John Hembling: Open mouth, insert foot.
So the other day someone asked the Men’s Rights subreddit “Why do people think you guys hate women?”
There were a lot of ridiculous answers to that question, but one of the most ridiculous (and one of the most highly upvoted) responses came from our old friend John Hembling, the blabby Canadian videoblogger and A Voice for Men “Editor in Chief” also known for some dopey reason as John The Other. He explained:
![johntheother [-37] 29 points 3 days ago (36|7) They dont actually think we hate women. The accusation is a derailing tactic, designed to push the topic towards a defensive posture, and requiring proof from us (MRAs) that "hatred of women" is a false claim. When used, it takes the discussion away from real issues such as suicide rates, homelessness, infant genital mutilation and so on. It's very very effective, because it plays on the fact that almost all men, including MRAs are basically decent. And the social stigma of a public perception of hatred of women is painful. To overcome this tactic, it is necessary to discard a self image relying on consensus approval. Tough to do because we are social animals. But to disarm the attack of "you hate women" it's necessary to develop a strong self identity which takes no account of consensus conferral of approval. Be the "bad man", and let only your own internal compas of right and wrong guide you.](https://i1.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/jtohatewomen2.png?resize=597%2C253)
Really, John? Because I have something like 1200 posts on this blog here that would seem to suggest that, no, a lot of MRAs (and PUAs and MGOTWers) really, honestly, sincerely, and sometimes even proudly, hate women. (Ok, a certain percentage of my posts are actually about kitties, but still, I invite you to spend a month or so going through the archives, John; you may learn a thing or two.)
But, actually, there’s no need to take my word on the subject. Because if you really want to know why so many people think MRAs hate women, I invite you to take a look at and a listen to this video by a prominent MRA. Seems pretty obvious that this guy hates women, wouldn’t you agree?
Oh, by the way, this guy is you. [TRIGGER WARNING for people who are not John Hembling and who might be disturbed by a smirking asshole literally laughing about rape. Seriously. This is bad even by his standards.]
Oh, another by the way: Hembling complained about feminists “doxing” him long after he made the video that was excerpted here in which he gave out his name. That’s right, he put his name out in his own video, then complained that feminists were violating his privacy and basically terrorizing him by ever mentioning his name. Until he started going by his real name again.
Before I go, here’s another particularly inane contribution to the Reddit discussion:
Huh. MRAs certainly have a most unusual way of “walking on eggshells.” Indeed, to this outside observer it looks a lot less like “walking on eggshells” and more like “angry toddler having an endless stompy tantrum.”
@ Argenti Aertheri
Oh man, your putting all of that in Excel? Yikes! Is that going to work correctly? I would think you would have to use a database for all of those questions that can have multiple answers since excel is just going to give you one cell per row and column for an answer. Unless all of the possible answers had its own column and everyone had a Y/N possibility for each individual filling out the survey. Holy Moly your giving me data nightmares.
It exported with each answer as a column. In words, not Y/N — I’ve gotten the combinations for each answer worked out (lots of copy and pasting!) and gave it usable headers. And split it into sets of 500 answers since excel keeps spitting on it.
Tomorrow first up will be making a spreadsheet (probably pages in a workbook) for each set of questions, then finding the outliers => trolls. Then maybe I can get to the fun stuff like charts!
And now I really am going to bed, as my “tomorrow” starts in <3 hours (argh)
@Argenti – yeah, the possum thing had me going WTF? when I saw it. Very golemish.
I’d have expected more people on the blog to tick non-religious beliefs, actually. Right now I can’t recall if I did or not (it was that definition of religious that tripped me up). Also, secular humanist yes, when it comes to things like separation of church and state.
In this country I could probably identify as non-religious because I don’t worship Australian Rules football.
Argenti, thanks again for doing this, seriously.
I’m not going to touch this whole religion thing. As I’ve probably said before, I’m an agnostic because I don’t believe in god but what the hell do I know?
…that is one CONFUSED troll.
It might be MRAL. And he thought it was ‘check one for the beliefs of each sock-puppet.’
Oh, actually, maybe I want to touch the religion thing, but sort of differently. Who was it who was talking about being a unitarian universalist? I’ve looked at that b/c the whole “we welcome everyone, including atheists” bit sounds cool, but it just seems … really really Christian, in form and structure and culture if not necessarily belief. And sometimes belief: The UU church nearest me is actually a church that’s affiliated both with UU and with the united church of christ; it serves communion, etc.
Just curious, really.
I didn’t tick secular humanist because I thought it was a particular brand of atheism. If it just means supporting separation of church and state, I’m totally for it.
Guess I should have googled a bit before not ticking certain boxes… too late now. 🙂
I got to ‘politics,’ and I was like, democratic socialist or socialist democrat? Fuck it, they’re both better than what we’ve got, I’ll take ’em. And I checked them both.
I wonder if there will ever be an argument that doesn’t descend into something like this:
Person A and Person B are having a conversation about population X, one is pro, one is against:
Person A: I like population X because.
Person B: Well, I have a criticism about population X. It is *specific criticism about some problematic aspect*.
Person C: Ooooh, so that means *broad generalization and blatant strawman about population X*.
Everyone else: Wtf? How did you get from Person B to Person C?? That’s not at all what was said??
Which certainly made them more believable to me, back when I was worshipping them. The fact that they might not answer your prayers, or even notice you at all, was well documented.
I’m still not convinced that theist privilege is a thing, because “theist” is such a broad category and extremely heterogeneous. Christian privilege is certainly a thing, and I think everyone else benefits or suffers by how far their views are from the Christian mainstream.
SittieKitty — probably not.
Re: half checked non-religious — I should’ve clarified, that’s half the responses to the question (which was check any), not half of us. So once I account for multiple replies it might be higher. I totally blew getting up early >.<
David — you see my email? Opinion?
One thought on the theist priviledge thing, that I’m going to try not Godwin’ing on — Jewish priviledge isn’t really a thing, and the farther you get into things like keeping kosher, the harder it gets to do things like eating in restaurants, at parties, etc.
Argenti, just sent you an email, sorry about the delay, sounds fine.
@Howard
Or a really adamant “all gods are real” polytheist.
@David
*waves*
Our roots are Christian, and we definitely structure our worship in a particularly New England Protestant way, but it really depends on which church you go to (each congregation is self-determining). At my church, we only talk about Jesus on Easter and Christmas, and even then he’s treated like a wise prophet. Believe me, if it felt Christian to me, I wouldn’t go at all. Another congregation I’ve attended has a really Pagan bent, while the congregation in my new neighborhood is pretty heavily Christian. It’s all down to the culture of the congregation. That said, UU is still pretty religious in the sense of having a formal structure and a set of principles and “sources of wisdom”, but the spiritual stuff is left up to the individual.
The UUA and UCC recently formed a sort of partnership over their shared liberalness, and there are some joint congregations, but it’s not like we’ve adopted their theology across the board or declared ourselves Christian or anything.
I should add that UUs tend to use “prophet” to mean “someone who had something important and world-changing to say”. This includes Jesus and Muhammad and Moses, but also MLK Jr and Rachel Carson. I add this just for clarity.
B-but, he checked the “no gods” box too!
This is just like that novel I wrote that one time.
Damn, I gotta polish that up and shop it around.
Sorry, last point on me and UU: the religious elements are pretty much last on the lost of why I go to my church – the fact that they share my politics is top, and the community is second (this is why I don’t really think of myself as a UU – I’m just someone who attends First Parish in Brookline)
Howard is correct. Xenu is also involved.
RE: CassandraSays
Golems live in attics? Aren’t they a bit heavy to be upstairs?
The Golem of Prague is supposed to be buried in an attic, where he was put down after doing his job too well.
RE: Kittehserf
Well, THAT certainly belongs on wtftaxidermy, for sure. Creepy!
RE: emilygoddess
My husband’s Southern Baptist, but the last church he got on well with was a UCC church. They were quite nice people! On the whole very old.