Recently, a feminist showed up on a twelve-month-old AVfM post and, within three comments, managed to get herself banned. She then complained via the Comments Ombudsman mechanism we have that she couldn’t see what, in our comments policy, justified her ban.
This happens from time to time, but this case shows such a breathtaking lack of introspection that it perhaps deserves a public airing. Since the following are my replies via private email. I’ve removed the name of the other party.
I have read your comments policy and cannot comprehend what has led to the banning of my account, especially when the person who banned me resulted to slander before doing it.
You mean, Suz? She insulted you, which is rather different from slander.
I find this highly hypocritical and reflects poor on the standard of A Voice for Men.
You walked into a men’s rights publication and, rather than dissecting an article with which you disagreed point by point, made the blanket pronouncement that being antifeminist is misandry. You then, without any apparent sense of irony, proceeded to explain that you are a feminist because of patriarchy — an ill-defined, unfalsifiable feminist concept for which there is not a shred of cogent or objective evidence which, unsurprisingly, pretty much only feminists accept (and therefore constitutes circular reasoning).
I have to say, it is highly presumptuous on your part to walk into a place that does not share your views, assume the absolute truth of your axiomatic premises and then criticise moderators when you get banned for not taking the time to understand why we say that patriarchy is nonsense and that a goodly proportion of feminists are misandrists.
Coming to that understanding involves a bit more work than reading one article and saying, “you’re wrong because reason”. That reflects poorly on you.
There is more than enough material, both on AVfM and the Internet at large, to explain why we think feminism is poison. You may not be poisonous, or behave like the toxic element of your ideological cohorts, but plenty are. But we can’t do your research for you, we can only present example and evidence.
And we can’t remove your ideological blinkers for you, either. That’s something you have to do on your own. Like Janice Fiamengo (ex-radical feminist). Or this woman. That’s a good read, and not from AVfM, either. It’s just a beginning, but if you actually are open to ideas that you might not like, it contains enough to get you started.
Try reading some of Warren Farrell’s literature. Or cotwa.info. Or the work of Erin Pizzey or Murray Strauss or Martin Fiebert’s bibliography in respect of male victims of domestic violence, now a multi-billion dollar industry thanks to the Duluth model and the ‘woman-good, man-bad’ paradigm so blithely promoted by the various White Ribbon campaigns.
Suggestion: when you understand your opponent’s position well enough to argue it on their behalf, then you’ll be in a position to tell them why they’re wrong.
This earned a couple of replies to which mine went as follows:
Wow what a biased email.
See, that’s what I mean: automatically I must be the one with bias because I dissent from you.
For what it’s worth, of course, I’ve got bias in gender politics. So do you. It is foolish to pretend that either of us doesn’t come from a particular point of view, particularly in the context of a men’s rights organisation like AVfM.
‘I don’t like feminism so anything you say about it wrong, even though I don’t have facts to prove that’.
We’d say that we’ve got more than enough facts and examples to back our opinions, but you may not accept that the evidence says what we assert it says.
Even if I had the time to do the research for you, I couldn’t make you accept it if you are determined to view the world through the feminist political lens. I recently came across this reasonably comprehensive critique of feminism replete with references. Somehow, I doubt you’d accept much if any of it.
There was me thinking this was a professional page.
Nice try, but no cigar. AVfM deals with gender politics. What does a professional gender politician look like? A feminist? By other professional standards, I sure hope not.
I reiterate, I have read your comments policy, me disagreeing with your view does not qualify for banning, or are you too unprofessional to stick to code and conduct as well? I think I’ve made my point.
The only point you’ve made is that you can’t respect an organisation’s principles enough to moderate and adapt your approach to it appropriately to the venue. Relying on patriarchy in an environment that explicitly and repeatedly rejects it along with gynocentrism, in general, is only going to derail comment threads.
Past experience has shown that those few who start out the way you did have absolutely no intention of constructive debate and are only there to push their political perspective. The best way to deal with such people is to ban them, just as any MRA may expect to be banned from a feminist website if s/he starts by asserting that there is no such thing as patriarchy and that feminists are anti-male.
Disagreement is not the reason for the ban, your behaviour is.
Also, I thought this was a ‘men’s rights’ website? My entire comment was based around men’s rights.
It is a men’s rights website and, as such, we reject feminist theory, particularly feminist notions of patriarchy, rape culture and male privilege — but in you come, presuming to tell men what is in men’s best interests according to precisely that feminist theory. It’s not that men don’t have privileges so much that women have as many or maybe even more privilege, they’re just privileges different from those of men.
Or, is it because I’m a feminist my viewpoint is automatically wrong?
You haven’t made many positive claims one way or the other, except to parrot patriarchy. You’re not automatically wrong because you’re a feminist, but most claims that arise from discreditable patriarchy theory are likely to be wrong because the theory is wrong — and when they’re right, they’re right for the wrong reasons.
Feminism is not poisonous, what’s toxic is your blatant disregard for the need for it and your willingness to accept the patriarchy exists.
Translation: We [MHRAs] are wrong because we reject your [feminism’s] condescending and deeply sexist perspective and because we refuse to kowtow to your political ideology.
How breathtakingly arrogant of you.
Feminism is poisonous precisely because feminism insists that everybody agree with and go along with feminist theory. You and your cohorts don’t have a monopoly on gender philosophy. You can be and are, in fact, wrong about some things. Examples:
- Feminists who say domestic violence is a gendered problem are wrong and refuse to acknowledge that nearly half of DV victims (especially by today’s expanded definitions) are men at the hands of women.
- Feminists who deny or downplay the significance of false rape allegations and who insist that we live in a rape culture are wrong. Even RAINN says so.
- Feminists, like Mary P. Koss, who insist that men can’t be victims of rape are wrong because consent is a two-way street, and an erection is not consent. Such feminists promote bogus 1 in 4/5/6 statistics lie through their teeth to advance their agenda.
- Those same feminists, contrary to the equal protection clauses of the US Constitution, have so weakened due process in college campus sexual assault procedure under the auspices of Education Amendments 1972, Title IX (20 USC §§ 1681–1688), ostensibly because women never lie about sexual assault (despite the Duke LaCross case, the U. Va case and many others; see FIRE and COTWA), have been the cause of a great deal of injustice — but that doesn’t matter, because the victims are all men.
And you say feminism isn’t poisonous? Go read that Tumblr post again if you still need persuasion and have the slightest open mind about how toxic feminism is.
MHRAs can be wrong, too, but we never sought to impose an overarching, unfalsifiable theory that explains all social ills on the rest of society or to force others to think as we do.
All we do is oppose sexism. Since a hell of a lot of sexism comes from feminists, we, of course, are pretty anti-feminist.
Banning people to ignore the problem does not solve the problem, it just makes your ignorant and a bigot. I don’t think I’ll waste my views any longer on a site which condones such biased, ill-educated statements.
You’d not have been banned had you done a bit of research before you revealed your own ignorance about what the MHRM in general and AVfM is about. We’ve had a few reasonable feminists come in and have some reasonable discussions and we welcome them.
Apparently, you’re not one of them.
Never has AVfM insisted that women don’t have problems or systematic social disadvantages, only that men have systematic disadvantages as well. But your patriarchy theory apparently prohibits you from acknowledging that except in terms of the alleged violence and misogyny of men.
And you have the nerve to call us bigots?
Feminists, this is a poor showing for advocacy of your cause.
Oh, and ban evasion is, itself, a bannable offence with prejudice (meaning we delete comments posted by your sock account as well).
