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a voice for men MRA

Is A Voice for Men's conference kaput? Doubletree says "they are not booked with us." [UPDATE: Elam says they have another venue.]

carwheels

Woah! Just wanted to pass along this news from the Motor City Muckraker:

A controversial conference for a men’s rights group in Detroit appears to be in jeopardy after a fallout with downtown’s Hilton DoubleTree, which planned to host the event from June 26-28.

The inaugural conference at the DoubleTree has been canceled for unknown reasons, and organizers of the first International Conference on Men’s Issues haven’t said yet whether it will be moved to another hotel and conference center.

“At this time, they are not booked with us,” Larry Brown, manager of the DoubleTree, said this morning. He declined to elaborate on the cancelation.

There’s nothing on A Voice for Men about this latest development, though Esmay hinted during his Fox News appearance that they were possibly going to reconsider the Doubletree. But as of right now, AVFM is still selling tickets, as if the Doubletree convention is still a going concern.

Are they going to try to book the convention elsewhere? Or are they going to take the $29,000 they raised for “security” and, I dunno, send Esmay to a better stylist?

One other, ah, interesting detail in the Motor City Muckraker story:

When asked Tuesday whether the event would be moved, an organizer responded: “The DoubleTree GM (general manager) actually said that he has ‘feminist phobia’ and sort of laughed but in a nervous way. So its being discussed.”

It’s questionable whether this conversation ever occurred because the general manager is a woman.

Yeah. Seems like a lot of things about this convention have been pretty questionable from the start.

UPDATE: Well, one thing’s a bit clearer now, though. I called the Detroit Police and they confirmed that the Doubletree did indeed report to them that it had received threats. Who sent them, we still don’t know, but I think we can all agree that whether the threats came from some misguided feminist or “progressive” or from an MRA trying to stir shit and make feminists look bad, whoever made the threatening calls is a shithead who deserves to face the legal consequences for what they did.

UPDATE 2: According to the Detroit News, Elam says they’ve got another venue:

“We have scheduled another venue and will make an announcement on the site this evening,” group founder Paul Elam said in an email Wednesday.

So far no announcement on AVFM; I’ll post about it when there is one.

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Gary T
Gary T
10 years ago
Reply to  emilygoddess

Emily? How could you?
After all we’ve been through together??

NO00ooo . . .

pallygirl
pallygirl
10 years ago

Noo, from laser sharks.

Lea
Lea
10 years ago

Sure. And whenever a feminist writer makes another post about recieving threats or being a victim of harassment, I will make sure to point out that these threats may as well come from a feminist trying to make males look bad.

Except that we know that Misogynists, the MRA affiliated kind especially, do make threats toward feminists regularly and that AVfM does engage in lies constructed just to discredit feminists and feminism regularly. So the two are not alike at all. Our mistrust of Elam and his gang of hateful tools is based firmly in reality. The MRM’s claims about feminism are not. See, the truth is not subjective but a verifiable thing. You can verify the shadiness of MRAs quite easily. But then, you knew that. You just thought you could score a “gotcha” for Team Misogyny.
You missed.

kittehserf
10 years ago

No, no, it would be Laser Death Cat.

Though I’m not sure zie would bother about threats.

http://youtu.be/vb_9vxXyqdU

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

But I want a battle Yorkie, dammit. With tiny little armor, and a big red bow on its forehead.

pallygirl
pallygirl
10 years ago

Sorry, when googling yorkie and lasers, this is pretty much all I got:

Alejandro
Alejandro
10 years ago

” AVfM does engage in lies constructed just to discredit feminists and feminism regularly.”

Well I was unaware of that. If you can link me to the proof that AVfM engages in constructed lies just to discredit feminist I will retract.

BTW, how do you quote here?

Howard Bannister
Howard Bannister
10 years ago

Alejandro…

< blockquote >

And there’s an AVFM tag. Check it out.

marinerachel
marinerachel
10 years ago
marinerachel
marinerachel
10 years ago

HOLY SHIT, IT WORKED. I officially know how to blockquote. Thank you Mr. Bannister, I owe you a cocktail and four internets.

Howard Bannister
Howard Bannister
10 years ago

😀

Also, on whether AVFM lies…

We don’t call anybody whores, you whore!

And, weirder, they’re totally non-violent, right? Totally non-violent.

What’s this?

https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2013/09/28/speaker-at-mens-rights-rally-of-the-century-in-toronto-calls-on-mras-to-take-up-arms-against-communists/

(scroll to the picture of Paul Elam)

(his T-shirt)

(think about it)

But the question was ‘do they lie about feminists?’

Okay, so, https://twitter.com/DavidFutrelle/statuses/477142466374533121

This is them trying to accuse David of calling outrage over child pornography hysteria. This is not the first time they have brought this accusation up.

Without any shred of evidence.

Howard Bannister
Howard Bannister
10 years ago

Oh, and this, where they call a male feminist a confessed rapist.

marinerachel
marinerachel
10 years ago

God, they hate false accusations WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

Howard Bannister
Howard Bannister
10 years ago

Right??

If you click through on that last one, it includes this…

Of course, this isn’t the first time A Voice for Men has falsely accused someone of something based on bad evidence or no evidence at all.

In April of this year, Elam (along with a number of other MRAs and an assortment of White Supremacists as well) worked himself into an uproar over a blog post from an alleged feminist allegedly working in a college admission office who claimed she was routinely trashing applications from white males.

Though even the most rudimentary amount of fact-checking would have revealed that the woman they blamed for the blog had nothing to do with it, she had her contact information posted online by MRAs and others, leaving her open to harassment and widespread vilification. Elam contributed to the hubbub by posting a vituperative post identifying the wrong woman by name — and only after being called on his mistake by numerous other MRAs did his finally retract the post.

Elam has also made false accusations against little old me. In yet another case of libel-by-headline, he accused Jessica Valenti and me of being “child abusers” … because we’re feminists. (Seriously, that was the entire basis of his accusation.)

And at one point, either lying outright or misled by a troll, he put forth the absurd conspiracy theory that I was somehow responsible for an appalling Reddit forum known as the Beatingwomen subreddit.

So saying ”AVfM does engage in lies constructed just to discredit feminists and feminism regularly” is actually rather understated, I thought.

Howard Bannister
Howard Bannister
10 years ago

Also, while doing some quick research on AVFM and lying about feminists, I came to this old post: https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2013/07/13/dont-be-that-rape-apologist-arthur-koestler-judgy-bitch-and-why-mras-hate-rape-awareness-campaigns/#more-9420

I was reading the post for the JB stuff, since she’s now commenting with attempted snark here, thinking to post that over on the thread where she’s commenting.

But instead I found the approved way to test your blockquote code.

😛

Shadow
Shadow
10 years ago

@Howard

No list of AVfM lies is complete without boxcutters!!

Alejandro
Alejandro
10 years ago

So far none of the examples provided comes remotely close to what they are being accused of (outright constructing a lie to make feminist look bad). Accusing someone without solid evidence, while certainly a bad thing to do, is not the same as outright lying (otherwise you would have to admit that all of the feminist that have accused AVfM of scamming people are lying)

The “confessed” rapist thing is an extremely missleading title, but anyone who reads the first sentence will realize what they mean by it.

The “child abusers” thing is also an example of over the top rethoric, but again, is not like they accused them of any specific child abuse incident. It is clearly stated in the AVfM article that they consider them “child abusers” in the sense that they support policies that (according to them) lead to child abuse. Is not different than feminist who refer to every single man who is sympathetic of male issues as a “woman hater”. Is not lying, just plain rethoric.

I wonder what you guys will come up with next. Maybe the person who pulled the fire alarm at that men rights conference was actually a male activist trying to make feminist look bad, right??

b

Howard Bannister
Howard Bannister
10 years ago

The “child abusers” thing is also an example of over the top rethoric, but again, is not like they accused them of any specific child abuse incident

Fuck you.

No, seriously, fuck you. You just said it was totally okay to call somebody a child abuser with no evidence.

But you want me to believe you’re outraged about false rape accusations?

FUCK YOU.

You’re literally excusing false rape accusations, you nitwit.

Howard Bannister
Howard Bannister
10 years ago

Is not different than feminist who refer to every single man who is sympathetic of male issues as a “woman hater”.

…protip. Nobody ever called you a woman hater for being sympathetic to genuine male issues.

It was hating women that got that.

Name ten genuine male issues.

NAME THEM, FUCKER.

I would bet money you can’t get ten without letting your hate for women shine through.

LBT (with writeathon poll!)

RE: Alejandro

It is clearly stated in the AVfM article that they consider them “child abusers” in the sense that they support policies that (according to them) lead to child abuse.

You ever tried out for basketball? Because with a reach like that, you should be in the NBA.

Child abuse is a serious accusation. It’s a crime to abuse children. To hate women? Not so much. It’s not ‘rhetoric’ to call someone a child abuser. Or do I get to call YOU a child abuser and just tell you it’s rhetoric?

sparky
sparky
10 years ago

Wow, so Alejandro was provided of numerous examples of AVFM lying to make feminists look bad, and refuses to accept any of them?

I’m so surprised

Alejandro
Alejandro
10 years ago

Fuck you.

No, seriously, fuck you. You just said it was totally okay to call somebody a child abuser with no evidence.

Typical feminist response. Emotionally charged, filles with insults, and completely failed to adress the actual argument. I said that what AVfM did was over the top rethoric instead of outright lying, but where on earth did I said that doing it was “totally OK”?? Go ahead and show me.

Child abuse is a serious accusation. It’s a crime to abuse children.

Except that nobody called David a child abuser in the criminal sense of the word, rather they accused him of promoting child abuse through his policies. Anyone with half a brain can see the difference between over the top rethoric and a factual accusation.

Feminist do it too. Remember when Kickstarter was funding this seduction manual that adviced pulling out your dick with a girl, and how nearly every single feminist went on refering to it as a “rape”manual? Newsflash: Pulling out your dick is not the same as raping a woman. At worst, it could be sexual assault, but it is not rape. So I will agree that the AVfM guy is a lier if you agree that all these feminist who refered to the kickstarter project as a rape manual are liers. Deal?

scott1139
scott1139
10 years ago

@Alejandro

I am genuinely impressed by how dense you are. Have you thought about volunteering as a sustainable fusion reactor? The pay would be astronomically higher than what the NBA could offer.

Alejandro
Alejandro
10 years ago

I am genuinely impressed by how dense you are. Have you thought about volunteering as a sustainable fusion reactor?

I tried but they told me I’m so hot the reaction would get out of control.

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