Have you heard about the big debate in Vancouver? In the wake of the recent hubbub over Men’s Rights posters in that fair city, one woman thought it might be a good idea for there to be a public debate over some of the issues raised by the posters.
I’ll let A Voice for Men’s JohnTheOther explain it, in his adorably poncy way:
Has feminism gone too far? …
That is the question asked in September of 2012, by a woman of integrity and courage. She posited this question as the premise of a public debate. It was to be discussed by three individuals from the contention that yes, feminism has gone too far, and three individuals arguing that no, feminism has not gone too far.
But, alas, this debate was not to be.
Unfortunately, following the announcement of this scheduled debate on the social networking site Facebook, that woman was rewarded for her attempt at public discussion by a torrent of abuse and threats. Some individuals apparently did not want a debate. Not only did they not want to participate, they wanted nobody else to either. Under the weight of abuse and threats, that woman whose integrity and courage moved her to propose a public discussion – cancelled the event.
What JohnTheOther doesn’t mention is that the “torrent of abuse and threats” apparently came not from feminists, as one might assume from the way he’s phrased it, but from Men’s Rightsers, who were evidently so excited by the prospect of having a debate with actual feminists that, in their enthusiasm, they couldn’t help but harass the organizer once it became clear the event wasn’t going to be organized in the same exact way that they might have organized it, if as MRAs they ever organized anything.
As the original organizer of the cancelled event explained to Jezebel:
I took the event down because of threats I had received from MRA members when I told them I was thinking of cancelling the event/changing the question. Having my Facebook account linked to here has reduced my safety from these men, who didn’t have my personal information as I was speaking with them over email. I have now had to cancel my FB profile which impacts my job seriously. Luckily I am in England right now so am safe.
Later, someone claiming to be her posted a comment on A Voice for Men saying the threats had come from “people claiming both sides of the debate.” The AVFMers downvoted her.
But fear not, debate fans! The debate is ON again! With the help of A Voice for Men, the blog A Father’s Story, and the East Vancouver Debating Society, a heretofore unknown organization which apparently has been conjured up just for this occasion, a “Has Feminism Gone Too Far” debate will take place later this month. At a car dealership, for some reason.
The debate format has apparently been designed to be as confusing as possible:
The debate format will be three speakers presenting arguments affirming the debate proposition and three speakers presenting arguments against the proposition. Each speaker will have 5 minutes to present an opening argument, alternating between for- and against postions. Following opening arguments, each speaker will have 5 minutes to address presented arguments. A third round of discussion will allow 3 minutes to address counter arguments, and final statements will be formatted within 3 minutes per speaker, for a total of four rounds of discussion for all speakers.
Following the scheduled debate, speakers will address questions and commentary from audience and observers for 55 minutes.
After which there will be an additional 15 minutes of calisthenics.
And then everyone will buy a car.
So far they don’t seem to have found any feminist debaters eager and willing to spend a nice Sunday afternoon in a car dealership getting yelled at by angry dudes.
Instead, they have devoted their energy to defining what exactly feminism means, because how can you have a debate about feminism if Men’s Rightsers don’t define the term first?
Someone called Sasha offered this definition:
If “the National Organization For Women, the largest American self-identified “feminist” organization, defines feminism as “The radical notion that women are human beings,” then I’d say MRAs have the radical notion that women are grown-ups.
I believe that feminism is simply a selfish, solipsistic creed, which exploits a natural tendency in some men and women towards narcissism.
The result has been a massive epidemic of narcissism across society, across the world (1) particularly amongst college students (2) and researchers agree this will have profound consequences for society.
One study showed that use of the phrase ‘I deserve’ in publications had increased 2000% between 1975 and 2005.
The reason that feminism doesn’t deliver happiness (3) to women is because happiness is dependent on ‘doing for others’.
The reason it doesn’t deliver it to men is because, being a selfish creed, it doesn’t recognise the sacrifices men make (from time with their families all the way to their lives) to support their families, communities and even countries, and in fact punishes and disincentivises such sacrifice.
All of this has gotten us at Man Boobz so excited that we – in conjunction with the Chicago Debatalogical Cooperative – have decided to have a debate of our own. And it’s happening right this very minute. Right here on your computer! The format is a couple of YouTube videos I found.
Here a representative of the Men’s Rights movement will argue the pro position: “Feminism has gone too far.”
And here is the rebuttal from the feminist side.
Who’s the winner? We all are!
Shiraz,
Read again, this is what HAIFISCH writes:
“And then one of my friends decided to invite a couple of local men’s rights activists to a debate panel for a moderated discussion of whether or not feminism has gone “too far”, before successfully confirming any feminist speakers of the female sex.
She received hate mail and threats by private messages (which she will be reporting to police); and was publicly bullied, shamed, and silenced by a number of my friends and fellow activists. There was talk of boycotting and picketing the space in which the debate was to be held, and she was accused of perpetrating misogyny and hate-mongering by the very act of positing the question, “Has feminism gone too far?” and confirming the first two speakers for the affirmative side of the debate — a total panel of six people was being planned for the event: three for the affirmative (i.e., it’s gone too far), and three for the negative (i.e., it hasn’t gone too far as a whole; if anything, it hasn’t gone far enough). While some argued that this was creating a space to allow the airing of hatred, some (myself included) argued that this was creating an opportunity to give the affirmative side just enough rope to hang itself with (e.g., it’s now illegal to menstruate in Arizona because personhood begins at ovulation — how the fuck has feminism gone too far?) The event organizer has since cancelled it and deleted the event page itself.
Ultimately, what happened is exactly what men’s rights activists wanted to happen (what they would have done if we hadn’t beat them to it): feminists attacked each other* and shut down the opportunity to engage with local members of the men’s rights movement. ”
HAIFISCH is a third party, but knows the first party.
How can you claim her report is less reliable than David’s report? David has interviewed none of these people and is working from a Jezebel write-up.
@shiraz are you saying no feminist has ever threatened another womens life? Cause thats a pretty ridiculous statement. ‘especially if want us to believe that feminists threatened that woman’s life’ you then follow that with a lot of adhom nonsense against someguy. Strawman much?
@Sandra I liked a source, not some anon dude. The source I linked is a feminist source.
Still the woman herself said it was Jezebel who put her in danger
‘Having my Facebook account linked to here
has reduced my safety from these men, who didn’t have my personal
information as I was speaking with them over email. I have now had to
cancel my FB profile which impacts my job seriously.’
I might mention her facebook profile is still there, so I don’t really know what to believe there.
But yeah, whatever.
It’s funny, I’ve been a journalist for 12 years, and in my professional opinion you just sound like a ninny with an agenda.
So they pretty much responded to the assertion that women are human by saying no, they don’t think so.
Before the have the “has feminism” gone too far maybe they should have the debate over whether or not women are human. After all, men have been debating it amongst themselves for hundreds of years, and if they follow tradition they won’t have to allow any women to speak.
David does, but Manboobz, Misogyny I Mock It does not.
@Ulere
Obviously feminists, who are part of an actual movement, are less likely to send violent threats than MRAs, who are part of a violent hate movement.
This concept is not challenging to grasp.
What tipped you off to the journalistic nature of Manboobz? Was it the cat and the goat videos in the OP? This is some higher level shit, clearly, because I totally missed that facet of it.
I guess if corporations can be considered people, so can blogs.
Also, I demand that the blockquotes tag read my mind and format my comments as I intended, rather than as I accidentally screwed up typing the tag.
Ok, now I’m wanting a microwave, I think the caf is closed, so I can’t get popcorn right away. I want something to watch the trollsplosions with though.
Ullere, claiming I said no woman has ever threatend another woman’s life in the history of the world is a strawman arguement. Check my post.
Oh by the way, are you someguy too?
“Having my Facebook account linked here…” is vastly different from saying, “Jezebel tried to throw me to the dogs.” Or “Jezebel linked to my page without my permission.”
Ah, I’ve been busy for a week and it’s good to come back to some guy repeating the same talking points. No wonder he’s bored! “David’s hobby blog is poor professional journalism, also weird irrelevant mention of FTB”.
How’s everyone else?
“What tipped you off to the journalistic nature of Manboobz?”
That would be the SPLC and people like PZ Myers and the Pharyngula Wiki and Arthur Goldwag.
David Futrelle, if you agree with Logger et. al., that you believe your posts at Manboobz is exempt from journalistic standards, would you please make a statement to that effect at your website?
Maybe then we can clear up with the SPLC and Arthur Goldwag and even PZ Myers is sometimes confused believing your posts to present a view informed with journalistic ethics.
David, if you disagree with Logger, would you please make that statement. That way we can get past this issue of whether Manboobz should be taken seriously in any manner.
Maybe the SPLC citing Manboobz is like the SPLC citing the Onion.
@ugh Obviously feminists who have a much larger movement are more likely to send violent threats than mras. There are more radfems than mras, radfems are plenty violent and hateful. Circular logic be circular.
However I was only highlighting who feminist sources have said sent the threats, not who is more likely to send threats.
When you say hate movement I assume who are refering to the SPLC who have said that they never declared the MRM a hate movement. When you say violent I wonder why everyone else says that MRA’s do nothing. Except maybe put up posters, oh and commit acts of violent hate. David here has put up numerous articles about mysogyny, do you really think that if any MRA’s were being violent that feminist websites wouldn’t be all over it? As it is even anti feminist men who have no attachement to the MRM are being repeatedly mentioned alongside peaceful mras, breivik for example.
@shiraz. You began by saying feminists equal women which is an interesting start. In your previous comment you implied it was implausable that feminists threatened that womens life.
When you read the letter she sent jezebel it is heavily implied she didn’t give her permission to have her details posted up there. ‘ Ironically if I had just been
selfish and deleted it like nothing had happened and not apologised I
wouldn’t be name as a misogynist on one of my favorite Feminist
Websites.’ You think they ask permission to call people misogynists?
*facepalm*
I’m getting a drink, ayone going to join me?
@Ullere
There are more also more civil rights activists than Klansmen, it doesn’t mean that the former is more likely to be involved in violence.
Citation needed.
When I say “hate movement” I mean my own observation that every mainstream MRA writer has advocated for more rape and domestic abuse in society.
The MRAs don’t do anything that could charitably be called “activism,” obviously. However, they do spend a lot of time talking about how rape should be legal. Obviously again, someone who devotes his life to complaining about the illegality of rape is more likely to commit rape, and also more likely to threaten rape and murder.
Breivik wanted to murder public officials because he was upset, among other things, that women had rights. Many mainstream MRA writers have expressed the same desire, or supported as a martyr Thomas Ball, who had the same desire.
This is not rocket science.
LOL! “Advocating violence but have not yet been arrested for doing violence” is not the same thing as “peaceful.”
someguy: If what David writes bother you so much, why don’t you fuck off and make your own damn blog?
David Futrelle allows his blog to be cited as a reference by the SPLC and by other noted pundits in common culture like PZ Myers.
David should make it clear whether the posts here conform to journalistic standards and can be so cited, or whether he misleading the SPLC and PZ Myers and others by not correcting their misattributions.
I think he owes everyone that, especially the people whose causes he wants to advocate for.
Seriously- was the goat scream real? It sounded like a person scream.
If it was real then OH MAN that is funny
I’m still actually pretty unclear on what some guy thinks David has actually lied about.
someguy: You do realize that you have absolutely no right to barge into someone else’s blog and start demanding that they do what YOU want them to, yes? I mean, if I started commenting on some random MRA blog, telling them that they have to start living up to professional journalistic standards, they would rightly tell me to fuck off and probably ban me.
So why don’t you start you own fucking blog, where you can piss and moan to your heart’s content about how David is DOIN BLOGGING WRONG, and the rest of us can ignore you/mock you as our fancy dictates.
Also, some guy, has it occurred to you that the fact that you are in a hate movement might be clouding your judgement of what is and isn’t true?