So, it finally happened. The men’s rights lecture and rally in Toronto that A Voice for Men have been breathlessly promoting for weeks — in no less than 17 separate posts — have both come to pass. Men’s Rights celebrities flew in from across the continent to attend the exciting events. Paul Elam was there! So was Karen Straughan! Even Dan Perrins made an appearance! (Oh, wait, I think he lives around there.)
In a post-rally post, AVFM’s Robert O’Hara declared the “Historic MHRA rally in Toronto” to have been a “huge success.”
Well, you can be the judge of that. Go here to watch some actual footage of the event. (Sorry, I can’t get it to embed here.) So far I’ve only watched the final 8-minute video at the top of the page, but it’s pretty revealing in and of itself. The event organizers almost outnumber the sparse crowd. And one of the speakers calls for MRAs to take up arms against their “communist” opponents. No, really, just watch.
In case the video gets pulled, or censored, I’ve taken the liberty of transcribing his remarks: :
There’s an organization out there called communism, and the communist manifesto says that the first thing they have to do is take over power. And they’ll never get elected. And they know that they’ll never get elected. So what they do is they say “we have to take power by violent methods,” right, so if you want to crack back against these people, I hate to say it, but you’ve gotta be prepared to pick up a gun and put down the books.
Emphasis mine.
Someone in the audience responds to this with a hearty “yep!” There’s a smattering of applause, mixed with boos. AVFM’s Dean Esmay hurridly ushers the speaker away from the microphone.
The speaker who follows Esmay — I didn’t catch his name — describes the counterprotesters (who held their own rally nearby) as being of “the hammer and sickle” and denigrates them as “queers.”
This isn’t so much history being made as history repeating itself. I suspect the rhetoric was similar at a lot of White Citizen Council rallies in the sixties.
Oh, and the HISTORIC LECTURE that so many MRAs were hoping and dreaming that feminists would disrupt? Feminists ignored it. Apparently, according to one MRA on Reddit who claimed to have been there, a little more than a hundred people showed up.
Congratulations, A Voice for Men, on your FLAWLESS VICTORY!
I’ll watch as much of the rest of the rally as I can force myself to sit through, and add anything else worth adding.
EDITED TO ADD: I watched the video that covered the rest of the rally. It was pretty uneventful: a low energy, sparsely attended rally with a bunch of half-assed speeches. Apparently no one at A Voice for Men or CAFE, the co-host of the rally, bothered to prepare anything to say — perhaps because they were all expecting some sort of feminist riot? The “pick up a gun” speaker wasn’t one of the scheduled speakers, just someone they gave the microphone to when he raised his hand after the scheduled speakers were done.
One moment that did stand out: a trans man — apparently a member of CAFE — briefly took the mic, taking offense at the chants from the counterprotestors calling MRA’s “anti-gay.” I would suggest he take a look at AVFM’s not-so-proud history of homophobia and transphobia.
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: Here’s a picture of the event from Civilian Media. You can almost taste the excitement! From left, Nick Reading of Men’s Rights Edmonton, Dean Esmay of AVFM, the legendary Paul Elam (looking a little bewildered), and two other dudes. Paul evidently HEARTS Fucking Their Shit Up. Oh, Paul, we HEART U!
Another huge turnout for an MRA event. I guess all the lurkers were supporting them in email and too busy to come out.
Snowy!
Pretty sure communism isn’t some “organization.” =S
Oh wow. I just looked at the still of Dean Esmay at the mic and noticed his terrible sartorial choices. Dude, at least work on your presentation, just a little. Billowing long-sleeve jackets(?) do not go well with loose shorts.
Anyone want to go take a crack at Carlo? It’s pretty easy; his arguments are things like “the rate of rape can’t be that high because that would be really high.”
Oh, you!
I watched the video covering the rest of the rally; not too exciting. I added a bit to the post on it.
Communism is an organization now? Huh. *goes to notify friends who are communistic*
“Not-so-proud” makes it seem like they aren’t proud of that history David. They very much are proud of it.
And their EQ ability matches their cinematography skills.
There was a lot going on in the chat rooms.
Wow! That was incredibly… boring. And if I didn’t already know what “MRA” was (and most people don’t), I wouldn’t have been enlightened by any of the speakers. I notice most of the people watching appear to have just wandered by in the course of enjoying a nice walk in the park… They look rather bemused.
They should have held their “rally” in a busy city street. Then at least they could have pretended the shoppers, strollers, stop-a-minute-and-stare or point-and-laugh people who happened to be in view were actual MRA supporters.
Tulgey, seconding your comment about Esmay’s sartorial disaster choice. Dude expects to be taken seriously dressed like that, especially when MRAs are so fond of telling women how to dress? HAHAHAHAHAHA
Drat. That should have been “sartorial
disasterchoice”.From the r/mr discussion of the events:
The correspondent admitted he didn’t take good notes on that last one. I suspect it was more of a question about whether trans* men would be welcome. Good points, feminists!
That must have really chapped Paul’s hide.
Respectable turnout for a lecture event on a college campus, even though I bet a lot of people there were just hoping to see some drama, or were feminists keeping tabs on them.
But that rally was just sad. They’ve been planning it for a while. We’ve noted many times that they do not know how to organize a one-car parade, but I really think that in some fundamental ways their very structure makes it impossible to organize.
AVfM is Paul’s baby. What he says goes. Since (relative to the size of the US and Canada) their number of “activists” is so small, the only way they could build an event like this would be to network with other organizations working on the issues they claim to care about. But most of those organizations would not be willing to work with them unless they moderate their message, and at the first request to do so Paul will just call them manginas and the rest of the AVfMers will go along obediently. You cannot build a healthy, decently-sized organization that way. You can build a small cult of personality, and that is what they’ve done.
TL/DR: They did no outreach to promote their rally, and are probably surprised that a couple of blog posts and some posters didn’t bring out the masses. The vast majority of people in Toronto are blissfully unaware of the existence of AVfM/CAFE or Paul Elam.
I’d have laughed loudly in passing and made a few comments about fuckwits to the world in general, if I’d seen that *cough* rally *cough*. Same as with the hellfire douchebags who rant in the middle of town.
Or cult of no personality, in Pauly’s case. 😉
Katz — done! Math failures cannot go unpunished!
This is my favorite photo from their rally, just because of the facial expressions:
http://i.imgur.com/kXDAMZW.jpg
I’ve been looking through some of the photos, trying to see why they’re claiming that the counter-protestors “desecrated” a war memorial. There are photos of the counter-protestors sitting & standing on a low marble structure. It seems a little histrionic to call that desecration, but this is a movement that described 10 people (one of whom had a utility knife which was being used to scrape a poster off a wall) as “a mob of 30 people with boxcutters.”
Oh mah lawd. Is that Elam in the background? He looks like the zombies already ate his brain, or maybe he is a zombie ready to start lurching.
As for Esmay – you couldn’t find a better fit for the “living in his parents’ basement” stereotype.
pecunium, if you’re reading, you may want to avert your eyes from this very typical example of extremely bad crowd photography: http://i.imgur.com/LZP0sQk.jpg
Note to aspiring event photographers: Taking photos of people’s backs is not the best way to grab or keep an audience’s attention.
Speaking of RationalWiki: has anyone here seen this page: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fun:Manosphere_glossary?
Not sure if this is viewable by people without Facebook, but the photos are all from here:
https://www.facebook.com/civilianmedia
I don’t want to make fun of how any of them look, but I do think it’s fair to say that you’d expect a group of people who so regularly criticize feminists as unattractive and overweight to be a little more conventionally attractive.
BTW, that expression on Elam’s face? It is the same expression that is on his face in the majority of photos that he’s in.
Semi-OT, I met a guy in the Communist Party of Canada a couple years back. We were both guests at a college discussing animation, and had an interesting question-and-answer exchange regarding unions and offshoring. (He’s very pro-union, while I think trade laws which allow for unrestricted offshoring fatally undermine them).
Very interesting fellow.
I feel compelled to point out: those aren’t questions, those are statements.
I think it really says something that when finally given an opportunity to address about 60 people, the “leaders” of the MRM can only do three things:
– Provide lame commentary about their opponents (whether imagined or real)
– Give the stage over to random retirees in the crowd so they can complain about the USSR
– And remark at how amazing it is that they’ve managed to get this far (this far? where are they?)
wat? No calls to political action? No activism plans? No proposals for programs to help boys and men? GWW stands up and declares how awesome her daughter is… and that’s pretty much it.
You can hear the disappointment in their voices (I swear Dean sighs before he begins his laundry list of thanks). They have spend so much energy gearing up for a showdown with feminists. And now they realize they’ve been caught with their pants down, and that their mothers are going to see them without fresh underwear (poor Pizzey).
“Compassion for Men and Boys.” What is that thing they always say to straw feminists… something about “actions speaking louder than words.”