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.
Hopefully you’re both right and, if there was a problem along those lines, it’s been fixed. It’s just always bothered me a bit because if it was something that I was missing in the first place then how would I know?
But if everyone we have here now who’s trans or genderqueer feels safe here then it’s probably fine, so I’m going to stop derailing.
Since I’m an anarchist (and so technically a radical), I definitely disagree with most people here about capitalism, statism, etc. But even so I haven’t felt alienated or excluded here at all. In fact, this space has been way more accepting of my anarchist views than other places – such as Feministe.
(sorry if that’s not relevant to the topic – it just came to mind)
I just read Ami’s comment in the open forum thread, and it read like there was a good deal of off-site things contributing to zir leaving. Zie specifically said zie doesn’t do forums and such well, and it was all getting a bit much. I don’t know what the HeatherN issue was, but to me it doesn’t read like the queer/trans* issues were the only thing or even necessarily more than the catalyst – it had been a while coming.
Definitely relevant, Ally!
That’s actually interesting in that Feministe probably has a higher percentage of people who’re at the radical end of the spectrum than Manboobz does. Did they say what specifically about anarchism they objected to?
Transness is solely characterized by the conflict between one’s assigned gender and one’s self-identified gender. As for genderqueerness, I’m not really sure, although I think it’s possible to be genderqueer without being trans. Please take my word on genderqueerness with a grain of salt, though.
Viscaria: I remember your leaving, and I recall the tone. I got the impression you were generally unhappy, and might come back.
I, for one, was sad to see you go, and happy to see you return.
Argenti: Cassandra — passive-aggressive maybe, but some of it wasn’t just those two. Like, idk if it’s me, but does this place feel more…silly? now?
The thing is, it only takes a few people who are playing, “punch bowl czar” to make life unpleasant for everyone. It is more silly now. I think this is because 1: we don’t treat everything as, “the important”, and 2: we had some unwinding/reacting to the sense of non-pressure, and as a result created a new culture; not consciously, but reactively, that wasn’t going to be friendly to a return of that sort of mindset.
I have a dear friend (whom I’ve never met; the closest thing I have to a confessor) and that person is very interested in how community is formed. She (and I spoke with her when this was going on, as it started, as it continued, and as it resolved. I was, at one point, very close to finding other pastures; and there were a couple of my hiatus where I was away because I found the atmosphere too toxix to speak my mind) would say we established a new equilibrium, because there was a sense of community.
It is to our credit that it was able to cope with the sort of strain, and strife, we had in that chunk of time.
I’m not sure why Owly was given the slack he was, those involved in the exodus, that I can get why David wasn’t inclined to pick sides, they were all regulars. But Owly was a regular asshole, in both senses.
Because he was an original member of the site: he was here from the get-go, and his rhetoric got worse over time. It was a “frog-boiling” issue.
RE: CassandraSays
it’s entirely possible that there was stuff in that conversation that I wasn’t getting or wasn’t seeing even though it was obvious to other people.
Again, that’s very reasonable. I mean, I obviously am still missing key parts of information, and I miss Ami and Cliff too. But it sounds like there was some real fucked-up shit going down. And I actually had the same issues with DSC and Rutee; I kind of avoided talking, just because I didn’t have the energy for a transqueer pissing contest. ESPECIALLY at that point in time.
Also, I’d add that we seem to have a broader conflict between radicals of all stripes and more mainstream member of whatever groups,
Honestly, I think shit like that will happen ANYWHERE you have a group of people. I’m not sure it’s something that can be solved… or necessarily should, y’know? There can be places for more radical people to set up camp. We have a huge comment base; it makes sense that we can’t open up to everybody. Frankly, I’m more concerned about how WHITE the commentariat is than how radical it is or isn’t.
As for the trans thing… like I said, I don’t really know wtf went down. I’m still missing key bits of info. I seem to recall some shit about some cousin site being made and it fucked up? Or something?
RE: Argenti
Yeah. Sneak and Gigs aren’t binary either… and Gigi militantly Does Not Care, while Sneak gets a sad over being misgendered but that’s the extent of zer desires. While I get annoyed about being misgenderd, but bodily dissonance was my big deal. And that’s in ONE FREAKIN’ BODY. Imagine the differences in people with actual different genetics.
The one big fight I saw was DSC and Rutee going nuclear over the idea that asexual people are ever oppressed in any way ever and whether they’re allowed to use the word “queer” without written permission in triplicate from the Really Truly Queer.
(I’m only exaggerating about the second bit … )
Nothing I haven’t seen before – the same criticisms about anarchism being unrealistic, utopian, dangerous, etc. I’ve seen way less of that stuff here.
Their arguments with a fellow trans anarcha-feminist, LotusBecca (remember her, kitteh?) were the most contentious. She was way more vocal about her views than I was, and she received flak for it. The only person who tends to not be criticized for her anarchist-esque views is EG, but that’s probably because she, like me, tends to avoid the subject of anarchism.
Should add that in all this I feel sort of halfway: I’ve identified for all but a few years as heterosexual (I briefly thought I must be lesbian, because I’d never even heard of asexuality or any other possibilities save bisexuality). I don’t think of myself as hetero now except in the single-target sense, so I’m not part of any of these communities, and don’t feel like I’ve the right to comment in a lot of these matters. But the policing going on was fucking disgusting and screw the tender sensibillities of those doing it, whether it could have hit me or not. (Prolly not, ‘cos I had no respect for them at all.)
The HeatherN thread — http://manboobz.forummotion.com/t997-new-blog-woman-boobz-taking-the-piss-out-of-misandry-and-transphobia-since-2012
Pecunium — I’ll give a real reply in a second, but boiled frogs do jump.
Second paragraph is mine, first is LBT. Curse you, blockquote monster.
Oh gods, some of those arguments with LotusBecca! 😀 Confession, she does strike me as very black and white, better is enemy of perfect, and yeah, unrealistic about stuff happening now, often enough. She’s still posting, sometimes; I think she commented on the penises and guns thread.
I wish I could be on better terms with her again. I used to talk to her a lot because she was so much like me. But then that thread about female horror movie characters came up and she glorified the notion of randomly killing men as a political statement. It sucks because I really did admire her until she said those things.
Is the political statement “I am an asshole”? Because otherwise I’m not seeing it.
“I was, at one point, very close to finding other pastures”
Yeah, I know, and honestly, I probably wouldn’t have returned from hiatus if you had. That I wanted to talk to you and thought it would be weird to email you out of the blue a month after we’d last spoken was a good part of why I came back from my depression induced hiatus.
——
And yeah, both the asexuals aren’t oppressed and poly people aren’t remotely queer, that shit got on my fucking nerves. In part, and definitely only part, because bisexuals, by all external appearances, become straight when with a member of the opposite sex. Add thus bisexuals dating heterosexually are not queer anymore?
Cuz I have seriously gotten that shit. And was, at the point I showed up here, getting my sexytimes on with two poly kinky partners, one of whom is genderqueer (fluid actually, but it’ smooth to my point) — but ze and I? Different anatomy. So out in public we’d look all straight and cis and “normal” and thus nope, not queer? *hed esplodes*
Here’s the thread:
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2013/07/10/jackie-the-ripper-where-are-all-the-female-serial-killers-on-tv/#comment-656889
RE: Kittehserf
The one big fight I saw was DSC and Rutee going nuclear over the idea that asexual people are ever oppressed in any way ever and whether they’re allowed to use the word “queer” without written permission in triplicate from the Really Truly Queer.
This has actually been a fight in the queer arena for a long time, and it ENRAGES me. I earned my fucking “queer cred,” by any stupid standard, and my rape was corrective for not being sexual enough. I know a lot of ace people who had a lot of shit hurled at them, and corrective rape wasn’t an uncommon thing. So yeah, fuck that noise. Fuck it to hell.
RE: CassandraSays
it makes me wonder what race-related issues are also simmering away under the surface,
You and me both, for sure. That honestly WAY more concerns me about MBZ. I mean, how many uber-radicals are there? Far fewer than POC.
On the asexual people and queer identity issue, I was initially one of the people who was confused by the idea that asexual people would identify as queer, so apologies to anyone who was hurt by my saying so in that thread. I hadn’t really thought about it at all prior to that, and changed my mind after I did think about it a bit, but still, it probably wasn’t fun for people to have to read, and I’m sorry about that.
Bloody hell, what a mess that forum thread was, Argenti! I didn’t even finish reading it.
RE: CassandraSays
Try not to beat yourself up over it. A lot of queers honestly know jack all about ace issues, and as you’ve seen, some of them get very territorial about it. Depending on the people I’m around, I often feel either like I need to give up my ace label, or my queer label. It’s not like there are even that many ace folks around, so I don’t get what the big deal was.
kitteh: They locked you out of the secret room???
Reason enough to be glad it died, if it was being used against people that way.
Yes. I can make various self-valorising claims; but it seems my lack of being willing to bend was the catalyst to lots of this exploding.
Someone told a mod that I was making them uncomfortable, because of my homophobia. I was excluded.
If I understand what happened, there were then conversations about how/if to let me back in, and that exploded.
Also, I was getting fed up with the level of background hostility (as well as a certain sense of pain/shame at being seen as less trustworthy than the person who made what seemed an asinine claim about me), and I reached out to someone, and also to Dave (who took no sides, in fact adamantly remained neutral), as well as to the friend I mentioned already.
And I decided I wasn’t leaving. I don’t know what would have happened had I let myself be driven off. I suspect the level of wide-tolerance we have adopted would have been more narrow.
Cassandra: Also, I’d add that we seem to have a broader conflict between radicals of all stripes and more mainstream member of whatever groups, illustrated by the argument we were all having with Black Bloc in this thread.
I think our problem is with “purists”. The people who say, “you aren’t good enough because you refuse to accept/believe” are going to have problems with us, because we are tolerant; and that means we accept things they won’t, and we question some of the limiting behaviors (e.g. “you question the tactical wisdom of trying to subvert the Hammer and Sickle; always and everywhere).
I confess, when BlackBloc expressed his participation/sympathy for the Black Bloc Quebecois, his reputation with me fell. I have personal reasons for not being happy with that aspect of radical politics. I have friends who suffered from the reactions to the events in 2000/2001.
Part of that is because they seem to be of the, “break shit, and better things will come of it”, or, “and The Proletariat” will rise because of the oppression of the Capitalists, or some such.
I’m a liberal. I am (for an american) fairly socialist. I am on the left side of the Progressive movement. I am not a revolutionary. Part of this is knowing too much of what revolution/civil war entails.
We’ve had radicals (zhinxy comes to mind), whom I don’t recall being dismissed/met with strong resistance. The difference is… they didn’t insist we accept them at face value, with no questions about how things are to be changed/what the end state is.
Cassandra: But really my worry about the great exodus remains that we don’t seem to have in any way resolved the fact that the people who felt most aggrieved, and who started the exodus, were both trans or genderqueer, and felt like that was part of why they were in conflict with other people.
I don’t have a good answer. What I saw (and my view is colored) was a lack of comity. A sense that anyone who didn’t take their view of how things are (and ought to be) as The Truth, were evil, and wrong, and stupid.
But yes, I am not genderqueer, nor am I trans, or gay. But I know how the people I know who are such feel about me and it’s at odds with the things which happened here.
And they were intolerant of more than just gender/sexuality issues.
Note one thing that, if accurate, this suggests to atheists like myself–we CAN’T just sit around and argue people out of their faith. Our best hope is actually pushing social-justice agendas, because those cause the kinds of societal shifts that produce the introspection that results in a decision to leave the faith entirely. In short, the Asshat Atheist brigade aren’t just shitty human beings, they’re even shitty at being atheists.
This sort of bothers me. I don’t care what someone believes, so long as they don’t harm others while doing it.
So the (implicit) idea that Athiests need to “convert” theists to “leave the faith entirely” is, at best, problematic.
As to Ami… I don’t know. I do know that she was being very much not active in the MB Prime for a good six months before the split (at least) and some others (e.g. zhinxy) had also basically become inactive.
I got the impression that it was more than just that, but maybe I’m wrong (and of course I have no way to be sure; but it did cause me to not approach Ami when we were both at the same convention earlier this year; I’m averse to needless confrontation)
Which is part of why I’ve not brought things up before, because it’s impossible to know why some of the people I liked aren’t here any longer.