This needs to stop. Now...again

oneiorosgrip · 2013-01-26T06:53:29+00:00

Since we're repeating ourselves...

Since this meta topic has been continually leaking into the main sub, I'm going to repeat here some of what I stated in meta about it.

On July 25th, 2012, a post was submitted to /r/mensrights (not meta) calling /r/mensrights a petty women bashing forum and demanding that we stop allowing facebook posts of ignorant people.

The post, now the top scoring post of all time in /r/mensrights, has since been edited to include more criticism, much of which displays enough ignorance of the sub to demonstrate that OP had not spent much time actually reading discussion there. In the course of the huge discussion under that thread, some of us fell for OP's bullshit (yes, that includes me.) However, it soon became apparent that the post and much of the discussion represented more of an outside invasion of the sub in an effort to control MRA speech, rather than a legitimate concern for content and public image. One clue was in how rapidly the post skyrocketed to top post of all time, reaching that position in a single day, a rate at which it is unlikely that most of the votes came from regular visitors to /r/mensrights. Another was the creation of two obvious-troll subreddits in response to my poorly thought out suggestion that the "problem" could be addressed by creating a space just for the type of post being discussed.

Following the post, Ignatiusloyola posted on the topic in meta, and further discussion followed. In that discussion, I pointed out the following (and in doing so admitted that my initial response to the post was wrong):

Among other things, I brought up (and am still wary of) the outside effort to control speech within /r/mensrights. It seems to me that, as I said before, if outside influences are attempting to shut down the these types of posts, maybe it's because they're having a more profound effect than they're being credited. Perhaps putting that ignorance on display is a more persuasive action because it's easier for people to grasp those examples in a single click, where more in-depth posts require an alertness and intellectual investment for which time and energy are not always available when browsing the net.

In addition to having to admit that my initial response was wrong (ouch,) I became (and am still) suspicious that maybe the original concern trolling over this occurred not because the OPs wanted to improve the content of /r/mensrights, but because opponents of the movement saw those items as an immediately impacting means of drawing people to the subreddit and inciting discussion on the male end of gender issues.

Here, I'll point out - I've created a post to keep track of the outside effort to control speech within /r/mensrights, noting posts, voting, and comment patterns which indicate that effort. This particular topic, being a repeated topic, is being included not because I think this post is an outside effort, but because I think current opinions on the topic cannot be discussed without taking that outside effort into account.

I saw a interesting and telling phenomenon related to this in my blog between posts on serious topics like false allegations and malicious prosecution, and my post about a boy discriminated against at school over gender roles and his hair. My blog has a small but broad audience (I don't have a huge number of hits, but I get them from every populated continent in the world.) I generally see posts hit their max page view growth over the course of a few days, then drop off slowly, with occasional spikes when a reader shares the link. In one day, the "hair" post received triple the number of views which the second-place post took two months to garner (and it now has 5x the views of any of the pages of the post on the gawker-doxxing incident, even though that post has been linked in a lot more places.) During the first two days after I posted, I also saw page view spikes in several "dead" posts and on all of my explanatory "pages," with only the link to the hair post in /r/mensrights showing as a source for most of those views whenever I was able to check.

From the numbers, I suspect that post maybe made the front page, but I don't know, and it doesn't matter for purposes of this post. What does matter is why, and I think a friend of mine (someone who doesn't post here, but is familiar with the issues) was on the nose in her assessment: People don't identify with things they haven't experienced. It's hard to connect with the cause from the outside if you haven't seen the discrimination first hand or known someone who has. Not everyone has seen men go through the harder-hitting issues - custody discrimination, false allegations, violation of due-process rights - and not everyone can grasp from in-depth discussion the impact and pervasiveness of discriminatory social attitudes... but it's easy to see and identify with the discrimination and injustice in that story, and the interest generated seemed to translate into some readers clicking through other links on the page.

Quick-hit type posts like images and memes may make the top post for the day, or may make the front page, but they are generally surrounded by more broad or in-depth discussion. I suspect a similar effect to that which I experienced on my blog. The "hot" posts list isn't normally dominated by this type of post, even when one hits the top, and I suspect that visitors to /r/mensrights end up seeing and reading some of those more broad or in-depth posts as well. Existing subscribers are going to discuss in-depth and broad-topic posts anyway, but there may be visitors who would never even check out the sub had they not responded to a simple post. Perhaps the reason some want these posts banned is not because they're low quality, but because they're quick and easy ways to get people involved in the dialogue. If that is the case, I don't think this group should be fooled into going along with that, as I'm seeing occur in recent meta posts. It isn't as if opponents of the movement haven't tried shutting down discussion before. It's a regular pastime for advocates who disagree with the MRM.

Since the "this needs to stop" post and the meta discussion on it, there seems to be a regular occurrence of similar meta submissions on banning these posts. Each time, it looks like the OP of the meta post has not looked back and read any of the previous posts on the topic, and either the discussion gets hashed out all over again, or the OP gets criticized and downvoted for repeating what is becoming a frequently asked question as a meta post. This may be more a knee-jerk reaction to other factors rather than concern trolling, but it has the same effect. The same pretty much resolved issue is being brought up repeatedly, each time with an effort to censor speech which the OP does not like. I think it would be detrimental to the interests of the movement to adopt the oft suggested policy of censorship on this topic.

My personal opinion is that censoring these posts because some subscribers don't like the way other subscribers attempt to communicate would be a bad move. Instead of improving the content of the sub, it would alienate a segment of the group and stifle discussion. In fact, I wouldn't even advise requiring these posts to be self-posts, because that in effect imposes a penalty upon posters who may actually be bringing new readers into this forum.

seriesoftubesguy · 2013-01-26T06:16:06+00:00

Concern troll is trolling.

Frankly_George · 2013-01-26T05:51:52+00:00

Not until the Media Lace Curtain goes away. Not until the Pussy Pedestal becomes a thing of the past. Not until people wake **up**!

Surprisingly, seeing posts like the ones you decry helps break the yoke of the internal mangina, because it exposes women for who they truly are by letting them speak for themselves. It's a good thing.

themountaingoat · 2013-01-26T06:05:48+00:00

We need to make a clear distinction between content being bad because it is anti-feminist, or anti-woman, or because it is women behaving badly content, and content that is just rather light and doesn't promote discussion or have much information in it (facebook screenshots and such).

I have no problem with any of the content because of anti-feminism and women behaving badly posts, however I think this subreddit could use more quality discussion and information. The fact that facebook screenshots get upvoted is more a matter of what happens to subreddits when they get too a certain size, and less a problem with the MRM. In order to promote quality content the subreddit could go to self posts only, which has worked to promote more thoughtful content in other subreddits, but I doubt people want that. Other than that, all we can do is browse the new posts and upvote the ones that are thoughtful and promote discussion, even if we don't necessarily agree with them.

SuperUppercut · 2013-01-26T18:54:47+00:00

So long as we're growing I don't care.

Fuck Feminists.

2013-01-27T08:05:38+00:00

Fuck off with your sanctimonious shitty reposts.

jpaul3211 · 2013-01-26T05:08:11+00:00

It is getting rather frequent. I wasn't here 6 months ago, but yeah I agree.

Title	This needs to stop. Now...again
Author	T-rex_with_a_gun
Upvotes	2
Comments	8
Date	January 26, 2013 3:34 AM UTC (13 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/mensrights/comments/17aqdz/this-needs-to-stop-nowagain/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/this-needs-to-stop-nowagain.1604907 https://theredarchive.com/post/1604907

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