Editor’s note: The following is a contribution from our friends at Men’s Human Rights Ireland, who’ve just officially launched their organization. They are an on-the-ground group with big plans for the future. You can find their excellent site: Men’s Human Rights Ireland. Please stop by and give them your support. –JB

I’ve been on Facebook for just about 4 years, been through wars, nonsense, seen off enemies, dealt with smear campaigns and some truly awful crap. I’ve helped a lot of people during that time who were being harassed on-line by trolls and wannabe-campaigners of all sorts. I have a list of contacts for all sorts of people going back 4 years. From law enforcement, anti-child abuse campaigners, anti-bullying campaigners, trolls, troll hunters, to hackers – I got them all. I helped people to stop being harassed by smear campaigners and helped to get websites, YouTube accounts, and Facebook profiles removed which were harassing innocent people.

All of this led to me being harassed as well. I’ve been named on anti-paedophile websites and had my home address published by trolls and paedophiles, not to mention people calling me on my home phone to threaten me. I am still here. So last year I got talking to a guy called Aoirthoir, seemed nice enough and he told me things which didn’t make sense. Things like domestic abuse was roughly 50-50 which I didn’t believe for one minute, and that more men were raped than women, and that there were more women paedophiles than male ones. I just didn’t buy any of it. So I read and read and read government reports galore. After reading a lot I found out that everything he said was true!

The red pill is a bitter pill to swallow.

Now I am an ARM (Activist for the Rights of Men.) As I said I’ve done lots of things during my time on Facebook. Originally I went on there to post jokes and have a bit of fun. I ended up fighting bullying and all sorts of other things which culminated in me making a group which was directly responsible for the arrests of over 30 people. That was over 2 years ago. I am proud of all I’ve done. I’ve helped many people, and many of them do not even know that I stepped into their lives to help them. All of it has been on-line and it has cost me money, stress, sleepless nights, some terrible nightmares, trips to my solicitor and the police.

Two years later nothing really important has been happening till 5-6 weeks ago I had an idea. I’ve seen the “I don’t need feminism” pictures which caused a few feminists to choke on their white wine, to which they responded with “I need feminism because….” pictures. All very unimportant in the scheme of things really. It just seemed to be tit for tat. I wanted to make a difference.

So my idea was to get 100 flowers and give them out for free near where I live, and ask women to pose for a picture while they held up a sign expressing support for human rights of men in Ireland. I wanted this to be a worthwhile event, so I took the idea of 4-1 the ratio between men and women taking their own lives to say it was a human rights issue. Tell women about male suicide rates and how it affects everyone – men, women, and children. Irish culture and life has become toxic for men. I spoke to over 80 women, all of whom knew at least one person who killed themselves, several in the last few months. The overwhelming majority of them were men. (The suicide rate is officially 4-1 but we estimate it could be far higher if drinking oneself to death, or mysterious car crashes were taken into account.)

The response we received was fantastic. Many people offered money, on the spot, to help us. We gave out over 80 flowers on that day, all of which had the website details (www.menshumanrightsireland.org.) It rained twice during the event but it didn’t stop us; we were there to fly the flag for MHRI. Many women said that they didn’t want their picture taken because they weren’t wearing makeup (we’ll be better planned for that next time,) but every last woman I spoke to wanted to help more.

They all realized that men have it tough in Ireland and that is why so many kill themselves.

The Irish Mammy is a fearsome creature who will fight tooth and claw for their sons. My own mother attacked a girl one time who had been bullying me. Women are aware of the pervasive nature of misandry; they know, for example, that media and advertising has been extremely biased against men for the last number of years. They now need to see the connection between suicide and that misandric atmosphere. Yesterday opened more than a few eyes. We’re going to make sure that we continue to do that at our next event – and we hope that more people will join us.

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