Well, theory and execution are different things. As the Southern Poverty Law Center reported last year, the MRM's most visible advocates often engage in perpetuating misogynistic myths. The SPLC wrote:

Some suggest that women attack men, even sexually, just as much as men attack women. Others claim that vast numbers of reported rapes of women, as much as half or even more, are fabrications designed to destroy men they don’t like or to gain the upper hand in contested custody cases

And the SPLC has data debunking the myth that women attack men as much as men attack women:

A major 2010 study by the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control thoroughly debunks such claims. Nearly one in five American women (18.3%), the study found, have been raped; the comparable number for men is one in 71 (1.4%). Not only that, but more than half (51.1%) of female victims reported that their rapist was an intimate partner — a current or former spouse or boyfriend, or a date.

The movement has struggled to find allies with tenets that don't hold up to the facts. Indeed, the abuse comparisons — that men were as likely to be abused as women — have been thought to undermine the potential good the movement could do for actual male victims of abuse. "Men's Rights Activists are rage-filled misogynists who claim feminists intentionally 'cover up' issues like male rape and workplace injury rates so women can achieve global domination," wrote Jezebel's Katie J.M. Baker in describing members of the movement.

So was Earl Silverman the good kind of advocate or the not-so-good kind?

Well, Silverman is known for having founded Canada's first shelter established for male victims of domestic abuse, out of his own pocket, because he couldn't find support services for himself. Silverman claims his wife abused him, and that's the reason he left her some 20 years ago. "There were a lot for women, and the only programs for men were for anger management," Silverman told Canada's National Post shortly before his death. "As a victim, I was re-victimized by having these services telling me that I wasn't a victim, but I was a perpetrator."

Silverman's shelter, the Men's Alternative Safe House in Calgary, was not funded by the government, and he failed to raise enough money from private donations to keep it open. MASH, as it was known, closed down last month. "The day after he packed up his recently sold home — also the site of the Men’s Alternative Safe House — Earl Silverman was found hanging in his garage," reports the National Post.

This man killed himself because a men's abuse shelter shut down?

Well, according to Silverman's reported suicide note, that could have been a factor. "In a four-page suicide note, Silverman blamed the government for failing to recognize male victims of domestic abuse and for not providing enough services to help those in need," Huffington Post Canada reports.