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 love the evil Mario Batali comparison! That is Dean Esmay.
In California, the “Safe Haven” (aka Safely Surrendered Baby) law allows either parent to anonymously surrender an infant within 72 hours of birth at certain locations (usually hospitals or fire stations).
Regarding returning use baby to the hospital, and I get that they aren’t delivered by the stork and don’t magically appear at the hospital, but…
Many countries, and all 50 US states, allow babies (usually very young ones only) to be deposited at certain locations — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_hatch
In theory it’s to prevent, well, things like infanticide, but I’ve never seen stats on whether it does.
Regarding the early 20s thing, oh yeah a full time course load and 20 hour a week min wage job, oodles of “this is the best time of your life!”. No, really, no.
p.s. About the terrible photography, some of that is down to the organizers’ poor understanding of what is called “optics” in USian politics, and some of that is down to the photographer, who seems to be someone who just attends political events to take photographs. There’s a guy in LA who does that, and then contacts the organizations afterwards to sell his photos to them, but he’s actually a professional photographer and does a decent job. Looking through the Toronto photographer’s FB page, he seems to do an equally bad job with every event he photographs.
Sorry to post again, but they’re claiming that 150 “MHRAs” attended the rally. WE HAVE SEEN THE PHOTOGRAPHS, DUDES! If that was 150 people, then I guess JtO really did face down a mob of 30 people.
Oddly, in the comments, Kimski spoke the truth (quoting Winston Churchill):
Emphasis mine.
Hey, if you look aside from the occasional flares of existential dread and inability to connect with other people plus burgeoning misantrophy, I’m having lots of fun in my early twenties.
It probably helps I’ve long since developed a rock-solid, unflappable god complex that allows me to disregard any indication of my own powerlessness as a momentary setback.
Eh.
To be entirely honest, I think a fair amount of problems stem from always being told that “When you get to age X, you’ll finally do Y!”.
“Just wait till you get to high school, you’ll…”
“Just wait till you get to college, you’ll…”
“Just wait till you get to uni or that job or that place or that thing, you’ll….”
“When you’re married or traveling or living somewhere else or that thing happens, you’ll….”
Being asked to feel like 90 % of your life should be spent waiting for something to happen is kind of a mindkiller.
For what it’s worth, all of you add a bit of joy to my odd days, so you can always have that thought if you wonder if you’ve made a difference today q:
“I heart FTSU”
Yep, pretty much sums it up. He doesn’t heart men and boys. In fact, he thinks quite lowly of them from what I’ve read. He hearts effing their ess up. “Their” referring to “feminists'” I suppose. So sad he wasn’t able to, as none showed up to have their ess f’d with. So now what? “Uhhh, thanks for coming everyone!” Was the overall jist of their speeches.
I just realized I have all the freedom in the world to type “fuck” and “shit”. I’ve been around small children all day…the self censoring becomes so automatic. Unless I stub my toe – Much swearing ensues regardless of company.
I wish two things would happen. I wish Elam would drop the whole pretense of caring about men and just declare himself an anti-Feminist.
And I wish that someone, anyone, would have the decency to get Mr. Esmay some long pants.
sarah: That would mean they thought he had grown up.
Nawh, they don’t need to be grown up dress pants, just pants. Fuck, sweatpants would work, jeans would be perfect.
Of course, you pull of a kilt with high socks so idfk, maybe he’d look creepy in anything. (Then again, if you tried that in a tee shirt I doubt it’d work)
The weird thing is that earlier in the rally Dean Esmay was wearing long pants.
112 people? I given speeches on bees and Pokemon to larger audiences.
This just in – I am personally more successful than a historic MRA rally.
I just don’t get how anyone would think it was a good idea, while promoting their “human rights” “movement,” to wear something promoting the fact that they endorse violence against women/feminists/really pretty much any group at all. Then again, I don’t see how people pretending to be a “human rights” “movement” would decide it was a good idea to sell shirts proclaiming that in the first place.
I would say that the whole FTSU thing is about as ignominious as it gets, except these are MRAs and I think we all know that that’s sadly not the case.
@MarkB
To try to answer your question, no the current MRA movement has very little connection to the Robert Bly “Iron John” inspired mens movement that was popular with men in the 1990’s. If you recall, those groups that MRA’s like Robert Bly and Sam Keen inspired had mens weekends/workshops where men did bang on drums to connect with their inner feelings and their inner masculine nature. The difference is that these mens groups unlike today’s MRA groups like A Voice for Men did not bash women or feminists at all. I recall reading Sam Keen’s “Fire in the Belly” Bly’s “Iron John” and they just dealt with men getting more in touch with their inner life, their masculinity, and becoming better men. There was none of this hateful misogyny that you see coming out of many of today’s MRA’s.
I am not sure if Paul Elam who I read has been involved with gender issues for many years, was a part of these early mens groups. I guess with the advent of the internet in todays time, it is very easy for misogynists or bitter MRA’s to just spend time hating on the internet rather than doing any real work. It is a bit pathetic that a hateful group like “A Voice for Men” gets as much publicity as it does, while a better representation of an MRA group like http://mankindproject.org/ gets very little publicity.
. Perhaps, the phenomenon that you mentioned where the extreme members of a movement drive out the more moderate members is what is taking place with some mens groups like ” A Voice for Men”
Argenti: Of course, you pull of a kilt with high socks so idfk, maybe he’d look creepy in anything. (Then again, if you tried that in a tee shirt I doubt it’d work)
Kilt hose are traditional
When I’m wearing a t-shirt I just slip on my Tevas.
Nawh, they don’t need to be grown up dress pants, just pants.
He’s not out of short pants yet
Gotcha on the short pants. And I knew kilt hose were traditional, but how many people can actually pull that off for daily wear?
I’d be amazed you own t-shirts, but I almost grabbed a brown one thinking it was my pants (I did manage to not leave anything right? Cuz I’m notorious with my relatives for that, to the point my aunt just designated a drawer for whatever I’d left)
Now I’m kinda disappointed that spermjacking wasn’t on the women’s list.
Cthulhu’s Intern –
Ditto, I’ve been on a massive knitting effort all yesterday. But you’ll love this: it’s from a game called the Call of Cathulhu, where kittehs save the world from ultimate evil.
I swear I’m almost tempted to buy it. There’s a link to it in the Pharyngula thread comments.
Paternity fraud was, maybe it was meant to cover spermjacking? Since “name any man she wants” made the list and those are, uh, the same thing? (Not that paternity fraud is a damned thing, it you get it)
Ack! Shoulda read further. Malitia, yes, that’s it, and thanks for the link! 🙂
http://techcitement.com/culture/the-best-birth-control-in-the-world-is-for-men/#.UkiWi9K-qFA
Just gonna put this here because the MRA’s haven’t found it yet. And that amuses me.
Also, if this was the rally of the century does that mean they have nothing planned until 2101? Because I can totally support them in that.
Guys, seriously, how would you feel about throwing together the requisite funds and purchasing a few pairs of slacks for Mr. Esmay? Because I would totally do it and wrap them with a bow and everything.
I kept reading it as a Yoda-ish version of STFU, even knowing Paulyboy’s favourite term for
promoting violence against womenengaging with peoplewhose right to existhe disagrees with.Argenti – I saw lots of blokes wearing kilts with proper kilt hose (and tees!) here during the last big UK team sport thingy, and they look perfectly fine. It’s not really a matter of pulling it off with those; they’re part of the outfit. If anything, I’d say a kilt can look a little odd worn without them, but that’s just me.
Although I doubt Esmay could manage to wear a kilt and hose and look anything but laughable, but that’s because he’s a shitbag.
Feminism is part of the Organization Called Communism? Didn’t Good just spend the previous thread ranting that feminism is too capitalist? These guys need to get their stories straight.
I know that surrendering a baby at a fire station is an option for men because Walt did it in the previous episode of Breaking Bad. I assume Breaking Bad is a 100% accurate reflection of reality.