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.
>>>Yeah, BlackBloc, because there are SO many MRM rallies around the world.
Bash Back doesn’t protest the MRA. They oppose fascism, of which the MRA is just a tiny faction.
Um, as someone on the left, I actually quite appreciate a discussion of how counter-protesting against bigots can be made more effective, even when I disagree with the suggestions offered. It doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate that they showed up to counter-protest.
OFFS BlackBloc, the thing about the tee was because of the associations the hammer and sickle have for most people. USSR, Stalin, Lenin, whatever, are NOT positive images, and that’s what people are going to see. You’re determined to be a martyr about every damn aspect of this, aren’t you?
Like hellkell said, haven’t you some art you disapprove of to go destroy? (No people haven’t forgotten that side-eyeing comment.)
gillyrosebee – applause! You’ve put it perfectly.
Bash Back doesn’t protest the MRA
We are all hallucinating together.
You mean when he said that he was uneasy with the use of a symbol that has become synonymous with Stalinism and other totalitarian forms of communism among most people?
I get that the symbol has a meaning outside of that association, and I get that it’s widely used, but is it really red-baiting to point out that it has negative connotations in the minds of most people?
Anupodes!
I am marking it on the calendar that the blockquote monster got me today for the very first time.
RE: thebewilderness
There needs to be a term, like Godwin, for that time in every comment thread when women are told that if we would just be nicer and show some compassion
It’s not just women. I’ve seen it with queers, trans folks, disability, racism, poor folk… it’s pretty much endemic.
RE: CassandraSays
What’s a one-word way to express the idea that someone is asking every woman in the world to be their mom?
“Sexist, Misogynist, anti-lass/Women ain’t here to wipe your ass”?
BlackBloc, make up your fucking mind. This is about them being at an MRM rally. You then ask us, on a misogyny mocking site, if we were there. In case it’s escaped your attention, not everyone here is a communist of whatever stripe, nor a member of any Canadian organisations, nor in Canada, nor members of an anti-fascist movement. This is about the MRM rally, not about fascism; it’s about the specific rally these protestors attended. You’re derailing even more and now it seems you’re complaining ‘cos we’re not in your particular groups doing your particular protests.
Grow the fuck up, seriously.
Ninjaed by Athywren!
Third time today, must be something in the water.
thebewilderness, congratulations on having come to the notice of the blockquote monster at last! 😛
And now kittehserf has engaged in Red baiting as well.
@ LBT
What a perfect chant for a Scot! I should teach it to my granny.
Oh, get off the cross.
Sigh… I’ve been red-baited, plenty of times. That ain’t what’s going on here.
Red baiting LOL LOL fuck, yeah, what a poor little martyr you are. Evidently any criticism of anything done by anyone identifying as any sort of communist/anarchist/whatever = Red baiting.
Try thinking with your brain instead of your ego, willya?
Kittehs, you are just like Joseph McCarthy though.
BlackBloc could of course be doing some elaborate performance art here. Zie’s doing a great impression of an MRA rage-wanking.
cloudiah, I know. It’s the haircut, people get us confused all the time.
I actually have somewhat of a sentimental attachment to the iconography of the Soviet Union (I even have a little bust of Lenin in my apartment), and even so I wouldn’t use it to identify myself/a group I belonged to because I know how that would read to other people. That’s not Red-baiting, it’s pragmatism.
Okay, I don’t recall the discussion to be definitive about it, but I don’t remember mockery about the hammer and sickle. Robust discussion of the issue, yes. Some discomfort, yes. But I seem to recall that it was basically pretty openly debated, which is for me, always relevant and absolutely never off the table. That figure carries a whole lot of mythological historical content and just reusing it in pink does not eradicate or release that baggage.
But this would be precisely the problem, for me, anyway. When you oppose neo-Nazis, you do so by deconstructing and countering their racist mythmaking. When you oppose homophobes, etc. When you counter MRAs you do so based on their misogyny, because misogyny is the framework through which they filter and focus their bigotry.
Anything else falls into a kind of pro-forma flailing that is too easy to dismiss as hooliganism or simple anarchic “anti-ism”. It’s too inchoate, too unfocused to be effective or persuasive. It’s a “Whaddaya got?” approach to activism.
Okay… I don’t know if this moderation filter is still running, but let me give this another try.
Intersectionality does not downplay the importance of one system of oppression (misogyny/sexism) in favor of another (racism and heterosexism). In fact, as Patricia Hill Collins notes:
(This is actually something I tried explaining to GWW once). But the point is that intersectional attempts to understand oppression resist placing primacy over individual systems of oppression. The things the MRM do aren’t bad simply because they hate women, they’re bad because they contribute to a system which oppresses women. They also contribute to a system that oppress queer folks, people of color, people with disabilities, etc.
And that is exactly what was wrong with my usage of the term “lame.” Despite any efforts on my part to vet ablist language from my usage, it happened and I became part of the oppression of people with disabilities. It wasn’t bad because “I’m motivated by a hate of people with disabilities” (because I’m not). It’s bad because I abjectified people with disabilities.
That is why I demand an intersectionalist account of oppression on the part of other feminists, and why I am very unhappy about the criticisms levied here (both in the comments ignorance of intersectionality, and towards the protesters).
@ gillyrosebee
Thank you, I didn’t have the patience to type all that out.
Haha, it’s almost like we have the same friend, Athywren. 🙂
My friend was also a really bright, smart guy. He’s the one that first taught me about straw-men and other logical fallacies, and I loved talking to him. He had such a beautiful brain, that I even developed a crush on him a while. He friend-zoned me though (mock angry fist-shaking.) 🙂
Now I find him using the very same fallacies he once condemned. I wish I knew what had happened to that beautiful mind I use to love so much. 🙁
>>>Evidently any criticism of anything done by anyone identifying as any sort of communist/anarchist/whatever = Red baiting.
No, the act of criticising someone for the simple of identifying as a communist/anarchist/whatever is Red baiting, just like you do when you criticize someone for wearing a hammer & sickle shirt and saying that that is detrimental to “the Cause”, or call it “pragmatism” to throw radicals under the bus.
@BlackBloc
Recognising the negative connotations that come along with the corruption of communism is not red baiting. Those connotations may be unfair, in another place I would vigorously argue that they are, but they are what they are. Until we find a way to reclaim them -and maybe wearing them in pink on our t-shirts will do that- they’re pretty much ruined for us. Why get bogged down in arguments of symbolism when we can make a case against class and capitalism? I don’t see the point.
(Reminds self to carry Lenin bust around with me, just so the comrades don’t feel like I’m letting the side down.)