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.
“Describing a plan to get rapists off the hook, legally speaking, as “bad taste” pretty much puts you into the not even worth engaging with category.”
Should I have said “good taste”? Fuck off.
Misogynistic AND dumb as a box of rocks. He’s a winner, this one.
cassandrakitty – Dishonest too. REALLY dishonest.
RE: Matheus
I think his comment was of bad taste.
What a sanitized way of putting it.
However, there have been many proven cases of false allegations.
Where the hell are one of our stat wizards? I’m POSITIVE they had a good study somewhere that showed rape cases had the same or lower rates of false allegations as other crimes… somewhere like 2-5% or something? *is operating on old memories*
you seem to assume that every allegation that is not proven to be false must be true, which really makes no sense.
See, I know a LOT of people who’ve been raped and never pressed charges. The statute of limitations ran out, they didn’t have the money, their rapist WAS the money, they were ten years old… the list goes on.
The thing is, Matheus, I am not a court of law. I am not going up to every rapist and carting them off to civilian jail. Believing someone who tells me they have been raped does not require me to do any lawbreaking or unethical thing… or even acknowledge the rapist’s existence. All I have to do is support the person who tells me. At worst, I’ve been schnookered by a liar, and all my comforting and recs of books and websites have been a waste of time. At best, I’ve helped someone who’s just gone through hell.
As a rape survivor myself, I know which person I would rather be.
Wow, I was way off on my 24 hour estimate, Now we’ve got this jackass to deal with
SORRY EVERYONE
BTW, not that it’s worth bothering in this case, but what say you, Mammotheers, about the idea of reviving the Manboobz challenge? By which I mean, anyone who’s reached this stage of pointless frothing should be obliged to provide documented evidence of these mythical reasonable, non-violent MRAs or be ignored completely.
(I would say moderated, but don’t want to dump that much work on the poor mods.)
“Do I go on? I can find more.”
Is that worse than feminists discussing male genocide and selective abortion of males? No, I don’t think so.
Fuck off.
Good advice, Matheus — take it.
We all have seen the same links to the same cherry-picked quotes forever.
On AVfM basically you can pick any post at random and taste the woman-hating.
How about “an awful notion, that should not be condoned”?
Matheus, why isn’t that obvious? Don’t answer, because I get the feeling it’ll just be to excuse Paul’s statement.
RE: Matheus
You seem to have ignored many of the more hateful comments, there.
You posted twenty-one images, all of which were large. I’m sorry that I didn’t read every single one of them looking for the absolute worst things purely so I could discount your argument perfectly. That’s what happens when you post a gallery and not specific quotes; if you wanted me to SPECIFICALLY take on certain quotes, you should’ve posted them outright.
There are a lot of reasonable, non-violent MRAs (the majority)
Good! I want to meet them! I mean this whole-heartedly. Please, link me to them! Tell me who they are! You think I LIKE believing y’all are haters? Please, prove me wrong! I want to believe!
A much sadder and more telling way to frame this is that, of the multiple people I know personally who’ve been raped, not a single one has ever pressed charges. A couple initially attempted to report it, and gave up once their initial encounter with the cops gave them a good idea of what lay ahead of them if they took it to court.
Matheus, this is the last thing I am going to say to you. Yes. Actually killing women and girls is worse than talking about killing men. Yes, yes it is. Write that down. Spell my name right.
No you idiot. Her point was dismissing it as simple bad taste didn’t go far enough. Hopefully Elam will never sit on jury at a rape trial. But what if it gives one of his readers the idea to do the same? The consequences of that is that a rapist goes free. That’s fucking reprehensible.
That comment did nothing but contribute to a culture where victims are blamed or not believed because they had alcohol or were wearing a short skirt or had previously been flirting with the rapist.
The only one who needs to fuck off is you.
No one has ever seen a nonviolent MRA. All the MRAs who call themselves that endorse raping teens, beating women and children, child abandonment, and talk endlessly about violence they want to see perpetrated against the general population that does not share their views.
Yes please, Manboobz challenge! Always good for a laugh.
LBT, I’m a stats-y person!
I won’t have good access to a database until later tonight (when I sneak back on campus), but I’ll see if I can dig up the old links, then. I think the rates of false reports were fairly close to other crimes; however, rapes tend to be severely under reported to begin with.
I don’t want to jump too far into this, without the data in front of me, but from recall, I’m absolutely sure that the resident troll is using assfax and the anedata assfax of his online peers, and not good database hunting.
If we give this dude the Manboobz challenge can we make him do it in pirate talk?
Fine then. More quotes.
or
THE FREAKING ARTICLE IS CALLED “STALKING SADY DOYLE” FOR FUCKS SAKE.
Or, how about this, from the mouth of Paul Elam himself? How about a man who said this?
Does aiding people in stalking, harassing, death threats, and possibly even murder sound like human rights activism? Does saying that “fucking your shit up gives me an erection” sound reasonable?
Or does that reek of hate?
Talk like a pirate? All trolls must talk like a pirate! Excellent rule!
Selective abortion of females is something that actually happens you know. The selective abortion of males? Not that I’ve ever heard of. In fact I’ve known plenty feminists with sons. Some of them are regulars here. Do you have any evidence that selective abortion of male fetuses is actually happening?
I also seem to remember lots of MRA trolls both on here and on Jezebel denying that Elliot Rodger was a misogynist even though his manifesto said he wanted to put all women in concentration camps and watch us starve to death.
I guess he realized that he was going to fail the Manboobz challenge, huh?
Has Matheus been banned yet? I’ve just caught up, and all I see is bloody quote mining. Page after page of selective screen captures is also…quote mining.
Matheus, just in case you’re still reading: it is not sufficient merely to produce quotes that “prove” your assertion about feminists. To show that feminists being actively anti-male is a feature of feminism and not simply an occasional person, you need to show that the overwhelming majority of feminist writing – including books and journal articles – features this type of content.
See, anti-female comments on AVfM is a feature. They occur in the posts, as well as in the comments to the posts. There is no equivalent occurring in feminism.
RE: cassandrakitty
A much sadder and more telling way to frame this is that, of the multiple people I know personally who’ve been raped, not a single one has ever pressed charges.
…oh god, I just realized it’s the same on my end. My mother, my uncle, my aunt, the various and sundry friends… hell, I’m the only person I know who even REPORTED it.
RE: thebewilderness
Actually killing women and girls is worse than talking about killing men. Yes, yes it is. Write that down.
Yeah, Matheus is totally not a misogynist. He just DISAGREES with us.
RE: contrapangloss
I won’t have good access to a database until later tonight (when I sneak back on campus), but I’ll see if I can dig up the old links, then.
Thanks, you’re a champion.
RE: cassandrakitty
If we give this dude the Manboobz challenge can we make him do it in pirate talk?
I’d love to, but he seems to have run off. Notice he hasn’t been engaging much with what I’m actually saying, merely whining that I didn’t read twenty-one enormous images to his satisfaction. (I actually chose the four images at random, because I’m incompetent and couldn’t figure out how the damn hotkeys on the gallery worked.)
Seriously, Matheus would be stomped by a high school debate team. It’s sad.
But no really, I really want to be reassured that decent MRAs exist. If he says Warren Farrell, I will fucking CRY.
JudgyBitch, in her conversation with anArchaeopteryx, deflects the question aA raises by saying that some feminists are against gay marriage too, and links to this article as supposed proof:
http://swampland.time.com/2008/11/26/feminism-and-the-3-arguments-against-gay-marriage/
As far as I can tell, it’s an interesting comparison between the reasons why traditionalists and traditional religion dislike gay marriage and feminism, and the essayist quoted seems very strongly in favour of gay marriage and women’s liberation.
Did she just pick up the title without reading the actual piece, or am I misreading it?
Notice he totally didn’t engage with ACTUAL OFFLINE ACTIONS of feminists. I even mentioned Goldman and Solanas, to make it easier for him!
For someone who’s so mad about what feminists are doing, he’s sure focusing on what a few of them are SAYING. While we KNOW that assholes from AVFM have doxxed, harassed, and tried to get people fired from their jobs before.
Where are all these castrating, doxxing feminists with boxcutters I’ve heard so much about?