Steersman wrote:Mykeru wrote:ReneeHendricks wrote:Mykeru wrote:
Well, maybe now they will start giving me some love. I know I am hindered by my refusal to engage them on their own turf, but Jesus Fucking Christ, I felt like they were ignoring me.
I actually thrive on turning their kind of humorless, mean-spirited horseshit into life-affirming Lulz.
C'mon baboolies, think of the lulz. And the baby otters.
Hell, I'm actually quite surprised when I get mentioned in passing - you know, when they start talking about MRA lovers and chill girls :D I think one person even said that I'm "despicable" (
https://twitter.com/aratina/status/259360017893953536 only found out due to Ophie being "confused" about a video I did not make).
Well, of course they don't get that I'm "MRA" only to the extent that I'm a skeptic. If some truly bullshit claim came out of some MRA source, I would criticize that too.
You might check out the debate with Paul Elam – of
A Voice for Men – where he argues or strongly suggests, I think, that some jurists should vote for acquital in rape cases regardless of the evidence –
jury nullification. That looks a little off the wall to me – and to a number of others here.
I'm not distancing myself from the "MRA" label, just the presumption that they have that the opposition must be the ideological mirror image of them, knee-jerk group-think and all.
Groups of all kinds – from the McCarthyists to the Stalinists; from the Elks to the Boy Scouts – are prone to that. I don’t think it takes much effort to find evidence of that on either side of just about any line creating two subgroups out of one.
But my experience so far with MRAs is that they would be far more receptive to criticism than these clowns because the MRM is essentially a skeptical reaction to a pernicious form of woo.
While you didn’t actually argue that all MRAs are like the ones you’ve seen so far, my experience is that there seems to be a not insignificant percentage of those who self-identify as MRAs who are just as off the wall and into woo just as deep as the most radical radfem. Woo – as evidenced by all of the different religions, secular and otherwise – seems to come in a great many varieties.
Not to mention they are ugly as shit. I took a gnarled crap this morning that would be more likely to be hit on than The Beaver.
Apart from the questions of whether that is true and whether you’re any better in that department, I wonder what either has to do with the credibility of all of their arguments, whether they hold any water or not.
Yeah, Paul Elam's argument seemed off the wall too. And that's the one thing everyone points to, that Paul Elam likes his rapety-rape. But the point he was making wouldn't really raise an eyebrow if the crime discussed didn't have the emotional weight that rape does.
The Innocence project found that of the almost 300 exonerations for men ( who were 99% of exonerations) who had spent decades in prison for crimes they certainly didn't commit, a significant percentage were for rape, or rape and murder. I can't find the exact number. Normally the rate of "unfounded" in rape investigations is conservatively 8 to 15%.
Many things account for the false convictions. Eyewitness testimony is unreliable, yet is treated as "best evidence". However, aside from error without malice, other disturbing trends emerge. Many rape convictions occurred through false confessions, the victim being led to identify a certain suspect and then her false identification becoming concrete over time. Forensic analysis is flawed and, in some cases involving bogus lab reports. Radly Balko did a series on now discredited forensic odontologist Michael West, who send many men to Death Row based on entirely spurious bite mark analysis.
Then there's outright prosecutorial misconduct, where the prosecutor actually suppresses exculpatory evidence. And, really, often that isn't necessary, As the West Memphis Three case showed, when you the authority of the state behind a charge, you can get people convicted on the basis of pure wind.
Thing is, we'd be more open to looking at the broken system applied to murder. Many states are already reviewing their death penalty laws based on the Innocence Project, the lab scandals and the like. Not that they now have a moral objection to the death penalty, but because you can't apply it in a broken system.
However, in the case of rape we have laws, social norms and just plain shaming that coerces into "believing the victim" and really continuing flawed prosecutions as a kind of security theater. Also, the prosecutor's office in the U.S. is a highly political position where the sacrifice of innocents is seen as a small price to pay for looking good. That many of these innocents are often minorities makes it that much easier.
In the Ronald Cotton case, the victim Jennifer Thompson who was, of course, vulnerable to coercion herself, was manipulated into identifying Cotton and believed he was the assailant for years. She was able eventually able to make peace with her coerced identification and later with Cotton himself. You could say she was victimized twice. And the man who actually raped her was running around all that time.
If you look at it that way, with the errors and misconduct where "the evidence" presented to the jury can't be considered the truth, and with a strong stigma against reviewing the process by which we can send a man to prison forever based on a "said so", then Elam's idea of nullification isn't "out there". You have to fix the system.
In fact, there's a place for skeptics there. So many researchers, notably Dr. Elizabeth Loftus has shown that eyewitness testimony is inaccurate, biased, often reconstructions and can be manipulated, we should seriously be questioning the prominent place we give it in our legal system and culture.
As far as MRAs steeped in woo, some are, I guess. Depends on who you are talking about, or if "MRAs" are being conflated with Pick Up Artists, Male Separatists, Iron John drum bangers and the like. I take it case by case. I don't anticipate, I just deal with people as they come up because, after all, groups are just made of people. I have yet to find that being a recalcitrant ideological douche is a requirement to join that club like it is for The Baboon Happy Fun Troop.
I have seen guys come into the A Voice for Men chat and other social media all pissed off as hell and bitter, but you have to keep in mind that some of these guys have been totally screwed over in a way that an amicably divorced guy who still has nothing bad to say about his ex wife wouldn't understand. Although, for months after my divorce I dreamed about her, usually in the context of her being lost and looking for her, and spent an inordinate amount of time on a bar stoll trying to get my liver to hate me. Maybe it's the first time anyone has listened to them. You let people like that vent and then try to steer them to something less personally destructive than being bitter.
No doubt I will come across some "men's rights" total woo and I will treat it like I do other woo.
One good thing about aligning with the MRM is that It give me the perspective to be as constructively a jerk as any woman. I mean in the sense of being a jerk out of a sense of self preservation.
Example. A few months ago saw the fizzle-out end of a relationship. At first, seemed good. She promised me she wasn't high maintenance and I believed her for a while. She was an army sergeant for years, was on board for my biking and hiking and camping liked baseball and was a fan of the Richmond Flying Squirrels (no, really).
However, as the relationship got serious she started asking for me to change this and that and whatever about me. You know, for any future children. I thought that was forward thinking, but you know, with a ticking clock I guess she should think about those things. After a point, I just told her that I appreciate the concern she has for future generations, but if I have to change this and that and the other thing, maybe she should be seeing someone else.
So, she decided to "friend-zone" me until she figured it out. I let her know that if were were going to be friends, we'd be friends. And I stuck to it. Of course, there were things that gave me pause about her previously, such as her need to have relationship critical conversations via text messaging (damn, that's frustrating) and, the real killer here, going through my phone and asking who was this and that person I was texting. Which I explained that this contact was my sister, another a lawyer, and I work with this person...and duly noted that she was the sort who would go through one's phone. I kept it on the up and up, but then she'd text me about what she wished she was doing with me...Uh, yeah. Just show me the hoop to jump through, why don't you?
Remember: It's not that men don't want to commit to women, ladies. We may just not want to commit to you.
And, mercifully, I think the last communication we had was two months ago. Which is great, really because out of nowhere pops up another woman who I had seen briefly and let her platonically crash with me for a few days while she was on a bender. I was buying her wine at 6:00 am so she didn't go through withdrawal and she drank my mouthwash. Then she scampered off only to reappear via text saying she was now really, really straight and hadn't gotten laid in 5.5 months (her exactness). I messaged back "1. Good for you, keep it up and 2. Can't help you there".
Now, I don't think that's too dickish. I can't see a woman being blamed for having that level of self-preservation. There was a time when I would have gone around the Maypole a couple of times over this horseshit.
The baboons would call that "woman hating", I guess. The PUAs would chide me for passing up an opportunity to get some. The Buddha would say the cause of pain is desire and I would say there aren't enough hours in the day to do what I want to do and put up with that.