Jordan Evans, a former student at Northmont High School was stopped and searched by school authority figures after his teachers claimed that he smelled like weed. Evans was subjected to a search. No drugs were found. Katina Cottrell, his mother-a registered nurse, brought a drug test up to the school. He passed the test. She then took her son to urgent care for another test, which Evans passed.
Despite the school’s inability to prove that he had any drugs on him, he was still suspended and was eventually expelled. The school’s policy allows them to suspend and possibly expel students for having the smell of marijuana on their breath or body. Katina is worried that her son is being racially discriminated against. Her concerns aren’t all that surprising. In 2018, Northmont hired a diversity coach to give staff members cultural awareness for black male students. This is due to the school’s history of failing to have a healthy student teacher relationship.
Evans feels that the damage has already been done. He claims that the suspension dropped his grades down tremendously after 5 days.
Introduction Kyle Kullinski is a left wing political commentator, who’s known for his YouTube channel “Secular Talk”. He decided to take a crack at the subject in his video titled “Richard Dawkins: There’s A Men’s Rights Movement?” So, for context, Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist was at Kennesaw State. He was interviewed about a variety of different topics. Eventually the topic about the MRM came up, and he was completely unaware of its existence (no surprise, as the MRM isn’t very large). The video was posted by the “Richard Dawkins For Reason and Science” YouTube channel On November 21, 2014. Kyle Kullinski took the small clip about men’s rights and decided to make a video about it. This one was rather ironic. Every other left wing personality is known for letting their bias and ignorance get in the way of their reporting. Most people point to Kyle Kullinski as an exception to the rule. People refer to him as “principled” and “willing to address arguments honestly”. In fact, he’s known for getting frustrated with other people who misrepresent left wing arguments. He even fights against dishonest framing in political discussions. Well, most of those positive aspects were non existent in this video. Kyle Kullinski-who generally comes off as an intelligent and rational person-came off as a complete douche in the video. He spent the entire video, pleading ignorance to what MRAs were advocating for and misrepresenting their arguments. His own audience clearly recognized this as well, judging by the dislikes the video got. But, let’s go into detail about the lazy arguments present in this video.
The Official Left Wing Stance On Men’s Issues 1A.(1:32-2:15) Kyle sarcastically addresses the idea of men needing a movement in the first place. You would assume that Kyle would do just a little research before making the video. Incarceration rates for men and women are higher for the same crime. Men, especially black men, are nearly left behind in the entire education system. Circumcision is a human rights violation that is practiced worldwide. These are just a few examples. There’s no need to sit back and just complain about this at a bar. Clearly something has to be done about this. People need to write about it, do speeches about it, get the mainstream media to report on it, and fight to change the laws-case in point, the men’s rights movement. Kyle could have done research on men’s issues. He could of even read a book. The information was there for him to find. Instead, he chose to smugly dismiss the idea that men were suffering from any injustices.
B. (2:15-2:59) He then gives Richard Dawkins “progressive brownie points” for his response to men’s issues. This statement does the best job giving the official left wing stance on men’s issues. Richard Dawkins has been getting heavily criticized by the left for his statements on religion-especially Islam. Apparently, according to Kyle, you can earn back your trust with the left by trashing men’s issues. This is essentially Kyle saying that male hatred is a staple of the left and that it has no plans on fixing it. What a great look for your cause.
Kyle Contradicts Himself 2A. (3:14-3:28) Kyle managed to contradict himself within a minute’s time. Despite Kyle, clearly dismissing the need for the men’s rights movement, he actually goes on to acknowledge that they make good points. However, he claims that in most cases “men are getting whatever they want”, while women are the disadvantaged group. Ignoring the fact he’s wrong, he’s completely contradicting himself. He shifted his belief from “Men aren’t suffering and don’t need a movement” to “Men do suffer sometimes, but women have it worst”. Even if we were to agree with his logic of women “having it worst”, the answer is simple: So? Since when is human rights a victim hood competition? Would Kyle stop the black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native community from speaking because one of the groups “have it worst” in his opinion? Of course not, because that’s silly and pathetic-like his logic on gender. Your opinion on who has it worst is not a legitimate argument against men’s issues.
B. (3:30-5:00) In fairness, he did actually say something sensible in this video for once. He actually acknowledged several points that men’s rights guys talk about-such as divorce laws. However, it’s still odd that he went from being arrogantly dismissive of men’s issues to acknowledging some of their points within a manner of minutes.
C. (5:00-5:37) Also, in a surprising twist, Kyle brings up issues with modern feminism and how there needs to be a push back against unfair attacks from feminist groups. So, after saying that men didn’t need a movement. He basically, just went on to explain another major reason why the MRM exists in the first place.
Making Shit Up 3A. (5:59-6:35) But, of course he went back to saying absolutely nothing afterwards. So, he claims that a MRA talking point is that “men are disproportionately targeted during war”. Ummmm….who said this? Notice, he didn’t actually give any examples of MRAs who say this. This is a routine that MRA detractors do. They always claim “This is what MRAs say”, but they fail to give any actual evidence.
B. (6:43-7:16) He then went on to address male victims of rape, without addressing the actual points that MRAs are bringing up. The MRM is bringing up the fact that the law gives a pass to female perpetrators. No MRA uses prison rape to claim that “men get raped more”. MRAs routinely try to bring awareness to male victims of female perpetrators, which have little to no legal recognition. But those facts don’t matter to Kyle Kullinski-he has a narrative to push.
Full Circle-Back To Feminism 4. (7:40-9:03) Finally, Kyle starts running to a dictionary, to claim that the text book definition of feminism is equality between the sexes. He then proclaims that anyone who cares about men’s issues should identify as a feminist. How is that possible, though? Kyle started the video dismissing men’s issues. Even when he gave men’s issues slight recognition, he immediately downplayed the importance of it. Now we’re supposed to believe that Kyle actually cares about men’s issues and that his feminism will save us? I don’t think so. He finishes the video off by talking about women’s issues, in a video about men’s issues. How ironic.
Conclusion This entire video was honestly hard to watch. The amount of lies and ignorance thrown out in this video could have been easily debunked by any MRA. It’s very telling that Kyle Kullinski is considered to be the intellectual of the left. There wasn’t much intellect put into this video. If he’s the intellectual of left wing YouTube channels, the standards must be dropping. Happily, this is the only MRA video I could find from Secular Talk so far.
Sauntore Thomas filed a successful lawsuit against his former employer for racial discrimination. He was hoping that he could move on from any more legal problems.
Unfortunately, he found himself in a new one. Thomas went to cash his settlement checks at his bank, TCF. He attempted to deposit them into his bank account. But, the manager refused to allow him to cash his checks. She “suspected” fraud, despite any suspicion of fraud, and called the police. Ultimately, no arrests were made, due to their inability to prove fraud and his cooperation with the police.
This incident brought up the need for another discrimination lawsuit. It made zero sense for the manager to assume that there was any possibility of fraud. There was no legitimate reason for her to assume that he was fraudulent. There definitely was no reason for her to call the police on him.
Thomas, an ordinary black man attempting to live his life, was discriminated by 2 different establishments.
On January 21, 2019, feminists held a Women’s March in Washington, D.C. During the event J Owen Shroyer, a host for Info Wars, was interviewing someone from the march. Suddenly, one of the members of the march, inappropriately touched Shroyer and openly admitted to doing it on camera. The woman was identified as Isabel Kenna O’Shaughnessy.
Isabel originally claimed that she inadvertently brushed up against him. She claimed that she was being sarcastic when she admitted to the assault and that Shroyer simply misunderstood her. She attempted to claim that she was “emotionally charged” which led to her sarcasm. Court documents indicate that Isabel plead “not guilty”, which brought the case to trial.
On July 26, 2019, Isabel was found guilty of sex abuse. She was sentenced to 5 days in prison. In addition to incarceration, she was given six months of unsupervised probation and a $50 fine. Stroyer was very pleased with the decision. He was relieved to know that his rights were protected under the law and people can’t attack him for it.
Introduction Unless your head is been under a rock, you’re completely aware of the antagonism that the men’s rights movement (MRM) receives from the media. One of the most misleading pieces of information that the media continues to spew is directly related to the manosphere. The MRM is constantly lumped in with other existing manosphere groups. The purpose of this is to cause confusion and place the responsibility of other groups on the shoulders of the MRM. With multiple journalists misleading the public, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate the men’s groups from one another.
What Is The Manosphere? Modern society has been rejecting the idea of male spaces. They also refuse to let men organically express their emotions. They only accept manufactured responses from media talking heads. The internet is the only moment where men can express their feelings without fear of being censored-thus the manosphere was born. The manosphere is a network of web based ideologies that are used as a platform for men to speak freely. Multiple men’s groups have rose to prominence in the manosophere. Such as Men Going There Own Way, the pickup community, and Involuntary Celibates. The men’s rights movement, a movement that existed prior to the manosphere, successfully utilized the internet to give their group a platform. MRAs, such as Allison Tieman, Brian Martinez, Karen Straughan, Paul Elam, and Elizabeth Hobson have all gained recognition for their advocacy on the internet. It definitely attracted the attention of the media and helped the movement grow in popularity. This sounds great on the surface. However, it gave the media ammunition to use against the MRM. The media didn’t want to spend their time doing accurate research on the entire manosphere. They didn’t want to do separate research on the MRM, MGTOW, PUAs, and incels. Instead they chose to lump all the groups together as one. The media speaks of MGTOW, PUAs, and incels as if they exist under the MRA umbrella-this is flat out false. The men’s rights movement is a completely different community and they openly acknowledge the difference between their group and other men’s groups.
Organizing The Manosphere Here’s an organization of the manosphere in order to fix the confusion between the different groups.
-Pick Up Community The idea of a pick up artist is to have sexual success with women. The term itself can be dated back decades. The pick up community however is a new group of men who decided to use the internet to bring back these old practices. People in this community consider themselves “Pick Up Artists” (PUA). Examples: >Roosh V (Pick Up Artist) >Return Of Kings (PUA website)
-Incels Incels (short for involuntary celibates) are members of an online subculture that have difficulty finding a romantic or sexual partner despite their desire to have one-referred to as “inceldom”. Incels have gained notoriety due to murders committed by people such as Elliot Roger and Scott Beierle.
-Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) MGTOW is an online advocating for men to separate themselves from society-mostly women. MGTOW opposes marriage and cohabitation as they believe that this is harmful to men-at least in modern society. Not to be confused with activism and human rights, MGTOW is more along the lines of self-help.
-Father’s Rights The Father’s Rights group is a community that has numerous legal organizations used to challenge legal injustices towards fathers. Notable Father’s Groups >The Father’s Rights Movement >Father’s 4 Justice >Families Need Fathers >Dad’s Divorce
-The Men’s Rights Movement (MRM) The men’s rights movement is a men’s group that advocates for the human rights and individual virtue of men and boys. The movement can be traced back to the late 1800s with socialist historian Ernest Belfort Bax. There was a noticeable shift in popularity due to the rise of former feminist Warren Farrell. The manosphere has recently given them another shift in popularity. The MRM hosts legal support, political recognition, men’s conferences, literature, and social media groups. MRA Umbrella >The National Coalition For Men-legal organization >Justice For Men And Boys-political party >A Voice For Men-website >Honey Badger Radio-media >The Myth Of Male Power-book >International Conference On Men’s Issues-conference
Introduction Steve Shives is a left wing political commentator. He makes a series of YouTube videos called “Five Stupid Things”. In Five Stupid Things, he’s supposed to give five valid criticisms of a person, group of people, or an ideology. This series gets large amounts of views and is very prominent on his channel. Well, Steve Shives decided to take a swing at the Men’s Rights Movement.
Videos In his video “Five Stupid Things About the Men’s Rights Movement”, he attempts to give criticisms to MRAs. There’s just one noticeable problem with the video: All of his criticisms were bad faith critiques. He made false claims and argued against the movement under false pretenses. The video received a large amount of dislikes. So many dislikes, he had to hide the like/dislike ratio.
5 Stupid Things About The MRM
I can go into full detail about the many things wrong with his video. But I don’t have to. A YouTube channel named “TL;DR” did a response video to Steve Shives. It was called “Steve Shives Doesn’t Understand the Men’s Rights Movement”. In this video, he goes into detail about everything wrong with Steve’s logic. He goes into detail about the statistical falsehoods and logical fallacies that Steve made in his video. To no surprise, this video was well received. He didn’t have to remove the like/dislike ratio. His video has way more views than Steve’s original video.
Steve Shives Doesn’t Understand The MRM
Unfortunately, this didn’t stop Steve from lying. In fact, he made a follow up video called “Five More Stupid Things About the Men’s Rights Movement”. In the video, he claimed to have found five more things to criticize the movement for. Similar to the last video, he failed to give any legitimate criticisms of the MRM. To no surprise, this video got heavy dislikes, so he removed the like/dislike ratio again.
5 More Stupid Things About The MRM
Thankfully, TL;DR recognized this video and responded to it again. He titled it “Steve Shives Still Doesn’t Understand the Men’s Rights Movement”. He proceeded to make a video using facts and logic. This was in contrast to Steve Shives, who spoke from blind emotion and fake outrage. Like the last video, this video was well received and gained more views than Steve’s inferior video.
Steve Shives Still Doesn’t Understand The MRM
Another YouTube channel, by the name of “Undoomed” was also very disturbed by the content of Steve’s video. So he made a response video called “Steve Shives Lies”.
Steve Shives Lies
Steve eventually got tired of TL;DR taking his ass to task. So he blocked him on Twitter. You can conclude what you will about that block. But, I’ll call it what it is: cowardice. If you have to remove a like/dislike ratio and block opposition on Twitter, you’re usually too scared to face reality. But, don’t just take my word for it-listen to everyone else. Though this video is the most extreme version of his intolerance, it’s not the only example.
TL:DR blocked on Twitter
Steve’s blocking patterns are well known throughout the internet community. YouTube channels make videos about Steve-mocking him for his inability to listen to opposing opinions and his refusal to accept facts that contradict his narrative. A YouTube channel, by the name of “SyeTen”, made a satire video about Steve’s stance on the MRM. It’s called “Men’s Rights Movement the Motherfucking Opera”.
MRM the MF Opera
Steve got tired of all of the criticism he was receiving and decided to make a rant video. The video was called “Seriously, the Hell with the Men’s Rights Movement”. He attempted to portray himself as a sort of revolutionary speaking truth to power. He dismissed the well received response videos as something only MRAs enjoyed. Unsurprisingly, just like the other 2 times, Steve received a lot of dislikes. Which he attempted to hide by disabling the like/dislike option.
The Hell With The MRM
At this point, Steve was becoming increasingly pathetic. If he was so sure that he was right, why did he hide the like/dislike ratio? If his words were so revolutionary, why did he have to delete comments? Instead of addressing the conversation honestly, he chose ideology over rationality. He surrounded himself in a feminist bubble-and he blocked anyone who didn’t agree with his views. Then he ranted about the criticism he received-hoping that he could shout down opposition. This can only be described as “immature”. A grown man, who is supposed to have uncomfortable conversations, chose the safest position and ran away from opposition. A fairly respected left wing YouTube channel, became a perfect example of an intolerant ideologue. Fortunately, TL;DR and other YouTube channels successfully delivered quality content. It’s just a reminder that the truth will always win in the end. Hopefully, Steve acknowledges the truth in the future.
A viral video shows a Jefferson Parish police officer detaining a handcuffed black man and planting drugs on him. There were 3 officers seen surrounding the handcuffed man. One of the officers can be seen looking around suspiciously. A woman could be heard saying “she’s recording”. The cop then gets up and rushes towards the camera. The disturbing video caused outrage on social media.
Men’s rights activists were holding a meeting at one of the lecture halls at the University of Toronto. Feminists were disrupting the event yelling that “women hold up half the sky”. One pulled a fire alarm.
By 6:40 am, he’s showered, shaved and is skipping into the garden to collect fresh honey from the beehive.
At 6:50 am, he stirs his tribe with encouraging words to seize the day.
By 7:00 am, the family is eating breakfast together: the children are respectful, they’re without their phones and father’s jokes create joyful merriment.
By 7:15 am, the tribe is ready for action. Happy children get themselves ready for school: teeth (check) beds made (check) P.E. kit (check) and off they go: it’s a seamless operation.
Every morning it’s a happy camp, from Monday to Friday … right?
Wrong!!!
Like the Pinterest images of euphoric families running along deserted, white sanded beaches, hand-in- hand, wearing bleached white cotton outfits … this is not real life!
Family life = chaos, ups & downs and a never-ending list of jobs to be done.
Lego left on the floor for you to tread on when you least expect it.
Battles with kids attached to their damn phones.
Un-drunk cups of tea, made lovingly for your teenagers but forgotten and left to fester for days: strange flowers now grow out of the sludge in the mugs..
So how do you juggle everything that needs to be done and still have a nice life?
This is a question I wrestle with and whilst my life is not a seamless operation (and never can be with 5 kids and bills to pay), I’m far more productive and relational than I used to be thanks to 3 simple strategies.
1) Lower your standards on trivial things.
You can’t do everything … or at least, you can’t do everything to a high standard. If your mountain of tasks towers over you and all the tasks must be done, then choose which tasks you’ll do well, which tasks you’ll do OK and in which tasks you’ll invest the bare minimum of effort.
For example:
I don’t iron anymore: not the bed sheets nor the school uniform nor my own clothes. In fact, the only time I iron, is for formal shirts, as and when I need them.
I like my house to be tidy but with 5 kids, I have a choice: either spend all day (every day) tidying up the clutter, or choose one room to keep nice and tidy, use it as my oasis when I’m feeling stressed, and turn a blind eye to the rest of the house.
If you try to deliver high standards on every task, you will burn out!
2) Rome wasn’t built in a day
Your decorating project at home will take more time if you also have young children. Just as you start glossing the woodwork, little Jamie will be sick in his bed! Of course, in our immediate world of T.V. on demand, Amazon next day delivery, Uber taxis waiting round the corner for your call and unbelievable download speeds for the internet, we’re increasingly unused to waiting for anything. But if you want to achieve something and you’re already busy, you must learn to take small steps every day and keep moving forward with managed expectations.
Bit by bit, if we stick at stuff, even if it’s just a little bit each day, then we can achieve MASSIVE things in 365 days. Patience and consistency rule OK!
3) Good Parking Rocks!
Sometimes your life will enter a season where you will need to park the things you ideally want to do: the snowboarding season in the Alps, the super-fast motorbike, or the jet-setting job taking you around the world. You’re just not in the season of your life where these things are workable for you, so they need to be parked.
Parking becomes unhelpful when it’s done on autopilot, as your typical habit, rather than an intentional decision based on logical evidence.
Parking involves letting go of the things we want now, because the timing is not right, and also accepting that we can’t control everything, that we can’t achieve everything and that we have limitations.
Parking is liberating: it cuts us some slack and temporarily clears some non urgent tasks out of our minds, so we can focus on achieving the important things which need actioning today.
Being productive (whether you have kids or not) is simply about choices and commitment: its deciding what is truly important, then investing your energies in the truly important things.
If you ❤️ this post, check out my recent TEDx talk: Domestic Abuse, not a gender issue, where I describe my experiences of abuse, why I stayed, how I forgave and the wider issues faced by male survivors. (See YouTube link below)
Andrew Pain is a high performance coach and TEDx speaker, serving people from all walks of life, enabling them to live boldly, wisely and with less stress, so they live life on their own terms and realise their most precious dreams. In his spare time, he is a domestic abuse campaigner, passionately believing that in order to effectively tackle domestic abuse, we need to de-gender it.
HuMANity 