I would like to talk about the Trust-O-Meter™.

     The Trust-O-Meter™ gives a pretty good indication of how much I am going to trust something.  There are good things, which tend to inspire trust.  And there are bad things which tend to reduce or eliminate trust.

     One of the great things that you can do that will inspire trust is to provide links.  If I can verify what you say for myself, I am more likely to trust you on other matters.  (Some caution is necessary.  If I think a link is suspicious, it won’t help.  Worse, if you make claims about A, B, and C that I know to exist but don’t know the claims as true and X, Y, and Z that I have never heard of and only provide links for the X, Y, and Z claims, it will actually move you down.)  Another good thing is to correctly report something I already know but which you don’t know I already know.  Also good is to admit when you are wrong.

     One bad thing that you can do is only to link to yourself or your supporters.  If you tell me that some prominent person said X, I want a link to his website saying X or a video of him saying X.  Now, I realize that sometimes there is a game of “hide the evidence.”  But you and your supporters linking to each other to make the claim just doesn’t help anything.  Moderating comments is a big red flag.  While there are occasionally reasons to moderate comments, the purpose is usually better served by removing derailing or disruptive comments after the fact.  If you are screening comments before anyone can see them, there is a good chance you are throwing away the inconvenient ones.  Getting caught in a lie is a great way to hurt your credibility.  That goes double if you lie about the very people you are trying to convince.

     Then there are things which ensure that you will have no credibility whatsoever.  Calling dissenters “X deniers” is a fine example.  Presuppositional Baloney operates on this.  You can also create an echo chamber.  When there are a lot of comments, but no dissent, something is wrong.  However, it is sometimes good to test this by leaving a dissenting comment and seeing what happens to it.  Incidentally, creating “straw dissenters” whose purpose is to be obviously absurd is not of any help.  If you play a game of “hide the evidence” your credibility is gone.  If you used to have a website but you took it down because you couldn’t handle criticism (especially links proving you said something inconvenient) then everyone that knows you did that will never trust you.

There was a blog demanding that “a voice for men” take its site down.

     Emphasis on “was.”  The blog owner took the whole blog down.  I find this somewhat amusing because he was boasting about how he wasn’t afraid of men’s rights activists.  He tucked tail and ran, fast.  

     Now, there is another possibility.  Google may have shut him down.  He did have a banner that said “stop men’s rights.”  That could be construed as hate speech.  I still think he took it down himself because people were agreeing that men should have rights.

On the fundie christian front

     Dan seems to have given up on his blog.  He hasn’t posted anything for a month and a half.  Even at that, on a blog he created “to debunk atheists,” he was reduced to such blatant lies as saying “you already believe.”  As near as I can tell, no one was buying his merchandise or donating to his bank account.  So, it looks like he is gone.  But, who knows, he may be back;

     Norman is back after an extended absence.  I think he was grounded from using the computer.  And he is saying that UFOs are really demons  Naturally, he only cites dubious christian sources.

     I think it’s cute the way he keeps trying to convince his readers that he is an adult.  He talks about using a typewriter to write letters.  (His grandfather must have told him about typewriters.)  In actual practice, letters were written with pen and paper.  A typewriter is useful for copying and cleaning up something that is already written down.  But when composing a letter, it simply breaks your train of thought.

     I think he is trying to give the impression that when he was in school, computers were not yet available.  But they were.  They were available when I was in school.  They were prohibitively expensive.  But the schools had them.  It’s where I first developed an interest in what computers can do.

     Now, here’s something of some interest about that time.  The instructors stressed that a lowercase ‘l’ could not be used as a substitute for the number ‘1’ on the computer.  It would cause confused results or errors.  I expect Norman will not be able to figure out why they stressed that point.

A response I made surrounding the Meg Lanker-Simons issue

     The link is here.

First, the comment I responded to.  (You will be able to see it at the link.)

She won’t be going to court on May 13 because she filed a written ‘not guilty’ plea, that means that the arraignment, set for May 13 will be vacated and her case will be set for a scheduling conference, maybe a month out.
The courts in Laramie don’t hold trials the first day someone comes to court, there’s a whole process. If the case proceeds to a trial it probably wouldn’t be until late Summer/ Fall.
Until then, she’s presumed innocent of the charge of interference and I think we’d all do well to remember that.

Next, my response.  You won’t see that.  After a week the moderators still haven’t approved it.

Let me ask you one question. When a man is accused of rape, and his name, photograph, and the charges are plastered all over the news for months, how well do you remember that accusations are not convictions and that he is presumed innocent?

I think she manufactured a fictitious threat. But then, I think that is a standard operating procedure within feminism. It plays quite well. People “come to the rescue.” But the rate at which feminists claim to be threatened or harassed strains credibility.

That said, she is presumed innocent under the law. But I am not on her jury. And I am not bound by the constraint. I can presume that she is guilty. Fortunately for her, my belief in her guilt will not ruin her life.

     She created fake threats that could well have landed some poor sap in jail for the rest of his life.  And she did it to convince people that there was a “rape culture.”  I am convinced that she is guilty because, if there was any way to portray her as the victim with the evidence found, the local officials would have done just that.

     So what can we take from this.  First off, “rape culture” is not real.  If it were, no one would need to fabricate threats.  Also, the only concern I have seen from feminists about this is that it might hurt their cause.  Not a passing thought is given to the fact that these sorts of things ruin men’s lives.  I have yet to see one feminist denounce this because it could have resulted in an innocent man going to jail.

 

Untitled

     It appears that a feminist named Meg Lanker-Simons sent herself a threatening message so that she could play the victim card.  This is in Wyoming.  The only thing I find surprising about this is that she got caught.  Feminism is all about playing the victim card.  But women are just not victimized to that great a degree.  They are not considered “acceptable targets.”  Men are.

A feminist who denounced MRAs for the London Irish Centre cancelling its booking.

     A link is here.

     For the record, she does state that she is “no longer comfortable” associating with the group that was trying to meet there.  And as I write this, it has only been 3 days since her original post.  I think that this has to do more with her plausible deniability going out the window than anything else.

     I would like also to talk about the comment made by Jo:

 

     Absolutely disgusted that Nesbitt’s ridiculous, illogical, and bigoted comments about the exclusion of trans* women were allowed to pass unremarked. Equating MRAs with trans* activists is a truly disgusting tactic. Shame on the interviewer for skipping over this point, and for allowing Nesbitt to conflate the vile actions of MRAs with the principled and intersectional criticisms of trans* people and allies.

 

     As far as I can determine, there have been no vile actions on the part of MRAs.  I will note that this may be a practical consideration more than anything else.  Feminism is still very much a darling of the media.  If MRAs were actually to do anything inappropriate, the media would be all over it like stink on a skunk.

     But feminism is a supremacy group.  Feminists see males as innately inferior and not fully human.  They are not going to let anyone escape this judgement through a little operation.  To them, trans-women are men because you cannot escape being sub-human. Logically, advocates for the rights of trans-women are advocates for men’s rights.  So, to them, it’s all the same; they’re all MRAs.  They don’t care how the people identify themselves.

On MRAs being “from another planet.”

     Here is another feminist blogpost.

     The main post is about the venue cancellation for “Radfem” and even seems to be an attempt at distancing themselves from it.  But this is the part I noticed:

     “The so-called MRAs appear to be living on a different planet: a planet in which women have so successfully seized control that men and boys are now a downtrodden, [marginalized[ group. It isn’t really within the scope of this article to [criticize] their position, but a beautiful piece that does so can be found here.”

     The following is my response:

     In the world I live in, if a man is a victim of domestic violence, he is still the one arrested. If a woman decides to make a false accusation of rape (say for giggles) her identity is shielded, whereas the man she accuses has his life ruined even if he is lucky enough to prove his innocence. Most people will remember only the accusation (front page of all the papers) and assume it’s true. In divorce, the wife gets everything automatically (except the bill, which goes to the husband.) She doesn’t even need a reason to file for divorce. That’s what “no fault” was created for.

     The fact is that it is the planet Earth on which the typical man is marginalized. It is this planet on which men have no *inherent* value. Women are deemed valuable automatically. Men have to “earn” value through great achievements. And most don’t make it. Instead, they’re considered to be ATMs

     I am anti-feminist because I see feminism’s claim that it is about equality to be a lie. Feminism is about female supremacy. It is quite plain why you do not want to give opponents “a platform.” I, on the other hand, want you to be heard. I want you to be recognized for what you are, outside of your echo chamber.

 

 

     I don’t expect her to approve my response.  After all, she doesn’t want to give a platform to opposing points of view.  It’s not nearly as effective as using strawmen.

My thoughts on MGTOW

     They want to avoid marriage and relationships.  That’s fine.  In today’s society, in which a woman can file “no fault” divorce and take 90 percent or more of everything the husband has or ever will have, marriage is a losing proposition for men.  Some even go so far as to want to have nothing to do with any women in any capacity.  I think that is unwise.  But I will get back to that later.

     Some people are trying to ridicule those who op out of marriage saying that they are “betas” and probably wouldn’t have children of their own anyway.  But really, that’s the point.  They already know this.  They know that they would get burned in divorce court and spend the rest of their lives paying for the children of other people.  Opting out of that scam sounds very sensible to me.  And society is pretty much built on the backs of “betas.”  I don’t blame anyone for deciding he doesn’t want to be a sucker anymore.

     But feminists are not going to want to let their cash cow go.  Sooner or later, they are going to push for laws to make marriage mandatory.  They will not want “opting out” to be an option.  In order to keep from being burned again, they are going to need the majority of the population that marriage should not be forced on men who don’t want it and that bachelorhood should not be punished.  And this is where I think having nothing to do with women is unwise.  In order for society to continue to recognize that bachelorhood is no crime, there have to be women on board.  If all women were to support mandatory marriage and a few male politicians played along for something that they would get out of it, it would be out of the frying pan and into the fire.

     Ultimately, this needs to be about recognizing the humanity of men.  And there are women who will recognize that humanity.  Not every woman has a marriage and a divorce planned out.  Opting out of marriage is fine, and even a good idea.  Opting out of politics is suicide.

On a deleted comment and and a declaration of “hate group”

     On this blogpost, wwomenwwarriors claimed that SPLC declared MRAs to be a hate group and that that meant that MRAs are of the same order as the KKK.

     My reply was to point out a simple fact.  When we identify the Klan as a hate group (which is appropriate) we point out the things that they have done — cross burning, lynch mobs, and the like.  As yet, MRAs have done nothing that warrants such a classification.  So all they have is a declaration by some group.  The owner of the blog found this reply to be inconvenient and deleted it.  I’m really not surprised.

I found a blogpost that I find a little disconcerting.

     The post is here.

     Now, the author is claiming that WoolyBumblebee is not a real MRA and seems to be suggesting that she is trying to sabotage the movement.  As evidence he provides a screen capture of part of an internet discussion, but no link.  He says he’ll tell you the context.  As you might guess.  I like links.  I like to check things out for myself.  And his claims do not fit well with my existing observations.

     The cynic in me says that this is someone who wants to dismantle the men’s rights movement.  It looks like he is using a divide-and-conquer strategy.  Creating strife and driving all women away would certainly play into the hands of those who want to eliminate the men’s rights movement.  But I don’t know for sure that that is his intent.

     Personally, I think this smells fishy.  As always, people will come to their own conclusions.

UPDATE

My revised opinion is that the original author is seeing women trying to take over when they are not. I think this partly fits the adage of “once bitten, twice shy.”