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.
LBT – True. Definitely people are being more accepting of the L and the G, and somewhat on the T but not really (I mean, egads, people still talk about trans* people as if they were somehow different species, e.g. in another online community that I *was* part of before it went all shitty, there was a thread every few months called “would you date a transgender?” (imagine lots of rolled eyeballs)).
Shadow – Ah. I’m sort of part of a similar thing with a different online community (who are or were members of the aforementioned other online community that went to shit). Except for that in our case we’re allowed to disagree and call people out for being shitty assholes.
Also, how fucked up is it that I had to get raped for a year, PLUS get the right surgeries PLUS get the diagnosis and the homelessness and all that other shit… just for random cockbites to take my words seriously? Even though the horrors had NOTHING TO DO with whatever I was saying?
Also, just read that forum post on WomanBoobz and AUUUUUGGGH. No wonder that exploded. Misandry and transphobia are soooo not comparable.
Misandry: at most, causes social discomfort
Transphobia: causes… murder and suicide. A LOT of murder and suicide.
LBT – *winces* Ewww, someone made that argument without irony?
Alice — look about two pages back for a link from me about HeatherN.
Cloudiah re: B — I think that was snark.
——
What really kills me about the secret room is that a private space where the literal only requirement for admission is some preset “you are not a troll” criteria might be a good idea. No, it wouldn’t be a truly safe space, but around here the idea of becoming troll bait is a bit limiting sometimes. And by preset criteria I mean like, mods recognize your nym // you’ve been here X long // someone vouches for you. Not a vote you in or out but a simple “yeah, this one’s been here X long and not been trolly” (I’m thinking a month~)
But yeah, even that would be bound to fail
WTF I meant there wasn’t some magical safe space so much as somewhere to give out contact info en masse and ask advice on things you fear trolls will use against you.
And part of my logic here is that I will not be so lax with the banhammer on Manboobz: The Magazining (btw, that lapse in comments from me? Comments are formatted on our budding template) — this is also why I’m holding any open “anyone who wants to help, for the love of all the gods please do! If nothing else you can hold a banhammer!”
*an open
And yes, my spelling is this sucky on my code, love the “wtf is going on…oh, helps if I don’t misspell my shit”
Argenti, do people have to sign up or something in order to start contributing? I would like to write a few articles if it’s not too much trouble. (Sorry if this question has been asked too much lately – I haven’t been following MTM as much as I should have).
Ally — at present we’re “hosted” on my laptop, once I finish the theme, and get people who seem serious about writing more than snark, I’m going to fork over the absurdly expensive $4 a month for server space — at some point before then we need to rename it as general thought seems to be that carrying over some manboobz humor is fine and dandy, but the site proper is going to be general feminism, not a spin-off.
In short, you can write whenever you want and I’ll get people added once we’re on a real server 🙂 (you have my email? This nym at gmail, or email pecunium, in totally unsurprising things, he has my email)
Isn’t that what the ‘open threads for personal stuff’ are for? I’m sure the trolls can lurk there, but David won’t let them comment/deletes any butthead stuff. They seem to be working out well, as in being safe, but doesn’t have that “You’re allowed in the treehouse, but zie is not” feel to it.
And guys, I code, I don’t write! I’m happy doing the backed, but this cannot happen without y’all!
Maybe? I’ve yet to see anything said in them used against someone, so yeah, they might. I am, again, having an Owly related wary. Plus, I have a stalker ex, so I’m a bit weird about private // public.
@Argenti
Good points.
Argenti – Damn it, I need to send inmy contribution. >_<
Damn you homework.
I wonder if I can submit something on the "Asian women are all submissive" stereotype. That's been pissing me off for a while now, because first of all, fuck you racist asshole and second of all my mother.
Also, is it just me, or is this site constantly resizing itself when it loads on an iDevice? Been annoying me as of late.
I always want to introduce the “all Asian women are submissive” guys to my mother-in-law, and then pass out popcorn.
CassandraSays – Introduce them to both your mother in law and my mother. Pass out popcorn and bowls of pho. Sit back and enjoy.
Wielding a banhammer?
That sounds like fun.
Thinking about it, I don’t know any Asian women who I could describe as submissive without peeing myself laughing and crossing my fingers behind my back. Granted that that’s partly selection bias, but still.
(Also, why waste good pho on misogynists? They can have instant ramen or nothing.)
@LBT
Yeah. It was really frustrating because I was itching to back Lauralot up but I was wary of telling queer people how to do queer. It just felt like whatever I do I’m gonna stomp on someone.
@Alice
I don’t know if it was so much that people couldn’t call each other on their shit, because that usually isn’t a problem on manboobz (individuals may sometimes react badly or turn into assholes when they get called on their shit, but it hasn’t really been a community problem (as far as I could tell). I wasn’t a member of the forum, or the secret room though, so I’m not sure how things went down over there.
@neuroticbeagle
The open threads are a relatively new thing, and trolls have used personal information that regulars revealed to attack them before, although I don’t think that’s happened recently.
@Argenti
I’d be happy to volunteer as a mod, but I think that the mod policy should be generally agreed upon. We should also have some kind of flagging signal a la Feministe’s giraffe. That way the community is able to have it’s say about the moderation process, and we’re much less likely to miss something due to our own privilege or ignorance.
On the QUILTBAG (what does the I stand for, if anything?) maybe we need a D for Dunno. I think I’d fit in that one. 😛
Re: what Shadow said about wanting to ask stuff – if anyone wants to contact me, y’all are welcome to drop a line, email addys or whatever at my blog. I moderate all the comments. It’s a hard task but somene has to … why, sometimes there might be four* in a month!
*three of which will be spam
That was my fault; I was being unreasonable and I should apologize for it.
I don’t think I should be a mod, I’m too impatient with people who may mean well but who’re not very bright.
@ kittehs
The I is for intersex, I think.
::shakes fist::
Curse you, blockquote monster!