Turns out VICE made a video about that Men’s Rights rally in Toronto. GO WATCH IT.
This is not an embedded video, so don’t click on it.
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.
Posted on November 2, 2013, in a voice for men, actual activism, antifeminism, evil women, FemRAs, FeMRAsplaining, GirlWritesWhat, imaginary backwards land, imaginary oppression, incoherent rage, ladies against women, men created civilization, misogyny, MRA, oppressed white men, paul elam, reactionary bullshit, Suzanne McCarley, things that aren't fascism, we hunted the mammoth and tagged a voice for men, antifeminism, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, toronto. Bookmark the permalink. 1,097 Comments.
Or set it up like this.
What they say in public…….
What they say when they don’t think people are watching……
“Hat stays on tank, cat stays away from tank, everyone wins.”
Well, the fish wins anyway. Not sure the cat would consider that ‘winning’.
Ophelia wins again! (and sleep well)
I love the Flailing At Foot kitty. Yup, that’s just what it was like.
Plus Shark Balloon, lol!
Sleep well, all! I have a new template of the Sir in progress and then it’s watching TV and knitting.
Is Man Boobz: The Magazining going to have a brain bleach/Furrinati section? I could help with that.
@Cassandra
Really anything that actually refutes or shows bigotry in their agenda, or shows that it’s based not on empowering or helping men, but rather attacking the rights of women and pushing retrograde gender-roles on society would be better at providing opposition than just yelling really loudly. Even if what you shout is true people aren’t going to appreciate the format that you’re sharing that information in, and it’s just going to make you look bad by comparison, particularly when the opposition remains collected and even toned for the most part.
You also need to provide proof or give your statements some kind of weight, otherwise it’s just going to be assumed that you’re making things up to make the person sound bad. Especially when you’re accusing them of things like racism, sexism, and homophobia; those points are so often used in debates to make the other side look bad that people tend to just regard them as ad-hominem insults if they aren’t given anything to back them up.
That was the real problem with the way the counter-protest there was organized. It really just came across as a general copy+paste protest with no real thought put in and nothing really linking it to the actual event. Like, “Why should we listen to these counter-protesters? They’re just here because they want attention.”
Random thought. You know in my country
neo-Nazis… sorry… deeply concerned radical nationalists insist on using the “Árpádsávos” flag but when called, well, what I called them first, they trot out the “but-its-a-historical-Hungarian-flag!” defense. Yeah. The one last used in WWII, when we were allied with Hitler. Also we have more than a dozen historical flags, it wouldn’t be hard to choose one less ideologically loaded, but nooooo. Eh. Sorry for the kinda sorta off topic.And this is why I run things by you guys!!
I love this idea, and it’s exactly what I meant by combining what gillyrosebee was talking about with my desire to reach people at the protests that might not know where to look for more information.
@Λυνα
I think if the flyer serves more as an ad for an online resource, we can provide the links there.
I also think it would be good to filter things by website. That way, if, for ex, it’s at an AVFM rally, people can see exactly what AVFM in particular is all about, as well as then learning about the rest of the shitosphere.
I’m thinking a flyer with some choice quotes, and then web links in smaller text at the bottom (or underneath each quote, if we’re dividing things up by concept, like here’s the stuff about rape, here’s the yay domestic violence stuff, here’s the “black men are stealing our women” stuff, here’s some stuff showing how PUA intersects with the MRM, and so on).
Also, Λυνα’s post perfectly illustrates that I was right to think that I might just be projecting.my own reactions on to everyone
Actually I think both the PUA meets MRA stuff and the fathers rights stuff need their own flyers, because it’s a little more complicated to refute than, say, the rape and domestic violence cheerleading, where you basically just have to point and go “look at this evil shit these people said”.
Also because more specific MRA events are more likely to have some impact, as opposed to the gathering of the ramblers events like the one in Toronto, where the main impact on any random people wandering by would have been “WTF is this shit and why doesn’t it make any sense”.
Yeah, I don’t see a reason why we couldn’t make a few different types of pamphlets pointing out the various biases and bigotries that the MRM community seems to hold, each including points and quotes from various leaders and spokesmen, and ending with a list of addresses providing the source of the quotes and the websites they’re from.
@Cassandra
I was thinking some choice quotes from the main dudes along with a cite, and then a see more at website
e.g.
“Fucking feminist’s shit up gives me a boner” – Paul Elam, article
Find links to these articles, and more, at manboobzmagazine.com
I just think Author, Article is neater, and easier than asking them to type out the url
And little postcard-sized flyers to hand out at events where specific people are speaking with their greatest hits (Farrell on incest and so on).
“Is Man Boobz: The Magazining going to have a brain bleach/Furrinati section? I could help with that.”
Not only can this exist, but if you want to find a good photo (line art might be better) to use like the mammoth/chicken here, I can have a kitty/puppy/whatever on the Furrinati page :)
And fuck JS, but I imagine there may be a plugin for the rotating art like up top here. I’ll add it to my todo list!
“Find links to these articles, and more, at manboobzmagazine.com”
This can also be a thing.
Oh and idk if you guys saw, but I found hosting for the exorbitant price of $4 a month (that is not a typo, I mean 4, as in four)
Actually I’ve heard people say “Those people were holding that rally for actual equal rights and then those protesters showed up and just made asses of themselves.” in reference to Toronto. That’s what frustrates me the most about those protesters; they didn’t actually provide people with information on why the MRAs are bad.
(hoping that I guessed correctly on the code for here)
I have to ask who the people who had that reaction were. Maybe I’m just super lucky in terms of my social circle, but everyone I’ve mentioned that rally to has basically said “LOL WTF”.
What I mean is, there are some demographics in which “Stupid protesters are just making a fuss” is the go-to response, and others in which the phrase “men’s rights rally” will automatically provoke a response of “huh? what rights do men not have?”, so the response is going to be extremely context dependent.
Most people I know are of the (quite obviously wrong) opinion that feminism is completely over and done with and any further injustice that women find is just because they’re looking for it, and to them the idea that feminism has overstepped it’s bounds and has actually begun to oppress men seems completely reasonable. I live in a ludicrously conservative location so that might have something to do with it (I mean, I was once given a religious tract claiming that “god makes people gay because he’s sad that women have rights and wear pants” by the staff at a clinic) But it does seem that there is a large section of the population who would actually buy the nonsense that the MRAs spew.
So if one day all women wore dresses would gay people (none of whom are women in this scenario, I guess) stop existing? Become straight?
But yeah, I think both you and I may have non-representative samples on our hands based on where we live. IRL I don’t know anyone who I could say “feminism has overstepped its bounds” to without them asking me if I was feeling OK and/or laughing at me.
@Cassandra
I’m not that surprised. I mean, the MRM leaders are absolute idiots right now, but should they ever grow even half a brain cell and look to the republicans for ideas, they could conceivably be dangerous. The reason I kept using the examples I did is because, as a POC, I would have been very sympathetic towards someone who came up to me and said “Men are not being given good counsel in family courts” or “Family courts are biased against men” because I already see that kind of bias by the legal system against people in my own community, so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for my imagination. It’s only thanks to my exposure to the MRM, and the cites and refutations through manboobz that I can see it for the bullshit it is.
That’s part of the reason I’m not all that fussed about trying to turf out the current leaders, actually. Please do continue being incompetent with my blessing, dudes.
The thing that really gets me about the MRM is that the majority of the things they complain about (such as rigid child support laws, alimony, bias against male victims of domestic violence and rape, more support for women in need than men) weren’t put in place by feminists, but by the traditional societal gender biases that were based on how people in an agrarian world viewed as the “natural order”; the same “natural order” that they claim to be in favor of. (They stem from the idea that a man can and should be able to take care of himself while a woman can’t, therefore a man who needs help doesn’t deserve it and that man should be absolutely responsible for his wife and child even if he’s not with them anymore.)
I used to try to point out to them that feminists were potential allies in the fight against laws and cultural assumptions based on gender essentialism, not enemies, but after “no it’s just that feminists hate men FUCK YOU” being yelled at me eleventy billion times in response I gave up.
“god makes people gay because he’s sad that women have rights and wear pants”
Well that’s a prize piece of weirdness. 8O
Though I’m inclined to say, “Gay people and women having rights and wearing pants? Sounds like a win-win situation to me.”
There are pro-feminist men’s rights activists out there, but they generally want nothing to do with the MRM and take pains to try to distance themselves from it.
On the child support issue I wonder if they’ll ever figure out that “I want the legal right to refuse to provide support to my child if I’m mad at its mom” is not exactly the most brilliant marketing move of all time.
Totally OT, how is your nym pronounced, Λυνα? I know it’s not going to be Auva, which is what my brain defaults to.
I dunno, the wish to not support actual born children is just the Republican stance writ small, and they don’t seem to have done too badly among sections of the US.
Even Republicans have some sentimental attachment to the idea that people should in theory care about their own kids, though. It’s specifically the MRA insistence that it should be acceptable to write off kids who you have a relationship with because their mother isn’t fucking you and cooking you dinner any more that I can’t see playing well with most people.
@kitteh
Yeah, they say a lot of weird things around here, but the reason they bring up gay people existing is because they consider it a sign that a civilization is declining; because as they say “Rome fell because of rampant homosexuality and paganism.” If you try to explain to them that Rome had been Christianized when it fell, and the collapse of the empire was more to do with classism and a refusal to acknowledge debts than who was sleeping with who, they’ll flat out call you a liar. Because who needs facts when you have willful ignorance.
Λυνα is Luna written in Greek.
Hey, there was that preacher who thought that Katrina hit New Orleans because there were too many gay people there, it’s not like that particular variety of stupid is uncommon.
Oh strewth, that bit about Rome sounds like the dreaded g0ys LBT told us about – isn’t that one of their hangups?
Not that the people handing out those stupid pamphlets would do anything but have a huge hissy fit about the g0ys. Be kind of fun to put them together, in a way.
@Cassandra
Couldn’t agree more. I wish Elam & Co. a long, healthy reign of incompetence
It’s 4 here, and I’m drunk as a skunk, so I reluctantly pass on the opportunity to reminisce on bizarre comments made by preachers/religious figures/republicans this decade :P
Nite all!! I shall see y’all on the morrow.
The g0ys are actually a counterargument to the idea that it’s possible to turn people away from a harmful ideology by saying “you realize that the people you’re supporting hate you too, right?”.
I keep reading g0y as goi, and I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to.
http://g0ys.org/initialize.htm
That site is like the timecube of male homosexuality.
And I’ve got an associated and even better one for you.
http://man2manalliance.org/crw/sg.html
So NSFW, but there’s treasure trove of timecubian oddity to explore.
“Timecube of male homosexuality” LOL! So true.
I always read it as goys, too (goi, goy, same word). It adds a layer of weirdness, and it’s not like those guys need added weirdness.
That site’s also NSF anyone who doesn’t want their eyes bleeding from the sheer horror of the *cough* design *cough*
Correction, both those sites.
::dabs eyes::
I think my favorite part of the cockrub warriors site is the illustrations. They’re like Mad Max meets Adam Ant at a Halloween party for professional wrestlers.
aaah why did they use the next gen font? My trek! It’s ruined!
No sorry, Dave, calling them a bunch of Lepines waiting to happen is righ on target. Go read that post you made a while ago where reddit users were talking about their fantasies of killing women.
I can’t take the unrelenting hatred & vilification for men who call themselves gay, are effeminate, are over 30, interested in non-bro culture, and engage in (gasp) anal sex. They can really fuck off with being thrilled by bad gays getting STDs, particularly HIV.
A false analogy inspired by fags being British slang for cigarettes really spins out of control.
Seriously, this guy needed to be prosecuted for extreme analogy abuse.
I get that they hate anal sex and men who admit that they’re gay, but what did the word “fuck” ever do to them to make them think it deserves to be spelled “phuck”?
Which I keep wanting to read as “puck”. I’ll never watch a hockey game in the same way again.
Oh typical, Mr I Hate Analogies also hates etymology and the strain of even looking something up on good ol’ Wikipedia, to wit:
In other words, the century-old Americanism has naff all to do with the British word for cigarettes. That fag comes from fag end, the worn-out end of something, originally in the sense of a frayed end of rope.
… which makes me wonder if this is what some fag-end cigarettes tasted like.
What. A. Maroon.
Oh drat, using the word has sent my comment into moderation.
tl:dr – the slur in US usage has nothing to do with the origin of the word for cigarettes. F*g as short for f*aggot was a slur first against women, not against men, though it may have spread to homosexual men from there. It might also derive from f*gging at British public schools; the younger boys were the f*ags in that situation.
The term for cigarettes is from f*g-end, as in the ratted and worn-out useless end of something, such as frayed rope. It referred to cigarette butts (ooh! Butts! That must mean anal sex, since things only mean what they mean in the US!) but now gets used of cigarettes more generally, ie. a pack of f*gs.
Mr I Hate Analogies (well of course he would – they’re ANALogies) also hates the bother of looking up anything, it seems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faggot_%28slang%29
Lord, the moderation filter’s sensitive tonight. Even asterisked versions of the word that starts with F and ends with G (or the longer version ending with T) get slammed.
Mr Idiot has no more idea about etymology than anything else. The UK and American words have totally different origins and meanings: one from the f– end of something, like a frayed rope, and originally referring to cigarette butts; the other from a slur directed at women, originally, and applied to homosexual men by extension.
Though I daresay he’d even get worked up about ANALogies and cigarette BUTTS, too.
Twit.
Phuck? Sounds like someone from A Midsummer Night’s Wet Dream to me.
Having to poop.
Argenti: The best example I can fine is here, in a discussion of, Authorised Tortures at Making Light, (from 2006). It’s a thread of moderate length, and there is a comment I made when i was cold with fury, and hot with rage.
I won’t say which one, because you sort of need context for it, and I am not sure how well it stands out from the other comments I made, if one doesn’t read those other comments.
Argenti: One of the clubs I was in organized counter protests against the recruiters (seriously pecunium, a decade ago we’d have hated each other)
Nah. One, I was too busy, two, I recall those sorts of events. They made me sad, (at most) not angry.
True Story: my fiancée (former, the good one) is a Quaker. She had a war protest hat. She was wearing it while visiting me at Walter Reed. A Seargent First Class (significant rank) came up to me, to tell me (since I was obviously in the military, and also obviously with her) that she ought to take it off.
I, with all due respect, told him it was her right to protest, and I wasn’t in any position to tell her what to do.
So no, I wouldn’t have hated you.
Λυνα I would probably set up a booth nearby with printed versions of some of the various speakers’ more hate-filled contributions to the web so that people would be given a more honest point of reference on their stance, or heckle them and derail their speeches with questions about their bigotry rather than just trying to drown out the rally, which really just made the protesters look like a left wing westboro, and is probably why they were accused of being just as bad as the MRM radicals by many of the uninformed people who happened to see the event.
That’s the way to do it, “More about Lyndon LaRouche/The MRM/Republican Party” as a header for the table, and then literature (with citations of findable sources for the information).
kitteh: In other words, the century-old Americanism has naff all to do with the British word for cigarettes. That f** comes from f** end, the worn-out end of something, originally in the sense of a frayed end of rope.
Hrmn… there might be a non-obvious linguistic relationship (irrelevant to the origin of usage).
“Fagging” in British schools is probably from the word, “fatigues” as a term for chores/duties (esp. in institutional settings, like boarding schools/militaries). So something “fatigued” is “fagged out”, and so the rope-end become the cigarette (mostly, I suspect because a frayed end of rope looks a lot like the butt-end of a cigarette)/
Wow. I’m off trying to write for the evening and y’all have a trollsplosion.
For the record, I’m a third wave feminist and an academic and I pretty much agree feministbees was full of crap. I’ve never known anyone on this site to ignore or deny the importance of intersectionality (at least none of the regulars) but zie was having a completely different conversation than you all were. It sounded a lot like someone new to either feminism or intersectionality who argues it constantly without knowing much about the nuances. Anyway.
Here, have a doggie:
http://fyeahenglishbulldogs.tumblr.com/post/65720845723
I have to say I was sort of surprised by the way feministbees got angry. In some ways it was familiar, as I saw zir engaqing with an MRM (some fool standing for parliament), and the dogged determination was similar; though the target was more obviously wrong.
The sense of it is much as with drst, someone who has a grasp of the concept, but not a good sense of depth, and wants to make the world perfect RIGHT FUCKING NOW!.
Which is well and good, but not doable, and sometimes we have to fight the battles we can win (or at least arrange to not lose) and yes, there is a time and a place for ontological perfection, and a place to know when the perfect is the enemy of the good.
Λυνα “god makes people gay because he’s sad that women have rights and wear pants”
How does this work? God does what… make men so stupid they get confused and want to fuck men, because they are attracted to people who wear pants?
What it basically said was that because women work outside of the home, cut their hair, wear pants and makeup, have abortions, and aren’t universally subservient to men, god punishes them by creating gay men (lesbians don’t seem to exist in their worldview). I’ve been trying to find that tract like all day so I could pull a direct quote from it, but it appears I’ve misplaced it.
@Argenti Aertheri
Very sorry for how my “other people have problems” came out. It was late and I was getting riled.
I am very sorry for what you are going through. I know there is no way one person can judge how hard another’s struggles are.
That whole “natural disasters are punishment by God” has always baffled me. My vague understanding is that: a) god is responsible for everything that is created, said, or done, and b) god gave humans free will, because otherwise eternal punishment or reward is meaningless.
So if someone is born gay, god made them that way, so why dump a hurricane onto other people for being in proximity? If someone chooses to be gay, then god allows that via free will, and they’ll be rewarded/punished eternally after death, so why dump a hurricane onto other people for being in proximity?
@LBT
“I once came down from my room to find nobody in the house, just the words ‘DO NOT GO OUTSIDE’ written on the communal whiteboard. I STILL think it’s the best opening for a horror story ever.”
I am taking part in NaNoWriMo (should be writing right now in fact) and am totally gonna steal that image for my crappy novel. Don’t even try to stop me. I don’t know how or when I am gonna use it ….oops, nope … it just came to me. Ehhhxcellent (cue Mr Burns voice).
Thanks!
I got a bit bogged down with the cluster-shit storm the thread became for a while, but I do have some thoughts on “counter protesting.” There have been some good ideas so far and if someone has already said this forgive me. I started skimming a while ago.
A few years ago there was a KKK rally here at the state capitol. They announced their intentions early and several local and not so local groups were trying to find the best was to respond. Word went out to no engage directly, not confront, not try to shout down but to — well I think of it as offering the alternative. Celebrate diversity if you want the text book term.
So day of the rally, there were about 30 angry, red faced guys, a few women and one or two children standing on the capitol steps raging into mega phones about …..something….I am not sure if anyone heard them. There were bands and food stalls and dance troupes and jugglers. Local groups and organizations were giving away information about their services and issues. People were tossing Frisbees and playing with dogs. Families with little kids and old folks and young adults were all just hanging out. A couple thousand people showed up for the “counter protest.”
The visual it gave to the media was amazing! It wasn’t two angry groups of people shouting at each other. It was one really big group having fun and celebrating each other with music and food and one angry group that for some reason seemed to be against music and food and having fun.
I am not sure what the online version would be. I am not even sure if online is the right forum for that kind of interaction. But I wonder what would happen if a group of feminists showed up at an MRA rally with food, music, information on services for men who have been victims of sexual or domestic assault, legal resource for fathers who are having custody issues.
The point would not to engage the speakers or even the hard core people in the crowd, but to show the fringes and the passersby the alternative.
re God/Punishment of Nations.
In the OT God has chosen the tribes of Israel to be His Chosen People (this is a mixed blessing).
In exchange for obeying Him, and following His commandments, He will see to it they are, “blessed” and have a nation, and enjoy a place among other nations.
But, to keep this favor (since they are a small group, even with all “twelve” tribes) they have to obey. If they don’t His favor will be reduced, and the riches which come of obedience will be withdrawn.
Slip ahead a bit. The Jews have been 1: subjugated, 2: reclaimed their nation, subjugated again, 4: reclaimed their nation, 5: been subjugated yet again; and this time ejected from their nation and driven to the ends of the earth.
6 In the meanwhile a Jewish sect has been taken over by Greeks, and claims the mantle of being Chosen; it ends up becoming the dominant religion in Europe. A group of schismatics from one of the major subsets of the religion moves to “The New World” to set up “A Shining City on a Hill”, and presumes the mantle of, “The Chosen People”.
As such, they have to adhere to what this subcult of the greater Christian Faith presents as, “God’s Will”, or face his wrath.
It’s Hubris, all the way down.
Pecunium — I’ll get to that thread once I have coffee in me, you talking (or ranting) about torture always interests me anyways, so I probably will read all of it (also, uh, Making Light is like, my favorite example of web design just not managing to work, sorting out why it bugs me is a good idea)
And I sorta know military ranks btw, kudos for not just saying “yes sir”. And, eh, I wasn’t exactly anti-military, just fucking livid about the war…never fucking thought I’d still be ranting about how you can’t fight a war against a neuter noun a decade later…but you know all this already.
Babsbeaty — no worries, as kitteh’s noted, I was leaking my cranky all over the place. You get a welcome package yet? I’ll have one for you in a second :)
One Welcome Package!