Talking Back to Irish Feminist and Misandry-Denier Taryn de Vere

April 19, 2018July 28, 2023Moderator 2 Comments

Since the publication of this post, feminist Taryn de Vere’s criticisms of Men’s Voices Ireland have been deleted from the Internet.

“Misandry, n. hatred of men.”

—World Book Dictionary

“[A] satirical imaginary concept.”

—Taryn de Vere

This post is inspired by mockery of a group called Men’s Voices Ireland, which in November held a conference titled, “Challenging Misandry.”

Feminist Taryn de Vere, whom we might call “Miss Andry” for fun, felt compelled to remark beforehand, “In what could possibly be a first for Ireland, a conference has been arranged on the theme of a satirical imaginary concept.”

I don’t know for Men’s Voices Ireland or Irish feminists, but I do know something about semantics.

First, all concepts are imaginary. “Women,” for example, is a concept. It represents nothing that is real. It’s an idea. Real are this person and that person and that other one over there. We form the concept “women” by observing that this person and that person have common contours. That’s it.

If that’s difficult for feminists to hear, so much the better.

Second, “satirical” means sarcastic. Ms. de Vere may use “misandry” sarcastically; Men’s Voices Ireland plainly wasn’t.

So there’s her acid characterization neutralized. While I don’t have the resources of the late Bill Safire to trace the provenances of words, I’m assured by consultation with Webster’s New International Dictionary (second edition, which is the only edition I own) that the word misandry was around before Ms. de Vere was born and was not coined by the men’s rights activists she ridicules.

Ms. de Vere endeavors to support her dismissal of any societal manifestation of misandry today by quoting some academics who know nothing about the law, which is something I know quite a lot about after being the butt of serial prosecutions and false accusations for 12 years.

Ms. de Vere:

It is impossible to have an “ingrained prejudice” against men when we live in a world made by men for men.

For this to be true, there would have to be no such thing as “women’s law,” a phrase that explicitly expresses a prejudice in favor of women by the part of society’s machinery that no citizen can safely resist or defy.

For decades, law monograph after law monograph has charted the evolution of “women’s law” (see left for citations of a few): progressively harsher statutes with progressively broader definitions of “abuse” and progressively reduced thresholds of proof; judges and police officers, who’ve received inducements in the forms of massive federal grants, being “trained” according to tailored social science; etc.

That’s “engrained prejudice” to a tee.

The laws themselves are the stuff of satire. Accusers, who are predominately female, are nominated “victims” based solely on their say-so, and they may move a court to dismiss their allegations while defendants, who are predominately male, may not. Defendants are railroaded through.

That’s in the United States, but it’s likely laws and court custom in Ireland aren’t so different, and they should inspire protest. Ms. de Vere, who is the mother of five, might feel very differently very promptly about men’s plaints if she were abruptly to find herself the mother of none based on some random allegations (of child abuse, say) made to a judge during a few-minute interview to which she wasn’t invited.

For many or most of those who constitute Men’s Voices Ireland, the perception of misandry is probably empirical, that is, based on experience.

It’s Ms. de Vere’s concepts, which are ignorantly based on emotions, that aren’t concepts at all but fantasies.

*“I’ve had a lot of super awful stuff happen to me in my life like multiple rape & domestic abuse,” Ms. de Vere says of her own experiences, which, however sympathetic, only make her willingness to understand men’s experiences that much more suspect. Most disappointingly, Ms. de Vere is a gifted humorist who calls herself “The Joy Bringer” yet is immune to stories like the one here—which is desolating and largely unexceptional. The “joy” she brings to her fans may derive, in part at least, from her derision of others’ agony.

When Girls’ Being Girls Isn’t Cute: False Allegations of Violence and Rape

August 17, 2014March 22, 2018Moderator 3 Comments

I was just contemplating what I’ve come to think of as “estrogen rage”—a peculiarly feminine mode of violence that orbits around false allegations to authority figures. Furious men do violence, which is why domestic violence and restraining order laws exist. Furious women delegate violence (by lying), which is why the abuse of domestic violence and restraining order laws is rampant.

I was distracted from this rumination by two accounts that emerged in the press recently of women accusing men of rape to conceal affairs:

“Ex-Counselor Gets up to 18 Months in Prison for False Reports of Abduction, Assault” (Bellefonte, Pennsylvania)

“Sheriff: Woman Files False Rape Report to Cover up Affair” (Athens, Alabama)

Their motive wasn’t rage; it was selfishness. That same theme is present, however: using others (cops and judges) as tools of violence.

When stories like this are bruited, it’s always to show that, hey, women lie about rape: See! That’s not what people should find disturbing about these stories, though.

whatever What people should find disturbing about these stories is how feminine false accusers think about lying, including lying about physical and sexual violence (or their threat). They think it’s no big deal—or they don’t think about it at all.

If false accusers regard lying about rape as no biggie, then what does that say not only about how they regard other types of false allegations but about how they regard rape itself? Right, they regard rape as no biggie.

This is what no one ever confronts head-on.

Even feminists who regard false allegations of physical and sexual violence as insignificant must regard acts of physical and sexual violence as insignificant. You can’t say the acts are ghastly and in the same breath say being falsely accused of them isn’t.

Either both are consequential, or neither is.

Feminists are more prone to denounce even the falsely accused (that is, to blame the victims) than they are to denounce false accusers (their “sisters”). Feminists’ denunciations, then, aren’t ultimately of (sexual) violence; their denunciations are of men. Here we come back to the topic of estrogen.

Feminine and feminist psychology are due more scrutiny than they receive. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read even sympathetic reporters of false allegations say they recognize that the more urgent problem is (sexual) violence against women—a sentiment that, intentionally or not, motivates false allegations. False accusers aren’t just aided and abetted by this pronouncement of priority; they’re encouraged by it.

Trivializing false allegations can hardly be said to deter women from making them. The message it conveys, rather, is that false accusers can and should expect sympathy and attention (because all women who make allegations can and should expect sympathy and attention).

The idea that men do evil in response to their hormonal urges is broadly promulgated, and the influence of that idea is to be seen plainly in our laws and in how our courts administer those laws.

Women have hormonal urges, too, and they’re not just toward maternity.

Consider that the women in the stories highlighted in this post falsely accused men of rape whom they’d just been rolling beneath the sheets with…and put a name to that act.

Both women’s lies, incidentally, were undone by text messages they’d exchanged with their lovers that showed the sex was consensual.

Girls will be girls.

If You’re not Part of the Solution, You’re Part of the Problem: On Why Restraining Order Abuses Have Persisted for So Long and How to Do Something about It

January 10, 2014August 21, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

“Men are bastards!”

“Women are cun[ning]!”

I could end this editorial here, and I would have summed up the problem, which originates with hearts but owes its infinitude to different organs entirely.

Predictably, since most restraining orders are sought against a member of the opposite sex, online forums about dirty divorces, domestic abuse, treacherous lovers, vengeful exes, predatory or parasitic whackjobs, etc. often boil down to cross-gender sniping and “team camaraderie.” Women just want to be pissed with men and bitch about them with other women, and men just want to be pissed with women and bitch about them with other men.

Both genders have limitless potential to suck; sex is beside the point.

Those who profit politically and monetarily by the misery inflicted through court processes that are easily abused by the “morally unencumbered” love all this conflict and misdirected rage, which only ensure that these corrupt processes continue to thrive.

They’ve already hummed along without a hitch for over 30 years. In fact, they’ve gained momentum, despite reasoned and articulately critical pans from distinguished members of the legal, journalistic, academic/philosophic, and public policy communities.

Not only does cross-gender bitching by victims of state abuses distract from the actual source of the problem, which is bad laws; it makes those victims sound like the cranks and nuts everyone else is glad to assume they are.

True, the person who betrayed you and lied about you should be subjected to medieval punishment. True, the judge you got may be worthy of the same for his or her cruelty or carelessness or cluelessness. But…the reason either was entitled to abuse and humiliate, rob and defame you was THE LAW.

Except for the statutes that authorized your injuries, those injuries wouldn’t have been possible.

Passive aggression isn’t going to accomplish anything. I can’t imagine venting even makes anyone feel better for very long.

Aggressive aggression holds a lot more promise. If you’ve been wronged, tell your story, and tell it in a way that will count. Sign a petition and add a comment about your own circumstances. You don’t even have to expose your name. Sign several and tweet them, too (a few are below). Start a petition of your own. Tweet that also and post it here. Start a Facebook page. Connect and consolidate forces.

STOP FALSE ALLEGATIONS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

THE SUPREME COURT: FEATHER FOR THE FALSELY ACCUSED

RESTRAINING ORDER LAWS ARE DANGEROUS AND UNFAIR TO MEN

This may seem unthinkable to you, especially if your wounds are fresh, but appreciate that the impulse to conceal shame only potentiates that shame. If you’ve been wronged, the shame isn’t yours. Re-channel your emotions in constructive ways. You’re not alone.

No one wants to do this. No one should have to. I wanted to write humor for kids. Though not a big dream, it contented me, and I think I would have been successful at it by now and that other doors would have opened. I was dragged from my interior world and away from the life I might have enjoyed. Not only am I not a political person; I don’t even like board games.

I do, though, hate bullies, especially ones with gangs behind them.

Recognize that the ringleader of the gang that assaulted you isn’t that petty lowlife you mistakenly invested your trust in; he’s an invisible man who’s represented in posters wearing red, white, and blue, and his gang is everybody.

The only way you can beat him and attain some satisfaction is by taking away his gang and making it yours.

TALKING BACK to restraining orders

THEY’RE NOT JUST ABUSED BUT ABUSIVE

Tag misandry

Talking Back to Irish Feminist and Misandry-Denier Taryn de Vere

When Girls’ Being Girls Isn’t Cute: False Allegations of Violence and Rape