Dave's Pickled Red Herring Does Not Go Over Well

This is an article from the Traitors of Men blog.

David Futrelle And The Mountain Of Lies

http://manboobz.com/2011/11/21/mens-rights-site-a-voice-for-men-offers-1000-bounty-for-personal-information-on-swedish-feminists/

A Voice for Men, one of the most influential and popular Men’s Rights websites, is now offering a $1000 “bounty” for anyone able to track down the personal information of several Swedish women involved in a tasteless video advertising a theater production based on Valarie Solanas’ SCUM manifesto.

Note how Futrelle immediately downplays the video by merely calling it "tasteless". Stronger adjectives, such as sickening, reprehensible, or misandric would seem to suit such a video better, but Futrelle chooses "tasteless".

The comments posted on the article at AVfM suggest that such “retributive” violence is a real possibility. Indeed, here’s the very first comment (which currently has 17 upvotes from readers of the site):

 
Was this an optimal manner for someone in the men's rights movement to express himself? No. Does it suggest that "retributive violence is a real possibility"? No.

These are the words of a man who just watched the Society for Cutting Up Men promote the murder of random men, for no other reason than their sex. I would even argue that violent threats would be understandable in such circumstances. However, this isn't one. He phrased it "shoot back", and in a follow-up comment ZenoCo calls it "defending himself". If, in the future, members of SCUM decided to follow in the footsteps of their idol and chose to enact their "theatrical play" in the real world by shooting at random men, those men surely would be justified in shooting back, would they not?

A commenter called  Xnomolos, in another upvoted comment, adds:

i would love to hunt down these women myself.

It is possible that Xnomolos meant he would like to go to Sweden and "hunt down" the women who advocate for murder. It's also possible that Xnomolos meant he would like to metaphorically hunt down the women's information online. Lastly, having never heard of this person myself, it is possible that they are a feminist attempting to make MRAs look bad.

Regardless, none of these possibilities indicate violence actually occurring.

JinnBottle responds to this comment by advising “all men to start carrying guns"

Within the context of his comment, JinnBottle is clearly suggesting for men to carry guns in self-defense only, and he even backs off from that soon after. That Futrelle attempts to portray this as an endorsement of proactive violence is illustrative of his transparent propaganda in action.

There is no question that the video itself is offensive, and designed to provoke.

It is not designed to "provoke" anything but taking joy in the murder of innocent men.

Futrelle just got done cherry-picking three AVFM comments, from 239, which he indicated were violent and threatening. Within the next breath, he is back to downplaying the Swedish SCUM video. The hypocrisy is unfathomable.

But John the Other, and the other commenters on AVfM, claim that it is more than this: that that the video of the staged murder, intended to provide publicity for a theater production based on Solanas’ notorious SCUM manifesto, is quite literally an open call for the murder of men. As John the Other puts it:

Open advocation of murder cannot be allowed in a civil society, without that society devolving into a culture of brutal violence.

Evidently he has no problem with, or has somehow not noticed, the comments on AVfM fantasizing about shooting and killing the women involved in the video.

Except not a single comment fantasized about shooting and killing the women. Futrelle has built his base of lies, and is making further lies from them.

Is the video a literal call to murder? Is it, as one AVfM commenter puts it, evidence of a “conspiracy to commit mass murder?” No. Violence and murder have been dramatized in the theater since its beginnings. No one accuses Sophocles of advocating fratricide and incest, though both are dealt with in his play Oedipus Rex. No one accuses Shakespeare of advocating mass murder, though many of his most famous plays have body counts that put many horror films to shame.

Does the tag line at the end of the video – “do your part” – transform the video from a depiction of murder  into an open call for it? No. The “threat,” such as it is, is vague; it’s not aimed at any specific individuals. It might be seen as akin to someone wearing a t-shirt that says “kill ‘em all, let God sort them out” – tasteless and offensive, but not a literal threat.  “Kill ‘Em All” is actually the name of Metallica’s first album. While a lot of people see James Hetfield,  Lars Ulrich et al as pompous idiots, they have not been jailed for conspiracy to commit mass murder. That would be ridiculous.

Let us look at the facts clearly, free from Futrelle's deceptive framing:

1) The group is called The Society for Cutting Up Men.

2) The author of the SCUM Manifesto, which the group bases their beliefs upon, actually put her manifesto into action by shooting and attempting to kill a man.

3) The video portrays a woman shooting and killing a man.

4) The video portray the woman and her accomplices as gleeful and orgasmic in reaction to the murder.

5) The video ends with the message "Do Your Part".

6) There is no other context to be extracted from the video, nor is their any apparent humor.

7) The people who made this video belong to a Facebook group called "Destroying the male gender".

Now, what other meaning could one possibly derive from "Do Your Part" other than an endorsement of murder?

I repeat, David Futrelle chooses to defend and downplay this hateful video, and instead attacks and accuses members of A Voice For Men for their angry reactions to the video. Mangina is far too kind a word for the likes of David Futrelle.

 

http://traitorsofmen.blogspot.com/2011/11/david-futrelle-and-mountain-of-lies.html