MRAs seem to think that they can spin their way out of pretty much anything. And on the internet, particularly in their own little echo chamber, they can kind of get away with it. It’s when they venture out into the real world that they run into some trouble.
Take, for example, the mad spinning that accompanied the implosion of the Canadian Association for Equality’s “E Day” concert scheduled for last weekend. CAFE, you may recall, is a Canadian Men’s Rights group that’s probably most famous for organizing a series of talks by Men’s Rights-friendly folks on Canadian campuses that, well, caused a tiny bit of a stir.
Oh, sorry. The group says that even though its “focus is currently on men and boys … [W]e do not consider ourselves a Men’s Rights Group.”
Anyway, so this non-Men’s Rights group decided to hold a concert on Toronto Island celebrating “Equality Day,” a holiday they made up just for the occasion. They found a venue, got some sponsors and even managed to convince a bunch of bands to sign on.
Everything was ready to go until a few days before the concert was scheduled to happen, when some of the people who had been roped into the event discovered just what they had gotten themselves involved with.
A headline from the Huffington Post sums up what happened next with admirable succinctness:
The exodus from E-Day kicked off after a post appeared on the lefty Canadian news site Rabble.ca pointing out what CAFE was really about. Musicians and sponsors quickly distanced themselves from the event, and CAFE lost its venue as well.
CAFE’s response to all this? A press release stating:
CAFE received overwhelming support from musicians, sponsors and the general public for Equality Day. After several months of productive collaboration, the original venue Artscape Gibralter-Point cancelled the use of their location after receiving a small number of misinformed complaints.
That’s a rather … odd way to describe what happened. According to a good number of those who had originally signed on for the concert, it was CAFE that was actively spreading misinformation about their own event and hiding its Men’s Rights agenda.
The musical group Giraffe posted a statement on Facebook saying:
We feel that we were not fully informed about what it was that is being supported here, and also that calling it a festival that celebrates “equality” as opposed to “men’s equality” was intentionally misleading to us in it’s effort to entice us to play this show.
Hogtown Brewers, one of the sponsors, offered a similar explanation for why they pulled out. “We’re kinda surprised that an event that built itself on being for equality turned out to be anything but that,” the president of the company told the The Star. “The minute that it came to our attention that it wasn’t a concert in line with our values, we moved to remove our support. We regret any involvement.”
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Artscape, the venue that was to have originally held the event, told The Globe and Mail that
[t]he premise of the event as it was given to us was a fair and equitable event that was family-friendly and a lovely music festival. It has since turned political and we anticipated that there could be health and safety concerns as well.
Perhaps the most amazing revelation: Jagermeister, which had been listed as a sponsor on CAFE’s publicity materials, said it had never agreed to be part of the event in the first place:
Thanks @amirightfolks for bringing this to our attention. We did not approve a sponsorship to this festival nor approve the use of our logo.
— Jägermeister Canada (@jagermeisterCA) May 30, 2014
CAFE’s creative, er, spinning continued in an interview the group’s outreach director Denise Fong gave to NowToronto. I’m not even going to summarize this one. Go read it.
A scaled down E-Day celebration of sorts did go ahead last weekend. It consisted of some CAFE volunteers standing on a corner handing out pamphlets and talking to passersby about their support of “boys, men and families.” (That’s a strangely limited notion of equality, huh?)
In their press release last week, CAFE announced that
Equality Day musical activities will be postponed to next Sunday, June 8. Details to be announced.
So far no details have been announced. But, hey, they’ve still got a couple of days to go.
On a totally unrelated note, I will be holding “E-Kwalitee Day” in my apartment sometime this afternoon. I am proud to announce that I have managed to book some outstanding musical acts for this extravaganza. They don’t know it yet, but I have written their names down in my appointment book.
Here’s the headliner:
I support kittens, cats and families. Ask me why!
I’ve encountered the whole “nope, not dating you because you’re bi, which means you’ll cheat on me/leave me for a man/insert assumption here” thing too, when I was younger. And yeah, it isn’t a whole lot of fun, and it is based on negative stereotypes, but it would never occur to me to tell someone reacting that way to reexamine their refusal to date people who’re bi because a. they have a right to decide who they want to date, even if it sucks for me, and b. why would I want to date someone who doesn’t really want to date me? I don’t WANT to be involved with someone who has to be strong-armed into it, whether that’s via social coercion or personal guilt-tripping or whatever. It would be nice if society as a whole would drop the idea that bisexual people are evil untrustworthy homewreckers, but on a personal are-we-going-to-date-right-now level? Nope, not OK for me to ask them to change their mind.
Now, do I need to put flashing LEDs around this post in order for people to drop all of their fucking straw arguments? Maybe some loud music, too?
@Ally
Yep, totally get that now.
This was just poorly articulated, then?
@ katz
Yeah, I was hoping we were just getting crossed wires there, sorry if I sounded touchy. The whole “your preferences are inconveniencing me/other people, and isn’t women’s sexuality meant to be fluid?” thing is one of those subjects where I’m not prepared to compromise at all, but I’d really rather not see Exodus 2 – The Grudge happen either.
Yes, hellkell, I shouldn’t have phrased it that way, and I apologize for it.
And I agree completely with you on this. Can you please stop misrepresenting my views? I already admitted that I phrased my points poorly, I apologized, and I attempted to clarify my views.
I really don’t want to have this argument, especially not with folks like you, for whom I have a lot of respect.
*drapes solar powered LEDs over the thread* there, those should stay lit awhile.
Cassandra — I think you and Ally are talking past each other, based on your last comment. Nobody, at least no one here, wants to strong arm lesbians into dating trans women, because yep, who’d want to be with someone guilt tripped into being with them? That’d suck all around. But as you said about biphobia, it would be nice if society as a whole would take a look at these stereotypes and slowly back away from them.
Who you love/sex up is still going to be who you love/sex up, but less “oh, you’re X, GTFO” would be great, regardless what X is.
Cassandra, you didn’t sound touchy at all, I was just communicating REALLY badly.
My last sentence needs a clause added about the GTFO being based on social stereotypes and GTFO of that sort of relationship, not that bedroom. Getting dumped sucks, but better to just go if it can’t be worked out (I hope you all know what I mean here, worked out like…”we don’t eat out enough” “well that’s an easy fix”, not deal breakers)
I’m starting to get the sense, after going back and rereading the thread a little, that we all basically agree, especially on the big points.
@ cassandrakitty
Agreed. I honestly think people auto rejecting me like that is a blessing in disguise. I probably wouldn’t want to date them anyway! But yes, never even occurred to me to try to guilt anyone into dating me, that’s abuser stuff.
Which would be fine if we could remove the “btw you’re probably a (insert reference to specific form of bigotry here) if you don’t want to date people who’re X” part. Ally wasn’t the only one who was making comments that were leaning pretty heavily in that direction. I’m glad that she at least is now expressing a much more reasonable position, but I’m still side-eyeing a few other people.
(And just plain confused about the idea that people shouldn’t care about genitals in general. If someone is pan then sure, I guess maybe that’s how it works? But most people aren’t, hence my confusion. And even more confused by the idea that preferring to fuck people with genital configuration A rather than B means that you basically see that person as a giant walking vulva/penis and are reducing them to their genitals.)
@ fromafar
Yeah, I always told people that I was bi right upfront for precisely that reason. If they were going to not be OK with that I figured I’d rather know early on, before I got emotionally invested in the relationship. It was also a good way to weed out people on the other end of the spectrum who just love the idea of dating a bisexual woman, in a fetishy sort of way. I’d imagine that trans people probably want to do that kind of weeding out of people who see them as fetish objects too.
I’m glad you understand my position now, cassandrakitty.
@everyone
I’m really sorry for starting this mess. If I didn’t do such a shitty job of explaining my views, none of this would have happened. I’m sorry. I may have to spend some time away from this place.
@ Ally
The position that you summarized above is fine with me, btw.
I blame Ruby for making inflammatory comments in the first place. Us fighting might have even been her goal.
@ally
It’s not your fault.
Is there value to examining our preferences, not to determine whether they are “right” or “wrong,” but just to question some of the attitudes behind them? If I wasn’t interested in men of Chinese descent, for example, I think it would be worthwhile for me to ask myself if it is because I feel that they are not properly “manly” like White men. If I look honestly at myself and find the answer is yes, that doesn’t mean I have to go and find some willing Chinese-Canadian guy to have sex with in order to make up for it, because choosing not to have sex with people is not oppressive. However it would be good for me to have identified this racist attitude in myself, because it has implications beyond just who I have sex with. If I am ever in a position to be hiring and promoting others, it would be oppressive for me to hire a white man over an asian man because I felt white men embody concepts associated with masculinity and success, like assertiveness and leadership ability; and that Asian men do not have these qualities and are therefore unable to do well.
Similarly, if I were to find myself unattracted to the idea of trans women with penises, I hope I would ask myself whether it is because I felt trans women were not really women unless/until they undergo bottom surgery. If that was true, it would affect whether or not I allowed these women into women-only spaces. It would affect whether I understood the transmisogyny they face as misogyny, something that I specifically oppose as a feminist.
I dunno.
No, don’t go! Don’t let the TERF (apologist) and the resulting mess send you away. Much as this discussion turned into a disaster, it started because we had a TERF drop by, and fuck that, we’re better than letting one of them scare people off.
Cassandra — “if you, personally, don’t like X, then you’re Y” = bad bad beans! yeah (thank you Doctor for that line!). “If you, all of society, don’t like X, maybe we need to have a talk about Y”? Idk. It would be nice if trying to discuss this particular form of it could go the same way as discussing biphobia, or why PoC in ads tend to have stereotypically white features. The question certainly needs to be about social trends, not individual people’s love lives.
@ Ally
For what it’s worth, I don’t think you really did anything wrong. We know you aren’t a troll. I kinda assumed what you meant based on past experience, and the fact that the ‘cis is a slur’ troll was being an ass, but its good to have clarification in case someone not familiar with this blog stumbles in here.
I think it was interesting to have a conversation about this sort of thing in a space with people capable of nuance and discussion without shouting over each other. I think I actually learned some things and feel better about my ability to express my feelings about this topic.
So, thanks? But I understand if you need a break. :/
What WWTH said!
That was nicely put, Viscaria. I think what you’re saying is what makes sense about “examining one’s preferences”.
Clarification, Ally, I understood what you meant in the first place because you had expressed your opinion correctly in another place, and I assumed the same to be true here, even if poorly worded initially here.
Guh. I need to go nuke my coffee.
And I second all the “please stay, Ally”-comments.
@ Viscaria
Yes! Seconding Dvärghundspossen.
I don’t know. This whole argument really hit home for me, being a trans lesbian who has had to deal with cis lesbian TERFs. I understand that there isn’t really a disagreement among us anymore and I’m not holding a grudge or anything like that, but these arguments have been very hurtful for me. My leave may be temporary or permanent. And please understand that this is no one’s fault but my own. I got so fucking carried away in responding to RubyX3 that I ended up saying some unacceptable things on accident. I shouldn’t be careless like that, especially since I know many people here are rape survivors and me stepping on them is unacceptable, even if it is unintentional on my part.
I’m not sure if I’ll leave yet, but it sure is tempting.