So A Voice for Men, having lost or abandoned the original venue for their “Men’s Issues” conference in Detroit, has announced its new location: A VFW post some 18 miles away from the original hotel where, presumably, most of the conference’s attendees will be staying.
According to Paul Elam, they made the move in large part to spare conference-goers the terrible inconvenience of having to watch the no-doubt riveting presentations from an “overflow room.”
No, really.
In a post last night, Elam declared that all the media attention given to the conference
has produced is a hell of a lot more interest in the conference, and more ticket sales. So much so, as a matter of fact, that we have opted to move to a venue that will seat more people and provide more security than was available previously.
While we apologize for any inconvenience that the move is going to cause, it is nonetheless a positive move for the conference. Because seating capacity was misrepresented to us at the previous venue, we were forced to plan for an overflow room where we would pipe in live events to a monitor at reduced ticket prices.
With the change of venue we will be able to accommodate all attendees in the same space at the same time.
Naturally, the first thing some critics of Elam did when they saw this announcement was to look up the seating capacity of the largest rooms at both venues. The largest room at the Doubletree Fort Shelby, where the conference was originally scheduled to take place, seats 300, with a maximum capacity of 310. The largest room at the VFW post … also seats 300. Or maybe 350. The VFW website isn’t clear.
In other words, Elam expects us to believe that in order to avoid the inconvenience of having to resort to “overflow rooms,” AVFM moved its convention to a venue 18 miles away from the original hotel that might not even offer rooms any bigger than the original venue.
Meanwhile, in the comments to Elam’s post, one would-be conference attendee reports that the Doubletree has canceled his reservation. If Doubletree has decided to wash its hands of the conference attendees now that they are no longer hosting the conference, and Elam is telling the truth about the number of people planning to attend, this could mean hundreds of people scrambling for hotel rooms.
Still, Elam and his troops are eager to present this as a great victory.
It’s weird. You might think that this sort of reality distortion would be impossible in a democratic country in the internet age. Sure, back in Stalin’s day, the Soviet Union’s propaganda machine could present massive failure as success and get away with it – at least to some degree, at least within their own country.
In the wake of a disastrous program of “forced collectivization” of rural agriculture in 1929-30, which left many peasants dead or imprisoned and paved the way for future famines, Stalin famously announced in an article in Pravda that the program had been so amazingly successful that he needed to call a temporary halt so that everyone could catch their breath. The title of his article: “Dizzy With Success.”
The only way you can get away with bullshit this brazen is if you’re a dictator or the leader of a cult – something that A Voice for Men has increasingly come to resemble. AVFMers are expected not only to accept Elam’s leadership; they’re expected to accept his distinctly non-consensus reality – a world turned upside down in which men are the real victims of domestic violence and rape and pretty much everything else, a world in which the Southern Poverty Law Center is a collection of evil bigots and his motley collection of misogynists is the true human rights movement of the twenty-first century.
Like a lot of cult leaders, Elam keeps his troops too busy to think straight in a continual frenzy of pseudo-activism. AVFMers are forever brigading comment sections of newspaper articles and YouTube videos in little squads (AVFMers almost always travel in packs), all reciting the same few talking points.
Weirdly, the dynamics of internet discussions can actually reinforce this kind of intellectual conformity, much as Stalin’s control of the media did in his day. No, AVFMers can’t avoid being exposed to facts that contradict the shared (un)reality of their ideological bubble.
But in internet discussions you don’t have to be right in order to convince yourself you’ve won an argument. You just have to be loud and persistent and unwilling to ever give in. You don’t have to convince anyone else of your arguments so long as you convince yourself. MRAs don’t win many arguments on their merits, but they manage to convince themselves they win every one.
The trouble is that when they step outside of their regular stomping grounds on the internet, this strategy – so effective in generating ideological conformity amongst cult members – falls completely apart.
We’ve seen several spectacular examples in the past couple of weeks. First, we watched a concert organized by Canadian Men’s Rights group CAFE implode after musicians and sponsors realized what they’d been roped into; the pathetically unconvincing attempts by the group to explain away this failure were amazing to behold.
Then we saw AVFM’s Dean Esmay reduce himself to a caricature on Fox (local) news as he rapidly regurgitated standard AVFM talking points like some sort of fanatical ideological auctioneer, apparently unaware that to everyone outside of the Men’s Rights bubble everything he was saying was obviously utter nonsense.
And now we have Paul Elam trying to convince the world that AVFM changed its venue for its conference because, hey, we needed more room!
The trouble with having your head up your ass most of the time is that when you take it out, people tend to notice the smell.
But, hey, as long as the AVFMers are happy with their new venue, I’m happy for them. Janet Bloomfield, the official “social media director” for the conference, posted this triumphant tweet lat night:
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/476822883881459712
She has assured me that this is an actual quote. The “Wayne State cunts” remark is apparently a reference to the Wayne State sociology professor who, er, debated AVFM’s Dean Esmay on the local Fox affiliate the other day. Esmay has also posted a slightly shorter version of the same quote in the AVFM comments section.
So, yes, both the official PR representative for the conference and AVFM’s “managing editor” both apparently think it’s a great idea to refer to women who disagree with them as “cunts.”
Oh, and Bloomfield also thinks it’s hilarious to joke about Elam scamming his supporters of the $29,000 raised for additional security:
https://twitter.com/BhasChat/status/476907717194702848
You can’t buy this kind of publicity, largely because as far as I know there are no PR firms that offer organizations help in destroying the last tiny shreds of their credibility.
Are you generally pleased with yourself? And are you paid to do this?
marinerachel: A smug sense of unearned superiority is necessary for being a FeMRA.
Fuck yeah! Paul wanted to keep all the donations for himself but I punched him in the face until he cried and agreed to give me half because he knew under VAWA he would get arrested because women never assault men so he gave in and now I get HALF bitches!
Lean In.
“Actually, it would be kind of amusing if nobody turned up, getting sidetracked at the nearest bars to catch the games.”
Wouldn’t surprise me. MRAs are the lazy bastards on the planet. They cause the problems they bitch about, and then expect everyone else to drop everything, spend big, and waste time sorting out the mess. They even expect women like JB to carry water for them.
JB, when the shit hit the fan and the MRAs turn (more) violent, you and your other femras will be the first up against the wall. Being a traitor to other women won’t save you because in the end, you’ll be judged as worthless as the rest of our gender. Men like this eat their own first. They kill and beat the women closest to them – mothers, wives, girlfriends, daughters – before turning on the rest of the world.
I’d be worried – and running – if I were you. Which I’m not, thank fuck.
I am befuddled by the MRA and that a woman is actually relishing the idea of having the same kind of notoriety than Shirley Phelps…creepy.
If we all pretend to be impressed will JB stop embarrassing herself? That is the question.
Add DV jokes to your child rape apologia. You are a disgusting human being. Someday you’ll get a blast of self-awareness.
It’s pathetic. I’ve been employed with groups that have a political agenda before. I can’t imagine any of them stooping to defaming an employee at their own conference venue for fun and attention. Especially when that venue is a non-profit organization rather than a big soulless corporation. That’s so unprofessional and such terrible PR.
To think getting attention for an offensive tweet and getting a mocking blog post is some sort of victory is just sad.
I would pity the MRM if it weren’t so morally repugnant.
QFT. Only a fool plays with vipers and thinks they won’t get bit eventually.
Actually JB and Vice seem like a perfect fit. She should stick to her current job, though, they pretty much have to pay better than Vice does.
Laughing myself silly over this! I used to help run rpg cons in the nineties. Way better organised! And about as well attended, in spite of being only one of four rpg cons that ran in Sydney annually. There were still more competitors in Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra… You get the idea.
Here are these mooks with not only the only game in town but the only one in the world and we’re looking at 350 tops?
Yeah, you’re ‘rising’. When you reach ankle height, let me know.
@Ann
“JB, when the shit hit the fan and the MRAs turn (more) violent, you and your other femras will be the first up against the wall. Being a traitor to other women won’t save you because in the end, you’ll be judged as worthless as the rest of our gender. Men like this eat their own first. They kill and beat the women closest to them – mothers, wives, girlfriends, daughters – before turning on the rest of the world.”
So true. I think that they believe that by debasing their gender and themselves they will be treated better.
Is anyone else starting to think they’re trying to get kicked out of the VFW so they can martyr themselves? This is starting to remind me of Cliven Bundy and his buddies trying to provoke a shootout with the government.
After all, if the conference goes ahead as planned and there aren’t many attendees and nothing gets accomplished, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.
If they can’t find and keep a venue, they can blame it on evil freeze peach denying feminists and the gynocracy.
Actually talking to JB mostly reminds me of trying to talk to the cokeheads I hung out with for a while during my (enjoyably) misspent youth. The cokeheads were more fun, though.
Woah there. Go ahead and do your thing, have fun with it, good luck with it, but maybe possibly try not to insinuate that punching men is somehow okay? Like, I get that you have an agenda and things you want to accomplish and all, but, seriously, domestic violence – violence of all kinds, even – happen to men too and I find it sort of peculiar and sad that you would joke about literally beating up someone for money, then threatening them with state sponsored violence.
That’s sort of low.
It works as a joke, sometimes, if the joker is being careful, but in this instance it really just kind of reads as a really crass attempt at being funny. It’s not okay to punch people, chum. It’s not okay to punch people even if those people are men. Women do assault men. Men do assault women.
You’re sort of helping perpetuate a stereotype that endangers and harms men all over the world here.
Could you not?
I would much rather be cornered by a cokehead at the bar babbling about their band and grinding their teeth than have to deal with JB IRL.
“It’s so true. I haven’t been able to aggravate you simpletons into providing media coverage at all. And I haven’t been able to plant any incendiary tweets that garnered coverage either.
I has a sad.
Lol!”
Ah, so this was all a hoax to make some quick cash.
Got it.
Most of the media coverage has been because of the supposed threats mentioned in the letter you say you received from Doubletree, not any media attention the actual protest has garnered.
Plus the cokehead might offer to share.
So…. this is your job? You’re employed as a troll?
Oh, I think JB is offering to share too – only we have to share in her misery, and snorting that stuff always just gets me down. You might even say it makes me have a sad.
Do you mean the shits? Coke makes you have the shits? Because it does.
Get working, minions! I called them WAYNE STATE CUNTS!
Tell me how your movement is about men’s rights and isn’t just a bunch of misogynists yelling at women, Social Media Director. I know I’m convinced.
And of course most PR professionals communicate in lolspeak.
Nah, whatever she’s on I don’t want any.
Imagine replacing the c-word with the n-word and then someone claiming the organisation isn’t racist.
Also: “movement” supposedly about men’s rights has their social media director making a joke about men being assaulted.
Wow, that’s some slick PR job. It also shows that you don’t really care about men.