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!
What? Fuck off.
It’s unnecessary. Gender socialization begins before birth, I don’t need to be reminded I was born female in a patriarchy.
Seriously? If someone is “ashamed” to be a radical feminist, which means ashamed of their support for women’s rights, then I’m some jerk for wondering if they aren’t committed?
Because you said this
And then made a claim that no one is trying to exclude trans women and anyone who doesn’t like TERFs isn’t a real feminist. The first two words in the acronym are trans exclusionary for fucks sake.
You clearly have some sort of anti-trans agenda. That isn’t a view point that is going to be well received here so I’m not sure what you’re really trying to accomplish here other than making an ass out of yourself.
So, if we’re not doing feminism according to the gospel of RubyRubyRuby, we’re not feminists at all?
Looks like Real Feminists could be a very small group indeed.
I would just like to direct everyone’s attention to this:
I think I’ve found those mythical feminists MRAs are always talking about who think that if you’re female you can never do anything wrong.
RubyRubyRuby, you might care to read this. Plenty of examples of transmisogyny from radical feminists here. Cathy Brennan & co, anyone?
http://www.insufferableintolerance.com/terf-ideology-one-massive-logical-fail/
The shame comes from all radical feminist thought being associated with those radical feminists who are hateful and who don’t support the rights of all women.
Sorry if I got that wrong, Ally S.
No, she just agrees that asshole is a male-gendered slur, of course.
ARGH you made me snortlaugh through my nose, Howard!
::clutches nose, whimpering::
Do you even know what that word means?
I told you why I was angry. And I don’t give a fuck about a transmisogynist’s opinions, so I’m not going to care about “asking questions” as if I care about maintaining a polite dialogue with them. They deserve to be shunned and called out, not given consideration.
No one is obligated to have sex with trans women, but that doesn’t mean that someone’s lack of attraction and/or disgust towards trans women is something that can remain unexamined and just totally accepted as normal. If it’s racist to prefer to have sex with white women, it’s also transmisogyistic to prefer to have sex with cis women just because of genitals.
I’m a woman, too. And I agree with a lot of radfems, just not radfems like you.
How, exactly? Nice cissplaining there, asshole.
Do you have any idea how much harm she has done for trans women? Or do we just not count as women?
Seriously, the fact that you think that Janice Raymond’s attacks on trans women don’t make her a bad feminist is seriously unsettling.
I’m really uncomfortable with the notion that women are always expected to examine their preferences. We don’t seem to ask this of men on a regular basis.
I’ve got my preferences, and I have a right to them. There’s lots of people out there who wouldn’t fuck me on a bet, and that is perfectly OK, no examination needed.
Yeah, I side-eye that, too. It’s awfully close to the “you should be open to sex with whoever’s asking” notion that says we’re not allowed to have preferences or boundaries. Sexual preferences might come from all sorts of sources, some might indeed have lousy origins, but saying women have to examine why they’re not attracted to X type of person is waaaaay too close to denying our NO for my liking. It’s like saying a heterosexual woman not being attracted to any women at all is homophobic, or a lesbian not being attracted to men is heterophobic, if there is such a thing. Sorry, not buying it. Saying “examine your preferences” implies to me that you then have to consider changing them. Nuh-uh.
PS and yes, I know you said nobody’s obliged, Ally, but it’s implicit in the whole idea.
I totally agree that being disgusted by a trans person is wrong and needs serious examination, but bringing sexual preferences into it as if they’re subject to this frankly skeeves me out. And as hellkell said, when do we ask men to examine their preferences this way?
I’m genuinely appalled that the idea that women have the right to enforce whatever sexual boundaries they see fit is up for debate on a feminist-affiliated blog. Everyone has the right to reject potential sexual partners for whatever reasons they want. “No” is a complete sentence when it comes to sex.
There’s also the question of, OK, what if people examine their sexual preferences and still don’t want to have sex with the person who they just examined their potential attraction to? Are they allowed to say no then or do we shame them into re-examining until the person who wanted to have sex with them gets the answer they want?
I think Ally is talking more about discrimination than preferences or tastes.
It’s like one time I went on a date with a guy back when I was doing internet dating and we had a few good dates and he seemed to be really attracted to me, until he found out I’m bi and then he suddenly didn’t want to date me anymore. Like, WTH? I hadn’t changed. It made me feel shitty. You are attracted to me and like me UNTIL you find out I’m not cis, or I’m non-binary or queer? That’s hurtful.
Having preferences and being attracted to people (or not) are different issues I think. Not everyone is expected to be pansexual, but actively discriminating against someone (and automatically declaring them to be unfuckable or unlovable before you even know them) isn’t just about whether or not you find them attractive, IMHO.
Does that make any sense? :/
Are you arguing that sexual orientation is socially conditioned the same way racism is?
This is way too long to be embroidered on a pillow, so QFT.
Also, you don’t use your skin tone to have sex with. You do, generally speaking, in most cases, use your genitals. So if a person just plain doesn’t find penises/vulvas sexually appealing then yes, that is probably going to be a problem for them.
fromafar, I think it is specifically about sex:
Ditto what cassandrakitty said. This is reminding me unpleasantly of the “you had sex with him, why won’t you have sex with meeeeee” shit we mock so often, or the “monogamy is so repressed, you need to be poly!” twaddle a few Sex At Dawn types spout now and again.
Lack of sexual attraction should not be up for debate.
You mean I bought all that Acme Sexy Sex Body Tint for nothing?
@ kittehserf
Yeah, you’re right. I was just having a hard time separating it from social context in my own head.
I agree though. Sexual attraction should not be up for debate.
It’s basically the same logic that a lot of the trolls we get here use all the time to insist that it’s unfair of women to prefer sex with (insert category of men that does not include them) and since it’s unfair those women ought to change their preferences, but with a veneer of social justice language laid over the top of it, and I’m not having it. People are allowed to decide who they do and don’t want to have sex with. You’re allowed to wish that their preferences were different, and you can even think that those preferences are kind of ridiculous, but attempting to shame them into changing their preferences is not OK because, once again, people are allowed to choose who they do and don’t want to have sex with.
(This doesn’t just apply to women, though it’s usually women who get told the reexamine their preferences. Men are allowed to reject potential partners for whatever reason they want too, and again, people can not like their choices, but they don’t get to try to force them to change those choices.)
cassandra, yes, exactly what I was saying.