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 think the argument would be better stated ‘carving exceptions out of your sexual preferences so that you wouldn’t have sex with trans people is socially conditioned.’
This. ^
With the topic being trans people specifically, I just immediately thought of those horror stories about trans women who are attacked or killed by cis men who think they were “tricked” into being attracted to them.
Those dudebros have a right to say “No, thanks. Nevermind.” and walk away. They don’t get to be violent in response. But society will make it into an excuse for violence anyway.
Trans people aren’t trying to “trick” anyone, but I think I’m preaching to the choir now.
Physically attacking someone because you discover genitalia that you weren’t expecting is totally unacceptable, no doubt about that. Saying “sorry but penises/vulvas just aren’t my cup of tea”, otoh, is a sexual preference, and people are allowed to have those.
Ok, here’s what I am trying to say:
Discriminating against trans women in terms of sex is the same as discriminating against women for some particular aspect of their identity. It’s similar to racial preferences in sex. All I’m saying is that transmisogyny can influence people’s sexual preferences. I take back what I said about genitals and I apologize.
…although we really, really ought to be asking this of men on a regular basis, given how many fucked up patriarchal and racist notions are tied to youth, weight, skin color, etc.
But Ally, all you just did is restated what you said before in softer language. The basic meaning (that it’s not OK to have sexual preferences that exclude people based on genitalia that you don’t find sexually appealing) remains unchanged.
Although… there was a discussion on this blog earlier about finding oneself attracted to certain races only, and then most people seemed to agree that if you find yourself thus attracted you’re totally obligated to do your best to change those preferences.
I think Ally has a very good point.
I also don’t think examining a preference means that the preference is inherently wrong. Examination can lead to reaffirmation.
There is alot to unpack about gender, sexuality and how we see and respond to our bodies.
RubyX3 was saying that cis lesbians are attacked for genital preferences by trans lesbians. I should have noted that this arguments made by TERFs is a disingenuous tactic to mask their transmisogyny because what they really believe is that we are men. And I was responding to her with that in mind.
I must have missed that. I don’t have a problem with that at all if someone’s not being a fetishistic creep about it.
Thank you, Lea.
Right. I can see where it would be transphobic to assume, for example, that all trans women have penises. But when you start telling people they need to reconsider what genital configurations they’re interested in, you start treading uncomfortably close to sexism and homophobia.
I hope not. I hope that what people on this blog would be saying is that if that were the case, you might want to examine yourself for racist attitudes and consider whether this is inidcative of underlying issues. That doesn’t mean that you have to try and be attracted to people you are not currently attracted to. It does mean seeing whether it is a sympton of an underlying (socially conditioned) prejudice or just a quirk.
” The basic meaning (that it’s not OK to have sexual preferences that exclude people based on genitalia that you don’t find sexually appealing) remains unchanged.”
That isn’t my point at all, but I admit I phrased my point very poorly.
But what about situations where a cis lesbian really doesn’t find penises sexually appealing and the trans woman who’s interested in dating her has one? Do you think that the cis lesbian has the right to say “no, sorry, I don’t like penises”, or would you insist that she reexamine? What if she then said, OK, I’ve thought about it some more and I still don’t want to have sex with anyone who has a penis? What happens then?
What I’m trying to get you to see here is that the logic of this argument is inherently coercive, and coercion should not be part of any feminist model of how sex is supposed to work.
Er, I’ve actually seen this happen. They may be exaggerating its frequency, but they’re not making it up.
What is your point, then? No matter how you dress it up, this a pretty awful argument. The coercive (as Cassandra mentioned) really sticks in my craw, and there’s no handwaving that away.
^coercive element
I feel like the distinction is between having personal preferences and having prejudices that cause you to discriminate.
As long as your preferences aren’t coming from a place of fetishization, objectification, or othering, and you view people as fully human people regardless of your sexual attraction or lack thereof, then it’s not discrimination?
Does that make sense? I don’t brain good right now…
@ titianblue
Agreed. If you find yourself saying that all people of X racial group are unattractive then yeah, it might be a good idea to think about why you believe that, because generally speaking there are a whole bunch of people who look rather different to each other within any given racial group, which points to social conditioning as probably being the cause of your aversion. If you find yourself going from there to the argument that a person who’s just been rejected on that basis has the right to insist that the person who rejected them reexamine their preferences, otoh, you have taken a very wrong turn somewhere and you need to refer back to the prime sexual directive, which is that people always get to choose who they do and don’t want to have sex with.
The push back Ally is getting sounds alot like the push back fat activists get when they ask people to consider why they think only thin people are sexually attractive.
They also get accused of wanting to make people fuck fatties. But that isn’t true. Asking someone to unpack their assumptions about bodies and sexuality is not telling that person that they have to find people attractive that they don’t.
@cassandrakitty
She has the right to just refuse, of course.
@ fromafar
Yeah, that’s part of what I was getting at with the comment about the guys who show up here bemoaning women’s terribly unfair preferences. A lot of them argue that women aren’t treating them as fully human or are disenfranchising them or whatever by not wanting to have sex with them, but no, that’s not true. You can see someone as fully human and even really like them as a person and think they’re pretty great and still not want to have sex with them.
There’s a fundamental difference between ‘I don’t really like penises’ and ‘so I wouldn’t date a trans woman.’
Just like there’s a fundamental difference between ‘I’m dating a person of x skin color’ and ‘I would only date a person of x skin color.’ (or handling it in an absurdly fetishistic manner, as hellkell put it)
Because somewhere in the continuum of the argument that’s a point where we’re saying ‘because trans women aren’t really women.’
On skin color; I don’t know that it’s useful to say ‘so change your preference,’ but it’s incredibly useful to say ‘so stop using your preference as a one-true-measuring-stick for beauty that demonizes black women.’
(there’s some interesting reading here)
I think trans people’s bodies intimidate cis people, especially straight cis people for alot of reasons that have more to do with how cis people view themselves than it has to do with what we find fun and interesting in bed.
I also understand lesbians being a little defensive about what they may see as yet more people telling them to give peen a chance.
I don’t think that is what is being suggested though.