Everybody, stand back! The intellectual powerhouse who goes by the name Joel Reinstein is hosting a Facebook page called STOP the “International Conference on Men’s Issues!”, and you know Joel is a badass motherfucker when he pulls out the ALLCAPS!
Before you go over there with your misogyny and patriarchy hanging out all over the place messing up the throw cushions and doilies, be aware that “Misogynists’ comments and posts will be deleted. Threats and harassment will be screencapped and reported to relevant authorities.” Joel means business.
Advance warning: this kind of misogyny will not be tolerated:
I posted it more than once and was continuously deleted, because the sheer vitriol and hatred in that was unbearable to someone as delicate and sensitive as Joel.
Some of Joel’s supporters seemed at least marginally willing to engage in debate about specific issues but Joel took the hardline and deleted comments that failed to toe the MRA=WomanHater line, leaving all the supporter responses up, so that the threads became incoherent. Like this one:
- Sarah Gray Safe haven laws are gender neutral, and it does *not* absolve the abandoning parent of their responsibilities.
Sarah Gray Women are legally required in all but two states to reveal the fathers identity and notify him if she wants to adopt out.
Men should keep track of their sperm, they can always contest an adoption because fathers have rights.
Samuel Molnar Guys, this isn’t a dialogue. Don’t get it twisted. We want to get the sexist abuse-apologists to stfu and gtfo. So dont come here looking for dialogue.
Sarah Gray No, women cannot unilaterally choose to have no responsibility got a child that actually exists.
When a woman has an abortion there is no child that needs support.
Sarah Gray Safe havens most certainly do. Every effort is made to find the parents.
Sarah Gray Funny how sticking up for the rights of children and their fathers is construed as not caring about men.
Sarah Gray Men can leave babies at sage havens too.
Sarah Gray Other than forcing a woman to have an invasive medical procedure. If pregnancy took place outside of women’s bodies entirely, I would agree with the general concept.
Sarah Gray No, a man can drop off a child at a safe haven without having legal custody.
Sarah Gray Giving men special rights is bullshit, that’s why.
Sarah Gray If MRAs stopped blaming women for their (sometimes valid, but not caused by women or feminists) problems, they might be more effective in their quest for equality.
Sarah Gray I am correct about safe haven laws. They are gender neutral.
Sarah Gray If the woman agrees to such a procedure, I guess she could do that, but that’s not what is being proposed for “choice for men”, where the man opts out of supporting a child that exists while the woman has all the responsibilities.
Sarah Gray Men should keep track of their sperm then.
Sarah Gray Because “discussing these issues” involves blaming women, encouraging the abuse of women, and denying much of reality.
Geoffrey Hughes Gee Alison, a more perceptive commenter might just get the idea they were not wanted and go elsewhere
Sarah Gray I’m not sure what your point is. We don’t have artificial wombs, and ending a pregnancy is distinct from removing a viable fetus to an artificial womb
Sarah Gray If men are concerned about that, they should keep track of where they put their sperm.
Safe haven laws are gender neutral.
Geoffrey Hughes Well, Alison, that sure sounds rough. Maybe you should go make your own page where you’re the moderator and you can apply your own rules of moderation.
Sarah Gray So? That sounds like a good reason for men to use birth control every time no matter what a woman says.
Sarah Gray Read up on the laws, they are gender neutral. It has nothing to do with legal custody.
Of course what they deleted was me actually reciting the law to them, verbatim, about safe havens, which is apparently misogynist and far too harsh for their sensitive brains to contemplate.
Can I really keep my baby a secret?
Yes, you can keep your secret and keep your baby safe. The Illinois law says that as long as you don’t harm your baby, you can hand your newborn (30 days old or younger) to personnel at any hospital, police station or staffed fire station in Illinois for adoption with no questions asked.
No one will ask your name. Your baby will get medical care and be adopted into a loving family. You can even provide anonymous medical information, so your baby will grow up with a medical history.
Sarah also refuses to believe that Safe Haven laws are used generally by mothers, even when they are written as gender neutral, which is not the universal case at all. In four states (Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, and Tennessee), only the mother may relinquish her infant.
The National Safe Haven Alliance explicitly identifies mothers as most likely to surrender newborns under these laws, no matter how the law is written.
The whole discussion should just engender (ha!) a giant eyeroll, no? Obviously it is going to be the mothers who surrender newborns with no further legal or social responsibility – how on earth could a father take a newborn and surrender it without the mother noticing? I can’t find any examples at all, because they don’t exist no matter how gender neutral the laws are written.
The safe haven conversation, in which the fact that women do indeed have the right to legally surrender a child after it is born was proven, combined with a private conversation I have been having with the Amazing Aetheist has led to me a new understanding of how feminists (and often MRAs including myself) see key issues: oppositionally rather than inclusively.
And that is a problem, perhaps our biggest one.
Sarah, and other feminist protesters see an issue like the right of men to choose parenthood as an attack on their own right to choose parenthood. Literal legal equality is perceived as an attack on their own special status, so statements like “giving men special rights is bullshit” and “because “discussing these issues” involves blaming women, encouraging the abuse of women, and denying much of reality” doubly ironic.
The only way they can counter the dissonance is to deny they have special status in the first place, which is simply not true. No one is saying women should not be able to choose parenthood – the argument is that since women can in fact decide if they will be parents, why can’t men?
Pick any issue, and this seems to be the dominant approach: pointing out that men can and are raped by women does not deny that women are raped by men. It simply highlights that rape can be and is committed by both men and women with both men and women as victims. How does noting that fact encourage the abuse of women? It encourages accountability, to be sure, but what about accountability is abusive?
I myself have railed heartily against the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign in which all men are treated as rapists, but perhaps a more strategic approach would be to treat everyone as a potential rapists and to make all students sit through lectures in which consent is explained? Make women understand when they are in fact being rapists, as well as men.
It didn’t take long for the protesters on the Facebook page to start alluding to vague and not so vague threats. One of the earliest posts on the page was by a man named Eduardo Guzman (Russ Tiller) who wrote “these people make me trigger-happy”. He only got four likes though.
Guzman also put forth the suggestion that the only way to properly protest was to “storm the conference” and bemoaned the fact that his inability to meet the cost of a ticket is the only reason he will not be attending.
Guzman’s own page links to two sports: motorcycles and Gabby Franco, an Olympic markswoman. Hmm. Interesting. Wonder if the protesters are worried about that?
There was concern expressed for hotel employees in case they got tear-gassed, too. My. That’s quite a protest you’re planning if it involves tear-gas.
Another protester, Emma Howland-Bolton is apparently planning some sort of staged event that will …. I dunno – be fun I guess? Wonder what that will be? Maybe another staged attack like the one that “happened” at Queen’s University? That worked really well.
Other protesters are warning that things could very ugly and it won’t be a dance party.
There is also some curious funny business going on with moderators claiming that they are not deleting comments, but rather that MRAs and those that question the protest are in fact deleting their own comments in an act of cowardice and fear, and yet when moderators accidentally delete a protester’s comments, they openly admit to deleting any and all comments that are not strictly supportive. It was pretty serious, too. The commenter who was accidentally deleted had her faith broken, her trust shattered! She was cruelly silenced! I hope she didn’t get #PTSD from the experience.
So, I guess the takeaway is that democracy is alive and well? Nothing says First Amendment quite like trying to prevent voices you don’t like from speaking and vigorously silencing all internal dissenters at the same time. The Founding Fathers would be ever so proud, but they were all men, weren’t they, so screw them anyways.
I hope the protest goes well for our FB friends. Sounds like it will be a riot. Storm the ramparts, folks! Tally-ho!
We’ll be over here, eating cake.
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 