Pity the poor MRAs who travelled hundreds — if not thousands — of miles to AVFM’s big weekend in Toronto hoping for a confrontation with the evil feminazis that never happened. They wanted footage of angry women they could watch again and again on YouTube. They wanted new names and faces to put up on Register-Her. In short, they wanted new women to hate.
But alas, the feminists, for the most part, stayed home. And the ones who showed up were mostly dudes, from the LBGT activist group BashBack. Making things even worse, they didn’t block any doors or try to crash AVFM’s rally. What they did, mostly, was chant things the MRAs didn’t like.
No, it was the MRAs who ignored the explicit instructions of the police to stay away from their opponents. Evidently hoping to provoke the confrontation that had been denied them thus far, a sizeable proportion of the AVFMers and Mens Rights Edmontoners in Toronto that day leave the spot designated for their rally to face off against the BashBack counter-protest.
How do we know this? Because Men’s Rights Edmonton filmed them doing it and put it on YouTube. And AVFM posted it on their site as well.
It’s kind of remarkable that they did. For one thing, it provides even more proof of how tiny the rally itself was. And it shows pretty clearly what an immature misogynistic buffoon Nick Reading of Men’s Rights Edmonton really is.
For those who don’t have the patience to watch the whole thing, here’s a quick summary:
The video starts over near where the MRA rally itself is being organized (or had just finished up). Nick Reading introduces himself.
Then, in the distance, the counterprotesters begin chanting “racist, sexist, anti-gay, MRA, go away.”
“What’s wrong with being racist and sexist?” Nick shouts in response. “It’s awesome!”
No, really. It’s about 40 seconds in.
Shortly afterwards he marches over and into the small crowd of counterprotesters, clearly itching for some kind of ideological smackdown. He’s followed by Dean Esmay, who’s indignant that MRAs are being called “anti-gay.” Which makes me wonder if he ever actually reads the website he’s the “Managing Editor” of. He yells about this for a time, then leaves. An assortment of others from the MRA crowd also show up. Some yell, others film.
Nick, who remains in the midst of the BashBackers, does his best to try to provoke, explaining his Patriarchy Party candidacy and generally acting like an ass. Eventually he elicits an angry reaction from several group members by declaring, roughly 5:50 into the video, that rape is funny; indeed, that “sometimes it’s hilarious.”
But that’s as close as he gets to provoking the confrontation he’s clearly itching for. After several minutes, apparently having run out of inspiration, he finally decides to leave.
And, scene.
This embarrassing video is in fact the first real footage of the events in Toronto that AVFM has put online so far — all the others they’ve put up have been interviews after the rally.
But I guess the folks at AVFM figured that posting this was preferable to posting video of the anemic rally itself.
And it’s true that the counterprotesters don’t exactly come across brilliantly in the video either. Despite their admirable restraint in the face of the MRA provocations, their overheated rhetoric is often way off the mark, and their old-school chants seem faintly ridiculous in an age of YouTube. And, seriously, wearing pink hammers and sickles to show support for LBGT folks being persecuted in Russia today? Stalin made male homosexuality punishable by five years in a labor camp; that law wasn’t repealed until 1993.
But it is really hard to see how Nick Reading telling a group of mostly gay men that rape is “hilarious” helps to solve the “crisis” facing men and boys– the ostensible reason for the rally in the first place.
Even more interesting than Reading’s abortive attempts to bait the BashBack protesters in Toronto were the reactions of AVFM readers to the video itself. Deprived of new women to hate, they turned instead to bashing the gay men in the video instead.
Mike Hunt — oh, very funny! — offers this totally not homophobic at all assessment of the BashBack activists:
I fully support gay rights and I am the last person to discriminate against gays, but did anyone else notice that all of these protesters seem to be gay? And not self assured, confident in who they are gay, but feminine and completely out of touch with any aspect of themselves that is masculine gay?
JinnBottle, meanwhile, claimed that AVFM had cured his homophobia — no, really — but that these protesters were making him think that maybe he should return to his old ways.
I came to AVfM definitely not “the last person to discriminate against Gays” – at least in my thinking. That thinking specifically took the form of repellence to the ubiquitous ball-busting of (mostly straight, but even other gay) men by gay guys I’d witnessed for 35-plus years in both the politico-social and personal spheres, ever since gay men had “come out”, about 1969.
Subsequently I saw that some of the clearest thinkers, potent social observers and eloquent writers on AVfM are gay – and bi … I rethought my thinking, and thought … the Radfem/Misandric Gay Guy was becoming a thing passing.
Now along come this fresh troupe of Gay misandrists and feminist allies representative of the old notion that, if not *all* gay males are self-hating masochist insulated style-boys, then a majority are.
Riku, meanwhile, didn’t hem or haw or pretend that he was anything but a bigot — and went right for the rape jokes:
You should have raped them guys. These guys literally begged for it. That’s what you were there for, no? 🙁 Thought I’d see some rapes on the event.
AVFM: Where jokes about raping gay men are a form of human rights activism.
Trying to use modern
frameworks oflogic to understand my writing is a veritablefeast offailure.FTFY
“Divorce without an annulment requires either hypocrisy or the opposition to dogma.”
Nope.
Civil divorce is fine. Subsequent remarriage = ongoing fornication without remorse, and so leads to an inability to attain the state of grace required for reception of the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
No heresy, just a lack of piety. It’s not a bar to paradise, just a ticket to purgatory.
For a convert you didn’t pay much attention to the required lessons of the catechism, did you?
Oh, wait, you aren’t a Catholic, you are trying to pretend to being one for the lulz. Dipshit.
Argenti: if you want to see some QI we have a lot of it (I think up to ‘K’) and can watch some.
his fearful symmetry.
Trollie’s lord is a tyger?
Poe?
note to self: read ALL the comments first…
Pecunium; I am given to understand that seven cardinals have signed petition to the Pope requesting an official Vatican investigation. This is according to my female friend; I neither can confirm nor deny with first-hand evidence that this is the case.
katz – embarrasingly bad, but with flair.
I still wish people would lose the “lived to 25” trope as if reaching forty was incredibly old and only one in a squillion people lived that long. Yes, most died younger than most of us in the West do now, but the huge child mortality rate is a major part of the overall average.
Kitteh: that’s one of my bugbears, too. People don’t understand averages. And you hear that one so often from otherwise good sources that ought to know better.
Too true!
Not to mention that the longevity, low child mortality and general health in First World countries are the exception, not the rule, even now, let alone where centuries or more are in question. The whole us-as-representative thing’s pretty irksome too.
Something not irksome: cat spitting cardboard. (Well, not if you don’t have to vaccuum up after zir.)
http://youtu.be/3qM3uZuRew0
From this article hxxp://avoiceformen.com/feminism/women-dont-own-sex/
Are men ever accountable for anything? or is it always women’s fault? men comit crimes to give women things? and why are they so insistent that men get to assume consent, why is it so hard to BLOODY ASK? sleeping in a guy’s bed is automatic consent now? WTF. Who thinks like this that AREN’T children? Children are the ones who take without asking, until they are taught it’s wrong. Until they are taught that taking things when you aren’t sure if you should means there are consequences. So yeah, the way she talks, men are apparently children who can just take without asking.
Check out the disgusting comment at the end of the article by Hg_CNO_2. You can feel the seething entitlement and anger that he has for not being able to fuck women he deems are “advertising it” with slutty clothes. Its such a nasty comment that even the feMRA who wrote this joke of an article thinks he crossed boundaries.
And they are just SHOCKED that people think they are hateful rape apologists and anti-women!
Quackers, oh, lordy, I think I need to go read that post. I have such a backlog of terrible mra/pua posts to write about, but I keep getting distracted by the toronto things.
Also, everyone, I banned MRAL/Thomas Moore. Sorry bout the delay. I was napping, and my main email is temporarily out, so I didn’t discover his rampage until I just now caught up with this thread,.
“Rape isn’t funny”
Nick @ 5:55 “yeah it is”
but only when it happens to women amirite?
David, this Toronto thing is such a joke, I don’t blame you for getting distracted. Do they even realize how idiotic they look? Nick is responsible for most of that, I just keep watching him make an ass out of himself in this video and just want to facepalm, over and over again. They really have no idea just how much he reinforces people’s negative views on MRAs and how they think it’s so hilarious and unimportant that women get raped. We should thank him really, for proving our point about what MRAs really stand for.
@Quackers
Fuck, I came back here for more hilarious troll comments and instead I see this…
What really bothers me is how… lightly she responds to him. She does the absolute bare minimum, and then goes on to say he “brings up a good point.” When she says that rape is still a real problem, she follows it up with “I’m sick of hearing women whine about catcalls.” She can’t disagree with him too much, or else she loses MRA cool girl cred.
B-but a woman wrote the article!!!1 We all know that female MRAs mean that they can’t be anti-woman (male feminists are totes manginas though)!!!!1
@baileyrenee
I don’t understand these women, I really don’t. Hell you don’t even have to identify as feminist to recognize how disturbed that comment was (he wont feel AS sorry for “sluts” who get raped cuz how dare they wear short skirts and taunt him dammit!) but she can’t tell him he’s wrong, oh no. Must toe the line and agree with the MRA ideology lest you get booted out and potentially harassed.
I’m sorry, this might sound cruel, but I find these feMRAs utterly pathetic. It’s not even so much that they aren’t feminists…I mean with radfems and also the hate thrown at you for identifying you as one, I can understand the hesitation to take up the label, most of my female friends don’t identify as feminist either. It’s the fact that feMRAs can’t even stand up and defend common fucking decency and morality. They defend the indefensible. I don’t know if they truly agree but I’m simply judging them by their actions.
and anytime they bring up the little “gotcha” when they say “see women like us too” I’ll blatantly say, yeah, I know. Women can be misogynists too, this is such a revelation? There are privileges when you go along with patriarchy, agree with the men in power and you’re in. Look at Thatcher. At Phyllis Schlafly. Even in everyday life, women might keep their mouths shut to not be labeled “that girl” I’ve even done it myself, and I hate it. And yeah, it’s disgusting how quick they are to demonize and dismiss male feminists as “manginas” who are kissing ass and/or brainwashed, yet don’t even consider feMRAs are doing the same. Why would they though? they have mentioned many times that feMRAs are the SECRET POWER to getting the message out since apparently no one ever listens to men on this issue.
*hate thrown at you for identifying as a feminist that is, not specifically a radfem.
does anyone else also get annoyed at how MRAs act as if women walk down the street in string bikinis? in summer the only thing that could be deemed “slutty” by people like that are really short shorts. I don’t see such horrible offenses in clothing, especially with the latest trends that include a lot of shapeless dresses.
Not that it matters of course, but it’s really messed up how angry dudes like that commenter get when women are out their existing and happening to look good in the process are labled as TAUNTING. It’s all about the man, and what he wants. In fact, lets use their favorite analogy about shoplifting- “but Officer the Apple Store was just TAUNTING ME with all their electronics on display, if they didn’t want them stolen, they shouldn’t advertise them!” “but officer, it’s boiling hot out, if the convenience store didn’t want me to run out with bottles of water and klondike bars without paying they should have a lock on the fridge, I mean they we just asking for it!”
How come that just sounds stupid and unacceptable, yet when applied to rape its reasonable to so many people still?
@Quackers
I really can’t add much more to that, you pretty much nailed it. It’s disturbing. I sometimes wonder what it would take for one of the feMRAs to snap and say something to one of those assholes; not even STOP being an MRA, just to stand up to ONE person who said something really terrible. That comment makes it look like that won’t ever happen. There are times when I honestly think that some of these women (and probably some of the men) actually want to, and are just too scared of the backlash they would receive.
GWW once talked about an article written by some feminist with a son in college who got accused of rape, and then got kicked off campus (or something) without a trial even happening. The woman wrote about how confused she was that this happened, and GWW pulled the whole “of course it happened, thanks to women like you! How could you not see this coming, it’s all you feminist’s fault” thing.
I wonder if she’s ever had a moment like that, or if she ever will.
And ugh, that whole “slutty” thing. It’s amazing how only women apparently “ask for it.” It’s fucking disgusting and I hate it.
kittehs
I have a superb, won.der.ful. lycra thingie. It’s sort of like a swimsuit that only comes up to the bottom of the bra. It’s absolutely fantastic when the back and the hips get in on the make your life a misery act together – the holding firm around the pelvis and lower back is a huge relief.
I don’t wear it all that often because I’ve lost the contact details for the people I bought it from and I don’t want to wear it out. It was a good bit more than $30. But a physio appointment is $70 and the relief you get from that only lasts a day or so. Even if they were $150+ they’d still be a bargain.
Regarding walking down the street in a string bikini… if someone really did that, people wouldn’t suddenly lose control over their urges. Rather, people would be like “WTF someone is wearing skimpy bathing attire on the street? That’s really weird.”
Man, that whole troll persona just defines ‘trying too hard.’
I appreciated several of the little touches, but overall, my god, what a bore that man must be at parties.
Keep it fresh, dude! Fresh!
Also, you’re helping to uphold a system of violence and misogyny! You can pretend to be ironic about it all you like, but that just makes you a fucking monster!
He was sitting in front of the Font of All Knowledge, but Googling how to spell calumny and asseverations and vicissitudes was too much trouble.
Me, I can spell those right off the top of my head because Noah Webster comes back from the dead just to whisper in my ear.
This summer I was walking down the street in the middle of town — I say town, because this is too tiny a city to call a city properly — and I met a woman walking down the street. She was wearing a bikini, just walking down the street.
I’m pretty sure there’s no pool anywhere near there, and there’s no good way to get down to the river and it’s not very nice anyway.
Still, it was a hot day, so I just walked on by, trying to be cool and not stare, but I couldn’t help thinking as I went by… IS there a pool here in town? Can I get access to it? HOLY CRAP IT’S HOT AND THERE’S NO AIR CONDITIONING IN MY BUILDING…
I think I’ve shared this on here before, but at my high school band camp in late July, inevitably some of the young women showed up with bikini tops under their t-shirts so they could strip out under the morning sun.
It was entirely not so the football team would then hoot at them.
I don’t know if the football team got rebuked, but the girls were definitely made to put their shirts back on.
Do you really think MRAL gets invited to parties?
Auggz: I really don’t care what issues Fidelbogen may or may not have. He’s an asshole.