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ismnotwasm

(41,992 posts)
Fri Oct 5, 2012, 08:03 PM Oct 2012

So exactly how scary are MRA's?

Well, Southern Law poverty Center thinks they're scary enough to add them to groups that 'spread hate'

Leader’s Suicide Brings Attention to Men’s Rights Movement

After 10 years of custody battles, court-ordered counseling and imminent imprisonment for non-payment of child support, Thomas James Ball, a leader of the Worcester branch of the Massachusetts-based Fatherhood Coalition, had reached his limit. On June 15, 2011, he doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire just outside the Cheshire County, N.H., Courthouse. He was dead within minutes.



In a lengthy “Last Statement,” which arrived posthumously at the Keene Sentinel, Tom Ball told his story. All he had done, he said, was smack his 4-year-old daughter and bloody her mouth after she licked his hand as he was putting her to bed. Feminist-crafted anti-domestic violence legislation did the rest. “Twenty-five years ago,” he wrote, “the federal government declared war on men. It is time to see how committed they are to their cause. It is time, boys, to give them a taste of war.” Calling for all-out insurrection, he offered tips on making Molotov cocktails and urged his readers to use them against courthouses and police stations. “There will be some casualties in this war,” he predicted. “Some killed, some wounded, some captured. Some of them will be theirs. Some of the casualties will be ours



Ball’s suicide brought attention to an underworld of misogynists, woman-haters whose fury goes well beyond criticism of the family court system, domestic violence laws, and false rape accusations. There are literally hundreds of websites, blogs and forums devoted to attacking virtually all women (or, at least, Westernized ones) — the so-called “manosphere,” which now also includes a tribute page for Tom Ball (“He Died For Our Children”). While some of them voice legitimate and sometimes disturbing complaints about the treatment of men, what is most remarkable is the misogynistic tone that pervades so many. Women are routinely maligned as sluts, gold-diggers, temptresses and worse; overly sympathetic men are dubbed “manginas”; and police and other officials are called their armed enablers. Even Ball — who did not directly blame his ex-wife for his troubles, but instead depicted her and their three children as co-victims of the authorities — vilified “man-hating feminists” as evil destroyers of all that is good



The men’s movement also includes mail-order-bride shoppers, unregenerate batterers, and wannabe pickup artists who are eager to learn the secrets of “game”—the psychological tricks that supposedly make it easy to seduce women. George Sodini, who confided his seething rage at women to his blog before shooting 12 women, three of them fatally, was one of the latter. Before his 2009 murder spree at a Pittsburgh-area gym, he was a student — though clearly not a very apt one — of R. Don Steele, the author of How to Date Young Women: For Men Over 35. “I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne — yet 30 million women rejected me over an 18 or 25-year period,” Sodini wrote with the kind of pathos presumably typical of Steele’s readers



http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/a-war-on-women
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seabeyond

(110,159 posts)
1. and we wonder about all the asian girl ads on du. it is amazing the number of men i now hear
Fri Oct 5, 2012, 08:53 PM
Oct 2012

cannot "handle" american women.

i read this. also another very popular site, voice for men, is a very scary site of men cheering rape, excusing rape, calling for rape.

BUT... i think this loud voice of hate from way too many men is what is really the kicker over the last year for a lot of people finally to get to the point to address these issues. it is all over the net. it is beong recognized and discussed. and a lot of men are in the front lines. a very good thing. i see more men calling out the mra type than women anymore.

 

TheMadMonk

(6,187 posts)
4. As someone who has observed all kinds of relationships...
Fri Oct 5, 2012, 11:38 PM
Oct 2012

... I would have to say that there is a great deal of fault on both sides of the gender divide, and a huge tendency for those most vulnerable to abuse to restart what may be a multi-generational cycle by choosing to partner with those most likely to abuse them.

Philandery and cuckoldry can both destroy a relationship, and both sexes use children as a weapon against the other.

The one thing which does make a major difference is the masculine need to dominate, which in a modern world can all too easilly become a liability, but in a more physically threatening world can be a considerable benefit to survival.

 

seabeyond

(110,159 posts)
5. i think the need to dominate is a human condition for many, and not gender specific. and i think
Fri Oct 5, 2012, 11:49 PM
Oct 2012

there are all kinds of formulas for successful relationships, as well as not gender specific when it comes to faults in relationships.

so we agree and disagree, lol.

i think why it is so easy for men to say they have a need to dominate and think it is gender specific is that is how it has been forever because of strength and how men are conditioned to live. but, we all know as many women with that need. and that need generally comes from experiences in life that leaves one insecure so they have the need to dominate and control to have their perceived "safe" environment.

but, i agree. both genders can be the issue. one is not all perfect and one is not all bad. i have seen as many women at fault as i have men, and a little of both at times.

that really is not what MRA is about though.

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