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.
Sleep well. cloudiah! Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.
Pecunium — lol, is that it? I’d sorta noticed, but figured it was a combo of chance, and not wanting to walk into my bag.
Argh my back
::sits down for cuppa::
::looks around::
Anyone still up?
re Esmay’s shaking (just got home from work): I think it as raw emotion, not fear. The thing which most saddens me is that, looking at that… I’m pretty sure he believes the arguments he’s making in that speech. He really does think men are oppressed.
It saddens me because that means he (almost certainly) can’t be persuaded that this is false (since it requires a level of counterfactual understanding of the world which is mind boggling) and because the level of raw pain such a massive misapprehension of reality has to be causing him.
In that moment I had empathy for him; not because I am at all sympathetic with him, but because (no matter on how fallacious a basis) he is a human being in pain.
I wish he were out of pain, or that I could ease his pain; but I can’t, because it’s based on lies, and he won’t listen to reason, nor face the truth. This is hell, nor is he out of it
His hand tremor read like nervousness to me. Or anger, maybe – the default state of these guys.
Kitteh — yup! Someone here just has an actual keypad while I’m texting with fucking T9.
Pecunium — see, you’re nice. You want to make him hurt less, I want to make him physically hurt.
Said someone just texted me, and I quote, “anupodes”…I totally forgot about that given the, uh, meltdown, and failed to say I think it should be butt beasties XD (I think anuses is the accepted standard?)
And yeah, my vote is anger, not fear. His voice is too solid for fear, he’s just death gripping that poor mic.
I’m still around, Kittehs.
Seconding that. This guy is one of those who wants me and a lot of people I love beaten, raped, killed, for not being their property.
Let him feel his self-created pain, if indeed he does. It’s nothing to what he and his mates would (and some do) inflict on women.
Hi gillyrosebee!
This feels so weird – it’s 4.30 pm here, I’m having an R&R cuppa before finishing the vaccuuming, and it’s the wee small hours for everyone else on site atm.
It’s definitely an excess of emotion, so much that he seems at the mercy of it rather than having mastered it. All of which is cause for empathy, but it strikes me that empathy is the last thing that he/they really want. And with that, we’re back to wanting to sit them down and ask what it is they really want.
Kitteh — daylight savings, it’s 1:45am here. Which is still plenty early for me, particularly if I get back to coding.
my problem with the chant is that it put their misogyny very much on the back burner.
Are they racists… pretty much. Are they homophobic, pretty much.
Are they misogynist.. fuck yeah, that’s their raison d’être
By sandwiching it between the other two, those elements (as the first and last) are the ones which stick in the mind. IT gives them tools to rebut, tools which are more effective for the placement of the ancillaries in the positions of note.
So yeah, I’d like to see all their bigotries called out, but I’d like it to happen in way that doesn’t make it easier for them to deny all of them.
Hi, Kittehs!
I know, and I should be asleep right now, but OMG the stress has been setting me on edge lately.
Of course, I still have some maps to print, and plans to make for tomorrow (I’m coordinating a crew of volunteers on a municipal political election). So much to do and so many problems to address, though at this point I’m starting to count the hours till the election is over with.
Even if they wanted empathy, they’re going the wrong fucking way about getting it.
What they want is pretty much answered by remembering they’re the abusers’ lobby, of course. It was said upthread before the Giant Commie Clusterfuck: women on edge, women never knowing what’s going to bring the next explosion. Ownership of half the human species is what they consider their natural due.
What pecunium said, but with a note that their transphobia seems to be getting lost behind “but they are racist homophobes”. Well, yes, they are, they’re also transphobes, among other things.
Oh and kitteh, I wasn’t trying to make it all about me by mentioning that “other people have it worse” is really a not so good stance, I remembered not long after I hit post that Dawkin’s Dear Muslima would’ve been a better example. Or the oh so frequent “but I got over a more violent rape”…I mean, yeah, their slights are largely imaginary, but idk that saying other people have bigger problems is really such a good road to walk down.
Ah well, I guess given the explosion since then, it doesn’t matter anyways.
Hugs, gillyrosebee.
Have a Kodi having a fling.
http://youtu.be/J4AFuKJQ1OM
Yeah, it was minor, Argenti – just following your comment to LBT it didn’t seem so good to compare. I take your point, it was the timing that niggled.
*waves*
Kodi looks a bit like my Izzy.
Although obviously she couldn’t do all those acrobatics as a nose or foot might fall off next time. Poor, poor whittled Frankenstein’s Izzy cat. 🙁
Could be the pills, just thinking that last comment made noooo sense. *giggles*
Thanks, Kittehs! Shorty and Kodi are always a good antidote!
Yeah, I can see why that irked you. And sorry again about that, it really was quite rude of me.
I want the cause of his hurt (i.e. his hatred of women) to go away.
Absent that… I can be a very less than pleasant person.
@gillyrosebee
It’s a fair point about lending them credence, and you’re right that there will be no productive dialog (but, tbh, I don’t personally have any interest in dialoging with them, and doubt there will be any use in it). I just feel like MRAs are the most dangerous away from their websites, in protests and such, because they can present whatever face they’d like. It’s very easy to take statements like “We’re just trying to help more fathers in the family courts” as fact when you don’t have their articles available to damn them. Had I heard about the TO protest in time, I would have definitely shown up to point and laugh, but if I’d seen people actually listening to what they were saying I would have definitely gone up to them and told them what the MRM is actually about.
@Argenti
These damn beavers have dammed up my creative juices, and my tech skills are on par with a canard in a coal mine, but I’m more than happy to offer my services for grunt work to keep the zine running.