision to divorce her husband, it's likely it is because he is an abuser, and therefore shouldn't have contact with his children. If he's not an abuser, well, it should still be down to the mother because, well, she's a woman.

    5: "...Register-Her...is dedicated to providing details of women they don't like to be used for harassment/stalking purposes."

    No.'Register-Her' isn't designed to stifle free speech, it is a database of women who incite hate against men and children, or who have murdered, assaulted or harmed men and children. There are no recorded instances of it being used for stalking or harassment. Some women object to being placed on it - and they are free to go to law if they chose to do so. You're quite safe.

    6. "Women are ..spermjacking hags who trick men into impregnating them and then live the high life by 'enslaving' the men into child support payments."

    Hmm...I assume you're talking about 'paternity fraud' here right? This is where a woman misleads a man that he is the father of her baby, out of self-interest. A man in this case can be defrauded out of large sums of money, besides the devastating emotional and psychological damage to him, his children and his extended family.

    Best estimates are that 3.7% of all children in the UK are affected by this. In 2008 the UK government made a statement saying it was aware of almost 5,000 cases. Leading feminists say men should just pay up, and shut up:

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/6391918/whos-the-daddy.thtml

    http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580398,00.html

    In the first article feminist Melanie McDonagh argues that women have a fundamental right to lie to men about who their children are, and that men have "a moral responsibility" to the mothers and child simply because they were "chosen".

    In my opinion not only is this a form of fraud as women can steal child support benefits from men, it is also a form of emotional abuse for the father and child involved. If a woman gets pregnant, no one has any obligation to her, and only the true father has an obligation to the child. The whole thing relies on the female supremist view that mothers should have more of a say in the raising of children than men, a view that is widely accepted and tolerated. Do you know what we call it if a man chooses a woman to be a mother against her will? "Rape".

    Anyway I could go on. Tom Martin? He's a odd bird to be sure, makes some good points and then cocks it all up with some rubbish about hard chairs.

    Oh and domestic violence? Well I've my own beliefs about that, but I've posted them before in comments to a very good article here: http://rhul-fem-soc.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/femininity-masculinity-and-why-mens.html

    Best. 13murphy13

    ReplyDelete
  3. 1. Yeah, feminism is all about making sure women, because of their gender, are the sole providers of care to children. That's why they fight for reproductive rights, workplace rights, including parental leave and all those other things that are at the heart of traditional 'conservative' values. Oh no, wait...

    The article I linked to made the point that "there's no evidence to suggest that courts are biased against fathers. For one thing, only 10% of child custody cases end up in court, and of those that do a tiny percentage result in limited contact orders. In 2010, only 300 of 95,000 litigated custody cases resulted in the father being prevented from seeing his child, and a 2008 study by Joan Hunt and Alison Macleod showed that when fathers do make contact requests, they nearly always get what they're asking for."

    So, do you want to discuss the 90% of cases in which the parents decide between themselves what to do? Because my guess is something like this: a) women are judged by society to be primary caregivers (not a feminist idea) and b) women are less likely to earn as much as men (not a feminist idea) - in fact, women earn less money when they have children as they're seen as 'unreliable' due to the whole primary caregiver thing, men earn more after children due to the fact they're expected - by society - to be breadwinners. Economically, it makes more sense for men to move out and women to stay in the home with the children. Do I think this societal conditioning is right? No. Is it a shadowy feminist plot to enslave penis holders? No.

    Or do you want to talk about the 10% of cases that go to court? Where judges find what's in the best interests of the children on a case by case basis? Might that be influenced by the judges' societal understanding of gender roles? Yes. Shadowy feminist plot? No.

    The only way your argument makes sense is if you're arguing that the people who are judged too dangerous to be allowed near their own children (300/950,000) are, in fact, the victims of the situation? Please tell me you're not doing that.

    Oh, and since you didn't like my link, here's some more:
    a) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/11/family-justice-review-norgrove-report?CMP=twt_gu
    b) http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/pas/dv.html
    c) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/06/no-bias-against-fathers-childrens-act?CMP=twt_gu
    d) http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/01/30/systemic-bias-in-family-courtor-just-selective-fact-finding
    e) http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/docs/ABA_custody_myths.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  4. 2) a) Femitheist is widely regarded to be a hoax site (something the MRM have openly discussed: http://manboobz.com/2012/01/03/manosphere-dudes-lets-set-up-fake-feminist-blogs-to-take-down-feminism/)

    b) You may notice there is no support of Femitheist either in 'her' comments or in the wider sphere (same for RadFemHub, no one wants anything to do with gender-essentialists, except other gender-essentialists like the MRM) - contrast with the incestuous circle-jerking of the 'manosphere', where no one (for example) will criticise AVfM for publishing sexist drivel like "As a man, nature equipped you to make decisions based on merit alone without respect to consensus.[so you must tell women what to do]" (http://manboobz.com/2012/04/21/calling-women-names-human-rights-advocacy-a-visit-to-a-voice-for-men/) - even though AVfM is, according to the MRM, a 'moderate' site. Even ones that MRAs view as 'extreme' will not attract condemnation, but instead a quieter support. AVfM even link to Thomas Ball's exhortation to mass murder on their front page.

    c) Please, please tell me your problem with London Feminist Network - I'm ill and I could do with a laugh.

    d) Refusing to condemn what was said but instead crying 'WAAAA WOMEN ARE SO MEAN HERE IS SOME EASILY-REFUTABLE EVIDENCE' is kind of, just slightly proving my original point.

    3. I'll amend to 'the SPLC, which is well known for documenting hate groups and extremist oppressive-ideologies, wrote an intelligence report on the MRM', and chuck in some quotes. Happy?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Femitheist is not a hoax. She is the end game of radical feminism. She is what N.O.W. and their kind really want to do to men. They wan to see us turned into nothing more than sperm banks. They want to take all the abuses women have suffered throughout history, multiply them a billionfold and then apply them to every man and male child on the planet.

      They want us dead.

      As long as feminists allow this extremist ilk to take the leadership roles, men will continue to overact and drift into misogyny in response to direct threats to our very lives. Blaming men for hating extremist feminists like the Femitheist is like blaming Jews for hating anyone who calls themselves a NAZI.

      Delete
    2. Hi Peter. If we assume for a moment that you're correct (which you're not), can you explain to me how if I, as a feminist, and the rest of the feminist movement don't even believe that Femitheist is a real feminist blogger, how we are allowing her to take a leadership role? The only reason I heard of her was through the above comment. I then looked at the blog and remembered I'd heard someone talking about a new blog which looked like an MRA sockpuppet, looked into it and it was the same blog they were referring to. I'm hardly taking it as gospel.

      You seem to sweetly think that all feminists are one person, who never disagree. Well, that's not true. There's many different branches of women's rights activism, and lots of people who disagree with each other. Just recently a group of so-called feminists wanted to host a conference which was explicitly transphobic. I and many other feminists got together and worked against them, because I believe that transphobia is part of the antithesis of feminism.

      Can you also explain to me how, as a woman who doesn't want children, I want to turn men into sperm banks? Or how as a woman with a male partner, dozens of male friends, a father, a brother, two uncles and five male cousins, who I care very much about, I want men dead? Can you explain how working against abuses that are disproportionately aimed at women oppresses men?

      Also, can you provide evidence of this shadowy cabal of women who want to multiply the abuses they have suffered a billion times and apply them to men? How would this work? What specific abuses are you thinking of? What would the end product of multiplying them a billion times be?

      I agree that everyone should hate nazis, but could you explain to me how making plans to poison the water at girls' schools, wanting to tear the voiceboxes from little girls or saying that all rape convictions are false is a reasonable reaction to people advocating for women's rights to be equal to men's? There's plenty of people I detest, but I wouldn't advocate them suffering. I would like to show them that they are wrong.

      Finally, references to (what I assume to be) N.W.O and nazis usually just get people lumped into the 'delusional crank' pile, so I hope you appreciate me taking the time to respond to your word salad.

      For everyone who's not Peter, you can play along at home with the game I devised at the end of this post :)

      Delete
    3. I've been informed by the ever-learned Ally Fogg (a man!!!11!) that N.O.W is an acronym standing for the National Order of Women. Mi dispace.

      Because of this confusion, I'd like to ask a further question - how am I allowing a group I've literally never heard of before today lead me? As an anarcha-feminist, I don't really go in for the whole 'leadership' thing anyway, so this one's doubly puzzling.

      Also, having just now looked at their site, I can't seem to find the section on 'LET'S ALL MAKE MEN INTO SPERM BANKS AND THEN KILL THEM', could you provide me with a link?

      Delete
  5. 4) You're misinterpreting - the article says that shared parenting shouldn't be at the expense of the current commitment to ensuring what's best for the child. See point 1.

    5) Riddle me this - why are Amanda Marcotte and Jessica Valenti on the site then? For writing things? And what about the $1000 bounties offered to people who could provide "full legal names, home addresses, places of employment, email addresses and contact phone numbers" of some women who appeared in a school play that AVfM didn't like? Where commenters were saying things like "i would love to hunt down these women myself"? (http://manboobz.com/2011/11/21/mens-rights-site-a-voice-for-men-offers-1000-bounty-for-personal-information-on-swedish-feminists/)

    6) Why do you view this as yet another shadowy conspiracy? Specifically what makes you so 100% sure that the women know the men aren't the biological fathers to their children? Do you think they do secret DNA tests, pick the other guy and then run away shouting 'MWAH-HAH-HAH!' and twirling their vagina-moustaches? That makes no sense. Hanlon's razor is a thing for a reason: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

    Also, thank you for reaffirming the MRM trope that children are nothing but 'property' to be used to score points ("This is MY CHILD, AND I WILL HAVE IT REGARDLESS OF THAT CHILD'S FEELINGS" - again, see point 1). If I found out tomorrow that my dad wasn't the one who knocked up my mum I'd be shocked, but would it stop him being my dad? FUCK NO. Would he be disgusted and demand child support back from my mum (that - shocker - they mutually agreed with no outside agencies involved)? FUCK NO. Why? Because my dad's not an arsehole. Genetics be damned, he's still the guy who taught me how to ride a bike, who I sit and watch University Challenge with, who I taught how to play poker... etc. Some other guy would just be a stranger to me.

    And finally, no, even if a woman intentionally (for whatever reason) lied to a man about him being a father, that is NOT RAPE and I'm offended (but not surprised) that you'd even attempt to make such an analogy.

    As for your equally tangentital/factually incorrect/exaggerated comments on the other blog, the fact that your post included the line (my emphasis) "As a liberal, open-minded man, I'm disappointed by feminism, and it's obsession with rape (what is that about by the way?) and its reactionary opposition to social justice and equality." says everything I need to know about your commitment to 'equality'.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Clarifications: In point 1), 'parental' should read 'paternal'.

    If these comments had done anything apart from 'no look it is a conspiracy see look look women ARE evil', I might have had some sympathy. However, as it wasn't, it just proved my point about blaming everything on women instead of doing productive things. As I said in the OP, it's not that I don't want (e.g.) father's to be involved in children's lives - I've made it clear I do. However, I don't think that it's the fault of some Illuminati-esque femspiracy, and I do NOT want that at the expense of the children.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Nat,

    Thanks for taking the time to respond. Allow me to correct/clarify a few points.

    1. Feminism's a complete joke, that's why it's such a minority pursuit and why most women and men don't identify themselves as feminists. I don't say this because I'm a misogynist, or that I believe in some 'huge shadowy feminist conspiracy' or that feminists are 'anti-men'.

    No, I say this because feminists couldn't care less about real issues of social and gender equality that affect the lives of real people. A glance at the websites of UK Feminista and LFN this morning shows their current concerns are: banning cosmetic surgery advertising, slutwaks, banning strip clubs, protesting outside the Playboy club etc.

    What you'll never see a feminist group campaigning against is the fucking loan sharks masqarading as 'payday loan companies' DELIBERATELY targeting poor and disadvantaged women, such as this bunch of wankers:

    http://www.cashlady.co.uk/

    http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/2012/02/women-targeted-by-payday-loans-companies/

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2094115/Instant-money-loans-Payday-loan-firms-ruining-lives.html

    Never mind your posturing and marches. Don't see fuck all from UK Feminista or LFN about this shit do you? Thousands of lives blighted - mostly young women and struggling single parents - in some of our most deprived communities, and complete tumbleweed-rolling-silence from so-called engaged, radical, edgy, inspiring etc. feminists - radical? Radical as a fucking cardigan. Don't hold your breath to see Julie Bindel write a piece on this in The Guardian, nah too busy pointing fingers at the 'menz'.

    So who IS on the frontline fighting against these bastards? Why, that would be those bad-assed motherfuckers over at the YWCA:

    http://www.platform51.org/whatwedo/moneyanddebt.php

    Yep, on the whole, you can rely on feminists to be missing the action, tilting at windmills, and showing all the political nous of Paris Hilton. Obsessed with glamour and victimhood, your modern feminist constructs a vast shadowy freemasonry-esque secret conspiracy called 'the patriarchy' on which to blame all ills, rather than get down to something productive like setting up a credit union.

    Cont.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. considering feminism's a big joke that no-one cares about, you seem to spend an awful lot of time, erm, caring about it...

      Delete
  8. 2. 'Clarifications: In point 1), 'parental' should read 'paternal'.' To my knowledge, not one feminist group has EVER campaigned for fathers. "when fathers do make contact requests, they nearly always get what they're asking for" - Good Lord you really don't get this do you? Why should fathers be reduced to begging for 'contact' with THEIR OWN CHILDREN? Why should't it be automatic that they share custody?

    And no, I don't think children are 'property' - God that's it right there: the moment a man expresses the need, the yearning, to care and love his children, feminists accuse him of treating them like 'property'. Woman says the same thing well....you know Nat, you can shove that sexist, chauvinist nonsense. It's tired, it's old and thankfully the tide's turning.

    4) "You're misinterpreting - the article says that shared parenting shouldn't be at the expense of the current commitment to ensuring what's best for the child. See point 1." What's bloody misinterpreting there? Even you admit that only 10% of custody cases go to family court, and only 300 of those 95,000 cases restrict access to the fathers. In other words abusive or problematic fathers account for 0.031 percent of all fathers involved in separation or divorce, so why shouldn't we assume it's best for the children of the other 99.997% of loving, caring fathers to have the security of knowing the law will protect their relationship with both parents?

    3. "Femitheist is widely regarded to be a hoax site," I did wonder about that, amazing how much time some people have on their hands. As for 'gender essentialists' - I didn't even know they had a label actually. Fair points. I wonder if David Starkey is a feminist hoax? Just kidding.

    4. "where no one (for example) will criticise AVfM for publishing sexist drivel like...etc.' Nah, men don't - generally - go in for criticising daft things people say. You might think they're daft, and you might challenge 121, but generally you appreciate people are saying something ill-thought through or poorly-worded.

    Take the slutwalk thing for instance. One Canadian plod says something stupid, and within weeks tens of thousands of young women are mobilised on four continents. What an amazing example of male power and influence. Overnight, that bobby became the most influential Canadian since Leonard Cohen. I can't think of a similar case where a woman, no matter what title, position or context, and no matter what she said, that could mobilise a single man to protest against what she said. A man in that room in Toronto would have just thought: "he's a copper, what do you expect? Dick."

    5."I'll amend to 'the SPLC, which is well known for documenting hate groups and extremist oppressive-ideologies, wrote an intelligence report on the MRM', and chuck in some quotes. Happy?"

    No not really. The SPLC has a long and distinguished history of fighting against grievous racism and injustice against terrifying groups such as the KKK. They've made it clear that they've never said the MRM is a 'hate group' or an 'extremist group'. The 'intelligence report' is nothing of the kind - it's just the opinion of one of their supporters. That author knew he was promoting a smear, but the feminists who are propogating it are as bad, because you're promoting a smear that attempts to exploit the reputation and credibility of an anti-racist icon. There fucking truly are no depths are there?

    ReplyDelete
  9. I've let PGMurphy's last two comments through as an example of how obsessed MRAs are with blaming 'feminism' and 'women' for all their 'problems' and not bothering paying attention to silly things like 'facts' and 'evidence'.

    I might bother to respond when I've finished doing what I have to do today - interviewing an anti-FGM campaign group and working on some admin for INTERSECT (www.intersect.org.uk). Maybe I'll chuck in a bit of oppressing my poor partner and getting hysterical about something first though.

    Here's a taster of it though: Murphy - it would behove you to at least look into what campaigns, ideals etc I'm involved in and who I've criticised in the past and why.

    Or, y'know, actually do some good for men's rights instead of blathering your ill informed nonsense all over here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sweet. Your entire blog is an example of how obsessed feminists are with blaming 'patriarchy' and 'men' for all their 'problems' and not bothering to pay attention to 'facts' or 'evidence'.

      Feminists are just incapable of recognising priorities because they're so indoctrinated with this patriarchy bullshit that they can't recognise class, race, the military-industrial complex or their own agency as being part of the problem

      To be honest, you're really proved my point. Interviewing an anti-FGM group are we? Fuck me - I'll bet that's a HUGE problem in East Sussex.

      Ask them about what laws they want changed, because we've already got the UK Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985 and the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, which makes it an offence for FGM to be performed anywhere in the world on UK citizens or residents. It's the toughest legislation in the world, comparable to our anti-terrorist legislation. However because FGM doesn't bloody happen in the UK precisely no prosecutions have ever been made.

      Doesn't mean the law's not right; we might as well work on the precautionary principle, but it the fact there's a campaign group about such a non-issue (unless you're in Somalia, where it is an issue) just illustrates feminism's skewed priorities.

      Delete
    2. Again, I'd advise you to look up what I actually do, campaign about and believe.

      The anti-FGM group I'm speaking to was founded by three young women who were brought up in England yet have undergone it. There are around 100,000 women in the UK who are living with FGM, with 20,000 under 18s in danger of it happening: http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDAQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forwarduk.org.uk%2Fdownload%2F162&ei=E3aaT5LGPLHN4QTz-bi2Dw&usg=AFQjCNGjwGL5G9wTJJlxDELSAafMCPk0Qg&sig2=XYQazTK-_pcKwTnHaUjV5w (PDF)

      Not all groups campaign for laws to be changed. DoE offer support, advice and advocacy for those who have undergone or are in danger of FGM. They also work within FGM-practicing communities to break the cycle of FGM and show just how horrific it is. Just because no arrests have been made doesn't mean it doesn't happen - just last week three people were exposed by the Sunday Times for offering to perform or arrange FGM. In the UK. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/22/female-genital-mutilation-uk-medics?newsfeed=true) - DoE also campaign to enforce the law, not just have it.

      That you don't even realise it occurs in the UK and think I shouldn't give a fuck about something if it doesn't speaks utter fucking volumes about you. Now if you could kindly stick your malicious drivel up your backside so I don't have to see it any more, that would be just grand.

      Delete
    3. Oh, and once again Murphy - what do you do, apart from blithering nonsense at women? What do you specifically do that means you can criticise me or anyone else for what campaigns we're involved in?

      Delete
    4. Fair points. I can see the need for campaigners to lobby within the African community to make FGM unacceptable. I suspect those figures are pretty wide of the mark though - they sound like someone's just taken the size of the migrant community and counted all the under-18 women.

      As for what I 'do', well I address that partly below, but in brief: I don't want to take any rights away from women, I just want women to stop taking rights away from men. That means two things:

      1. An automatic presumption in law that after a separation or divorce, a child has the right to a relationship with both her mother AND her father. Frustrating or obstructing that relationship should be seen as a form of child abuse.

      2. Increased research, support and funding for male victims of domestic abuse. Men are abused by their partners differently - it's usually verbal, emotional and psychological. Women often abuse men to the point of suicide or severe mental illness by taking away their children (suicide rate for divorced and separated men is many times higher than rate for all men, which is already high).

      Womens groups, particularly feminist groups, oppose both these campaigns, because they challenge the idea that women can be perpetrators or that men - fathers - are important. There you go, in short, that's why so many men are a bit sick and tired of feminists.

      Delete
    5. Yeah, that's bullshit. Did you actually read the OP? You might want to go back and look at it again. Then maybe try talking to some actual feminists instead of the straw ones that reside in your head.

      Delete
  10. 'As a liberal, open-minded man, I'm disappointed by feminism, and it's obsession with rape (what is that about by the way?)' I'm sorry? Err no I am not. WHAT IT IS ABOUT IS THE FACT THAT NO WOMAN ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD IS SAFE WALKING DOWN A STREET AT NIGHT. Clear enough? Sorry for the caps Nat.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Glory be, my interview was pushed back, giving me time to respond:

    1) ' Feminism's a complete joke, that's why it's such a minority pursuit', 'within weeks tens of thousands of young women are mobilised on four continents'

    I'll just leave those two next to each other there.

    You do realise most feminists are heavily involved in other social justice activism, right? And that just because some people are more heavily involved in one campaign over another doesn't mean they don't support it, right? Why aren't you out campaigning against rape being used as a weapon of war (to everyone, not just women) in the DRC? Mind you, this is the person who doesn't understand why people are so het-up about rape in the first place.

    Tell me exactly what you're involved in to make a difference, please do. Because all I'm seeing is 'tumbleweed-rolling-silence' from the MRM on ANYTHING that's not 'WOMEN ARE HOWWIBLE'.

    Basically, what I'm saying is that projection doesn't suit you sweetie.

    Oh, and patriarchy is a process of socialisation whereby men are held to be a) more valuable than women and b) the default norm. It's not a conspiracy.

    2) No, you don't get it. Making a contact request is not 'begging' to see your own children. It's involving external mediation processes because the parents can't decide between themselves how to arrange things. Arbitration is not a feminist vanguard, neither are messy divorces.

    3) The point of the article is why should we change the law to move away from a child-centred approach to an adult-centred approach when evidence shows us this is what works best?

    Again, it looks like you've gotten confused: "In other words abusive or problematic fathers account for 0.031 percent of all fathers involved in separation or divorce, so why shouldn't we assume it's best for the children of the other 99.997% of loving, caring fathers to have the security of knowing the law will protect their relationship with both parents?" - the whole point was that if parents aren't abusive, they do have the protection of law - only 0.031% of fathers don't have legal access to their kids - so what's your problem? Do you think abusive people should be blithely handed children? Because that's what it looks like, if you're complaining about a system that works perfectly well, if we both agree on the stats.

    ReplyDelete
  12. 4) You claim that men don't go in for criticising people, yet you've taken the time to write four extremely long comments here, which are full of misrepresentation and obsfucation, all while refusing to condemn things that have been said extremely bluntly by the MRM - like the stuff about Register-Her: http://manboobz.com/2011/11/23/and-what-if-they-get-killed-a-voice-for-men-as-an-antifeminist-witchfinder-general/. You attribute the imagined actions of all feminists to me despite the fact that I have a long track record of speaking out against people I disagree with and who's ideals I think compromise our movement. Research doesn't hurt, really it doesn't.

    From your screed on Slutwalk, I'd like to make the following points:

    a) what the policeman said was offensive - it blamed people who were raped for what happened to them
    b) people were outraged because they're sick of being told drivel like this from random people, and that a person who's supposed to be out catching rapists was happier to blame the victims is totally galling
    c) most of the discussion centred on the fact that it exposed some of the huge problems with the police force, including institutional sexism. Maybe you're happy to just shrug it off, but most people actually care about things like this. Although I understand that since you can't blame a woman, you're not interested
    d) could your idea that men wouldn't have mobilised about something a woman said in the same way be down to i) men don't generally have to worry about being raped or being blamed for their own rape, ii) that women aren't seen as representative of 'the establishment' or figures with influence to be taken seriously?
    e) The MRM couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery - whatever happened to Sink Misandry? Hahaha.

    5) It's sweet how you're trying to take the moral high ground here, but no dice. The info's there as an intelligence report, it was published by the SPLC - I'm not co-opting them (another way I differ from the MRM!). And once again you demonstrate your refusal to condemn the frankly, fucking scary stuff published in the report but instead decide to have a big old froth about women because the report was published. Nice one, sparky.

    To conclude, thanks for taking the time to come over here and repeatedly prove all my points, it's been fun! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to actually do things that help people. When the door hits you on the way out, please don't think it's just because you're a man.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Re Tom Martin's Road to Damascus moment: I was under the impression ladies' nights had been legislated against. But on searching, all I could find was lots of "Ladies' nights could become illegal due to EU equality rules" stories going back many years. Presumably you know it stands. They do seem to have become rarer, but maybe that's just because I'm old and don't go to clubs much now.

    I'd be happy to see them go. It looks pretty discriminatory to me to have entry on this basis (like with the now-changing car insurance situation). And I don't think it does the female customers any favours either to be used as 'bait' here. But how he gets from this to "massive wimminz conspiracy against teh menfolk" I don't know. It's like he and logical thought have never been introduced.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Oh, I might seem like a petty concern troll on feminist blogs, but you should see how worked up I get at "male rights" sites.

    Thinking there was some legitimacy to the claim that society has some poor preconceptions of manhood, I checked out some youtube channel by a group called "manwomanmyth". Long story short; they aren't interested in legitimate issues. Basically their videos consist of interviews with unaccredited, dowdy looking men, who spend their whole time purporting the existance of feminist conspiracies and denying crimes-against-women statistics.

    I checked out there website, and on the front page was an article entitled "why women can't do stand up, and are only funny if they act like men". That tells you everything you need to know about them.

    Are there any sites that discuss male issues, without the batshit insanity or 19th Century misogyny?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, there's No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz? - http://noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz.wordpress.com/

      Also, Ally Fogg writes some good things for CiF on men's issues and masculinity.

      Note how neither of those sites want anything to do with the MRM - and in fact, the MRM hate them because they don't promote macho-manhood and the subjugation of women as solutions to their problems.

      Delete
  15. I don't think you've proved anything Nat.

    1. Feminism's managed to make itself pretty peripheral. I've asked around - not one women I asked this morning (admittedly just four mind) said she'd describe herself as a feminist, none of them knew about 'slutwalks'. Mobilising thousands doesn't mean a great deal really. After all, thousands turned up for the Countryside Alliance marches and I don't know that many fox-hunters, do you?

    Frankly you're correct. I personally don't feel strongly about Playboy clubs (don't go to them), FGM (doesn't happen in the UK), rape (very, very bad, but it's illegal, and a 59% conviction rate is the same as for any other violent crime). More precisely, I'm not sure why rape is such an hot button issue, in the UK, for UK feminists. I mean I don't approve of murder or GBH either, but that's just sort of one of those things that goes without saying isn't it? I mean, who does?

    Institutional sexism? Yeah I guess, whatever. That's more about courtesy and professionalism though.

    2. "Tell me exactly what you're involved in to make a difference, please do". Well, I've set up two credit unions in the UK since 2006 which to date have lent to 13,455 individuals. Reckon about 60/40 female/male split (guesstimate). Generally people on a household income of less than £10,000pa. I like to think this is very practical help for women (and men, and children) who very much need it. One of those CUs is having to merge with a larger local co-operative soon due to FSA rules, and that's taken some of my time recently. In 2009 I also helped set up a charity providing suitcases free to young people leaving care, so that they didn't have to carry their worldly belongings in black bin bags. This currently operates in collaboration with social services departments in Gtr. Manchester, but we have plans to start operting in London in September. I'm going to Kampala in September to set up a funding stream for a local CBO working with young people with HIV through sports. This is in my free time, aside from my day job.

    3."Why should we change the law to move away from a child-centred approach to an adult-centred approach when evidence shows us this is what works best?..."only 0.031% of fathers don't have legal access to their kids."

    That's the pecentage of fathers denied access by the courts. What do you think the percentage of fathers who are frustrated in accessing their children by the mother is? Anyway, why are we talking about 'access'? A truly child-centred approach would give the child the right to a relationship with both parents.

    5. SPLC - well, yes you are co-opting them, but go ahead.

    6. Truly all of this is ultimately a distraction feminists can do ANYTHING they like - by all means jump up and down about any of this nonsense - be my guest. If you were to ask 'why do you care so much anyway? you'd be quite right.

    What I do care about is fathers having shared custody of their children, and I care VERY MUCH if I catch feminists spreading lies, misrepresenting statistics or painting all fathers as abusers, simply to support the status quo which is so widely acknowledged to be heavily weighted against fathers.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Congratulations on what you've done, they sound like great schemes.

    Notice how I managed to do that without whining that you should be doing something else, even if I personally might consider other things to be more pressing? Notice how I asked you what you're doing instead of just prescribing a bunch of campaigns to you as an individual?

    If men want more access to their children and the mothers won't provide it, why aren't they going to the courts? There's a 99.97% chance they'll get it. Also, I still fail to understand how this is feminism's fault. We discuss access when parents - or children - fail to come to an agreement on how custody should be shared. It's a short word that enables us to articulate a big concept for the sake of convenience. You're still arguing opposing viewpoints - either a) you agree with the statistics and only 0.031% of men - who are demonstrably dangerous to their children - aren't allowed to see them, which you should agree is not too many, thus rendering your 'campaign' invalid or b) many more men are denied access to their children, but you can't point to who or where or how.

    As for your final paragraph, if you could point me to where I did any of those things, it would be just grand.

    Finally - FGM does happen here. You could at least have the courtesy to acknowledge that, even if you won't acknowledge the utterly horrific shite your 'movement' pulls on a day to day basis.

    ReplyDelete
  17. FGM - you know, I'm not sure it does happen in the UK - the criminal sanctions are too great. I can believe though, that there are probably cases where young girls are spirited abroad for FGM. A bit like forced marriage and Asian gangs who groom young white girls for sex, this is one of those issues where there's a nasty trifecta of culture, race and silence.

    My point isn't that 'there are other issues I consider more pressing' - my point(and it's not a personal point to you Nat) is that contemporary feminism is SO focused on demonising men that it seems to have completely lost sight of social and economic justice.

    You say you 'fail to understand' how fathers' not getting access or shared custody of their children is 'feminisms fault'. Well, men like me seek equality and then when we look into it, we see that feminists and feminist groups are campaigning - very successfully - to disparage and minimise the role of fathers. I provided links to these groups in my first comment. They are not peripheral either - these are some of the biggest, highest profile womens' organisations in the world. The day a single feminist group condemns this kind of prejudice is the day I'll condemn some misogynistic tosser.

    As for "many more men are denied access to their children, but you can't point to who or where or how," you are kidding me right? You've heard of Fathers 4 Justice, Families Need Fathers, the Fatherhood Institute etc. etc.

    You think they're all blowing smoke?

    Incidently "the MRM couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery"? Listen sweetie, when children are at stake, we're fucking awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTeDvoM_rUA

    Just for a moment, play an imaginative exercise: imagine tomorrow a feminist group announced a campaign against payday loan companies targeting women. What would the reaction be? I think upone hearing the reasoning, the media and public would probably see the logic, but what's your very first, visceral, reflex emotion? Yeah I know - it'd be surprise. Why is that do you think? It's because it'd be a topic where feminists wouldn't be blaming men. Every other feminist campaign targets men and mens behaviour.

    As for the 'Utterly horrific shite my movement pulls on a day to day basis'. Well, it's not my movement, and I've never seen any man lobby for the destruction of families in the way that Julie Bindel, NOW, NOWL etc. have. Your definition of 'horrific shite' seems to resonate from shock that anyone is daring to point out that feminism has degenerated into a gender-based special interest group.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Last time I'm going to say this - you have literally no clue what I'm involved in, what feminist groups I know are involved in, or other groups do. It's like you're playing chinese whispers, but no one had a fucking clue what the message was in the first place.

      It is frankly, dull as fuck to repeatedly dissect your odes to victimhood.

      Once more - if only 0.031% of fathers can't see their children, what is your fucking problem? And I want a direct answer to this, not 'OH OH BUT LOOK F4J', or I won't publish it.

      If British girls are being taken abroad for FGM, why is the idea of an anti-FGM group in Britain so objectionable? (Oh, I love how you didn't even look at my stats but instead just pulled an 'explanation' out of your backside by the way.)

      And again, why won't you condemn statements like 'the thought of fucking [women's] shit up gives me an erection'? What about someone discussing Register-Her saying 'So what if they get killed'? Neither of those discuss the goals of feminism, and that's what I've been asking you to condemn.

      But no. WAAH WAAH IT'S ALL THE LADIES FAULTS THEY'S SO MEAN TO MEEEEE NOT WANTING ABUSIVE FATHERS TO TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER CHILDREN WHEN CUSTODY IS DECIDED'.

      As I said above, I'm fucking bored of you repeating the same fallacious shit over and over and over and over again, (predictably) blaming everything in the world on women, and refusing to answer questions. So consider yourself on moderation until such time as you refrain from being terminally dull.

      Delete
  18. Just so everyone's aware, I'm now removing posts from Murphy. His last one continued in the same vein as above, despite me having reiterated my rebuttals to his points several times. He also tried to not only minimise death threats that MRAs sent to some students who put on a play of the SCUM manifesto, but justify them. If he so wishes, he can set up his own blog and rant to his heart's content, but he isn't entitled to my time, attention or commenting space.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Wow. That was exhausting to read, how you managed to keep up with that despite being ill is beyond me. I feel like I need to make you a cup of tea and offer a bourbon biscuit in thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Just as an update: after the recent Times report, two people have been arrested for performing FGM in the UK. An estimated 100,000 UK girls are thought to have undergone FGM either here or abroad.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Somehow I feel like MRAs are just some sad, lonely boys who are bitter because they're too afraid to look inside and realize that maybe the problem is internal/individual and not with half the human population.

    Whatever. Let the MRM die (nobody takes them seriously anyways). Ironically, they seem to be against gay marriage on the whole, even though they constantly exhort people to believe that men are superior. Well...then why don't MRAs just marry other men if they hate women that much?

    ReplyDelete
  22. I agree 100% with the above article.I am a middle-aged anarcho-punk guy, and I've been all around these arguments since the 80s, and you DO feel - "Why Am I Having To argue All This Stuff AGAIN". I've recently been trying to discuss some of this stuff with young men on YouTube, & you do end up losing your patience, because THEY'VE just "discovered" these issues, & their arguments aren't very developed. I know that might sound very arrogant, but please bear with me.
    When you start out on a path (regarding certain issues) it all seems very SIMPLE. When I started getting involved in certain movements in the 80s, everything seemed very clear cut - "That's WRONG, this is RIGHT, blah;blah, blah". Whilst I have never lost my core beliefs, I now realise that certain arguments are far more complex.
    For instance, when I first discovered feminism, I agreed with it, but I had nagging doubts about what I perceived to be "double standards" (all that "if its okay for women to do this, why is it wrong for men?") As I matured in my thinking, it became apparent that the argument was far less clear cut. Men & women do NOT face the same issues in the same way, & they're are a great many other issues to take into consideration. "Double Standards" is far too simplistic an argument, because you might as well say "IF IT'S OKAY FOR A MOUSE TO GO IN A CHINA SHOP, WHY IS IT WRONG FOR A BULL TO DO THE SAME?"
    Another flaw with all that "if its okay for...." argument is -they're not asking the question - WHO says its "okay",and WHY are they saying it". Sometimes, actually NOBODY (except a few extremists) are saying "its okay for....."
    These young guys are saying "If I, as a man, did this, everyone would say" or "If a woman did this, everyone would say...." and its not based on any real experience- its based on presumption. "If I was beaten up by my girlfriend, everyone would sat - Hip! Hip! Hooray!" Oh really! Would they?
    Here's another example of SIMPLISTIC thinking. All these young guys have got a gripe about allocation of health resources. They come out with all this "Testicular cancer gets this amount of money, whilst breast cancer gets that amount of money, & that's not fair". Trying to apply a 5 year old's logic ("She's got more pudding than me- that's not fair!") to an issue as complex as Health resources is just silly. What are they saying? - that we should allocate health resources on the basis of - Take the total health service budget, & divide it by the total amount of diseases, & allocate it that way". That would be a stupid way to run a health service. There are far more complex issues to do with health service resources, such as - no, I won't even start, because I'd be here all day listing them, and I know that I'm talking here to intelligent people, so there's no need.
    And a million other predictable-as-fuck arguments ("there are extremist feminists who say......" Oh really! I never knew that! Thank you for enlightening me") ("If you believe in equal rights for men & women, you shouldn't call yourself a feminist" OH No! Don't get me started on THAT one!)
    People- I'm EXHAUSTED! These lads have found some simplistic argument on the internet, & then rehashed it, and part of me wants to help them look at it from a different perspective, but it just WEARS YOU OUT. I'm going off for a lie-down in a dark room. Thanks for listening.

    ReplyDelete