Men having rights is apparently a controversial topic...

avantvernacular · 2014-07-17T17:13:03+00:00

Like it or not it is controversial. The status quo is not in support of men's rights. We seek to change that. Hence the controversy.

IS44 · 2014-07-17T16:31:50+00:00

Well, it is controversial. When people stand up against the status quo, it is inevitably going to be controversial. There is nothing wrong with being controversial.

The actual annoyance from this should be directed at the language of the article itself, rather than the fact that it is listed as controversial. Let's take a look.

Immediately after a brief and frankly rather lazy description of what r/MR is, we get the next paragraph:

Reddit's men's rights sub-forum was included in a list of twelve websites in the spring 2012 issue ("The Year in Hate and Extremism") of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report in a section called "Misogyny: The Sites". The dozen sites were described as "women-hating" and "thick with misogynistic attacks that can be astounding for the guttural hatred they express"

So, after having given almost no information on the movement or the subreddit, there's an instant segue into what's supposed to be wrong with this place.

Granted, the rest of the article is pretty shoddy in this department; almost every description for subreddit groups just skips explanation or introduction, and goes straight to what is controversial about the groups. Point of the article or not, it's poorly structured.

The citations are... eh, they're okay. Also fairly lazy, I think. Lots of links to Daily Dot and HuffPo to begin with here, but mostly to show who was making the claim. Problems begin with the citations for the SPLC incident, however:

In late March 2012, Mark Potok (the Intelligence Report's editor) was asked in an interview if the SPLC had formally classified /r/MensRights as a hate group, and his response was that "We wrote about the subreddit Mens Rights, but we did not list it as a hate group" and expressed doubt that the SPLC would ever designate the community as a hate group, noting that "it's a diverse group, which certainly does include some misogynists—but I don't think that's [its basic] purpose."

43 - Morris, Kevin (28 March 2012). "Why Reddit's r/MensRights is not a hate group". The Daily Dot.

Daily Dot again... well, great. We couldn't get a more, I don't know, neutral source, could we?

The citation in the last paragraph is also from Arthur Goldwag. And the link it follows is just so objective as a source, what with its listing sitting under "anti-woman".

Let's see... the Doxxing Incident portion of the article cites We Hunted the Mammoth and... oh, look, it's the Daily Dot again. Now that we have stepped out of the claims-zone, why are these still being cited as legitimate sources? The paragraph that cites David Futrelle (twice) says:

In April 2013, the subreddit was threatened with a shutdown by the Reddit admins after /r/mensrights users gathered personal information on a supposed blogger of feminist issues, and the subreddit's moderators advised members of the subreddit on how to proceed with this 'doxing' without running afoul of site rules.

Surely, if an entire prominent university was involved, the writers could actually cite some news articles on the subject?

Wait... you mean an actual, detailed Google search of the incident only brings up Futrelle's claims? Huh. Fascinating. And searching Futrelle's article for citations comes up with... huh. Links to other parts of his blog. I'm stumped. Citation needed.

Onto the Occidental College Incident. Having been here for that particular incident, I still hold that this sub made a serious mistake. HOWEVER:

Culp-Ressler, Tara. "'Men's Rights' Groups Are Spamming Occidental College With Hundreds Of False Rape Reports". ThinkProgress. Retrieved 5 March 2014.

Kingkade, Tyler (18 December 2013). "'Men's Rights' Trolls Spam Occidental College Online Rape Report Form". Huffington Post. Retrieved 16 February 2014.

Weinstein, Adam (12 December 2013). "College: "Men's Rights" Trolls Spammed Us With 400 Fake Rape Reports". Gawker.

You seriously could not find, in a sea of reports, something besides Gawker as a citation? Gawker, which - in the same manner as Futrelle's blog - goes ahead and cites itself as evidence of the incident. Now I have no more doubt that this article was edited and/or written by feminists. Thank you for showing your hand, ladies.

Grade? F. Poor effort; deliberate opinion-bias. Go back to school and learn how to cite legitimate sources.

Apemazzle · 2014-07-17T18:31:12+00:00

Anyone else remember that time when a bunch of people from this sub submitted a load of false rape reports to some online reporting system that a university had set up?

Yeah, that kind of thing is why this sub is controversial - not just cos we want men's rights.

I've only been here about a year or two but my god have I seen a helluva lot of improvement in that time. When I first came you'd see people saying shit like, "That woman should be burnt alive", about some woman who made a false accusation, and those comments would be voted to the top. Nowadays the reaction is more likely to be, "That woman is a disgusting human being and should go to jail for a long time". I realise that this is meant to be a safe space for people who've been victims of false accusations (and thus who have strong feelings about those sorts of people), but it's no surprise that those sorts of comments are perceived as misogynistic.

MechPlasma · 2014-07-17T19:19:48+00:00

Oh man, this article.

I mean, "Is /r/MensRights controversial" aside, because it most certainly is, the next question is inevitably "Why is there so much on /r/MensRights? Where's X, or Y?"

Basically, it's because Wikipedia only allows stuff from news sites and such. And the only news sites who talk about something as insignificant to the outside world as individual Subreddits are the journalists who have some sort of personal investment or vendetta against specific ones. And it's the same here - most of the sources for the /r/mensrights section are from notably biased sites, like Gawker or Huffington Post. So whereas The Daily Dot makes a big deal out of us doxxing, when... oh, say, /r/pcmasterrace gets outright banned for it, not a single news site gives a damn, and thus it never makes it to Wikipedia.

'Course, there are exceptions. Like in GunsForSale, where it's actually worth reading, or in Technology's case, where... actually, I have no idea why that one's been covered so much.

phySi0 · 2014-07-17T20:14:11+00:00

Let's not stoop to the levels of intellectual honesty of feminists. /r/MensRights the community is not men's rights the concept. You know that.

DavidByron2 · 2014-07-17T16:20:12+00:00

Well it is a controversial topic to the feminist infested wikipedia no doubt.

HankSought · 2014-07-17T16:28:25+00:00

A subreddit created March 19, 2008, it has drawn contributors such as Erin Pizzey,[38][39] but also encountered controversies from 2012 and onward.[citation needed]

So it's controversial because...reasons. Sounds legit.

EDIT: IS44 does a better job examining the wiki entry.

arminius_saw · 2014-07-17T18:59:47+00:00

Well 100 years ago letting women vote was controversial. Letting black people free was controversial at one point. You see where I'm going with this :)

IcyTy · 2014-07-18T02:42:18+00:00

TB it seems like you may be representing Wikipedia wrongly.

Calling a specific subreddit about a topic 'controversial' is not the same as calling the actual topic controversial.

Case in point, /r/technology is also listed there.

Wikipedia is saying that the subreddit about technology has controversies related to it.

I suppose the topic of technology has controversies too, but I don't believe that is what Wikipedia is saying.

Even if it was... being listed alongside technology is a rather good room-mate IMO.

outhouse_steakhouse · 2014-07-18T04:43:28+00:00

I believe in the radical notion that men should have rights.

Prefer_Not_To_Say · 2014-07-18T16:45:49+00:00

I think saying "Men having rights is apparently a controversial topic" doesn't paint the whole picture.

That's not to say that this subreddit or the people who frequent it are bad. In fact, it's the opposite. It's probably the most welcoming and I find the sub is more likely to the victim of brigading than the instigator. However, saying "men's rights is sooooo controversial (/s)" is a lot like the feminists who say, "yes, feminism wanting equal rights for men and women makes us so evil. /s".

We all know that the measure of a group is in its actions, not in its tagline. Which is why many of us are antifeminists in the first place.

ARedditorCalledQuest · 2014-07-18T16:50:09+00:00

If it weren't controversial, we wouldn't be here in the first place.

2014-07-17T20:01:22+00:00

They hate us for our freedom.

Title	Men having rights is apparently a controversial topic...
Author	TylerBan
Upvotes	28
Comments	35
Date	July 17, 2014 3:44 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/mensrights/comments/2ayn4q/men-having-rights-is-apparently-a-controversial-/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/men-having-rights-is-apparently-a-controversial.1619339 https://theredarchive.com/post/1619339

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