Great journalism on the men's rights movement

VICE reporter Alex Brook Lynn has just done a multimedia piece on both the women of the men's rights movement, and the entire movement itself.

It is phenomenal. I endorse it with every clinging scrap out clout I have.

The full video and article are here. The following embedded video is a one-minute trailer:





What really stands out to me here is that we get to see both the valid points the men's rights movement cares about as well as the scumbag tactics the activists use. Issues like domestic violence against men and the new definition of rape need to be discussed and addressed, and I'm glad people are out there fighting for this cause, but as I wrote last April I absolutely loathe the tactics they are using.

In the video, you see one of the activists proudly states that they are using the Malcom X approach, which is contrasted with the always reasonable and soft-spoken Warren Farrell who uses a peaceful, MLK approach. The movement is dominated with hyperbole and bomb throwers and they acknowledge this openly. Like CancelColbert social justice warrior Suey Park stated in March, they admit they are purposely saying outrageous things to get attention.

Bad journalism serves to advance an agenda or glosses over nuances in search of a good story. Good journalism informs and enlightens. It would have been very easy for Lynn to create yet another hit piece focusing on the bad tactics and dismissing men's issues, but instead Lynn has done the modern world a service by framing this subject in a way that is both fair and moving.

Bravo.
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Why I am not part of the men's rights movement

I care a lot about men's rights issues, including domestic violence against men, male disposability, the male suicide problem, asymmetrical attention for men's health issues, false rape accusations, discrimination against men and attempts to vilify masculinity in modern society.

Unfortunately, the movement that is drawing attention to these important issues tolerates too many scumbags in its ranks.

In college I read The Myth of Male Power and became a huge Warren Farrell fan. I also became a male domestic violence victim and felt I had no where to turn - not the police, who would have probably arrested me instead of my abusive girlfriend - and not the local domestic violence shelter, the same one I had given money to at a fundraiser earlier that year.

It's not that I thought they would turn me away; they probably would have given me a safe place to stay for the night. It's that they never presented themselves as an organization that welcomes male victims, so in my time of crisis it never occurred to me that I could call them for help.

There's one major aspect of my views on men's rights that most people misunderstand, and I have this view because Warren Farrell made a very good argument for it. Our society is bisexist - that is, it is sexist against men and sexist against women at the same time but in different ways. That doesn't mean they automatically balance out - I consider that magical thinking - and I'm open to the idea that women have it worse overall, but they are both there.

Caring about men's issues does not mean that we have to ignore, mock or diminish women's issues. It's a big world and we can care about all of them.

I lost my friend Mark to suicide in college. I didn't think of it as a men's issue at the time, but now that I'm more familiar with the subject I recognize it as one. While women attempt suicide more often, men die from it four times as often.

This winter when I cheered on a friend at a polar dip for a gay men's domestic violence group in Boston, my heart sang when the founder told his story. In 1993 he fled for his life from a partner, but was turned away from domestic violence shelters because of his sexuality and his gender. Even as a straight man I could relate to that feeling of isolation and abandonment and I realized I want to be around more people who care about these issues.

But it's not going to be the men's rights movement. They have too many monsters that are allowed to move about the ranks. There are extremely vocal people in it that hate western, independent women and dismiss all claims of anti-female sexism out of hand. Even beyond them, there are many members who are rude, vulgar and childish.

Two years ago I wrote about how absurd it was for the Southern Poverty Law Center to label the men's rights movement as a hate group. I stand by what I wrote, that they were cherry-picking and ignoring the Warren Farrell's of the group. There are the legitimate sexists, and then there are people just like me who want to address legitimate problems men have in our society.

The problem is, every time I try to read men's rights webpages, I end up finding the trolls within a few clicks. They are there, and there are a lot of them.

Of course, the critics paint them all with one brush and often sprinkle in  messages from comments sections to pad the numbers of jerks. In fact, feminists have dug up obscure passages that Farrell wrote and misrepresented what he said about consent laws to dismiss him. This is a crude tactic to avoid addressing his real concerns, and unfortunately it has worked on many young impressionable minds.

I hate acronyms so I'm not going to call anyone an "MRA," and feminists have done a good job of using that three-letter term to associate men's rights activists with negative connotations. That have, in fact, poisoned the movement in the public's eye.

Which is ironic, because every single problem I have with the men's rights movement is a problem I have with modern feminism. Look at the tone of this vulgar piece on A Voice For Men. It's like I'm reading another foul-mouthed social justice warrior rage blog. Perhaps that's because it is just another social justice warrior rage blog. Feminist circles have their obnoxious extremists who say monumentally stupid or crass things, and many of them get propped up as legitimate leaders in the movement. The more I learn about the men' rights movement, the more I believe they do it too.

The two movements mirror each other in ways that supporters from both don't like to think about. While I love people like Farrell are care about these issues, I have no interest in being associated with the troll fest.

I've also owned a grey fedora since college and would like to be able to wear it again on formal occasions, but the men's rights stereotype destroyed that for me.
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Fringe feminists oppose free speech

I had to stop myself from titling this entry "Feminism isn't a religion, it's a cult" because I started writing immediately after I watched the following video from the University of Toronto:




Feminist activists tried to stop men's rights and gender equality author Warren Farrall from speaking at the school defaced and removed promotional posters and blocked audience members from entering the venue until police forcibly removed them. They also assaulted police and harassed people who tried to enter.

I realize that the brutes who staged this violent protest do not represent all of feminism. That's why I wouldn't let myself use that pointed title I first came up with. However, the protesters who blocked the doors did behave like cultists. One of the hallmarks of cults is shutting out the influence of outside messages. That's exactly what they did here, try to block other students from hearing a message they don't like.

The target of these protests wasn't just Farrell, it was also the public. In a summary of the fundamentals of freedom of speech, Christopher Hitchens said:

It’s not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen and to hear. And every time you silence someone you make yourself a prisoner of your own action because you deny yourself the right to hear something. In other words, your own right to hear and be exposed is as much involved in all these cases as is the right of the other to voice his or her view.

Hitchens went on to ask who would the listener entrust the great responsibility to decide what they should be allowed to listen to or read. The implied answer was no one.

Watching that video, I can't say that I would appoint a group of ignorant, self-righteous, close-minded angry fanatics to decide what I can hear.

I find it frustrating when someone tries to dismiss a thinker based on something tangential they said that is separate from the important ideas they contributed. Last week I tried reading what progressive writer Corey Robin had to say about Friedrich Hayek, but he was more interested in alerting people to Hayek's embarrassing support of Augustus Pinochet than to address any of his major ideas. This is a sign of a hack, and it's telling that the Toronto protesters focused on a single line Farrell wrote in 1993's The Myth of Male Power.

Farrell had criticized watering down the definition of "date rape" to include cases where women say "no," then change their mind and engage in sexual activity without verbally declaring "yes." Farrell was critical of labeling this as "rape" because no unwanted sexual activity occurred. Instead, the sexual partners did not follow a protocol established by certain activists. He then wrote "We have forgotten that before we began calling this date rape and date fraud, we called it exciting."

That's where the out-of-context quotes of saying Farrell supports date rape come from. They have no interest in understanding his message, they just want an excuse to shut him down.

It is customary to blame media bias when stories like this fails to capture much media attention, even though reporters where there when it happened. I try not to make jump to those conclusions when a story like this fails to spread, but I would bet money that if this was a Christian group shutting down Dan Savage from trying to speak using the same forceful tactics it would be all over the news.

Is there anyone who would find tactics like this acceptable when used against a speaker they agree with?

These activists are brutes. They are so absolutely sure that their world view is correct that they are willing to stomp all over the rights of others to silence their opponents. This is fanaticism and it has no place in a civilized society.
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Idiot hunting with the Southern Poverty Law Center

The self-appointed taxonomists of hate groups at the Southern Poverty Law Center released a list of Men's Rights websites they consider to be the work of hatemongers, and have idiot hunted the issue to prove that only bigots can care about injustices men face.

M-Hawkins did a good take down of some of the nonsense, and even referenced a classic post I wrote about the feminist shell game, where criticism of modern feminist causes like affirmative action is misrepresented as opposition to older victories like voting rights.

He did a great job of showing the polarizing impact modern feminists can have. Feminist caricatures like Gloria Allred say if you don't mimic her exact goals and tactics for reaching them, then you are an evil bigot. There is nothing in between, she says. By the Southern Poverty Law Center's logic, her existence should disprove feminism as a legitimate movement.

It's also Allred's with-us-or-against-us thinking that leads to nonsense like this. Some of the examples on the list of Men's Rights deserve harsh criticism and are belligerently sexist, but then there are descriptions of pages like the MensActivism blog:

This website tracks news and information about men’s issues from around the world, with a focus on activism — and outrage. Par for the course are lurid headlines like this one: “Pakistani wife kills, cooks husband for lusting over daughter.” The site also runs stories like the one it headlined “Australia: Girl, 13, charged after taxi knife attack” that involve no abuse accusations, but are merely meant to undermine what the site claims is “the myth that women are less violent than men.”

What's the problem here?

Here's the kicker for the SAVE Series page

The site trumpets as a “key fact” that “[f]emale initiation of partner violence is the leading reason for the woman becoming a victim of subsequent violence,” even though a study shows that approximately twice as many women as men are injured during incidents of domestic violence.

That's poor reasoning. The Southern Poverty Law Center is trying to sweep male domestic violence victims under the rug, and their broken logic assumes they can judge who started a fight by who reported an injury afterwards. This is a basic failure in logic, but it's presented like some kind of trump card.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is guilty of idiot hunting. They have found some idiots on the web, an easy task no doubt, and used those anecdotal examples to "prove" that a civil rights cause is illegitimate. Shame on them, as Men's Rights advocates have shown a lot of potential.

I've learned a lot from Warren Farrell over the years and his brand of masculinism is truly a quest for gender equality.

Farrell declared we live in a bi-sexist society, where both genders have their own problems. That's not a way of saying men and women have an equal amount of problems, nor is it a wish to undue the progress women have made. Instead it's a desire to bring both genders forward with more progress.

The good feminists are out there fighting for gender equality, and by their own admission they have left a gap to be filled for men's issues.

False rape accusations, domestic violence and custody laws are real issues that need to be addressed, and I'm glad to see civil rights activists are out there tackling them. It's terrible that some jerks who want to turn back progress have made some idiot blog posts, but that doesn't disprove the important work other people are doing.
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