A Voice for Men likes to present itself as a voice for gay men as well as straight ones. In a recent post, site founder and chief fulminator Paul Elam declared that
We regard men as human beings, regardless of their sexuality. And most of us feel that this is the salve that heals what has in recent history been inflicted on gay men.
No mention of lesbians, but of course they’re women, and Elam does not seem to like women very much.
AVFM managing editor Dean Esmay, meanwhile, likes to present himself as a champion not only of gay men but of lesbians as well, boasting in one recent tweet that “I have been lesbian-supporting since the ’80s.”
So why is AVFM giving a platform to one of Canada’s most influential opponents of same-sex marriage — and gay and lesbian rights in general?
Canadian Senator Anne Cools, one of the scheduled speakers at AVFM’s upcoming “Men’s Issues” conference in Detroit, has been a staunch opponent of same-sex marriage for decades.
Her objection? That only heterosexual marriage deserves legal protection because gay people can’t make babies – at least not with each other – thus making their interest in sex all about lust.
In a speech before the Canadian senate, she argued that
The public interest in marriage is reproduction, the continuation of the species, the offspring. There is no public interest in sex or the gratification of sexual impulses for their own sake. …
[L]ust, like all human passions, is not to be trusted. Lust and sex on their own have no public character and contain no public interest or public good. Marriage is about man and woman in a peculiar act of bringing forth offspring.
Never mind that plenty of stright couples don’t, or can’t, have kids. Or that some trans men can.
She’s not simply an opponent of same-sex marriage. Cools has consistently opposed other legislation designed to afford gays and lesbians the same basic rights as straight people — and the same legal protections as other victims of bigotry and discrimination.
She opposed adding “sexual orientation” to hate speech legislation, warning that doing so would expose “millions of Canadians…who hold moral opinions about sexuality, to criminal prosecution.” (Needless to say, the passage of the bill in question did not lead to millions of Canadians being rounded up and arrested.)
She also worried that adding “sexual orientation” to hate speech legislation would somehow – I don’t quite understand the logic – encourage the “depathologizing the paraphilias” and ultimately lead to children being “seduced” into dangerous sexual activities. Here’s her argument:
The fact of the matter is, honourable senators, that we discourage children from smoking cigarettes because tobacco is harmful. I would submit that we are talking about some sexual activities that are dangerous and life-threatening. The committee should have the moral courage to hear something of it. I have lost a lot of beloved friends to a variety of these conditions. I have made it my business to instruct myself. That is the first question. You can think about that.
Ms. Landolt, your concern that the term “sexual orientation” is so wide as to involve a wide range of sexual behaviours is well founded. I would like to put on the record here for this committee a document called the Journal of Homosexuality, particularly, volume 20 in 1990. The subject of the entire volume is pedophilia and male intergenerational intimacy, historical, social, psychological and legal perspectives. If you were to open up this text, the foreword is the debate on pedophilia, and the second article is “Man-Boy Relationships: Different Concepts for a Diversity of Phenomena.” It continues with “Pederasty Among Primitives and Institutionalized Initiation.”
She continued:
I want to know about these children out there and the impact that this is having on them, and, in addition to that, all of these children who are being seduced at youthful ages and who are discovering what is happening to them two or three years later. I have done a lot of counselling. I would like to get a greater picture of the problems out there for children on these grounds, because this sexual orientation debate is going on here as though children do not exist.
She also tried to raise the question of “the medical consequences to individuals who involve themselves in activities such as ‘rimming,’ … sado-masochism and so on.”
In explaining her opposition to adding sexual orientation ito the Canadian Human Rights Act, she offered a similar “slippery slope” argument:
The concern is that pederasts and paedophiles will advance claims to engage in adult/child sexual relationships as a matter of human rights; that claims will be advanced on the legal grounds that pederasty and paedophilia are sexual orientations having entitlements.
For more on her various backwards views, as well as the source of that last quote, see here.
On Twitter, I asked Esmay to explain why AVFM is providing a platform for a woman who opposes same-sex marriage. He hasn’t replied.
Another curious Twitterer asked the same question of Janet Bloomfield, the official spokeswoman for the upcoming AVFM conference. She handled the question with her usual (lack of) aplomb.
Apparently AVFM’s much vaunted “compassion for men and boys” doesn’t apply to gay men who want the same basic rights as straight men.
For more on AVFM’s tolerance of homophobia – and Elam’s notorious attack on one trans women, see here.
EDIT: After I put this post up, I decided to see if I might have better luck at getting answers from Bloomfield on Twitter. The conversation went about as well as could be expected. Remember, Bloomfield is AVFM’s offical “social media” spokeswoman for the conference.
I didn’t see her comment about harassment until after I tweeted a couple more times.
Some more bang-up public relations work from Ms. Bloomfield here.
Yeah, you’d think a group so devoted to ‘responsibility’ would be responsible enough to say, “Hey guys, one of our speakers is a homophobe. We’re not okay with that, by the way.”
GOD WHAT A LABOR.
Well, the choice of speakers accurately reflects what the MRM has to offer gay men, ie. nothing but scorn. Most gay men don’t want to beat up women, and pretty much none of them want to rape women, so what possible use is the MRM to them?
Wow, browsing her website was the least fun I’ve had in a while. She’s terrible.
@bunnybunny, she publishes that shit in a major newspaper!
Maybe other speakers who aren’t *phobes also aren’t interested with lending their support to AVfM – which is how their agreement to speak at the conference would be interpreted.
For one thing they claim to be for the rights of men, including gay men. Her stance on gay rights goes against that. We here already knew that the MRM doesn’t give a shit about gay men but they usually pretend they aren’t homophobes and act all offended if anyone says they are.
For another thing, they claim to be a human rights group. Either you’re for human rights or you aren’t. Anyone who would be for the human rights of one group while opposing the rights of another group is being very disingenuous to claim the mantle “human rights activist.”
What does this even mean? Saying “gay men are human beings too” heals the damage caused by homophobia? He’s apparently never heard of the “hate the sin not the sinner” homophobic shell game. And why “recent history”? This is pontifical gibberish.
If they rejected prospective speakers and supporters for holding repellent, exclusionary views, they’d have an even smaller pool to choose from.
As a married gay man and father of sons, I don’t find anything in the MRA that supports me – despite living a life almost as androcentric as a Spartan sysstitia. Heck, I used to joke that the only time my kids saw women eating dinner was when we went to my Masonic lodge.
RE: Robert
Yeah. Gay trans guy rape survivor here, and some of the folks who’ve been around here a bit might remember the couple times I challenged MRAs to recruit me and they flat-out admitted there was nothing they could offer me. One of them even tried to pull a, “Well, you’ll just have to butch up, buttercup, and accept that you aren’t the center of the universe.”
I was like hahahahaha and you wonder why I won’t join you.
AVFM occupies a weird political space. Their opinions on women and feminism are deeply reactionary, but they’re couched in the language of liberalism (rights, justice, etc.). There’s a tension between the views they hold on women and the rest of their professed beliefs about race, gays, etc. They seem strangely able to ignore the similarities between their anti-feminism and the anti-feminism of, say, the KKK; they still consider themselves a civil rights group.
Has AVFM ever addressed the question “why do some of the most horrible people on the planet agree with us about feminism?” It might pop their cognitive dissonance bubble between viewing themselves as totes oppressed freedom fighters and the fact that their beliefs are basically the same as people (e.g., Heartiste, Vox Day) who openly admit that women and everyone else ought to be enslaved to white straight cis men. Might that be the source of JB’s hostility?
I think the source of JBs hostility is a personality that’s about as warm and fuzzy as a sea urchin, personally.
David, you are a hell of a lot tougher than I thought. Congratulations. Hang in there, You are going to go down in history while these evanescent MRA sites go bye-bye. Ain’t nobody going to remember Elam. But you, with your common sense and your sophistication regarding the MRA…you will be remembered.
I agree they aren’t warm and fuzzy, but sea urchins are gorgeous and colourful and fascinating, and if I ever get an aquarium I want it to be full of sea urchins. So to be kinder to sea urchins, how about as warm and fuzzy as… razor wire? caltrops? durian fruit?
Also, is anyone else a sea urchin fan? The ones I saw in Thailand were amazing. At one dive site was covered in sea urchins and anemones. Was so fantastic.
@zoon echon logon: you’ve just nailed it right there. Those who ACTUALLY believe in furthering the cause of human rights know there’s nothing to be gained by tearing down other groups – it’s why black civil rights leaders in the 60s weren’t fighting with the women’s lib movement – because we’re all trying to fight for things other people ALREADY HAVE and WON’T LOSE if some more people have them too!
I could almost comprehend the MRA standpoint of only helping men if they weren’t so blatantly paying lip service to helping men who don’t fit the stereotype of macho male masculinity. What percentage of their time do they spend denigrating and attacking women, versus the amount they spend actually doing something constructive to further the rights of gay & trans men, male rape & DV survivors, or any other group that only gets mentioned in passing when they’re trying to deflect criticism?
I would use durian as a metaphor for MRAs (stinky, can probably kill you if dropped on your head, shouldn’t be allowed on planes), but my MIL loves it and would kill me (hopefully not by the death-by-giant-fruit method).
A sea urchin once got my hand when I was snorkeling, so I’m kind of bitter.
I give it 24 hours before one of them goes back into WHY AREN’T YOU DENOUNCING THIS FRINGE TUMBLR FEMINIST mode (even though said tumblr feminist is likely a Poe or the MRA is having one of their little “reading comprehension is misandry” episodes)
Tumblr in general tends to be too stupid to be worth the effort of denouncing, imo.
(Is a grouchy olds.)
While the two movements weren’t fighting each other as a body, WOC in the feminist movement and in the black civil rights movement both had to struggle with each to make sure that particularly black people’s and women’s issues respectively were addressed by the broader movement.
David, you are so courageous, especially now, pointing out the Detroit MRM conference as a cover for misogyny and homophobia. I am sorry to read about the savage unwarrranted attacks on you. Then I see from your posts that you are tough and stable. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
There’s always one in every group, even sea urchins.
This is what the dive site looked like. It might even be the same place.
The anemones were blue on the outside, as you can see, but one of them had a white racing stripe. Was probably some sort of mutation, but it was definitely the coolest anemone on that bommie.
Hot off the press: Important Message for AVFM Conference Ticket Holders
It’s not cancelled, dammit. Ticket holders have to present a gov’t-issued photo ID. (Jeez, voting is easier.)
Comma fail in the second paragraph. Sitting around trash-talking women or merely being a man is an offense?
Does anyone know the latest on DarkHorseSwore’s efforts to attend?
So basically the only reason why they’re trying to stop people from sitting around talking shit about women is because they’re worried that it might be used against them, and they already know that’s inevitably going to happen, hence the warning?
Oh MRAs, you are so ridiculous.
QFT. That was the bit that leapt out at me: she’s fixated on anal sex, like so many (all?) these rabidly homophobic idiots.
The whole “public interest” thing was both eye-rolling stupid and creepy as all get-out. What does she want, everyone to be subjected to fertility tests, birth control and abortion banned, and sexual partners required to split up if they don’t reproduce within a certain time?
@Leum: that’s kinda my point though. Being aware of the struggles others face is an integral part of any genuine social justice movement, which is why words like “intersectionality” and “solidarity” have almost become buzzwords. Anti-feminists hear women talking about the problems they face and either block their ears or say “But we have it worse!”
True fighting for equality is helping each other make it to the top of the wall – not climbing over each other to get there. 🙂
I really don’t get the anal sex fixation. I mean, if we’re TMI-ing, it’s really not my cup of tea either, so it’s officially off the menu in my house, but why should I care whether or not other people are doing it? Why should anyone?
If someone is trying to force you to participate in a sexual activity that you’re not into then by all means push back as forcefully as necessary, but why do people care what other people do when they’re not even around?