Category: actual activism

Facebook: Page advocating murder of feminist blogger “doesn’t violate our community standard on bullying and harassment.”

Several months ago, you may recall, feminist activists got Facebook to agree to remove blatant sexist hate speech from its site — much to the chagrin of many Men’s Rights Activists, like Paul Elam of A Voice for Men, who declared, in a post filled with alarmist rhetoric, that “feminist ideologues are co-opting Facebook, and they will root out any and all opposition to their worldview.” AVFM’s John Hembling, meanwhile, denounced the feminist activists as “fascists.”

Ever since then, Men’s Rights activists have been playing a game of “gotcha” with Facebook, trying to prove that the hate-speech monitors there only care about misogynist hate speech, and don’t actually care about hate speech directed at men. Every few days, it seems, there is a new thread in the Men’s Rights subreddit purporting to document this alleged “double standard.”

Ten days ago, for example, a Men’s Rights Redditor called dizzy_j got nearly 400 upvotes for a post complaining that “I reported three anti-men Facebook pages for gender-based hate speech today. Only one was removed.” Six days ago, DerDietrich got 580 upvotes for submitting this supposed evidence of a double standard. Trouble is, you can’t actually prove a double standard with a handful of examples.

But I would like to suggest an alternate hypothesis, which also fits the anecdotal data provided thus far by the MRAs, and provide an additional piece of anecdotal evidence that supports my theory and undercuts theirs.

My hypothesis is that Facebook is shitty at recognizing and dealing with hate speech and harassment, no matter whom it’s aimed at.

My evidence for this? Well, yesterday bloggers at Skepchick noticed a Facebook page targeting a specific feminist/skeptic blogger and asking if she “should … be murdered.” The anonymous poster — who identified her by name and posted pictures of her on the page — coyly avoided a literal call for murder, writing instead:

We should not ever break the law. Rather, we should advocate , through lawful land constitutional processes, to have the law changed so that it is legal to kill [name redacted by DF]. Alternatively, we should, where legal, request that [name redacted by DF] kill herself. Relevant laws should be changed so that suicide, and advocating suicide, is legal.

The Skepchick bloggers reported the page to Facebook for its obvious violations of the site’s harassment policies.

And they received this reply from Facebook (I’ve covered up the blogger’s name):

I think it’s fair to say that if Facebook can’t recognize a page calling for the literal murder of someone as harassment there is something very wrong with its system for dealing with harassment and hate speech.

The page has since been taken down, though it’s not clear if it was removed by Facebook or by the original anonymous Facebooker.

Get your act together, Facebook.

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Deprived of new women to hate in Toronto, A Voice for Menners resort to rape jokes, gay bashing

Post author By David Futrelle
Post date October 2, 2013
350 Comments on Deprived of new women to hate in Toronto, A Voice for Menners resort to rape jokes, gay bashing

Nick Reading and Dean Esmay amongst the counterprotesters

Pity the poor MRAs who travelled hundreds — if not thousands — of miles to AVFM’s big weekend in Toronto hoping for a confrontation with the evil feminazis that never happened. They wanted footage of angry women they could watch again and again on YouTube. They wanted new names and faces to put up on Register-Her. In short, they wanted new women to hate.

But alas, the feminists, for the most part, stayed home. And the ones who showed up were mostly dudes, from the LBGT activist group BashBack. Making things even worse, they didn’t block any doors or try to crash AVFM’s rally. What they did, mostly, was chant things the MRAs didn’t like.

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Confused losers at A Voice for Men congratulate themselves on their COLOSSAL SUCCESS in Toronto

Post author By David Futrelle
Post date September 29, 2013
203 Comments on Confused losers at A Voice for Men congratulate themselves on their COLOSSAL SUCCESS in Toronto

Derek Zoolander: Also a little delusional sometimes

So over on A Voice for Men, the regulars are all congratulating one another for their grand victory in Toronto. In AVFM’s official post on Saturday’s tiny “rally,” incongruously titled “Historic MHRA rally in Toronto huge success,” Elam — who in photographs of the events looked rather befuddled by it all — declared that the day had been magical for him:

“This was one of the greatest things I have ever done in my life,” said Elam. “Meeting all of these people and talking to a crowd that was five times bigger than the opposition was a remarkable event.”

Given that most of the opposition made a clear decision to ignore the AVFM/CAFE rally and lecture — much to the obvious disappointment of many MRAs who were there in Toronto or watching on the sidelines on the Internet — this was not much of an accomplishment.

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Speaker at Men’s Rights RALLY OF THE CENTURY in Toronto calls on MRAs to take up arms against “communism”

Post author By David Futrelle
Post date September 28, 2013
230 Comments on Speaker at Men’s Rights RALLY OF THE CENTURY in Toronto calls on MRAs to take up arms against “communism”

Dean Esmay rallies the troops in Toronto

So, it finally happened. The men’s rights lecture and rally in Toronto that A Voice for Men have been breathlessly promoting for weeks — in no less than 17 separate posts — have both come to pass. Men’s Rights celebrities flew in from across the continent to attend the exciting events. Paul Elam was there! So was Karen Straughan! Even Dan Perrins made an appearance! (Oh, wait, I think he lives around there.)

In a post-rally post, AVFM’s Robert O’Hara declared the “Historic MHRA rally in Toronto” to have been a “huge success.”

Well, you can be the judge of that. Go here to watch some actual footage of the event. (Sorry, I can’t get it to embed here.) So far I’ve only watched the final 8-minute video at the top of the page, but it’s pretty revealing in and of itself. The event organizers almost outnumber the sparse crowd. And one of the speakers calls for MRAs to take up arms against their “communist” opponents. No, really, just watch.

In case the video gets pulled, or censored, I’ve taken the liberty of transcribing his remarks: :

There’s an organization out there called communism, and the communist manifesto says that the first thing they have to do is take over power. And they’ll never get elected. And they know that they’ll never get elected. So what they do is they say “we have to take power by violent methods,” right, so if you want to crack back against these people, I hate to say it, but you’ve gotta be prepared to pick up a gun and put down the books.

Emphasis mine.

Someone in the audience responds to this with a hearty “yep!” There’s a smattering of applause, mixed with boos. AVFM’s Dean Esmay hurridly ushers the speaker away from the microphone.

The speaker who follows Esmay — I didn’t catch his name — describes the counterprotesters (who held their own rally nearby) as being of “the hammer and sickle” and denigrates them as “queers.”

This isn’t so much history being made as history repeating itself. I suspect the rhetoric was similar at a lot of White Citizen Council rallies in the sixties.

Oh, and the HISTORIC LECTURE that so many MRAs were hoping and dreaming that feminists would disrupt? Feminists ignored it. Apparently, according to one MRA on Reddit who claimed to have been there, a little more than a hundred people showed up.

Congratulations, A Voice for Men, on your FLAWLESS VICTORY!

I’ll watch as much of the rest of the rally as I can force myself to sit through, and add anything else worth adding.

EDITED TO ADD: I watched the video that covered the rest of the rally. It was pretty uneventful: a low energy, sparsely attended rally with a bunch of half-assed speeches. Apparently no one at A Voice for Men or CAFE, the co-host of the rally, bothered to prepare anything to say — perhaps because they were all expecting some sort of feminist riot? The “pick up a gun” speaker wasn’t one of the scheduled speakers, just someone they gave the microphone to when he raised his hand after the scheduled speakers were done.

One moment that did stand out: a trans man — apparently a member of CAFE — briefly took the mic, taking offense at the chants from the counterprotestors calling MRA’s “anti-gay.” I would suggest he take a look at AVFM’s not-so-proud history of homophobia and transphobia.

EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: Here’s a picture of the event from Civilian Media. You can almost taste the excitement! From left, Nick Reading of Men’s Rights Edmonton, Dean Esmay of AVFM, the legendary Paul Elam (looking a little bewildered), and two other dudes. Paul evidently HEARTS Fucking Their Shit Up. Oh, Paul, we HEART U!

kXDAMZW

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Jane Austen and the Rape-Threatening Men

Post author By David Futrelle
Post date July 31, 2013
1,016 Comments on Jane Austen and the Rape-Threatening Men

The face that launched a thousand threatening tweets.

NOTE: Today is Day Two of the Man Boobz Pledge Drive. If you haven’t already, please consider clicking the little button below and sending some bucks my way.

Thanks! (And thanks again to all who’ve already donated.) Now back to our regularly scheduled programming:

So what sorts of things make some men so furious that they feel the need to send women they’ve never met literal death and rape threats on the internet? It doesn’t take much, apparently. A woman suggesting that it’s not such a good idea to hit on women in elevators at 4 AM. A woman making videos suggesting that there’s sexism in video games. A woman captured on video telling some men to shut the fuck up. A woman complaining about sexist jokes at a tech conference.

Add to this: a woman campaigning successfully to have Jane Austen’s face put on the Bank of England’s ten pound notes.

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Don’t Be That Rape Apologist: Arthur Koestler, Judgy Bitch, and why MRAs hate rape awareness campaigns

Post author By David Futrelle
Post date July 13, 2013
736 Comments on Don’t Be That Rape Apologist: Arthur Koestler, Judgy Bitch, and why MRAs hate rape awareness campaigns

Arthur Koestler: Brilliant writer, serial rapist?

Today I’m going to talk about Janet Bloomfield — AKA JudgyBitch — and her bizarre attack on the original Don’t Be That Guy anti-rape posters in Edmonton. But I’m going to take a bit of a detour first, so bear with me.

I recently picked up a copy of Arthur Koestler’s The Case of the Midwife Toad, a nonfiction account of a scientific feud that provided me with some diverting travel reading and put me in the mood to read more of Koestler’s nonfiction.

But doing some rudimentary Googling I made a rather horrifying discovery about Koestler, whom I’d admired since reading his bracing account of breaking with Communism in the classic The God That Failed anthology: according to a recent biographer, Koestler was a serial rapist and abuser of women.

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John the Other: Feminists who oppose rape memes on Facebook are violence-promoting fascists, and you are too! Probably.

Post author By David Futrelle
Post date June 5, 2013
289 Comments on John the Other: Feminists who oppose rape memes on Facebook are violence-promoting fascists, and you are too! Probably.

Typical feminazis! Oh, wait.

The MRA hissy fit over Facebook continues. Over on A Voice for (Human) Men, our old friend John “The Other” Hembling offers up his take on the whole controversy, which has roused the usually torpid MRAs to “activism,” and somehow manages to be even more overheated and incoherent than even Paul Elam before him — and at times nearly as ponderous as the legendarily ponderous Fidelbogen as well.

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Man-O-Philosopher Fidelbogen: Feminists want to ban Facebook rape memes because “feminists do not allow the right to exist of people who are not feminist.”

Feminist grinding men into dirt on the Internet.

While we’re talking about this whole Facebook thing (see here and here if you don’t know what I’m referring to), I figured some of you might be wondering: What does the eminent Man-O-Philosopher and self-described “Counter-Feminist Agent of Change” Fidelbogen think of all this?

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A Voice for Men activates its activists to make asses of themselves over this Facebook thing

Post author By David Futrelle
Post date June 2, 2013
113 Comments on A Voice for Men activates its activists to make asses of themselves over this Facebook thing

For MRAs, driving in circles IS the plan.

So if you’ve ever wondered what sort of activism that Men’s Rights, er, Activists do when they do do activism, take a look at this little ACTION ALERT from A Voice for Men.

You may recall Paul Elam getting all worked up the other day because Facebook, responding to a campaign launched by a coalition of feminist activists and groups, announced it was going to try to do a better job removing “gender-based” hate speech from its site. You know, like this [TRIGGER WARNING] sort of thing.

Naturally, Elam and other MRAs interpreted Facebook’s announcement as the first step in the End of Male Speech on the Internet, or something.

Anyway, now the MRAs are ACTIVATING! AVFM has announced that it’s going after the groups that signed onto the feminist Facebook protest. Because, well, I’m not sure I get why exactly.

Here’s their explanation:

It’s time for action. The AVFM community has scrambled to look beyond the fine print of WAM!’s ultimatum to Facebook and into the signatories. We are finding that some of them are tax-exempt, and even government funded. We now know that government funded institutions have endorsed a harmful double standard that results in the censorship of men.

But, if we discover that even one cent of government money touched WAM!’s campaign, we will be exposing a whole new dimension of hypocrisy.

Uh, ok. I’m just really having a hard time finding the hypocrisy here. If you look at the names of the groups that signed onto the open letter, you’ll find a number of general feminist groups, groups concerned with the representation of women/gender in the media, and groups organized against sexual assault and other forms of violence.

They didn’t sign a petition demanding that all men posting on the internet be banned or, I dunno, kicked in the balls. They signed onto an open letter demanding that Facebook remove

groups, pages and images that explicitly condone or encourage rape or domestic violence or suggest that they are something to laugh or boast about.

That doesn’t seem hypocritical to me. It seems rather in line with what these groups promote.

And the only men who will be censored will be men posting this sort of hateful shit. If women post this sort of shit, they’ll be banned too.

Apparently, AVFM and its “activist” fans are so divorced from reality that they think they’re going to be able to publicly embarrass rape survivor support groups … for standing up against crude, hateful rape jokes on Facebook featuring images of brutalized victims.

Still, at least this sort of surreal, self-defeating activism is better than firebombing courthouses and police stations, as that infamous manifesto posted in AVFM’s activism section so enthusiastically recommends.

EDIT: I forgot the link to the AVFM alert; added it inthe first graf.

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2012: Year of Triumphs for the Men’s Rights Movement

Post author By David Futrelle
Post date December 28, 2012
356 Comments on 2012: Year of Triumphs for the Men’s Rights Movement

What a year!

The Men’s Rights movement, the most important human rights movement of the 21^st century, got 2012 off to a flying start in February with an event in Bozeman, Montana that was quite literally attended by no one. After that, the year was a whirlwind of activity. Let’s go to the timeline: