Tag GLBTQ domestic violence

ManBoobz and Subreddits: Why Your Abuse by the Justice System Is Less Important than a Communal Toilet

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“Man Boobz has a contingent of MRA commentors, but he has never (to his knowledge) changed any of their minds.”

—Kate Donovan, TeenSkepchick.org

Even at the risk of giving the impression that what the epigraph means is worth understanding, I’ll interpret: ManBoobz.com is the domain name of a website that mocks “MRAs” or “Men’s Rights activists.” (The grammar of the quoted writer, Kate Donovan, also humorously suggests “Man Boobz” is a nickname of the website’s author, David Futrelle—which, admittedly, is why I lifted the sentence.)

If you’re like me, you’ll be filing this information under the mental tab WHATEVER. So why do I bring this up?

In recent weeks, I’ve corresponded with and written about

This is besides digesting copious nauseating and desolate reports of abuse compounded by legal fraud submitted by both men and women. A respondent the other day, for example, reported she’d been chronically forced to have sex and was then issued a restraining order petitioned by her rapist, who endeavors to expel her from the life of an older woman she nurses, an older woman she loves and thinks of as her “grandmother.” The man has also cost the girl work by telling people she’s crazy. He’s apparently concerned she might pose a risk to his inheriting the older woman’s estate…besides concerned she might expose him as a rapist.

Dilettante demagogue Dave Futrelle has “document[ed] and mock[ed]” male complaints of injustice since 2010. Today a fulltime heckler, he supports himself and his cats with advertising revenues and online donations from feminist fans.

In writing about the black dad who now has an “18%” share in the lives of his two infant boys (“who go insane when I have to drop them back to their mother”), I was moved to criticize the rhetoric of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represents itself as a civil rights advocacy group. The SPLC publishes a page called, “Misogyny: The Sites,” that suggests opposition to feminist-inspired legal travesties (for instance, the restraining order) is motivated by hatred of women, and on this page it refers approvingly to ManBoobz.com, the site introduced above.

The domain name ManBoobz.com leads to the blog We Hunted the Mammoth, whose title is apparently a lampoon of the titles of “MRM” (Men’s Rights Movement) blogs like Return of Kings. “We Hunted the Mammoth” is meant to suggest the Men’s Rights people are Neanderthals. Yuk-yuk.

If you’re a parent who’s missing his or her children, an abused (former) spouse or boy- or girlfriend who’s now homeless or living “like a hamster” consequent to misapplications of the law, or a senior who’s been bullied into cowering behind his or her blinds, this post is to make you aware of the trash talk that has cost you what you valued most; that talk is what informs pop culture sentiment and diverts awareness from your torment.

The anti-MRM crowd—of whom David Futrelle, author of We Hunted the Mammoth, is apparently a bellwether—represents the complaints of men/fathers to be unprovoked hate rhetoric (and anyone, man or woman, whose complaints are identified as corresponding to MRM complaints is simply lumped in). Calling complaints of state-sanctioned abuses “misogynist” makes them easy to dismiss. The conclusion that complaints are “misogynist” is plainly superficial but not unpredictably embraced by feminist partisans.

Here’s a snippet from a recent post on We Hunted the Mammoth (selected because I don’t have the stomach to stick my hand all the way into the bowl):

Men’s Rights Redditors agree: it’s tough to be a man. Well, a cis man, in any case. And those silly trans people are making it worse.

On the Men’s Rights subreddit, one concerned fellow has discovered a possibly insurmountable obstacle standing in the way of true gender equality: A “Women’s Room” at the University of Queensland that, as a sign on its door notes, is open to “trans*, intersex and genderqueer people as well as cis-females.” The horror!

The post concerns a sign on the door of a University of Queensland toilet. That’s right: a toilet.

(Apparently chemical prefixes are now used to distinguish different “gender types.” A “cis” is what most of us would naïvely call a heterosexual man or woman.)

Here’s an excerpt from another post:

Yep, I reported the 100% true fact that a Youtube bloviater named Aaron Clarey had written a post on Return of Kings urging men, in his words, to “not only REFUSE to see the movie, but spread the word to as many men as possible.” I described his readers on Return of Kings as misogynists, not MRAs, though clearly there is a massive overlap between those two groups.

The idea that this was specifically a Men’s Rights crusade was, to be sure, a bit of sloppiness on the part of the journalists writing about it, who are not quite as familiar as some of us are with all the different varieties of woman-hating shitheads there are in the “manosphere”—especially since their belief systems overlap considerably. As I noted in a previous post on this subject, writing about Esmay’s accusations against a writer for the Huffington Post,

It’s true that the HuffPo writer, in the original version of her piece, wrongly described the MRA-adjacent Return of Kings—which has urged a boymancott of Mad Max Fury Road—as a Men’s Rights site proper. There are in fact some differences between ROK and AVFM. For example, while AVFM writers have declared women to be “obnoxious cunts,” who control men with their vaginas, ROK writers have suggested that women are actually depraved, disloyal sheep.

You can almost forgive journalists for getting a bit mixed up.

The post has something to do with a recent movie (Mad Max: Fury Road). As of this composition, it’s been tweeted 27 times and circulated on Facebook 98 times. It was more popular than the toilet post…maybe because it has dirty words in it.

The writing is virtually indecipherable to outsiders but communicates the nature and maturity of the “discourse” (i.e., teenage). This sniping has “evolved” (or escalated unchecked by the reproofs of grownups) to the stage that it has its own jargon and insider acronyms.

Noteworthy is that Mr. Futrelle’s tirades are in each instance against a single person: “one concerned fellow” and “a YouTube bloviator.” Whether these two men represent the “Men’s Rights Movement” is clearly questionable. Here, incidentally, is a clipping that shows topics surveyed on the Men’s Rights “subreddit” (r/MensRights) that Mr. Futrelle criticizes, topics that paint a different picture from the one his writing does.

Among the members of this so-called collective of haters who posted yesterday are a “self-reflective feminist,” a defender of an elderly man with dementia who was reportedly assaulted, and a father who alleges he was falsely accused of child abuse.

Issues these posts purport to concern seem no less worthy than those feminists raise. Mr. Futrelle nevertheless categorically calls contributors a “hate group,” as does the Southern Poverty Law Center. Ms. Donovan, the girl or woman quoted in the epigraph, offers this interpretation:

MRA stands (loosely, and inaccurately) for the Men’s Rights Activists. More correctly, the MRA movement has enveloped a terrifying sector of the population that feels women and particularly feminists are devoted to squashing the given rights of men in every way. This ranges from belief that women deserve abuse to abusing evolutionary psychology to claim that women are just genetically inferior and will remain that way.

While you, the reader of this post, perhaps sit huddled in a dark corner wondering at the maliciousness of Fate, wondering whether your estranged child or children are safe, wondering if you’ll ever vigorously embrace life again—this is how your pain is perceived (or at least represented) by the feminist “smart set,” which celebrates specialized toilets and mocks you as a “misogynist” and a crybaby.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*Consider this woman’s post to the “subreddit” r/AskFeminists: “Why do Feminists hate ‘MRAs’ and portray them poorly?”

You Don’t Want to “Be a Part of It”: Commentary on New York’s Protection Order Biz

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I corresponded with a man last year, a man in a homosexual relationship, who was assaulted by his partner severely enough to require the ministrations of a surgeon. His boyfriend was issued a restraining order coincident to his being charged with assault. That’s how it typically works in New York: A protection order is issued following a criminal complaint.

The man who wrote reported that he contacted the violent partner while the order was in effect to impress upon him how badly he had been hurt. The boyfriend used the contact to have the assault charge reduced and to obtain a protection order of his own, which he then abused serially to drive the man he had assaulted from his job and eventually from the state. This only required that he repeatedly claim he felt threatened, which is what he did. (According to the man, “The DA did not even try to substantiate my ex’s allegations and pursued the case to the utmost of his ability.”) The law licenses “mandatory arrest” under such circumstances. Arresting officers told the man all they needed was his accuser’s statement. (It didn’t matter who the actual victim was.)

The man was badly traumatized, at least as much by the lies and legal abuse as by the violence. Though he can’t look in the mirror without being reminded of it—one of its mementos is a scar under his eye—the effects of the violence subsided; the lies and legal abuse eventuated in his public disgrace, alienation from his friends, his being arrested at his place of work, and his being asked to leave by his employer after his business dried up and he had accrued massive debts, including from legal fees and medical treatment for PTSD and depression. He says he developed “terrible agoraphobia” (“afraid I would inadvertently run into my ex and have him accuse me of anything just to have me arrested yet again”) and continues to suffer nightmares (“that cause great daily despair”) even now—in another state where he fled to the safety of his family and where he gets by on disability insurance while he plots a reemergence secure from the risk of further legal assaults.

His story, which has here been stripped of detail to preserve his confidentiality, should serve to inject some color into the black-and-white tutorial on New York protection orders that’s examined below.

I digested a page on protection orders recently that was prepped for the New York Court System by the very earnest Judge Penelope D. Clute. It obliquely highlights absurdities in the system that merit some remark.

According to the judge, there are two types of protection orders: “stay away” orders and “refrain from” orders.

The former are pretty straightforward in their prohibitions:

  • No physical contact of any kind.
  • Stay away from the home, school, business or place of employment of the person named in the Order.
  • No phone calls.
  • No letters, emails, or faxes.
  • No messages through other people.
  • No presents.
  • No contacting the person in any way at all, even if you are invited to talk or meet by that person.

Note the last line—and note that it is the last line.

It acknowledges that people who are nominated “victims” on protection orders may entice their “abusers” to contact them. The quotation marks around the words victims and abusers in the previous sentence are there to stress that the language used by the courts and inscribed in the law is suspect. The court itself recognizes that there are cases when “victims” invite “abusers” to chat or hang out (or move in). As the story that introduces this post shows, besides, there are instances when actual victims seek the understanding of abusers, and this may come with its own host of complications and horrors.

Attorneys like these know very well that allegations of abuse may be hyped or fraudulent.

Unstated in Judge Clute’s bullet list is that the burden of blame falls on the accused even if s/he’s invited to violate the court’s order. Unstated but implicit is that “victims” may not be victims, and “abusers” may not be abusers. Entirely unconscious is that telling people whom they are or are not “permitted” to send a message or gift to contravenes the basic principles of liberty we define ourselves by and pride ourselves on. Restraining orders obviate the chance of reconciliation between parties in conflict by criminalizing contact and making what may be strained relations wholly and possibly virulently antagonistic.

(But, I hear you counter, you sacrifice your freedom when you violate the law. The issuance of a restraining order may be in conjunction with a criminal case, as it commonly is in New York, or it may not be; doesn’t necessarily require proof conclusive of anything; isn’t itself a criminal judgment but an admonitory one; and may be grounded on cranky interpretations of perfectly lawful acts, on lies constituting fraud, or on mere finger-pointing and a few moments of the court’s attention only. The issuance of a restraining order is, however, regarded as a criminal judgment, even in the absence of a criminal charge, and a finding that the order was violated is a criminal judgment. Appreciate that a violation could be the “abuser’s” calling the “victim” and reporting, “Your dad phoned and says your mom’s been in an accident.” A restraining order makes that act criminal, and the court’s prohibitions aren’t negotiable. Restraining orders make perfectly lawful acts, even morally imperative acts, criminal ones, ones you may be arrested for, denied jobs and housing for, and/or deported for.)

These contradictions will likely be familiar to the repeat reader.

Fascinating to learn of was New York’s “refrain from” order. Its contradictions are less likely to be familiar. According to Judge Clute, if you’re issued a “refrain from” order, “you can live together and have contact, but you’re prohibited from harassing, intimidating, threatening, or otherwise interfering with the person protected by the Order.”

This means, evidently and bizarrely, that there are people dwelling under the same roof as their accusers who may be cited for criminal contempt if an accuser calls and reports them for “harassment” that occurred, for example, in the hallway or the kitchen. The implications, which are fairly stunning, bring to mind the phrase “sleeping with the enemy.” The law invests its complete faith in the virtuousness of accusers’ motives. What will be plain to anyone who’s been falsely accused is that an accuser who’s been granted a “refrain from” order and resides with his or her “abuser” holds the life of the accused in the palm of his or her hand.

A writer for the feminist house organ Jezebel might ask, “Why would anyone make a false accusation of harassment, intimidation, or threat? What could be gained by that?”

Since feminists aren’t actually obtuse, the question doesn’t require an answer. Pretending, though, that they are obtuse, here is one: A residence could be gained by making a false accusation. Property could be. Children could be. Revenge could be (see the introduction above). Attention could be. The list goes on.

Judge Clute wraps up her tutorial on protection orders with this advice on “How Defendants Can Avoid Problems,” which reinforces the earlier observations that “victims” may call their “abusers” or otherwise attempt to reconcile, and which notes, besides, how a court order may stir conflict and confrontation with “family or friends.”

  • Do not go to places where you know the other person goes.
  • Leave a building, restaurant, store, or other place if you realize that the other person is there.
  • Hang up the phone immediately if the person calls you. Record the call on your answering machine, if possible. Tell your lawyer about the call.
  • Do not send letters, emails, or faxes to the other person and do not respond if that person sends one to you. Give your lawyer any message you receive from the other person.
  • Do not get into arguments or confrontations with the person’s family or friends. Walk away. Try to avoid them completely.
  • Do not get together with the other person, even to apologize or to try to work things out unless the Judge has dropped the Order of Protection.

Everything that makes these bureaucratic intrusions and impositions ridiculous is right there on the page.

Remember: If you spot your accuser, run away and hide! If s/he calls, hang up immediately (and call your lawyer posthaste)! Also…no sending presents!

Should such a debasing and debased statutory process really be one embraced by an enlightened citizenry?

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*The author of this post has listened to National Public Radio for about 20 years (and done The New York Times crossword for at least as long). If a cosmopolitan New York doyen(ne) of the art world, someone with the right background and the right associations, were saddled with a protection order based on false accusations (which are easily staged or concocted and may be heinous or a foot in the door for the commission of years of legal abuse), it might be treated on an NPR program (or in The Times) like a rare and inexplicable bird sighting, and the torments, indignities, and privations of the sensitive, cultivated victim of this “anomalous” miscarriage of justice likened to those suffered by a detainee in a Siberian gulag. It’s estimated that millions of restraining orders are issued in this country each year, and it’s posited that a majority are based on hyped or false claims. It’s further speculated by this author that only a tiny minority of the country’s privileged class are victims of such frauds.