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!
I like this pic as well. Captures the sheer excitement of the event:
Alice, you and I know that, but there are MRA’s who do have both a sense of self presevation and some political savy and they are much more careful in how they present their ideas. These are the people Elam is hoping will be representative of MRAs in the publics awareness.
I’m sorry this took so long, I was talking to someone (cute), but Kitteh, where in the hell did that person get that picture of me?
I think they stand as an excellent reminder that you can be a skeptic and still fall for irrational nonsense. No matter how rational we think we are, we’re all still humans, and humans are irrational as hell.
Well… I didn’t feel old, but I had Goosebumps and book fairs when I was young too… so… is there such a thing as a quarter life crisis, and how do I go about having one?
I feel a little terrible, because everyone is subject to politically-motivated bad photography* and the photographer in this case seems like a total hack. But it’s funny, so WTF.
*For the record, I am far to the left of Hillary Clinton, but I can still recognize the misogynistic overtones of publicizing these kind of photos.
pillowinhell – I sort of feel bad for them. There are people who do care, but whose voices have been silenced by AVFM and other MRA groups because they’re seen as manginas. How could they be the face of the movement if they’re vilified within their own movement?
Athywren – True. Our own biases tend to taint things. Under all of the evidence I do have, I am a feminist. Under all of the evidence they have, they’re MRAs. I wish they could see things my way, but I know they won’t, because they’ll shut me down before I even began.
I don’t know if I’m living through a quarter life crisis. :/
Crocs are super comfortable, especially when you’re standing for hours.
And I don’t really care about their looks. The hypocrisy doesn’t really bother me and I don’t really agree with shaming them based on the way they look… or whether they date or not, or play videogames or not, although I’m happy to say I think that people who hate women should not date women because that’s a recipe for violence.
A male contraceptive answer would be fucking brilliant. Last I heard they were working on human trials in India about something like that – it’s an injectable substance that’s inserted into the vas deferens that “shreds” or blocks sperm from being released from the testicles. A second substance can be introduced to break it down so it’s completely reversible. That would be really awesome for men who are interested in having a contraceptive option that’s more reliable than condoms (which are already super effective and prevent against STDs so I still recommend them unless you’re 100% sure of your partner’s sexual history [and with MRAs believing all women are lying whores they obviously should constantly utilise condoms – but then that affects the happiness of their penis so they can always find something to complain about]), and it doesn’t rely upon your partner taking contraception either, which with BCPs, like condoms, it doesn’t have a great non-perfect use rate. Although, something that does concern me is how many people forget that condoms are not just contraception and prevent against STDs and how much people might spread STDs if they feel like they don’t have to worry about it because the contraception thing is covered, that was a thing when the BCP was first introduced, to the point that, in Canada at least, many STDs are public health concerns that have to be reported to a database…
Considering that AVFM’s official cartoonist has done about three dozen cartoons of me as a giant baby-man in diapers, I can’t feel too bad about using photos of them that aren’t completely flattering. Not that ANY of the photos of the event make them look good.
Also, ugly shorts guy looks like he’s singing, and Elam does indeed look really confused. Perhaps by the singing.
Quackers — idfk, but my response consisted of the word “fuck” used liberally (see, you do not go after my friends, and my ex-FWB’s brother killed himself, so saying I wish he’d have had more resource is victim blaming struck a goddamned nerve)
Also, I loved choose your own adventure books. I mean, loved them the way I loved VtM:B, perhaps more. So many options, so many ways for the story to go!
More info about the male contraceptive injection.
Omg, I loved these types of books. I used to read through every single option. Also, Encyclopedia Brown, so fun! I used to do as much work as I could get in order to have money to buy books during the fair, and I’d always get a dollar from my parents to buy a new bookmark. Good times. It’s not nearly as fun now I have my own money and just go to Chapters and find something in the aisles, so much of the fun was getting the little paper catalogue and flipping through it for what I wanted.
If you people keep bringing Bloodlines up, I’m going to have to dig it out and play it… you monsters. Redemption was good too, though not so great with the choices.
The big-F Fascist movements (neo-nazis etc) tend to be *convinced* the reason so many people hate them is because of “communism” (which in turn is a jewish plot or something like that). you see this all throughout nazi literature and into modern day terms like “RAC” which means “Rock against communism” and is a code word for nazi-skinhead music usually themed around beating up blacks or “communists”.
The parallell is an interesting one to make since essentially these movements are small-f fascist in nature with a huge helping of anti-woman hate speech thrown in..
Each photo posted is more depressing than the last. If they weren’t such complete assholes I would be feeling pretty bad for them right now.
@Alice Sanguinaria, you sound like me. I too feel like I’m having a quater-life crisis and am sad that this is the MRM.
feelsbadman.jpg
I feel safe that I could write a whole primer on How to Organize and post it here, and I would not need to worry about MRAs using it because my methods are bottom up/democratic and completely incompatible with their approach. Not posting my bona fides here because of concerns about doxxing, but I was involved in a successful effort to organize a bargaining unit containing thousands of people — and in making the “leadership” look like, and be accountable to, the base.
Meanwhile, (the possibly constipated) Paul Elam just wants an army to obey his orders.
baileyrenee – You just feel tired, you know? Exhausted. You wake up, hoping that it’s a new day, and then you get up and it’s the same shit every day all day long. People being assholes on the Internet. Someone throwing a temper tantrum online. Someone being so stupid that you just want to bash your head against the keyboard.
Same old, same shit.
They say that 20 is pretty young. I feel ancient, a speck in a meaningless world.
/existentialism
I never click on MRA links, ever since my anti-virus freaked out when I tried to click on a link to AVfM and I started wondering how not-secure those sites might be. The other photos are sadder than the one in the post?
That looks suspiciously like the cover of Call of Catthulhu:
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/117755/Call-Of-Catthulhu
I really wanted to like CYOA books, but even as a kid, I found they never lived up to the potential of the concept. Way too often there would be bottlenecks where practically every choice leads you to the same place, making the choices feel meaningless, or they’d have a poor causal relationship between what you choose and what actually results. Plus for some reason edutainment had a stranglehold on them.
I’d be keen to see them done right, but I haven’t so far.
Ok, what is VtM:B? Y’all keep mentioning it and it seems like something I should be interested in … or know about … or something.
For the record: I own that game in pdf. It was a gift from a friend… he knows me. 😀
Let’s just say it has an unusually high concentration of cat/Lovecraft puns. (Whiskathonic University, Nyancatnomicon, Hastpurr of Catcosa etc.)
@Athywren and Alice
I suspect I might be around the same age as Athywren if we both had Goosebump books when we were young. I’m 28. Don’t really feel anxious about my age but sometimes you’re reminded of something and think “damn…that was a long time ago” lol. If book order forms were still around schools 7 years ago, I hope they are still around now. I think it’s a good way to get kids interested in reading!
@SittieKittie
Ah my comments came out wrong. I definitely think that it’s wrong to shame anyone for how they look, I guess that all the years of hearing them bash feminists’ appearance while not being supermodels themselves got to me. I should have been the bigger person though.
Also my comments about not dating and playing videogames all day were not meant to sound judgmental. I’m a huge believer in people doing as they please so long as they don’t harm anyone else. It’s the fact that MRAs and moreso the MGTOW guys that tell young men to take up hobbies NOT for the sake of taking up hobbies, but because women=bad and hobbies are a way to avoid thinking about then. So yeah…that’s my problem. Not the hobbies or non-dating lifestyle.
Sittiekitty, you are never required to be into, or even know about, anything.
Except the Beatles. Everyone should know who the Beatles are. But that’s the only exception.
Walk down the passage way: turn to 63
63
You trip on a hidden squirrel and break your neck. Your journey is over.
This will either cure your existentialism, or amplify it exponentially… one or the other.