"But since when has MRAs done -anything- for male victims”

hellnoradfems answers Feminist attacks on Male Rights Activism

Reblogged from(http://hellnoradfems.tumblr.com/post/87033962058/imminentdeathsyndrome-sarahjhuynh

“I doubt feminists would be against helping to fund male support groups for domestic violence and sexual abuse”

Erin Pizzey started one of the first women’s shelters in the modern world. Pizzey has been the subject of death threats from feminists because of her claim that most domestic violence is reciprocal, and that women are equally as capable of violence as men. Because of feminists who not only threatened her, her family, and shot her family dog she went into exile for over a decade.


Here’s a fundraising campaign to build a men’s shelter in Ohio that only raised $235 of its $100,000 goal. If this were a fundraiser for a women’s shelter the goal would have been met in no time.

According to a special report by SAVE, “An estimated 1,200 abuse shelters are currently in operation in the United States. It’s well-known that most of these shelters routinely turn away male DV victims, or provide them a substantially lower level of service.

One former shelter director revealed,  ’The shelter did not provide services to male victims of domestic violence, even when the men had suffered physical abuse similar to what women had experienced.’

Psychologist David Fontes noted that when he advised male victims to call local domestic violence programs for help, his clients found that ‘either the shelters and centers never returned their calls, or they were told by the workers that they really don’t have the services for male victims of domestic violence.’ In those cases when men in desperate straits showed up at their door for help, Fontes noted that ‘some of the men felt they were treated at these shelters and centers more with suspect than respect.’

Ironically, not only do shelters discriminate against male victims, they also treat female batterers as victims. In one case a female abuser called wanted to get help with her anger management problem, but the local domestic violence center ‘tried to convince her that she was a victim and not a perpetrator.’

In a more curious case:
A woman was arrested and ordered out of the house following her assault against her husband. She was referred to a shelter. Her attorney provided the shelter counselor with a detailed account of what had transpired: ‘Mrs. C. grabbed Mr. C. by his necktie (and) he pushed her away. Mrs. C. then punched his face and her fingernail cut his neck.’ And how did the shelter workers assess the situation in its records? ‘Physical abuse’ of the woman by her husband.

Judy King Smith, director of the Rape and Domestic Violence Information Center in Morgantown, West Virginia, once admitted, ‘We do not shelter men in the shelter even if it’s empty.’

Why?

For the simple reason that ‘we were founded for the purpose of providing shelter to battered women and their children.’

According to Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young, these coordinating councils ‘formally require member organizations to embrace the feminist analysis of abuse as patriarchal coercion.’ An example of that perspective came from the director of the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, who made this dismissive comment about male victims: ‘Sometimes it snows in Florida … but we don’t make public policy around it.’

These coalitions have not been welcoming to organizations that serve male victims.

In Maine, the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence refused to approve the application for membership from the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men, explaining that our ‘current criteria require that membership be organizations whose primary purpose is to provide a full range of services to battered women and their children.’

In New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence likewise refused membership to the Violence Intervention Program – New Hampshire, on the grounds that VIP-NH, which had a predominantly male clientele, duplicated the services already provided by A Safe Place, a domestic violence crisis center located in the same area. But Ann Venier, the center’s education and outreach coordinator, had a different story to tell: ‘We did not provide shelter to any men.’

More recently, a survey of 3,410 shelter persons residing at 215 abuse shelters in eight states found fewer than one percent of the respondents were male.”

TL;DR Feminist organizations influence shelters to reject male victims, attempt to convince female aggressors that they are the victim,  and shelters serve less than one percent of male victims across the United States. Feminists do not acknowledge male victims, don’t care about them, and threaten those who tell the truth.
"But since when has MRAs done -anything- for male victims”

Earl Silverman was a men’s rights advocate who operated Canada’s only shelter for male victims of domestic abuse — doing so out of his own pocket and without government funding — but was forced to sell the property because he couldn’t afford its upkeep.

Silverman attempted to get funding from provincial and federal governments to help run his shelter and home, but believed he was always refused because the space was dedicated to helping male victims and their children. Silverman committed suicide last year in April due to personal demons.

The incredibly high suicide rate of males around the world in comparison to female suicide rates has always remained a main focus for men’s rights groups.

TL;DR MRAs have done something for male victims, you stupid twat. Perhaps if feminists weren’t around every fucking corner trying to thwart their pursuits to understand male issues and figure out solutions to them then maybe there would be more examples of things they have done.

Maybe feminists should just fuck off and stop protesting MRA events, tearing down posters promoting them, and attempting to slander their movement at every turn. In other words, MRAs never gave a fuck about feminists before they started to slander them.

"Persistence is the first and most important requirement for success."

This Huffpost smear is a typical feminist article. It aims to demonise MRAs, and to take advantage of the recent tragedy to get the re-classified as terrorists (this was formally debated in the EU). It lies over and over, ignores all evidence to the contrary and relies on emotion to paper over the gaps in logic.

"They believe that they are superior to women and that it's the fault of women that they can't get laid"

This would be a great surprise to Erin Pizzey and the rest of the female MRAs. And a lot of us manage teh sexi quite nicely, thank you.

"He believed in and was wholly part of the MRA movement"

There's no evidence he even knew what those letters stood for. He was involved in Bodybuilding groups, WoW, Young Turks and an anti Pickup Artist (PUA) website. This video shows the difference.



The author knows there's a difference. She knows she's lying.

But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.

• "War Propaganda", in volume 1, chapter 6 of Mein Kampf (1925), by Adolf Hitler

"This is not a one-off. This happens daily, multiple times a day."

Seriously? In what alternate plane of existence do killing sprees by mentally ill people happen several times a day? I read that there were 16 in America last year, and it's the worst place on the planet for them. You are more likely to choke to death on a peanut than be shot by a crazed gunman.

"Elliot Rodger may have been mentally ill. He did have Asperger's syndrome. But to believe he killed and harmed those women because of those things is wrong and increases stigma about autism and mental illness"

Since he wrote over and over and over that he was God and wanted to kill his family and hated all men and wanted to deprive them of love and sex forever and rule the world from a tower... yeah, I think it's safe to say, even without the professional diagnosis of his psych. that he was mentally ill.

 But we have that already - that was officially announced. The author ignores it, because the truth is inconvenient.

And that's normal for Feminists; like the 77 cents in the dollar wage gap lie, they just want to repeat this until one day a US President will announce it as the truth.

Notice how she continually emphasises the two women he killed AND TOTALLY IGNORES THE FOUR MEN?

Male lives mean nothing to a Feminist.

Dialogue between a Feminist and myself.

"But fundamentally, it's not a movement to disempower men, it's aiming to empower women."

Are you sure? I can tell you that there's an awful lot of feminists who have argued the opposite. They argue that men have power that is unequal, and that power needs to be reduced so that equality results. This is often done through quotas, for example.

If you look at a situation where men and women compete for something (like a job), but men tend to win more often, then substitute a reserve 50 % of the seats for women, but have women and men compete for the remainder, it's hard to see how that isn't disempowering men.

" It is a movement based around trying to achieve equality for all sexes and genders."

Then it would care equally for all, instead of only those it identifies as female. And as someone who grew up in the 1970s as part of a feminist household, marching in WEL rallies, where women and men, girls and boys, were supposed to be equally important, equal members, people with different bits but fundamentally the same inside, I would say it started off more or less in that way. It certainly isn't that way now.


And I have to point out inequality was always there, not as an extremist position, but right at the core. Take WW1. Very few men were allowed to vote; the elites held onto it, and they weren't letting go. Men were forced to go march and die in the sucking mud and choking gases.

Women weren't.

It was raised at the time that this wasn't just. Women would be given the vote, and yet didn't have the same responsibility to die for the nation? Men were put to death for refusing conscription? A deal was made, and the White Feather movement was born.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather#World_War_I

Feminists got the vote, in exchange for helping shame men who resisted the pressure to fight. They would not *have* to do any service. They could volunteer.

Nothing has changed. Women are still not forced into dangerous situations. They can choose to go. But in the US, by law, the right to vote is tied into military service (and a few other things). And when the question "why isn't conscription universal?" is raised, I have yet to see one Feminist deal with the matter properly.

We conscript black people, white people, people of irish descent, people of Samoan descent, christians, atheists, left handers, right handers, and nowadays, gay and straight people, all of whom can fill a body bag - just so long as those people are men. Women are immune.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHvcFzzUues

"However, I think there can definitely be hostility towards men in these spaces"

Well, yes, feminist fiction about exterminating men has been popular since the 1960s (c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_Man). Even Neo-Nazis aren't that open about their hostility towards the objects of their hatred. And things like the so-called "female sperm" are met with responses like "one step closer to killing you off".

Works like "The Vagina Monologues" even have section about the use of female pedophilia as a tool to vaccinate females against heterosexuality; the so-called "good rape". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vagina_Monologues#Plot_summary

And it's hardly alone. I was shocked when I was at Sydney Uni, trying to decide if I should do Women's Studies, to find not one, but two books on the shelves of Feminist literature, that advocated women sexually stimulate their infant daughters as a way of achieving that goal. One of those books was on the reading list of the time.

I can't imagine the outrage that would result if a man wrote the equivalent of that filth, let alone had it as part of a course of formal study at the most prestigious University Australia can offer.

"men and boys certainly do face sexual violence as well. None but the most fundamental are trying to say that this isn't true. "

In which case "the most fundamental" is the majority of Feminists. I have arguments constantly as to whether or not men can even be raped, let alone as to how often. In the US, for example, "Rape Culture" documented the prevalence of male rape victims, and the fact that they were blamed - "they deserve it"

The victims were prisoners.

How did Feminism respond? By co-opting the term, and erasing the male victims. The idea that the primary victims might be male was intolerable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_Culture_%28film%29

And how mainstream is the erasure?

Here is a gov't sponsored campaign. I don't know if it's changed, but for years it put out the message that men were predators, women victims, always. "Don't be that guy" - with no acknowledgement of the possibility that guys were victims or females victimisers.

As someone who was a friend with a girl who was raped by her female friend, and found absolutely no acknowledgement within the legal system, and no support from Feminists, I can say that happens in Australia, too.

To a degree, the same applies to domestic violence. In Australia, men cannot get free legal advice, for example. I can't recall if there's any shelters offered, but it's certainly far less than is proportionate. Men are openly mocked if they complain, and so they keep silent - and then the statistics show few cases where males are victims and females are perps, reinforcing the notion that this is always the case.


"These issues deserve to be discussed, but realistically, when you go onto a feminist website and bring these things up, you are going into a space created solely for women to talk about womens issues, and you are making the discussion about men. "

This isn't a 'Feminist website'. Besides, echo chambers are dangerous. If you never hear a voice that challenges you, how do you know you are right? Groups that only hear reinforcing voices wander into dangerous, and often violent, delusions.


"So they definitely do care" about their kin, yes. But if they are conditioned to value males less than females, they are unlikely to advocate for the same protections for their sons as for their daughters - and they might care for their husbands up until they divorce them and are able to legally alienate them from any benefit to parenthood.

When girls were doing worse than boys in school, it was an outrage. Mothers were up in arms. So the system was changed, and now boys do substantially worse in education. The mothers... are mostly silent. (Boys are stupid) (masculinity is toxic) - Girls are Amazing!

If Feminists cared about their sons as much as their daughters, they have managed to hide it very, very well.

So, ok, maybe all those Feminists are not 'true Feminists', or maybe Not All Feminists Are Like That - but the ones who are are in power. And they are certainly doing their best to silence dissent.

(this guy shouts a lot but he makes good points) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2KPeMcYsuc


This has gotten to the point where a bill to outlaw antifeminism was proposed in the EU. I would be imprisoned and treated as a terrorist for simply saying "Feminism is wrong". For a movement that supposedly has no organisation, it certainly has a lot of political power.

Hilariously, in a perfect example of doubletalk, it is called “The European framework national statute for the promotion of tolerance” (discussion: https://www.change.org/petitions/to-the-members-of-the-european-parliament-protect-freedom-of-speech-in-the-eu-freespeecheu)

"the frustration vented upon them is a cumulative frustration"

Calling for the extermination of all men is just 'frustration'? Pulling fire alarms and assaulting people is just frustration? Was what happened to Erin Pizzey's dog .. do you know who she is? Do you know what they DID?


"A whole movement should not be dismissed based on the actions of its most fundamental members"

This is the rationale used to justify the lack of protest when websites like Jezebel advocate violence towards men (http://jezebel.com/294383/have-you-ever-beat-up-a-boyfriend-cause-uh-we-have)

In which case, we shouldn't criticise the Nazis, because only a few, a handful, really, did those bad things - and all the nice people attending rallies and singing cheery songs are innocent. Most had no idea about the Final Solution.

The same could be said for movements like Stalinism and Maoism. Movements that resulted in millions and millions being exterminated. The nice people at the bottom let the nasty people at the top decide what the movement stood for. They don't get to wash their hands of it and say "We are not all like that".

When organisations like NOW have immense political power, when people like Mary Koss can influence the US gov't to protect females from appearing in statistics as rapists (http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/male-disposability-and-mary-p-koss/), when women like Hilary Clinton can appear in Feminist magazines and Feminist websites as someone who people should vote for BECAUSE she's a feminist (and have a fair chance of success)..

Then I look at all that and I shake my head .. feminism doesn't need to be a monolith to be organised, any more than the trade union movement did. There are feminist lobby groups, there are people in power who are 'Like That', and they are unopposed by Feminists and that is *wrong*.

The leaders of a movement dictate the face of the movement. The silent, acquiescing majority can be as nice as they want - they have rendered themselves impotent and irrelevant, until they speak up and say "no, no, NO, you do not represent us, you do not speak for us".

So here's a challenge. Challenge those who would speak for you. Do *better*.