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!
Kittehs, I remember the race conversation being really, really judgmental of you in particular.
I suppose you’re right. I (and a few others) disagree with almost everyone here regarding capitalism, yet I don’t try to argue about it because 1) there’s no point and 2) no one here is a libertarian.
katz, I don’t remember that much detail, but it was severely fucked up all round. I iz the ultimate bigot, all the classes of people who aren’t Mr K don’t get a look-in! 😛
Ally – yup, that’s it.
I’m confused as to how anyone walked away from the race conversation with the impression that the consensus was that people were obligated to examine themselves and keep examining until they’re attracted to everyone. I do think that if you find yourself saying that you don’t find anyone of race X attractive at all then yeah, that’s probably motivated by racism, but the next assumed step, that people are obligated to try to change their attractions, and the one after that, that other people have the right to demand that they do so, are steps that I would never, ever agree with, regardless of which group of people are in the excluded position. Standing against the idea that it’s ever OK to socially pressure people into sex they don’t want is just too basic and important a principle to me, and I don’t think you can go down path A without some people ending up being put in situation B.
Yes, it’s one thing to say to yourself, “Why do I find all the individuals of class X automatically unattractive?” and maybe think yeah, socialisation, prejudice, whatever. But that’s as far as it goes – and seriously, it should be about ordinary interaction with people, not about who you want to fuck.
Doesn’t this then get to a reductio ad absurdum where we all have to find everyone sexually attractive otherwise prejudice?
I have hired oodles of people I would never find sexually attractive. I have purchased goods and services off oodles of people I would never find sexually attractive. I have socialised with oodles of people I would never find sexually attractive.
Sexual attractiveness is a special case, because physical attraction is necessary. All those other things are not dependent upon physical attraction, and its really leery if physical attraction forms part of the requirements for decisions on those other things – because it’s not relevant.
Depends whether your preferences are about looks or about icky racial stereotypes, too. “I like small slim women with dark hair, therefore it’s unsurprising that Asian women are well represented among the women I’m attracted to” – OK, sure. “I love Asian women because they’re so sweet and submissive” – ick.
Yeah, that too. One of the things that a lot of people find disconcerting about the manosphere, I think, is that the assumption that woman I don’t want to fuck = woman who has no value of any kind and who should probably be poofed out of existence because she’s of no use to me. And they then project that idea onto other people, which is how you get to the conversations where they’re all “women are dehumanizing me by not fucking me!”. They think people of the appropriate sex who they don’t want to fuck are worthless, so they assume everyone else does to, but honestly, thinking that way is really weird.
I don’t want to fuck my granny or my dad. Still think they’re both pretty awesome and worthwhile people, you know?
First off, a big “thank you” to RubyRubyRuby, for starting this whole mess off.
Second, an apology for engaging and then running off. I had to go to work, and I feel like I disrespected you all and the good faith we try to have in each other by commenting and running.
Third, an apology for defensiveness. I’m so used to coming here and seeing people whine that they’re oppressed because the people they want to fuck won’t fuck them (I mean, we had a Friendzone troll just this morning), that I read it into a conversation where it wasn’t actually happening. That was unfair of me and I’m sorry.
The thing is, I’m pretty sure most of us who are involved in social justice work already strive to do that. I’ve unpacked a lot of my younger disgust with fat bodies, and I know there are several of us who are both kinky and kink-critical, so.
emilygoddess: You have nothing to apologize for.
Yep, did some more thinking about your point about Asian women, and this website pretty much sums up how I feel: http://fucknofetishization.tumblr.com/FAQ
I think the second example is a problem because it’s a racial fetish and is other-ing.
I was so stressed about this thread at work, I was almost obsessing over it (thankfully, work is pretty distracting). I know a lot of people I care about were hurting and I felt terrible not knowing what was happening, and worrying that we were going to have another massive schism. This community is so important to me and I’d hate to see it blow up. I’m so glad to see it calming down.
Basically any time that you find yourself attempting to tie a behavioral or personality trait to a phenotype, stop and think again about what you’ve just said/thought. But please for the love of Ceiling Cat don’t then turn around and expect the group of people you’ve been projecting that shit onto to help you process your feelings about it/assist you in your emotional evolution/whatever.
I was arguing on this thread as I took breaks from trying to level two beds of dirt outside. =P
Exactly!
Oh, shoot, no. We’re in umpteen time zones, we have lives afk, we have stuff to do. I had to cut out early last night – or rather, this morning: it was 1am when all this was starting up.
Seriously, you’ve nothing to apologise for.
I may be the only one, but I wasn’t hurt by this. Skeeved, irritated-verging-on-offended, but that’s about it.
Hm, a comparison example? My brother’s best friend categorically states that Asian women aren’t attractive, my BF asked the other day if I’d seen the black woman who had walked by (I hadn’t) because she was attractive and he doesn’t usually find black women attractive. The former? Dude, really? It isn’t possible? The latter? A preference that, clearly, has exceptions.
X cannot be attractive vs I am not usually attracted to X
Excellent example, Argenti.
And to add another layer, if someone thinks that EVERYONE in a certain racial group is attractive? Fetish, not preference.
Urgh, yes.
Yeah, that’s just, urgh. And bull, you’d think masochist + ethical sadist (oh yeah kitteh, I completely forgot to mention that, I know we’d discussed it!) = perfect right? Different preferred acts.
Why am I going TMI here? No bloody way is everyone who COULD satisfy your fetish GOING TO.
Kitteh — he enjoys his partners reactions, particularly if they’re caused by a few painful (but not dangerous) things that the partner enjoys him doing to them. So really, it’s a bit like enjoying how your partner reacts to [insert non-painful sex act here]
Argenti, I’m looooooost, which bit is this responding to? I has lackafood brain.
We had, months upon months ago, discussed ethical sadists. With you questioning how that wasn’t an oxymoron. Seeing how I’m now dating one and remembered that convo and asked him, that last comment I made reminded me, and here we are.
@emilygoddess:
I’m not sure why you’re pointing this out. Did it seem as if I was arguing the opposite? That wasn’t my intention.
Regarding the race-preference-thread, I might misremember it, since it was a long time ago. But according to my memory, it went down like this: For some reason (don’t remember the beginning of the whole thing at all) a discussion started about people having sexual preferences tied to race. I and certain other people said that you can’t blame someone for their sexual preferences per se, since you don’t really control what turns you on, although you can obviously blame someone for being a racist. I, and others who have said the same thing, got loads of shit thrown at us, because we were supposedly defending people’s right to be racist or something. We were told that if you find yourself having a “racist boner”, than you really ought to try and change that, by, for instance, consciously exposing yourself to media where people of the racial group that you do not now find attractive are presented in an attractive light. Eventually I was like “okay, guess that might be a good idea”, which in hindsight seems like a weird concession, but all these “if that’s the way you are, you’re a RACIST and there’s no defense for that!” or (since I kept repeating that I was speaking hypothetically, not about myself, I don’t have any racial sexual preferences AFAIK) “you’re defending racists!” kept wearing me down.
I do think, however, that some of the people most heavily involved in that discussion aren’t active on the site anymore. I remember Cassandra was in that thread and kept writing pretty much what she writes in this one, but I seem to remember a gang of people (but possibly my memory plays tricks on me, and they were just a few individuals who kept doing lots and lots of angry posting) who thought that the standpoint that your sexual preferences are not under your direct control and therefore you can’t be obligated to adjust them in a more politically correct direction was a horrible one.
::lightbulb::
Oh, I remember! Yes, I hadn’t got past the definition of a sadist as taking pleasure in the other person’s unwillingness/distress as much or more than their physical pain.