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!
@ Just Give Up
you are right, nobody should, however, many do and you are not alone. i worked at my local battered womens shelter for many years, providing crisis counseling, referrals to social and psychological services, intake and house supervision for many years.
i urge you to see if there is anything similar where you live. if you are in the US and let me know which state/county, i can find the closest service where you live. you are also entitled to victim’s assistance through the local prosecutor’s office if your abuser is being prosecuted.
i urge you to get some help. what you are going through is unfortunately a very normal part of the process, but wishing death upon yourself and to the point of recommending it to others is a very bad place to be mentally. help is available, i promise. if you are in the US, i am more than happy to help you find it. if you are outside the US, let us know so we can see what we can do about finding other resources.
Just give up
There is always a way PLEASE reach out to us and tell others that we are here for them too.
Great point fruitloopsie.
I find it really telling that one of the first conversations in teh comments section of the HuffPost article was a guy saying “women don’t have the right to feel safe”.
and Avicenna showed up in the comments. Days of yore.
@melissia and enhanced vibes ~
here’s a great quote from one of the huffpost related articles, a man, relating how he was ‘raped’ 16 years ago and is still in ‘hell’.
of course, this is theoretically possible, but i would have to question how drunk they both were, how he managed to have an erection while ‘blacked out’ and how did he get to her house? it’s hard to imagine that she physically picked him up, threw him in her car, drove back to her place, carried him onto the bed and then had her way with him.
so he was apparently sober enough to participate in getting into this woman’s bed and to ejaculate in the right direction to cause pregnancy but was apparently speechless as he could not say ‘no’. it’s a tough sell, ain’t it?
Fauxmy, I’d rather we didn’t go around trying to poke holes in rape survivors’ stories.
A man can ejaculate without wanting too, especially after being impaired with alcohol or other drugs, so no, that is not a tough sell.
Agreed with katz. Men can absolutely be sexually assaulted when drunk, and nit-picking recollections of their accounts is a big issue that prevents many of them from accessing justice and support.
i hear ya. sorry if i pushed any buttons. will simply say that the physical act of transporting his drunken self from drinking establishment to bed would be a challenge under most circumstances. i am an extremely tall, strong woman, my husband is the same size. although i can carry him for very brief periods of time, anything further is impossible without assistance. this is true for both of us.
i do however understand your point, completely.
@fauxmy
Wow, that whole comment is really fucking gross. Among other things, you seem to be confusing “blackout drunk” with “passed out”. I’ve never blacked out, but I’ve heard it described (AA meetings are educational in some ways), and all it is is a period of time you don’t remember. People can be conscious and mobile in a black out, they just won’t remember any of it. So all your speculation about how she’d have had to carry him, etc aren’t really relevant.
And I’m really not down with questioning the stories of rape survivors, especially since “how did you get an erection if you didn’t want it?” is a pretty common tactic for questioning male survivors.
Also, this:
Failure to say ‘no’ is not consent. And we don’t even know whether he said it or not. This is just exactly what is said about women who are raped while drunk, or raped in any way really – “she didn’t say no” or “she stopped saying no” or whatever bullshit. The onus is not on the victim to object, ffs.
fauxmy: Don’t. Just don’t. As to the difficulty of his getting there… I have a friend who drank too much in college. He would end up blackout drunk, and wake in places he had walked to… miles (like a dozen) from the last place he remembered.
I once drank enough that I had a few minutes which were sort of blacked out (I was quite confused until I recalled the events, as to how my shirt had gotten so dirty on the front).
So no, the not recalling is far from dispositive. And (as a man) erections/response are not things we decide to do.
So please, just don’t.
as i stated above. i hear you. i apologize. the mans many other comments were quite difficult for me, i wish i had not seen them or reacted here. i sincerely apologize for my comment above.
Agreed, just don’t. Everyone has a right to feel safe– this includes rape victims, regardless of gender.
Thank you, fauxmy. Everyone appreciates that.
And here we have a prime example of the right way to do things.
Get it wrong. Make a mistake. Choose the wrong words. Whatever we do tripping over our own shoelaces – a short, sincere, proper apology gets it all over and done with in less than 3 lines.
If only the dopey visitors who get here by clown car taxi could learn such a simple lesson from the Decent Person 101 handbook.
fauxmy: No worries. I understand. On the face of it I don’t really think he’s arguing in the best of faith, but that’s a different issue (if there are kids, then they need to be supported).
The link in David’s post that says ‘go read it’? Read it.
I know that sometimes links here take you to ugly places. This is not one of those. Read it.
I know some of you read this blog to quickly find out what’s happening in the MRM and don’t have time to read all the links. Read that one.
How can you be a feminist if you hate a certain group of women and actively contribute to their oppression? Am I just missing something?
TERFs identify as feminists. Their (awful) ideas are drawn from a long history of radical feminist thought. Pretending they are not feminists is a way to disassociate with them, rather than trying to tackle the problem they represent in the feminism movement.
There transphobic/transmisogynistic feminists, racist feminists, ableist feminists, the list goes on. They all believe they are supporting women but they define “women” as cis, white, neurotypical, often straight women. Some of these feminists are very influential. That’s a huge problem! We need to face bigotry within the feminist movement to try and eliminate it. We can’t just stick our fingers in our ears and sing “NA NA NA NA.” 🙂
Oh, okay; I think I understand now. Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me, Viscaria; I appreciate it.
If a feminist excludes certain groups of women from zir definition of ‘women’, is it okay to say ze is bad at doing feminism?
Just Give Up,
I”m sorry you have been treated this way and it has been so hard to go on. Don’t give up. You are not better off dead. Women do get away from their abusers and go on to live their lives. I don’t know where you are, but if you call a rape crisis line in the US they may be able to get you some counseling. Also, we’re here and you can talk to us.
scott1139,
Sure you can. They’re the worst.
Okay, will do.
IIRC, someone here posted a link to a PDF version of Lundy Bancroft’s book. We could refer Just Give Up to it; it might help zir.
Just Give Up, I am so sorry for what your abuser has put you through, and I’m sorry that the law has not protected you.