John “The Other” Hembling on MRAs spamming Occidental College with false rape reports: “Go forward, brothers, and f*ck their sh*t up!”
This has to be my favorite quote to come out of the whole Occidental College fiasco; it’s staggering in its moral blindness and fanaticism and its complete lack of self-awareness. It also captures well the peculiarly self-defeating quality of so much Men’s Rights rhetoric and, er, “activism.”
![johntheother [-37] -8 points 3 hours ago (11|19) "‘Men’s rights activists’ conspire to cripple college rape reporting system with false reports" GOOD! Go forward, brothers, and fuck their shit up. rape is a crime. If somebody has a report to file of being the victim of this crime - file that report with a POLICE ORGANIZATION, not with some jumped up kangaroo court or administrative star chamber. And when operating in an environment where the star-chamber rules - FTSU with the same fraudulent reports they've tuned their system to process against you. permalink source save give gold hide child comments [–]O-Fortuna 3 points 35 minutes ago (4|0) This came off so silly and juvenile I thought it was one of the troll comments the mods talked about, but you seem to be some kind of widely known mra. In favor of making false reports. Appalling.](../../../../2013/12/jtoonbrothers_w-604.png)
The backstory here: the commenter in question is none other than John “The Other” Hembling, the Number Two (or Three? I can’t tell) boy at A Voice for Men. He’s responding to an article on Raw Story that’s indicative of the incredibly (and justifiably) bad press Reddit MRAs have gotten for spamming Occiental College’s anonymous rape reporting website with false reports of rape, some of which may have named real people at the school as the “perps.”
At this point in the story, even the normally obtuse Men’s Rights Redditors realize they have a disaster on their hands, and are trying to blame anyone else they can.
But Hembling thinks it’s the perfect time to cheer on the false accusers amongst the MRAs.
That’s right: apparently jealous of all the attention Reddit MRAs have gotten for their cloddish “activism,” he’s decided to jump aboard this train — after it’s left the station, derailed, and fallen into a ravine.
That response is classic, too
Posted on December 19, 2013, in a voice for men, are these guys 12 years old?, attention seeking, drama kings, evil women, false accusations, johntheother, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, oppressed men, rape culture, slacktivism and tagged a voice for men, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, occidental college, rape culture. Bookmark the permalink. 179 Comments.
@CassandraSays: Well, Australia was home to the ute and the Valiant Charger(regarded as one of the best non-American Chrysler products of all time by many an auto enthusiast), so there’s that.
Auggz — that sucks, I, thankfully, end up disgusted by the idea of food and thus stay out of hue kitchen entirely. And yeah, I’m trying to figure out how you even manage to drive in a straight line when the lines are swimming (or snakes, or whatever thing that isn’t a solid straight line)
Pretty much a car culture, unfortunately. It’s okay in the capitals; we’ve pretty good public transport, though it’s woefully neglected here in Melbourne, partly because of the roads lobby. I can’t speak for other states, but the regional rail infrastructure here was gutted in the 90s, and if you live in the country most places are only accessible by car. Melbourne’s roads are getting more and more congested (government’s solution: knock down houses and build more freeways). The sheer size of the place doesn’t help - not just the size of the country, but urban sprawl. Greater Melbourne is as big as Greater London, so I’ve read. So yeah, cars are very much A Thing here.
Sweden is probably similar to the UK in that our drinking culture is pretty horrible, but we have good public transport and don’t rely on cars the way Americans do. Also, most people abstain from driving the next day as well if they’ve been binge drinking, since it’s gonna take a while for all that alcohol to be cleansed out of your system.
I can have three or four beers and not really be impaired… Like, I’ll be more easily-amused and giggly, but far from the point where I’ll do stuff I normally wouldn’t do. When I was twenty though I was a really habitual drinker and had a tolerance level to match. I could down six-seven stiff drinks and not be visibly impaired at all. That’s pretty dangerous, actually…
Obviously it’s bad for your overall health to drink as often as you have to in order to build up that kind of tolerance, but it’s also dangerous because you can get to a state where you’re much more drunk than what is physically possible for a person with lower alcohol tolerance (because the lower-tolerance-person will throw up or pass out long before zie reaches that level of extreme drunkenness).
Like, once I was having a night-out with some friends, and when I was going home, I had forgotten where I lived. All I could remember was that I lived in the northern part of the city. I did realize that it wouldn’t be a good idea to just go north by a bus or whatever and stroll around hoping to stumble over my apartment, so I didn’t know what to do. By pure accident I did end up outside of the building where Husband lived at the time, although by then we weren’t a couple. I thought that “Yay, I can stay at his place tonight and go home in the morning! Just gotta give him a call so he can let me in.” Problem was, I couldn’t remember his phone number either, I only vaguely recollected what the figures were. So I began making phone calls, trying out the figures I thought was part of not-yet-husband’s phone number, and rang like twenty different random people or so. Eventually, I did manage to call not-yet-husband. Me:
- Heeeeey, can I crash at your place? You see, I’m really drunk and I have forgotten where I live.
Not-yet-husband:
- Um, that’s not a great idea, my father is here visiting.
Me:
- But come ooooooon, how am I gonna get home when I don’t know where I live? Pleeeeease, I gotta crash at your place!
Not-yet-husband reluctantly agreed that I could crash at his place because he was scared that something terrible would happen to me if I was left wandering the city all night in that state. And that’s how I, for the first time, met the man who would eventually become my father-in-law. I really hope that the saying “first impression lasts” is false.
This is what irks the snot out of me about Austin. You NEED a car here. It’s pretty spread out and the busses aren’t that great and light rail only has one route (to top it off, the city isn’t very walkable if you’re not downtown, it’s not uncommon for neighborhoods to have no sidewalks at all). Plus, there’s more po po than I’ve ever seen in my life here, so driving for a night out is not gonna happen. Thankfully we’re only a six dollar cab ride from anywhere we might want to go downtown.
Seattle was great in that you didn’t absolutely need a car. I sold mine after a few years because finding parking was more hassle than it was worth.
@Kitteh: Reminds me of Dallas/Ft. Worth in a lotta ways…..
Waaaay off. The Melbourne land area is over 8.5 thousand sq km, London’s only one and a half. Even Adelaide’s a bit more than that - and we’ve only got 1.2 million people.
Damn, how long does it take to get from one end of Melbourne to the other? It can take about 90 minutes in London if you count zones 5 and 6.
I love the star chamber. Every so often I invite guests into my star chamber for a good ole stew that I made in the misandry crock pot. What a fucktard Hambling is.
Hambling and new girlfriend are writing crappy rants together now.
It’s a tough world I’ll tell ya.
@House Mouse Queen: I agree with you, though, TBH, I don’t think it’d be a wise idea to keep using the word “fucktard”, as it may come across as offensive to people who struggle with certain mental conditions. Just thought I’d let you know.
Oh great, more ableism.
@auggz: I don’t think she meant any harm, though…..or was it me you were referring to? *looks around, confused*.
I was referring to House Mouse Queen using “fucktard”.
@auggz: Oh, alright then, thanks for clarifying.
At this point, I have zero fucks to give whether or not someone meant harm by using ableist slurs.
Hembling has a girlfriend??? This I gotta see.
Where’s my unicorn? *restarts the timer* can we go to 10am tomorrow, blog time, without ableism? Probably not.
If people are wondering why the regulars are annoyed, this is why. Imagine if we had to tell people at least daily about some other -ism that we hadn’t had to ask people to knock off, not with any regularity, for months. Like, you go months with just the occasional “they must be fat, that’s why they can’t get laid”, and then you have to say Every. Damned. Day. that this sort of anti-fat bias isn’t cool around here.
Relatedly — neuroticbeagle — narwhal narwhal swimming in the ocean…thank you, my brain beach backlog only goes to Christmas Eve cuz I didn’t know what I wanted to do for Christmas Day. Narwhals it is!
Oh and alternatesteve90 — this is why people keep raising issue with your warning to other people — fuckt*rd is offensive, not “may come across as offensive”. Calling pecunium a mango may come across as offensive (he hates them, with a passion), mangos are not, contrary his opinion, inherently offensive. Fuckt*rd, and all variations on ret*rd, are inherently offensive.
(Hi pecunium, do they make mango cutters or anything like that? I keep seeing ones for avocados and such, but not mangos. You know I’m buying you one if I find it ^.^ )
@Argenti: Hmm….well, to be honest, having given it a little thought, I think I see your point here. Will keep that in mind for the future. =)
yes, they make mango tools, looks sort of like a metal vulva in a ring. Splits them in half, and removes the pit, all in one step.
Have some Mango Splitters
John the Otter has an “article” on AVFM in which he takes a step back and offers some well thought out observations about the whole Occedental College fiasco.
J/K It’s a rambling post in which he says a bunch of offensive, stupid shit.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/kids-false-reporting-is-bad-mmmkay/
While JtO is not the most articulate writer, I believe his point is that there are two types of false reports and only the first kind is made by non-victims. The second is made by “victims”, brainwashed by feminism and rape hysteria, who cry rape whenever their feelings are hurt.
So, JtO thinks society should be question women who claim to be raped, because rape is now so broadly defined that it goes way beyond traditional, felony “real rape”. That’s actual problem, not the actions of some well-meaning MRA activists.
Don’t strain anything.
I’m still waiting for MRAs to acknowledge that the form allows for men to report and for women to be reported.
JtO links to a photo of a women holding a sign saying “I need feminism because men can still RAPE even without laying a hand on a woman”.
Then he says:
It’s an obviously faked “parody” of the ‘I need feminism…” meme, but he uses it as a prime example of how feminists describe rape culture. That’s a huge scoop of intellectual dishonesty in one sentence.
I have literally never heard of a single feminist saying that regret after sex is the same as non-consent. Never. JtO is one pretentious, disingenuous douchebag.
Also, that picture makes sense. When people talk about “laying a hand” on someone, they often mean physical assault. So that woman is probably just saying that violent, physically aggressive rape isn’t the only kind of rape.
As Ally said, if the photo meant “hand” as in violence, then it’s true, but if she meant a literal hand, then who the fuck has ever said that?
That reminds me of another photo they posted of a woman holding a sign saying “no always means no but yes doesn’t always mean yes”. When someone commented saying they didn’t see how this was necessarily false, an MRA commented something like “name one way yes wouldn’t mean consent, besides pedophilia, drugs, physical violence, blackmailing, or any other force.”
The irony was lost on him.
@Ally
I didn’t think about it that way, that she meant the lack of violent force. Good point.
Maybe reading JtO dulled my mental faculties and impaired my empathy. That’s the excuse I’m going with.
@Ally S: “So that woman is probably just saying that violent, physically aggressive rape isn’t the only kind of rape.”
Yeah, rape doesn’t always involve a lot of violence, or even much violence at all; just being coerced counts, too, doesn’t it?
@auggz: No surprises there, unfortunately.
[Content note: rape, violence]
Anyone who thinks that’s false is very much pro-rape. Many rape victims pretend that they are consenting in order to avoid more violence from their perpetrators. It’s a survival tactic, in other words. By MRA reasoning, a man who is being beaten and raped by a female perpetrator is consenting if he pretends to enjoy it. Even in a non-violent rape, the male victim could say yes just to avoid the stigma of being raped by a woman.
Maybe MRAs could say things like “Just because you said yes and people said you were lucky, doesn’t mean it was consensual” instead of their childish, misogynistic whining about posters that stigmatize male rapists. But nope. that would require them to be sincere and actually interested in helping men.
No one…but then again, MRAs never let a little thing like facts get in the way of a cool unicorn story.
@Ally S: Once again, you’ve hit the nail right on the head here.
He forgot mental illness. If depression could make me seriously contemplate lying down on a train track when the freight was coming even though I didn’t want to die, then I’m sure it’s no stretch to surmise that someone else in a state of mental distress could say yes and mean nothing of the sort…
@Bina: I’m sorry to hear about that. Hugs from me, if you want them…..:(
Not caught up, but pecunium that does look a bit like vulva. The infamous vagina dentinata slice mangos! If I see one in person, I’m buying you one. I’m sure you’ll find something to do with it. Maybe I’ll frame it with “Reminder: Argenti is a smartass” ^.^
Thanks, Steve. ‘Twas a long time ago, and I’m twenty years out of that state, hopefully never to go there again. I even live right next to two major rail lines now, and such ideas no longer occur to me. Which is as good of proof of my recovery as I can think of. I do sometimes recall those ideas…and I always shudder.
Thinking back to that time (which I tried so hard to forget, because ugh) just crystallized something for me, not only with regard to the ableism problem (which I’ve put my foot in too, and am now trying to learn, or UNlearn rather, and make amends), but also the sheer icky awfulness of those PUAssholes who deliberately pick on women with eating disorders. They are taking advantage of a mental illness to green-light their rapey behaviors, and they rationalize it with the idea that “she’s just trying to be skinny for Teh Menz”. Just because someone whose illness has approval-seeking as an unfortunate side effect said “yes”, doesn’t mean she meant YES. But they can’t be bothered to understand that not-so-fine distinction. They really do believe that crazy ladies are just inherently hot to trot, when in fact the ladies are not interested in the sex (or the mooks offering it), but rather the validation it has come to represent, in their own disordered thinking.
Count every imaginable zone. Those areas for Adelaide and Melbourne include places/ towns that some residents still gallantly resist calling suburbs - but they are. No idea about getting across Melbourne. Adelaide is basically a narrow string 20 km wide, 90 km long. With a lot of parkland in some parts and considerable bushland in a few others. Which makes providing public transport a bit of a nightmare for such a scattered population - and there’s lots of resistance to infill and high rise housing, especially where it means loss of open space or sports facilities or whatever.
I’ve never done the trip from one side of Melbourne to the other, but from where I live - 56km from the city centre, the outermost suburb going this way - it’s an eighty-minute train trip, including ten-fifteen minutes around the City Loop (three underground stations). Getting home from work takes me a minimum of ninety minutes, because it’s a tram and train trip, plus walking from the station at home. My morning commute’s two and a half hours, but that’s because I include stopping for coffee and spending time in the park with Louis - it’s our only earth-time alone together.
Speaking of travelling, anyone remember we were talking about backpacks and bags recently? I finally found a little daypack for going OS - a PacSafe. Mine’s the plum colour.