Earl Silverman’s story is why I cannot support Feminism.

323 points65 commentssubmitted by [deleted] to r/MensRights

I’m new to the MRA space on the internet, I’m not entirely sure if I’d call myself MRA, but I just learned of the story of Earl Silverman and I cannot believe how the American media and feminist writers reacted to it.

I’m just aghast.

If you don’t know the context, Earl Silverman was a survivor of domestic abuse who spent 20 years of his life trying to help men and boys who suffered from domestic abuse. In 2013, he committed suicide and left a note citing the lack of government funding and the disparity between funding for women’s shelters and male shelters, as well as the financial situation in ran into trying to fund his cause, as what drove him to suicide.

Here’s a list of the main problematic articles:

An article from the Atlantic that attempts to discredit Silverman’s cause by taking his issues out of context and strawmanning him.

A Salon article that seeks to discredit his cause by using statistics on DV in America as opposed to stats from Canada which Silverman used in his claim (which are accurate and verified)

This article cites the two above articles and is cited in the Atlantic article. The author tried to discredit Silverman and his cause after his death.

I’m not going to list out all the problems in the articles because it would be really long and would take away from the post.

But as a survivor of psychological domestic abuse myself, the response from the American mainstream media is devoid of compassion for men. It makes me and I’m sure other survivors feel alone, maligned and frustrated because no matter what any woman goes through, she’ll have plenty of government funding, shelters, and public sympathy for her.

It’s both revolting and alienating and I’m not sure who’s to blame but ourselves.