Women's Issues

If you consider nice cushy lifes being forced to stay out of the way, being treated as property, no say in any matter, not even allowed to be seen by company, and just being a baby factory.

And if you believe that is exaggerated, please look up the treatment of women in Athens Greece, what was considered to be one of the most enlightened city states in all of greece.

Sparta was better about treatment of women, but had a whole other set of issues for both sexes

I've spoken with plenty of sane MRAs. And plenty of less sane ones. Same with feminists. The sane ones are usually not the ones people notice in message boards and such, though, since people are experts at Accentuating the Negative. Like bringing up the absolute worst example they can find and hold that up as something normal or average.

Hadn't read your post as I was writing that.

edited 31st Mar '14 12:23:47 PM by AnotherDuck

That is not the worst example though, unless your talking about something else.

X4 That's the thing isn't it, does someone count as a MRA if they advocate for equal rights for men in areas where women have more rights (which is pretty much the criteria I've seen used to identify if someone counts as a feminist), if they self identity as a MRA, or if they are part of a MRA group?

Going by the first definition you probably are looking at a vocal minority with the assholes, but if you just go by the third one than I'd hazard a guess that it's a majority that are simply women-haters. The second one would probably give you varied results depending on what the reputation of MR As are in the area.

edited 31st Mar '14 12:23:32 PM by Silasw

I go by the second one.

MRAs seem to treat the notion of gender rights as a warzone, in which women are an enemy that must be conquered.

I think that applies to just about any extremists about gender issues. Flipped, if necessary. Thing is, if you're treating it as a blame game (or oppression olympics), you're looking for a target, not a solution.

Flipside of that is that when a necessary part of the solution is that people whose behavior are contributing to the problem need to cut that shit out, some targets do need to be fired on.

Hate groups, defenders of the status quo, etc. have found sanctuary in the idea that they're the real victims and those civil rights groups need to stop oppressing them.

edited 31st Mar '14 12:55:57 PM by TobiasDrake

Again it comes down to how you define MR As, you'll find self identified ones on this forum who don't treat it like a blame game/war against women, but when you're limiting you definition to the ones who are members of the angry women-hating MRA groups than yeah what you say fits.

And a random note, I'm loving the April Fools, even though it's still March for 3 hours here.

That's a fair point, it applies even to Men's Rights, some of the biggest enemies of men's rights and the women-haters who insist that they are MR As.

edited 31st Mar '14 12:54:39 PM by Silasw

Right, yeah. Claiming discrimination because you're being denied the right to discriminate isn't cool when the Church does it, and it isn't cool when the men's-rights movement do it. A helpful reminder here that the Ontario MRA network's biggest and most famous project involved telling women not to report sexual abuse when 92% of sexual assaults in Canada (for victims of either gender) already go unreported.

edited 31st Mar '14 1:13:34 PM by Iaculus

Where did they tell women to not report sexual abuse?

The "don't be that girl" campaign increases the pressure for victims to non report because they don't want to be considered "that girl" on top of all the BS that's already happened to them.

Then one takes the "Don't be that girl" campaign wrong. That campaign was originally aimed at false accusations and "I regret having sex with this guy. I shall call it rape so it's his fault and not mine!"

It's the same thing as when there was "You don't hate X, because you are decent person" campaign and those ads got torn down. Rather than actually listen, assume worst and claim misogyny.

Because feminism is the only way to achieve equality and is perfect

That's one potential effect of the campaign, but I didn't ask that. I asked what it's telling women. Or where it's telling women that, if you want to be pedantic.

edited 31st Mar '14 4:02:44 PM by AnotherDuck

The "Don't be that girl" is awful and ignores the huge amount pressure women already have to report rape period.

Then it's still a problem, because it's fighting a phantom enemy which barley exists when effort is desperately needed to fight real problems that men face (like the under-reporting of rape by men). It's a campaign that acts as if a very rare problem (false rape accusations) is a huge thing, while ignoring the real problems that beset men every day.

O top of that it does massive damage to men's right everywhere by creating the false equation of "was raped" and "was falsely accused of rape", do you know what the male equivalent of a girl be raped is? It's a guy being raped, NOT a guy being falsely accused of rape.

I have no love for the "Don't be that girl" campaign, it sickens me.

Edit: , and , if feminists started running a "don't be that guy" campaign designed to cut false reports of men claiming to be raped by women would your response not being something along the lines of "You really think that that's the most pressing issue your group faces?" and to be slightly insulted at a campaign that is obviously going to push vulnerable men, who are uncertain of if what happened to them was rape, away from reporting it due to a fear of being labelled "that guy".

edited 31st Mar '14 4:32:34 PM by Silasw

I'm not sure why you're asking me that.

You appeared to be joining Mandemo is arguing that the campaign wasn't that bad, though now I re-read your posts I've noticed that you were simply asking questions on information.

Also, DAMIT LAMPY! Stop spoilering things, he's already spoiled Genesis for me.

edited 31st Mar '14 4:57:43 PM by Silasw

Where did they tell women to not report sexual abuse?

The tagline is 'Lying about sexual assault is a crime - Don't Be That Girl', accompanied by messages like the sarcastic 'women who drink aren't responsible for their actions - especially where sex is involved'. Combined, that creates a pressure not to report any sexual encounter you're unsure about, which is a pretty goddamned shady thing to do when the report rate for sexual assault is already so tiny. The example I use there, for instance, carries the implication that alcohol-fuelled date-rape is the woman's fault, and they should therefore not report it.

You mean that's what you infer from it, rather than what they're actually telling.

edited 1st Apr '14 3:35:53 AM by AnotherDuck

The whole poster campaign is inference, but it's very clear inference. No, they're not explicitly saying 'If you think you were raped, you weren't, so shut up you stupid bitch', but if you don't get that message from posters with tags like 'Just because you regret your life choices, doesn’t mean it’s rape', 'Just because you regret a one night stand doesn’t mean it wasn’t consensual', and 'Women who drink are not responsible for their actions especially when sex is involved (DOUBLE STANDARD)' in posters intentionally designed to mirror a high-profile anti-rape campaign that were disseminated by a group whose senior members have explicitly said that dressing in a certain way means you're 'damn near gagging' to be raped, then I think the problem likely has more to do with your inability to read subtext than anything else.

So say that instead of lie about it. Don't even start to bend the truth to suit your arguments, no matter how noble the intentions. That only gives them fuel to the fire that women are lying bitches, as someone put it, and it discredits your cause.

Also, what I understand about it has nothing to do with what it's actually telling.

I wasn't lying, I was interpreting based on available evidence, because that is exactly the effect that the Don't Be That Girl campaign and other stuff like it has, and I strongly suspect that that was exactly the effect it was designed to have.

It's probably worth noting, though, that blaming, gaslighting, and otherwise making rape victims' lives harder is not the only incredibly sleazy thing Men's Rights Edmonton is doing with its 'Don't Be That Girl' campaign.

edited 1st Apr '14 4:18:35 AM by Iaculus

That poster I haven't seen before. And to me it doesn't even make sense. I mean, if there actually were a decent choice (a woman who wants to be a prostitute without being forced into it one way or another), then there wouldn't be nearly the same problem it is. Women making the choice? It's their choice. Women being coerced into it? Approaching slavery.

What exactly did the tagline say? It's too blurry on my current monitor to read more than a few words.

If you're free to make that interpretation, I'm free to interpret what you said as a lie.

edited 1st Apr '14 4:34:08 AM by AnotherDuck

A lie is a deliberate untruth. I was putting a negative spin on the campaign, but one I believed to be accurate and justified. If there was an untruth there (and I continue to doubt that there was), it wasn't deliberate.

edited 1st Apr '14 4:33:53 AM by Iaculus