I don’t know how I missed it, but a couple of weeks back Vice posted a short video about that EARTH-SHATTERINGLY HISTORIC Men’s Rights rally in Toronto that captured the attention of the world a tiny fraction of a percentage of people in the world (including the people at it and readers of this blog) a little over a month ago.
Alas, WordPress won’t let me embed the video here, but you all need to go look at it. Not only does it capture pretty well what a dinky event it was, but it also contains a bunch of mini-interviews with some A Voice for Men folks that are rather revealing.
The most revealing one of the bunch starts about 2:40 into the video, when AVFM’s Suzanne McCarley explains that
Men, as a class, have never ever oppressed women, as a class. Men have always protected and provided for women. And protected them from oppression from others.
From others? What kind of others? Like, space aliens?
Women have never objected to this, and in fact have always been grateful because it’s how they survived. It is only in the last few hundred years when women of privileged class who don’t even know what they’re being protected from feel disadvantaged because they’re not comfortable with the level of protection they have.
Wow. A few hundred years? Sometimes people accuse MRAs of wanting to take us back to the 1950s. McCarley apparently wants to take us back to the 1750s.
They don’t even understand what they’re being protected from.
Wolves? Sharks? Dishpan hands? Space aliens?
They have no concept how dangerous the world is for them but gosh they’re just not happy because, you know, the males in the family tell them what to do and make all the decisions for them and control all the money. That’s not oppression. That’s protection.
Wow. So I guess slaves and prisoners are the most protected classes of all.
It’s what kept our species alive and what built … [she gestures at the park and the buildings around it] this beautiful city.
Wait. I thought Jefferson Starship built this city. On rock ‘n’ roll.
Anyway, there’s also some footage of a speech about the evil oppression of white men given by an unknown speaker at the rally. He also complains that men working for the government are men who’ve had “their things cut off and are toeing the politically correct line.” (Hopefully after the bleeding has stopped.)
There’s an interview with Paul Elam, who for some reason looks like he’s wearing mascara (which I’m pretty sure he isn’t). He delivers this puzzling pronouncement:
Looking at men in government and saying they have all the power is like looking at women in grocery stores and saying they have all the food.
Not only is this way more revealing about gender inequality than Elam may realize, but it’s also a tad ironic, because Elam not that long ago used (unreliable) data about how women “control” most consumer spending — that is, they do most of the shopping — in order to argue (twice!) that women were the ones primarily responsible for destroying the environment.
There are assorted other bits of misinformation and ignorance and just plain old bigotry from the MRAs.
There’s also some commentary from the counterprotesters that made me wince. No, MRAs aren’t all Marc Lepines waiting to happen. They’re shitty enough people as it is; you don’t have to compare them all to a misogynist mass murderer to make your point. And in fact, you undercut yourself with that kind of rhetoric. Focus on what they actually say and do. It’s bad enough.
And the “racist, sexist, anti-gay” chant? Drop that. MRAs are, for the most part, driven by misogyny — not by other bigotries. Yes, some are racist, including one of the speakers featured on this very video, but that’s not the driving force for most of them. Some are homophobic, but that’s not the driving force for most of them. Some are transphobic — including Elam himself — but that’s not a central issue for most of them.
It’s worth pointing out these other bigotries, but to make these issues the centerpiece of your counterprotest is to miss the point — it would be a bit like attacking the Ku Klux Klan as “sexist and racist.” I’m sure plenty of KKKers are sexist as hell, but with the Klan racism really is the main thing; with MRAs, misogyny is.
And in this case it gave AVFM’s Karen Straughan the opportunity to appear (at least for a moment) like a reasonable person by pointing out that she in fact is not straight.
Anyway, watch the video. It’s amazing.
If anyone here is transphobic, I disassociate myself from them.
I also disassociate myself from BlackBloc, though I’m sure that will be called red baiting.
I associate myself with gillyrosebee, who seems pretty awesome. :: raises fist, sings Solidarity Forever ::
Do go fuck yourself, BlackBloc. You admit to hardly knowing the commenters you’re having a go at, despite how long you’ve been on the site, yet it doesn’t occur to you that they’re accepted regulars here, and thus NOT going to be TERFS?
I’m getting the feeling it really is all about you if you haven’t even taken notice of what the other regulars around have said over the years.
Why should BlackBloc stop? They are getting what they want.
cloudiah, you, you, McCarthyite, you! HUAC! Reds under the bed! Domino theory!
>>>it doesn’t occur to you that they’re accepted regulars here, and thus NOT going to be TERFS
No, I simply do not think that that conclusion follows from the previous statement.
Do you grant your solidarity to absolutely everyone, despite whatever basic, fundamental objections you might have with their methods and goals? Are all communists equal?
Your solidarity is worthless and meaningless in that case. You might as well stand with MRAs who share your views on communism and to hell with their bigotry.
You can act as paranoid as you like, BlackBloc, it doesn’t change things.
So you think we accept TERFs here, BlackBloc? Go fuck yourself. Damn, you are really being an unredeemable asshole here.
Considering the treatment of some ex-regulars because they were trans* or GQ, no, I do not think I have a reason to grant you this.
Fuck off, Black Bloc. If that’s what you want to think, go right ahead, but that is not what went down at all.
BTW, I thought you were gonna show solidarity and not post here any more. So much for solidarity, eh?
Oh fuck off, BB, seriously. You took “a principled stand” on that at the time, and then came back like nothing happened. You have no moral standing to raise that at this time. I didn’t raise this before out of kindness, but clearly that was misplaced.
(And to everyone else, it is much more complicated than BlackBloc is painting it. But in any case, it is completely hypocritical of him to raise it, only once it appears he is losing an argument but not before when he was apparently fine with the outcome.)
hellkell, you read my mind.
No, the painting thing, that wasn’t BlackBloc. Unless I have the wrong incident in mind, that was Mr “the world is not all tea scones and unicorns” ahostileDisneyworld, subject of one of my favorite Pierre comics to date.
*is watching all this unfold with bemusement*
I… I think I’ve lost exactly what this comment wreck is ABOUT. Not you, FeministBees, I get you. But the rest of this train has leapt the track.
And uh. If there were TERFs here, I’d be running for the hills.
>>>You took “a principled stand” on that at the time, and then came back like nothing happened. You have no moral standing to raise that at this time.
That is true and it makes me a bad friend but that’s for me and my actual friends to judge.
gillyrosebee: BB did do a drive-by comment about art vandalism, but I don’t think it was in the thread you’re thinking of.
Oh yeah, he’s going down the “All you ManBoobzers are homophobes and trans*phobes” bullshit route. Seen that before.
Amazing how it’s only the ex-MBs’ opinions on the site that count. None of the LGBTQ people who’re here now get to have a say in it; it’s all policing by people long gone, a few of whom, IIRC from what was in old threads, were being total assholes about other people, principally asexuals, and were pretty damn good at driving them off-site.
So yeah, BB, go fuck yourself with your assumptions about people on this site here and now, and claiming the high moral ground.
Oh no, BB, we can totally judge you for it too.
Especially since you’re just bringing it up to try and score points, which is seriously fucking tacky.
Got it, my bad.
gillyrosebee – it was when we were talking about the idiots in London who deface art to supposedly draw attention to what fine, hard-done-by fathers they are. BB was all “meh” about the damage done to the new portrait of the Queen, in a combination of sneering at it for being kitsch and for the subject. This was before Mr Rainbows, and drew a good bit of side-eyeing and questions (never answered) about how much art he would approve of destroying.
I suspect the conversation would have gone the same way, had it happened.
“>>>it doesn’t occur to you that they’re accepted regulars here, and thus NOT going to be TERFS
No, I simply do not think that that conclusion follows from the previous statement.”
*Dies* oh wow. You don’t think it obvious that anyone who came in here hating trans* people would be torn limb from metaphorical limb?
——
So, who wants to muse on Man Boobz: The Magazining? Or WP themes in general? I’m thinking greyscale with either red or blue. Preferences?
I like blue.
Hey, let’s ignore BB just like we’d ignore any other troll. (I know I’m guilty of not ignoring him.)
Can we get back to discussing how best to counter MRM-style bigotry?