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.
Muahahahaha, since when do kitties need to be trained to attack people whenever they feel like it?
Also, thank you! 🙂
True. I suppose they could be taught what body parts are more sensitive- particularly misandrist kitties.
I think they have that hard-wired into their evil little brains. Or else their mothers teach them. They always know exactly where to put those needle-sharp kitten claws.
Not a pic of kitties being evil, but one I’ve made tonight and am really pleased with. (There are kitties, but they’re not being evil.)
A Fireside Day
Awwww. Such a sweet picture. Kitties- they look so innocent when they are sleeping. Ones Katie, whose the other? (Sir, of course, needs no introduction).
Although, which Louis is he? I forget the numeral that goes after His name.
That looks like Katie, but it’s actually Thomas, who’s a very big boy and a lovely chap. It’s just twenty years since he passed over, and he was only eight. The one in front of the fire is Magnus, terror of the neighbourhood, savager of managers’ hands and official Stupid Cat according to his former vet, who crossed four years ago aged 22.
Louis’ number is XIII. Thirteen’s my lucky number!
Niters all, I’m off to watch telly. 🙂
Indeed! Not to mention, a terrible person!
I think an optimistic theory is good, but practice has to take reality into account… I’m still not sure how to make communism fit reality. Maybe turn it clockwise until it fits through the door?… I don’t know.
I have met such kitties… they liked to grab hold of a helpfully placed human in a between-the-legsy-type place and haul themselves up onto the sofa. They were mean. Still, it was all maded betterer when they curled up in my lap and switched to vibrate mode.
You may want to consider rephrasing this after rereading the first sentence.
I have to go to work, I have thoughts on this, but not the time to really expand. The quick and dirty is that I am a left-wing, semi-socialist progressive. I don’t think the various flavors of anarcho can work in the real world (they all rely, at bottom, on the same thing; “The Rational Actor”. It doesn’t work, because there is no such beast).
I was absent (thank goodness) for most of the meltdown. I’d have done my best to stay out of it (for more than just the obvious history, some of it is related to events which didn’t happen here, but in Canada, more than a decade ago). What I did see was a moderately commonplace reaction. When one has a single guiding principle, on which all else depends, all else takes a back seat.
And when someone has a reasonable critique which seems to touch on that principle it’s dismissed out of hand, and with great vigor.
I try to avoid this,but I am sure there are some things I am prone to that sort of rigid response. I like to think that where I know I have a hard-line response (e.g. torture) it is well thought out, and that I can engage those who don’t agree without completely discounting them, and without declaring them to be evil people; in all regards, just because they disagree with me.
Well, you’ve never randomly accused someone of transphobia because they disagreed with you about torture, so I’d say you’re OK.
@pecunium
Can you please clarify what you mean by “The Rational Actor?” Is that idea based on the assumption that all people are rational beings? If so, that isn’t really a necessary assumption underlying anarchism, especially not anarcho-communism.
Ally — I’m gonna guess he’s off to work, but I think you’re right about what he meant.
Pecunium — dude, I’ve read plenty of you talking about torture, and yeah, it’s by and large level headed retorts of why the other person is Very Fucking Wrong.
Manboobz: The Magazining update — sidebar is done, typography is more or less done, search bar is giving me a headache. Need to redo the comments, figure out how to mark admin comments, and sort out wtf I want to do about author blurbs since it seems we’ll be having plenty of authors 🙂 (start writing y’all!) And a few more HTML elements need to be styled (namely tables, which I’m avoiding because I remember the days of doing design layouts in tables (this is horrid practice, never do this!)
The jQuery and anything else I forgot.
Why? I like vibratey things. Especially when they’re warm and snuggly and let me tickle them.
Vibrating in between your legs?
“Maded betterer”?
Nooo, vibrating on my lap – because of the purring – which makes me feel less horrified by the attempt to remove parts of my anatomy… because purring is a get out of jail free card.
I was assuming you didn’t mean to suggest what would happen if someone read about the Hello Kitty vibrator and decided to improvise, but as you can see from Argenti’s comment…
….Hello Kitty vibrator?
o_O
Search bar is done, the Argenti needs a nap.
There’s a Manboobz : The Magazining forum thread, can interested parties pop over there and give me some idea what we’re looking at for categories? Like, I know we have Furrinati, Scented FUCKING Candle Reviews, etc, but what about Teh Serious. Or you want to lump it all under that and the other under Teh Goofy and worry about sub-categories later?
Ally: Can you please clarify what you mean by “The Rational Actor?” Is that idea based on the assumption that all people are rational beings? If so, that isn’t really a necessary assumption underlying anarchism, especially not anarcho-communism.
Yes, it is what I meant, and it may not be a stated requirement, but for a lack of gov’t to work there has to be a shared sense of what is right, and a willingness; on the part of everyone, to play by the same rules. This is because (so goes the theory) that set of rules, when obeyed by everyone, is the best course of action.
And it may be, but (to borrow a phrase from Bruce Schneier) all it takes is a small number of “defectors” and the trust required to make the system work falls apart (btw, I strongly reccommend Bruce’s writing, but “Liars and Outliers” is the one which touches directly on this topic.
BTW; Brooked, that was some of the most endearing compliment I’ve been on the receiving end of.
As to the allusion, I don’t recall making it, but it causing me to show the film to someone tonight.
Manboobz: The Magazining update — things I need to do before we can put up anything resembling content // justify the horrendous $4 a month server cost: redo the comment formatting, add author blurbs and format author pages, and jQuery.
Also, what are we doing content-wise? I know there’s a strong idea we should go serious feminist critique, not MBZ spin-off, and that people do want MBZ humor. So I’m thinking, and bear with me here, this might get complex…
Main site, what you see on loading the home page — feminist critique, tags and categories in sidebar limited to ones used by those posts, link in the menu nav for the MBZ humor. I’m undecided on some things about that, but that’ll be in the next paragraph.
Click said link, get sent to the humor, sidebar loads the tags and categories for that stuff only, menu bar stays the same as the default, or does what I’m about to get to asking about. Now, my question here is, do we want to do “misogynist trolls say the darnedest things”, “scented FUCKING candle reviews”, etc as categories, all mixed together on the main humor page, or as categories and separate out the humor section by giving each category its own page? And if we do that, should the main menu bar list those pages as drop down pages (I have the coding for drop down child pages done already, so either way works fine), or do we have them only display on the humorous subsection?
…this is going to need a diagram huh? Give me a second!
A diagram of Argenti’s website. (JK, I do understand what you’re planning.)
Katz! How did you get that picture of my database’s relationships file?!
At the risk of sounding like an awful person, why not have the main humour page have all of them mixed together, and provide links to a separate page for each category in the sidebar?
(For the non-PHP aware, I swear, that’s not as much of a horrible thing to suggest as it sounds. I am not the monster you’re currently thinking.)
Also, made it to chapter 33 of 48… woo! I will make this book readable if it kills me.