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.
They’re all fiercely intelligent and independent women who don’t want the power that comes with claiming victimhood status.
This? This right here is comedy gold.
Liquid fucking comedy gold.
Where are my blockquotes!
http://media2.giphy.com/media/bicB3wPwDfzEc/200_s.gif
Well, one thing is now resolved: I called the Detroit police and they now say that the Doubletree did report threats to them.
Of course, we still don’t know who made them.
As I said before, if some misguided feminist called in threats, that was a deeply shitty thing to do, and they deserve to face the legal consequences for it.
If it was an MRA trying to make feminists look bad, well, they deserve to face legal consequences too.
Not that I actually define myself as a gender feminist, but I’m guessing MRAs or M(H!)RAs would define me that way, so.
They’re all fiercely intelligent and independent women who don’t want the power that comes with claiming victimhood status.
I have a technical question, here.
What should I do if someone actually victimizes me? I’ll pick something apolitical here: say someone steals my wallet.
I’m a fiercely intelligent and independent person, now. I’m not looking for a power trip. Does this mean that I’m required to not tell anyone my wallet is missing, not have any emotions about missing my wallet, not try to get my wallet back from the thief, and not replace the things in my wallet?
Because if I did any of those, I’d be acknowledging that I was a victim of something, and that’s terrible.
Did they address the letter? Because I called the hotel the Sunday and Saturday after the letter was posted on AVfM, and they completely denied threats being made and sending the letter
And the police were saying no threats were reported last Monday.
Yes, none of us here are familiar with anything any of those “honey badgers” have written or said. JudgyBitch did not recently appear in a comments thread here herself to treat us to the most nonsensical unintelligible ramblings I’ve ever seen.
What sort of horrible person would threaten people for working in or staying at a hotel?
Whoever did it, I hope they get caught ASAP.
David
You write:
“Mike, you do realize you’re posting on a blog that is devoted to alerting as many people as possible to the terrible ideas of MRAs? That basically every single post here, aside from the ones about kitties and Meredity Monk and so on, is based on the simple notion that the best way to defeat the MRM is to expose its terrible ideas to as many people as possible?”
Of course I realise that, but your premise is laughable. Why would radfems want to pressure the Detroit Hilton into cancelling the conference if they wanted to expose its ‘terrible ideas’? They’d surely want to make every effort to disseminate videos of the speeches etc. I want people to be exposed to facts and arguments they’re clearly not being exposed to on your blog, from the evidence of your comments stream.
Firstly, I suggest you need a reality check here. YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT THE MHRM, EVEN AT THIS STAGE. It will only get stronger over time. States assault the human rights of men (and boys) to advantage women (and girls). The evidence for this lies in every life outcome you could mention. The following are just a few examples, off the top of my head (situation in the UK, I believe the US is worse in some areas, not so bad in others):
– male / female suicide differential in the UK has increased from 1.9:1 to 3.5:1 in the past 30 years. It’s the #1 cause of death of young men
– fathers denied access to children, yet the state forces them to pay maintenance on threat of imprisonment (a driver of suicide)
– absence of support for male victims of domestic violence (a driver of suicide)
– absence of support for homeless men, driving male suicide (<10% of homeless people are women)
– discrimination in education (e.g. Brunel female students £20,000+ pa additional grants for having the 'correct' genitalia, a highly feminised education system ensures 60% of university students are women…)
– all-women candidate shortlists for parliament, although the proportion of women in the House of Commons already greatly exceeds the proportion of applicants who are female
– discrimination in employment (quotas for women – well, in the well-paid pleasant lines of work, anyway)
– government bullying major companies into increasing the number of women on their boards despite KNOWING one consequence will be corporate financial decline
– paternity fraud has long been a criminal offence in the UK, not one woman has ever been convicted of the offence – the justice system treats women as having no higher moral agency than small children
– FGM is banned across the developed world, MGM commonplace (and far more so in the US than the UK)
If the MRM's ideas are 'terrible', why has nobody challenged J4MB's evidence bases? Why has nobody accused me of lying? By stark contrast, can you explain to me why not one of the many feminists in the link below (including Caroline Criado-Perez, Kat Banyard, Julie Bindle) have ever responded to our showing they were demonstrably lying, by retracting those lies? Lies are the bedrock of feminism, that's why.
http://j4mb.wordpress.com/our-public-challenges-to-feminists/
You’re right. We won’t, you assholes will do the job yourselves. You fools cannot stop shooting yourselves in the foot.
That would be because they weren’t lying, sweetie. And because you have all the importance in the world of a collapsed souffle so they’re not going to even bother responding to your stupidity..
Because you are of no more importance than a gnat. No one emails a gnat.
ninja’d by titianblue.
I, too, am very interested in who made these threats. I wouldn’t put it past any group to have some crazies who would do such things, but to make threats after it has been alleged that they have already been made (even if they were not substantiated or reported) seems even more crazy to me.
FTFY
@Sarah, no ableism, please. Nasties, not crazies.
Allow me to translate:
“Women who keep their damn mouths shut about what men do to them and tell other women they deserve it anyway.”
Can you imagine anyone worse than Mike? He’s claiming that victims, like the little girls and boys I met through CASA and DCBS for being raped and abused, were just power hungry. They weren’t ripping out their own hearts when they came forward to tell the truth about what had happened to them at the hands of loved ones they trusted, usually only to be called liars. No, they were after the “power that comes with claiming victimhood status”.
When POC complain about institutional racism and microaggressions, he’s insinuating that they are only after power, not an end to inequality and abuse.
Either that, or he only thinks that is the case when women fight back against abuse and inequality.
But he’s not a misogynist posterior pimple. Shucks no.
YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT THE MHRM, EVEN AT THIS STAGE.
Okay, so… what are you so worked up about? Sounds like you’ve got nothing to prove. Why argue petty details with the opposition when you’re winning in a landslide?
It is weird that the landslide winners can’t get one damn conference together, but what would I know about landslides.
So, we still don’t even have a definitive answer on whether or not threats happened?
😛
Mikey,
Your points have been debunked many times before. I’m not sure why you’re claiming we haven’t bothered to refute MRA talking points.
Go read the thread about the Mankind Initiative video. There are links showing that law enforcement actually does take allegations of DV against men seriously.
It’s also well known by now that when fathers actually seek primary custody they are just as likely to get it as mothers. Mothers are more likely to have primary custody because fathers are less likely to seek.
Also, how can you claim to be for justice for boys while simultaneously arguing that fathers should have the right to abandon their children and not contribute financially to their upbringing? Sure, many children with deadbeat dads are girls and we all how much you hate them, but some of the children abandoned by their fathers are boys. If you care about boys at all you should take the position that both parents have a duty to raise their children to the best of their abilities.
It’s almost like you care more hurting women and girls than helping men and boys. Typical MRA.
You know, when I think of people with power, the word “victim” never comes to mind.
The only people over whom a victim might hold power is a perpetrator afraid of being busted.
When people tell you who they are, I think you should believe them.
That’s why these Mens Rape Advocates are so desperate to silence women* through lies, harassment, doxxing and demonizing. If all the women MRAs had ever victimized ever came forward and named names, it really would be a dark day for the MRM, wouldn’t it?
*Yes Mike, your precious movement is all about censorship. It’s a movement based on calling women liars who probably had it coming anyway and trying to threaten them into silence. You’re an abuser’s support group, not a human rights group.
No! Not a collapsed souffle! Be careful, titianblue, them’s fighting words.
So, if the police are now confirming that they were notified of the death threats, the next question is when were they notified and by whom? Given that they were denying it over the weekend.
Radfem:
Shorthand slang for Radical Feminist.
Generally describing those who purport to be for equal rights for all, but actually campaign, lobby and agitate for superior or precedential preference in legal treatment for women over men.
Fair enough. As someone who has had to deal with mental health issues, I should know to use more sensitive language