Let’s say, hypothetically, that you run a site that appeals to raving misogynists given to launching into violent anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat. And let’s just say that you have gone to great trouble to organize a conference that is designed to play down the fact that a significant amount of your fanbase is made up of raving misogynists given to launching into violent anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat.
Well, you probably shouldn’t post a public announcement warning the raving misogynists who will be attending your conference to refrain from launching into violent anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat because someone might hear them. Because the fact that you feel it necessary to issue such a warning is kind of a giant clue that a significant number of the conference attendees are raving misogynists given to launching into anti-woman rants at the drop of a hat.
I bring this up because Paul Elam posted just such a warning on his site last night in a post that he labeled “Important Message for AVFM Conference Ticket Holders.”
[T]here will be ideological opponents to the MHRM, including some members of the media, present at the event. Some will be looking for anything they can to hurt us with. They will be listening, eavesdropping, and if they can, gathering things to harm us with.
For that reason, ANYONE sitting around trash-talking women, men, making violent statements, even jokingly, will be brought to the attention of security who will issue ONE warning (or less). After that, they will be directed by security to leave. There are no exceptions.
Please, for all here who are attending, keep this in mind with everything you do and say. Even at after-hours social events, if you hear anyone saying anything that can be used against us, or that makes our gathering toxic, pull them aside politely and say, “Hey, you are hurting us with this. If you want to hang with this group you have to stop it.”
Oh, I suppose I should acknowledge that technically Elam also warned his attendees not to “trash-talk” men either, but the only kinds of men that ever get “trash-talked” on A Voice for Men are men that Elam and his cronies have decided have shown too much respect for women.
I’ve never run across this sort of warning at any other conference I’ve been to, or read about. I’m guessing that when the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery holds its annual trade show it doesn’t have to warn attendees not to bad-mouth their sworn enemies: Ear, Nose and Throat specialists. Or that the Electronic Transactions Association has to specifically forbid its convention-goers from publicly threatening to kill people who still like to pay with cash.
Maybe they do. Maybe they’re just a bit more discreet about it.
At least one of AVFM’s misogynistic fans wasn’t thrilled by the ban on overt women-hating rants.
In the comments to Elam’s post, someone called MGTOW-man complained that,
Of course I understand why attendees can’t be honest about women and men while at venue but what is to stop those ideologues from cherry-picking and distorting things said on AVfM? What is the difference?
Also, bummer! Isn’t part of the reason mhra’s are gathering…to learn more about each other, confirm similarities, discuss philosophies and potential solutions, and forge bonds, etc—especially during socializing time? It will be excruciatingly hard to do this if attendees lips must be sealed.
Will attendees have to take their talk elsewhere if/when they need to be honest but in which outsiders obliviously cry ” hate” because they do not want the truth to be told?
How come outsiders will be allowed in socializing time? Will attendees be allowed any time to gather WITHOUT snooping idiots probing for things to be mean and clueless?
I feel for these poor fellows, trying to come up with topics of conversation that don’t involve how much women suck.
In the comments here on We Hunted the Mammoth, Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III has offered some suggestions as to what AVFM conference goerscan can talk about if they can’t talk shit about women:
- the weather
- incomprehensible poster design
- the weather
- correct etiquette for eating cold stew from a can
- the weather
- hey do you think Warren Farrell is related to Colin Farrell or is it just a coincidence
- tie knots — the Windsor vs the Esmay
- ellipses and the rule of two
- why all women are bloodsucking monsters. I mean the weather! The weather! Shit.
Hope that helps!
They clearly need hall monitors. Dressed a la Esmay.
And another major difference between “AVFM” and actual social justice movements.
Social Justice: Don’t say X because X is false, hurtful or regressive.
AVFM: Don’t say X because X might make us look bad.
I’ve never run across this sort of warning at any other conference I’ve been to, or read about.
I did see a “please be mindful of others’ needs” at WisCon38, which is a sci-fi/fantasy con devoted to… well, basically all people that mainstream sci-fi ignores. But that was just a gentle reminder that some people need space for their wheelchairs. There was absolutely nothing about “please don’t bash white straight cis able-bodied men because they might hear us, teehee.”
Note that at least one of the panelists at WisCon got a ton of death threats, doxxing attempts, and other attacks by white supremacist groups, just for daring to attend and say Europe wasn’t entirely white throughout all of history. And that was just ONE PERSON. I’m positive other folks did too.
So yeah, I’m not buying for one moment that these guys are actually serious about human rights. They’re just using paranoia to close their ranks and fuel their people’s martyr complex.
MRAs are always afraid that people will find out the truth, it seems…
Yeah, usually when a conference or a convention puts up behavior or harassment warnings, it’s because they disagree with that kind of behavior. Not because it makes them “look bad”.
C’mon, AVFM. Have some decency. Declare hateful and violence speech verboten because you are against hateful and violent speech, not because feminist spies will be eavesdropping.
Another Quote from the comment section:
“Anthony Zarat MGTOW-man • 11 hours ago
Feminists are not as stupid as you think. What if a male feminist plant attends the conference under my name, and then invites you to a “get it off your chest” chat in a local bar? I have been pretty open about how much I regret that I can’t come, so the feminist would know that there is nobody there to spot them as a plant.
What if after a few drinks you start to loosen up, not knowing that the man is wearing a wire? What if the feminist tells you a made up shocking story of family court abuse, and solidarity compels you to “join in” a session of trash talking women? If this happen, the ONLY thing that you will hear in the media about this conference will be those words.”
Dat paranoia
“I have been pretty open about how much I regret that I can’t come, so the feminist would know that there is nobody there to spot them as a plant.”
Wait, so is he claiming that he has super feminist spotting powers that the rest of the HMHRHMH lacks?
Obviously the only way to be “honest” about women is to trash talk them. Not letting men talk shit about women is literally Hitler. Or literally Abraham Lincoln, on Reddit.
ohmydog, Anthony Zarat is still commenting there? Awesome. I miss the days of talking to him about sex robots and splitting the country in two and putting men on one side and women on the other. I’m glad to see he is as paranoid and angry as ever. I was sort of worried he would have imploded in white hot rage by now.
AVFM is full of women-bashing rants. Putting the kibosh on offline hate speech for a weekend isn’t exactly preventing anyone, including media representatives, from looking up the movement and encountering the bounty of anti-female rhetoric that makes up their website.
I read something like this and that’s why I want to donate even more to DarkHorseSwore. Elam and his crew may be terrified of bad public relations. If some media outlet like 20/20 or another mainstream media outlet got hold of hateful statements directed at women or others, it will confirm a lot of peoples opinions. The mens rights groups will publicly affiliated rightfully so with extremists or other fringe hate groups like the kkk or skinheads. Ironically Dean Esmay claims he is a liberal how the heck can he be a part of an extremist right wing organization like avfm.
I think Elam is doing some type of damage control at this point. It seems he desperately want to present a distorted image to the public that avfm is not hateful and supports women as well. He knows it will not work because the anchorpeople for the networks will surely interview a lot of men who will say stupid comments. This conference will make Elam look really bad to the general public. He is in state of some type of panic. I am sure he Elam will try to point out to the media that there are women (I heard their called honey badgers) mra’s. It should be interesting next week but Elam is scared that the hate against women and other groups at his website will finally be leaked out. I read on another blog that the men attending were also told to dress in suits and be well groomed to portray themselves to look good in the media. What a joke this is.
I love how Anthony Zarat is so scared they’ll be tricked into going on misogynist rants. I’ve been drunk many a time. It didn’t turn me into a bigot. In fact, I just get more vocal when I do hear someone say something bigoted. If he wasn’t a misogynist, he wouldn’t be able to be baited into saying something misogynistic by a mole pretending to be an MRA.
Nobody with half a brain bought the tricked into bigotry excuse from Donald Sterling. They aren’t going it buy it from MRAs either.
This is going to be like the Monty Python Spam Spam Eggs and Spam skit, if trash talking women is the word Spam.
Wont make a difference anyway, Mras idea of what is misogynist doesn’t match the average persons so they’ll just say awful shit without even realizing it
One time I was black out drunk at a party in college. Was told the next day that I started ranting about how band aids are racist because my friend cut himself and I went to go get a band aid and all we had were ‘skin tone’ and rainbow unicorn. So I brought him a rainbow unicorn band aid cause “the other ones were being racist.”
RE: sadiesummer
“Anthony Zarat MGTOW-man
OMG ANTZ IS BACK! The dude who thought the genders should be separated down the Mississippi River! I wrote a story in his honor, back in the start of my writeathoning!
I think his idea was that if he came, and there were also a feminist there pretending to be Zarat, then the conference would suddenly have two Zarats, and people would realize something fishy was going on… But since Zarat has announced that he’s gonna stay at home, there’s an opportunity for a feminist spy to take his place and pretend to be him.
Anyway, it’s still completely paranoid.
This is one of the reasons they whinge so virulently when people tell them they shouldn’t tell rape jokes. Thinking before you speak is misandry and censorship and hard! “What? Consider the impact of my words like an adult? YU SO HILTER?!!!” I really can’t imagine Paul’s requests for them to mind their P’s and Q’s going over terribly well.
If they’re forbidden to say nasty things about women, it will be one hell of a quiet conference.
Wait a minute. So if people make remarks that women might find offensive, then convention staff is going to throw them out? And the ordinary convention-goers are going to be encouraged to help enforce the policy when convention staff isn’t around? And they’re all OK with this?
This is rather…unexpected. I would have expected a lot of howling about the “PC Police”, and a lot of whining that they won’t be allowed to try to flirt with women at the bar under these rules. (Because they can’t figure out how to flirt without being offensive.)
I know it’s not the best anti-harassment policy in the world, but it’s still better than some non-MRA groups have been able to manage.
RE: Dvarghundspossen
But since Zarat has announced that he’s gonna stay at home, there’s an opportunity for a feminist spy to take his place and pretend to be him.
My time has come! *throws off black cloak* I have been deceiving all of you Mammoths for years! I AM ZARAT! Also Owly, Tom Martin, and George Washington. CHECKMATE FEMINISTS.
Hahaha!! I’m so glad you lampooned this one, David.
Oh they have that covered already. The FeMRAs are going to act as human shields! I kid you not.
Yeah, I don’t think that’ll stop them.
It will be nuts having all these nutty mra’s who have hidden behind their computers in the so called manosphere out in public. All these manosphere bloggers coming out in public. It will be a rather interesting scene nonetheless. Elam and Esmay are somehow claiming there will be legitimate workshops on mens issues and they expect a lot of men there representing their hateful forums like reddit mens rights and others.
That is why it would be good if DarkHorseSwore or some other like minded reporter is in the conference observing these workshops, Then the real deal of all the hate going with these guys. I am curious if any other feminist blogs such as Feministe or any others will also try to send someone there. But a lot people may think it is better to just ignore the conference. Imo if your going in there in Detroit it is better to just fully expose this hate movement for what it is so the general public will know how hateful these mra’s are.
So, in short: “Don’t do or say anything that we always do or say.”