I don’t know how I missed it, but a couple of weeks back Vice posted a short video about that EARTH-SHATTERINGLY HISTORIC Men’s Rights rally in Toronto that captured the attention of the world a tiny fraction of a percentage of people in the world (including the people at it and readers of this blog) a little over a month ago.
Alas, WordPress won’t let me embed the video here, but you all need to go look at it. Not only does it capture pretty well what a dinky event it was, but it also contains a bunch of mini-interviews with some A Voice for Men folks that are rather revealing.
The most revealing one of the bunch starts about 2:40 into the video, when AVFM’s Suzanne McCarley explains that
Men, as a class, have never ever oppressed women, as a class. Men have always protected and provided for women. And protected them from oppression from others.
From others? What kind of others? Like, space aliens?
Women have never objected to this, and in fact have always been grateful because it’s how they survived. It is only in the last few hundred years when women of privileged class who don’t even know what they’re being protected from feel disadvantaged because they’re not comfortable with the level of protection they have.
Wow. A few hundred years? Sometimes people accuse MRAs of wanting to take us back to the 1950s. McCarley apparently wants to take us back to the 1750s.
They don’t even understand what they’re being protected from.
Wolves? Sharks? Dishpan hands? Space aliens?
They have no concept how dangerous the world is for them but gosh they’re just not happy because, you know, the males in the family tell them what to do and make all the decisions for them and control all the money. That’s not oppression. That’s protection.
Wow. So I guess slaves and prisoners are the most protected classes of all.
It’s what kept our species alive and what built … [she gestures at the park and the buildings around it] this beautiful city.
Wait. I thought Jefferson Starship built this city. On rock ‘n’ roll.
Anyway, there’s also some footage of a speech about the evil oppression of white men given by an unknown speaker at the rally. He also complains that men working for the government are men who’ve had “their things cut off and are toeing the politically correct line.” (Hopefully after the bleeding has stopped.)
There’s an interview with Paul Elam, who for some reason looks like he’s wearing mascara (which I’m pretty sure he isn’t). He delivers this puzzling pronouncement:
Looking at men in government and saying they have all the power is like looking at women in grocery stores and saying they have all the food.
Not only is this way more revealing about gender inequality than Elam may realize, but it’s also a tad ironic, because Elam not that long ago used (unreliable) data about how women “control” most consumer spending — that is, they do most of the shopping — in order to argue (twice!) that women were the ones primarily responsible for destroying the environment.
There are assorted other bits of misinformation and ignorance and just plain old bigotry from the MRAs.
There’s also some commentary from the counterprotesters that made me wince. No, MRAs aren’t all Marc Lepines waiting to happen. They’re shitty enough people as it is; you don’t have to compare them all to a misogynist mass murderer to make your point. And in fact, you undercut yourself with that kind of rhetoric. Focus on what they actually say and do. It’s bad enough.
And the “racist, sexist, anti-gay” chant? Drop that. MRAs are, for the most part, driven by misogyny — not by other bigotries. Yes, some are racist, including one of the speakers featured on this very video, but that’s not the driving force for most of them. Some are homophobic, but that’s not the driving force for most of them. Some are transphobic — including Elam himself — but that’s not a central issue for most of them.
It’s worth pointing out these other bigotries, but to make these issues the centerpiece of your counterprotest is to miss the point — it would be a bit like attacking the Ku Klux Klan as “sexist and racist.” I’m sure plenty of KKKers are sexist as hell, but with the Klan racism really is the main thing; with MRAs, misogyny is.
And in this case it gave AVFM’s Karen Straughan the opportunity to appear (at least for a moment) like a reasonable person by pointing out that she in fact is not straight.
Anyway, watch the video. It’s amazing.
Argenti: Kitteh — daylight savings, it’s 1:45am here. Which is still plenty early for me, particularly if I get back to coding.
Actually, we are back on standard time not Daylight Saving Time.
Kodi…it’s your tail.
It’ sat tachIt’s attached to your butt. It follows you around. You clearly aren’t a kitten, so how are you not used to it being behind you? Somebody spike your catnip?(Mercury in retrograde, somebody laced the pot, any theory is as good as any other at this point?)
And, because I totally needed more stress, now I have to deal with a buyer who thinks that her desire to package my work in her product overrides my ability to tell her to take her money, ball it up into a tight bundle with lots of sharp corners and pound it nice and deep where the sun has never been but a distant and unreliable rumor.
I need another beer.
We’re on daylight saving here, just to add to the confusion. 🙂
Ophelia – “Could be the pills, just thinking that last comment made noooo sense. *giggles*”
Makes perfect sense to those with Furrinati Insider Knowledge. ::preens::
gillyrosebee – I’ve become addicted to Shorty and Kodi. Theirs is the only youtube channel I’ve subscribed to!
Kitteh: No confusion, you are entering late Spring, we are in middle Autumn.
I just want him not to pass on his pain to other people like some kind of self-replicating virus.
Pecunium — I have yet to see proof that you are capable of being actually angry. Which is probably good, you are likely a force to be reckoned with.
“Actually, we are back on standard time not Daylight Saving Time.”
Whatever, I’m all digital except my pocket watch and my battery is dead. Only clock I have to change has a little switch I flip and TADA!
Shadow — first we need to people to, you know, write stuff ^.^ But if we get troll run-off from here more mods would definitely be more better.
Argenti – that “What IS that thing?” look on Kodi’s face is priceless, isn’t it?
More Shorty and Kodi:
http://youtu.be/vMhCL8hl54s
Pecunium – I know (autumn! Grrr! Envy), it was just the “what time is it in X if it’s such-and-such time here” thing I meant. 🙂
gillyrosebee, that’s extra suckage about that buyer.
I am suddenly very glad that the cat here only acts like a bat out of hell on occasion (of course, my foot is still cut up from when she decided to use it as a launch pad last week)
@kitteh, I’m glad. 🙂
You’ll be glad to know we haven’t found any more cat pieces around the house, hopefully two ears and an inch and a half of tail will be the last of it.
But eww, never wanna witness that again. It’s cute when your other cat plays with it’s catnip mouse, but when it decides the dismembered ear of its best friend is a great toy, just yak, argh!
BTW, Shadow, are we pretty much on the same page now? It seemed like we were earlier, but then Feminist Bees seemed to be sure that we were coming from totally different positions, and then I had a few more glasses of sake so now I’m a bit hazy.
Argenti: I have a couple of levels of really angry. I can point you to writings I did in the heat of passion.
Agreed, Shadow, and it’s an excellent point. I personally think it’s best addressed by patiently, thoroughly, and with footnotes and diagrams as necessary, showing why those statements are unconnected to the regular rhetoric of those individuals. Then link to all those other, more problematic, comments.
Then, for bonus points, highlight the individuals and groups actually working to address the problems that the MRAs only want to use as an excuse to shake their fists at feminists.
But again, this is what I have inclination and energy for. It’s also what I think my skills are best suited to and what is most likely to produce a result I can be happy with. Each must choose what they are comfortable with on their own.
Evie regularly decides that, a la Evil Dead, her tail has become possessed by evil and must be chased down and killed immediately. Of course, this mostly seems to happen in the wee small hours of the morning, and must be accompanied by the most horrific howling you have ever heard.
The client is always
rightan asshole.Having done a bit of web design for a law firm, I feel your pain. There comes a point where tact fails and you just want to go “no you fucking idiot, it doesn’t work like that!”
New cat stopped chasing her tail at about 9 months, which seems odd to me because it’s so big and fluffy, but apparently she’s not interested any more.
Ophelia, do I dare ask about the ear thing, or should I just be horrified along with you and let it go at that?
Ophelia — what?
Pecunium — yeah, I’m curious, seeing how you’ve seen me truly lose it at Joe and OF when he made that arsenic comment. (That’s about one step down from “you should leave, I want to hurt you”)
Wow this thread is a regular fuckadoodle doo.
I realize I might derail the thread by referencing the Vice piece that the post is about, but I’d like to give props to kittehserf for perfectly describing why Vice’s “the MRAs just need love, love I tell you!” malarky is kind of appalling.
Nailed it and I concur, fuck that.
Oh no, it’s the dreaded “let me endlessly explain what intersectionality is and tell you how do it properly” lecture series. But then this warmed the cockles of my cranky heart:
I’m a newbie but you Manboozers are da best!
A few tips to FeministBees. 1) Throwing blocks of academic text doesn’t contribute to the conversation and we aren’t unschooled savages who need your wise books to free us from ignorance.
2) When people point out mistakes like your use of the word lame, it’s polite to say things like “Sorry, I won’t do it again” and “that’s a good point about ablest language, I never thought about it before, thanks for pointing that out”. Unfortunately, you said this:
And that is exactly what was wrong with my usage of the term “lame.” Despite any efforts on my part to vet ablist language from my usage, it happened and I became part of the oppression of people with disabilities. It wasn’t bad because “I’m motivated by a hate of people with disabilities” (because I’m not). It’s bad because I abjectified people with
disabilities.
You know that it’s not always about you, right? I don’t care about your holy journey to bias-free purity and how out of character it is for you to falter because you embody intersectionality in human form. Not to be rude, but you don’t have special secret knowledge that let’s you do Feminism The Right Way, so stop with the “heavy lifting” sanctimony.
Sorry about the length, but seeing someone lecture phantom “bad feminists” while ignoring what people actually say gets my goat.
@ gillyrosebee
At the risk of reigniting the earlier argument, this is why I feel like a one size fits all leftist chant doesn’t really work. In order to explain why the MRM is so nasty you have to get into the details of the stuff they believe, and that means being specific and targeted in terms of what they’re saying, what they say about that same thing when they don’t think anyone is watching, and who’s in the audience they’re speaking to.
@Cassandra, much earlier I think you asked (I then read another 3 pages of comments and jumped to here):
“What’s a one-word way to express the idea that someone is asking every woman in the world to be their mom?”
Regression.
I’m glad Izzy’s not shedding bits anymore!
Argenti, it’s complicated a bit further by the fact that we’re talking about an actual product here. She wants to be able to buy it, have me adapt the packaging to suit her, and then resell it as part of a gift set without needing my permission to do so.
I’m all for the go get ’em spirit, but seriously, what part of that is supposed to be okay? You want to start your own business making gift baskets, fine. But I don’t know you or your customers and I don’t know if I want to be associated with you. And I certainly don’t appreciate the end run around my ability to decide where I am going to sell my work. Being a reseller is not a right but a privilege, and I get to decide if I want to participate.
Grrr. Argh.
Sorry about the venting…
Absolutely.
Again, I completely agree, and I especially think you nailed it based on the question of curating the message for the audience they wish to address/mislead.
My only point of question is whether disagreeing and countering in the moment is an effective object lesson for that audience, or if it’s better to go to a venue where it is possible to be substantive and engage with the ideas without being too badly derailed by the personalities. I’m not convinced that counter protest works, though reporting on an event might? I think that it’s best to be able to say “here’s what they said in person, and here’s what they say when they think no one is watching.”
I still think that, given enough rope, they will string up a whole wing of gallows. That’s why I often play “feed the troll till they burst” sometimes, because given enough time most of them unmask themselves with little, if any, help from me. Then, later, it’s possible to provide a layer of analysis that clarifies what happened.
Brooked – applause for that post, and thank you, too. 🙂
There’s another prop to Manboobz, btw. It’s not that long since I said the bit about women being expected to mop up men’s messes but said with it, “Surely PoC and LGBTQ people don’t get told If Only They Were Nice, blah blah blah?” That was a grand show of ignorance but people here put me right, and without doing the Intersectionality Lecture, either.
gillyrosebee – no apologies for venting, that person is Doin It Rong. Surely they can be told to clear off? It’s like one’s OBLIGED to sell to anyone who comes along, an attitude that pisses me off mightily.