If anyone feels compelled to discuss the AVFM conference, do it here.
I’ll post links to any articles and blog posts and interesting tweets and pretty much anything of note I see about it; if you run across any, feel free to post them in the comments and I can add them to the post.
Here’s the live audio stream for the conference, which is off the air. And the video stream, which isn’t working at the moment. Apparently they’ve packed up for the day. (Friday, that is.)
There was no protest, as the organizers of the earlier protest called for a boycott
The official twitter hashtag is #icmi14. For some wonderful Janet Bloomfield PR professionalism, see @JudgyBitch1 and @icmi14.
Highlights so far:
A Detroit MetroTimes reporter says he was literally molested at the conference:
An older man came up to me and immediately complimented my hairy arms (a first). He then started telling me all this crazy shit about how he was from California and he makes movies and he wants to take me to Malibu. Regardless of sexual orientation, it was pretty weird. People started filling up the seats around us and I didn’t want to make a scene, so I just politely accepted the compliment and tried to deflect. The dude kept petting my arms.
It was at this point that I realized this is the kind of creepy shit women deal with … everywhere … every day. A part of me wondered if the feminists had planted this guy to hit on rape-apologizing MRAs to teach them a lesson about “rape culture.” If that is the case: well-played. Unfortunately I think I was just dealing with a garden-variety creep.
HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISM! On Twitter, several others said they’d also had, er, encounters with this guy.
Here’s Janet Bloomfield’s response:
Paul Elam saddened to turn away a clearly troubled man in search of human contact because of accusations of "molestation" from MSM #icim14
— AVfM Conference 2014 (@icmi14) June 27, 2014
Sworebytheprecious, despite donating the cost of a ticket to charity, has not been let into the conference, despite assurances from Dean Esmay that she would be. Here’s her twitter feed, and her explanation of what happened on Reddit.
i put on my nice heels, a dress, and did my hair and makeup. the lyft was called and i arrived promptly at 3. my breath tight, i introduced myself to the police and to security. inside was a small table, two chairs, a man and a woman. i noticed a small vaporizer on the desk. we used the same tank.
i introduced myself by first name and last name, not knowing if Esmay had put my name down. last i heard i was not allowed on the premises even with a ticket and a video declaring me welcome. no matter who i was reporting for, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. if anything else i wanted to make myself available to the MRA. im still here.
a very large, gruff man appeared and quickly asked me to leave. his bass carried. he looked like Esmay. i asked why i should leave, was cut off, and he repeated himself in a louder voice still. i thanked everyone for their time and exited the building. i took one single photo as proof i was there, and quietly left. the cops followed me out and seemed curiously bemused by my presence. i wondered who they expected.
Janet Bloomfield had this to say about Swore’s treatment:
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/482599155986997249
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/482608296222662657
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/482608815758528514
Follow the links to Twitter to see even more from JB along those lines.
I will post more as I find it.
UPDATE 1:
AnimalNewYork.com has a report with a number of quotes from last night’s press conference. The reporter also quotes a St. Clair Shores police officer saying that no specific threats have been made against the conference.
By the time yesterday’s planned 3pm “press conference” got going 25 minutes late, there were only about 30 people in the audience, most (but not all) white middle-aged men. A handful of them were reporters. The rest were true believers in a “War on Men.” There was a disco ball in the center of the hall, draped with white paper streamers.
“Point the camera that way and that way only,” said one of the three security guards armed with superfluous walkie talkies, reprimanding someone taking video footage of the attendees, which was prohibited. The organizers introduced the speakers at great lengths, taking pride in their various appearances on Fox News. A Voice For Men founder and conference organizer Paul Elam stated that the cop cars parked outside were there because of more death threats. ”I’m getting tired of the death threats,” shouted a staff member.
Outside, I spoke to St. Clair Shores Officer David Burmeister about the alleged death threats. He said that no specific threats have been made at all. The cops were contracted to be there by A Voice For Men. It appeared that they weren’t there to protect them from specific and imminent danger, but to give the illusion of it.
Hmm.
I have a friend who’s famous enough (he’s a writer with a substantial and growing early-teen readership) to need to watch what he says on Twitter, and it’s hilarious seeing the contrast between his tweets and his far less guarded Facebook posts (which are restricted to actual friends) – often he writes about the same things, but the tone is very different.
Although it’s also a salutary lesson in how to do this sort of thing properly.
By contrast, I don’t think that JB knows what “PR” actually means.
It’s a very simple principle: PR professionals are hired to accentuate the positive and do their damnedest to bury or plausibly excuse the negative. But a PR person who reinforces all the negative perceptions of the organisation she’s trying to defend, using aggressive language on top? She wouldn’t last five minutes in an outfit that truly cared about its image. (I’ve certainly seen PR professionals get heated behind the scenes, but they never ever do it in public in the way that JB’s doing – the threat to their careers just isn’t worth it.)
It’s a doubly baffling decision because if AVFM really desperately needs anything, it’s good PR. They’d have done far better hiring an actual professional instead of spending all that money on security that they obviously don’t need.
Still, I’m not bothered.
It’s rather telling that for MRAs, all that matters is the gender of the harasser for him to get their sympathy. Poor poor (male) creeper, just looking for human contact! The gender of the victim is a smaller issue, although no doubt they’d still prefer him to be creeping on women, since admitting that nonconsensual advances usually come from men regardless of the gender of the victim makes their argument of a gynocracy look rather silly.
AVFM: Empathy for creepers, abusers, bullies and harassers.
And this might just be my ol’ grumpiness talking, but for the life of me, I can’t take seriously a PR person who uses the acronym “LOL” in a non-ironic manner. What is JB, seven years old?
Feminist conspiracy! All a plot to make the conference look bad! But seriously, I think the boycott did AVfM a favour … it would’ve been embarrassing had the protesters outnumbered the attendees
It is morning and while I am having my morning coffee I am laughing at all the comments and how horrible a voice for men looks by all their twitter hate. If the protesters were there, there would be more of them than the conference attendees.
But as Amanda Levitt implied these mra’s are nasty, very mean and vehemently harass protesters either online or revealing their identities, or some type of smear campaign against anyone who is against the mra’s. Look how nasty they were to some protestes when they had Warren Farrrell speak at the University of Toronto. These repugnant mra’s will tease, torment, and try to bully any protesters. How hyprocritical? when avfm attempts to
represent “human rights”
So let these dudes embark on another full day of hateful propaganda. They even have Warren Farrell today giving a seminar on the mens movement. This is a joke. These guys having their convention over in Detroit as I write this do not represent men and this is no mens movement. It really pisses me off that the vfw which has been around for years now granted them a permit for this convention. Why did they do it?
This gathering in Detroit is a travesty, while good male leadership such as Jackson Katz, and Rob Okun aren’t getting the press like Elam is. These are the guys that should be speaking about mens issues as opposed to Elam and Farrrell who offer no solution other than scapegoating women for their misery. I hate avfm so much and want to see them go down.
Anyone else laughing at the “live stream” that’s a loop about some piano bar in the suburbs?
Oh, lol. It’s always projection, isn’t it?
There’s a study I saw *digs around* here: Are Feminists man Haters? Feminists’ and Nonfeminists’ Attitudes Toward Men
“An ethnically diverse sample (N = 488) of college students responded to statements from the Ambivalence toward Men Inventory (AMI; Glick & Fiske, 1999). Contrary to popular beliefs, feminists reported lower levels of hostility toward men than did nonfeminists. ”
So Feminists ‘hate men’ less than the general population. Let me rephrase that; Feminists hate men less than other men hate men.
Here’s a link to the site that describes the original Ambivalent Sexism test and a bunch of other cool stuff (I couldn’t find the specific questionnaire from the above study online, but it’s very similar to the original, just with men): http://www.understandingprejudice.org/asi/faq
I forgot to cash in my female privilege chips for an up-to-snuff computer, so I am largely mobile/on a crap old computer. No live streaming for me.
I’ll be watching on twitter again.
I don’t actually tweet (watching there has just been the most reliable way to keep up with the, er…news?), but I loooove the idea of getting out real messages. That is brilliant. As ever, you all are amazing.
I will just leave this here for everyone’s smile:
I demand more short trousers and poorly considered facial hair! So far the pics from this “event” (heh) have been rather disappointing.
…I don’t even know what is going on with this twitter mess right now. The official account is silent and JB is bragging about calling people whores, tweeting a bunch of political crap, saying feminist shouldn’t reproduce…uhhhhh. I don’t even know.
Apparently WF is saying some pretty creative stuff about using various agencies and Men’s Studies programs. I feel like they keep trying to make fetch happen.
“Apparently WF is saying some pretty creative stuff about using various agencies and Men’s Studies programs. I feel like they keep trying to make fetch happen.”
Hmm interesting their not showing Farrell’s seminar on the mens movement, what the heck are they trying to hide by not showing it?
This is why Elam is so cunning and why what Amanda Levitt wrote was right on the money. Elam want so bad to advertise for his brand “a voice for men”. He got a new logo a couple of months ago to help market his brand. He is all about promoting his brand. So he attempted to have workshops on topics such as men’s studies programs in universities to sound like they are really trying to be an advocate for men. But all this is a false lying façade to mask their severe hatred and bigotry and sexual frustration. Elam is an opportunist and we will see him try to make his so called mens convention in Detroit to appear transformational to the public. Thank goodness we have screen shots of Esmay’s putrid recent twitter rants. The general public doesn’t care one iota about avfm and what is going on in Detroit now.
I’m really liking the updates, WatermelonSugar. I want to give you a fancy title, like they do for their correspondents on The Daily Show, but I can’t think of anything truly fitting.
Dear JudgyBitch
I know this is tricky, but there seems to be a slight misunderstanding here. I think that PR- responsibility for this con, should be understood in the public relations sense, and not as the abbreviation sometimes used in medical settings, and it seems that may you have unfortunately made a slight mistake here, which may cause problems for the Movement. Perhaps we can be assured that this will be rectified in the future.
Back on le Twitter today. I got some sincerely confusing responses last night.
Luzbelitx: 🙂
Watermelonsugar: Every time I see your name I crave delicious watermelon.
This just in! Breaking news from JB, y’all!
I’ve read that everything is the fault of feminist.
…waaaait a second. I am pretty sure that’s the same old line they’ve been dangling all along. Never mind!
Also, I got the live youtube stream to work on my phone. The current speaker (on paternity fraud) is discussing a mythical/metaphoric woman called Cupcake and something about an undefined Evil Empire, which makes me think of Darth Vader as a delicious sweet treat.
Senior Confused Correspondent, signing off.
https://www.google.com/search?q=darth+vader+cupcakes&safe=off&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=VuuuU4uUBuXy8QGouoHwBw&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=979
OMG
I can’t stop laughing.
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/20/f0/6b/20f06bc1d648b97e552de6b50aa792b3.jpg
Well I managed to listen to the whole 2 1/2 hour conference… by doing other tasks on the internet, obviously. I got annoyed real fast just sitting and watching feminist-hating, finger pointing, cherry-picking female disgrunted disillusioned kids rant on about their unhappiness. Ugh! I’m still working on my second bottle of wine at this moment…
One of the biggest issues I had was with Erin Pizzey (and that loony woman sitting next to her) thinking that men and women commit violence equally or are equally violent.
Um…no, Erin — you moron. Simply, no. Statistics show time and time again that men commit the majority of violent crimes the world over, from armed assault, to rape. Past and present.
I’ve asked many a men in my time, including my male siblings, if they ever feared coming under assault by a woman. All answered no. I’ve asked the friends of their friends, some of which were store owners, another was in the marines, another in the national guard… all said ‘no’ to having any thoughts of even being assaulted by a woman. Most have told me they don’t even think about it. It’s men they wonder if they’ll be attacked by. They scoff at the notion a woman will gun them down and steal their wallet in a dark alley. It’s just unheard of to them. It’s never happen to them and they don’t think it ever will. From their experience, both personal and visual, they don’t see women as equally violent as men.
They have even told me in scenarios I have painted for them, that if they see a group of females gathered around in a secluded street, they won’t perceive it as a possible threat. Just a group of girls socializing with no intent to do harm. But if they see guys doing the same, they might think it’s gangsters (depending on their gear, etc), hence they’ll walk by with some caution.
Apparently I heard they handed out free tickets to try not to embarrass themselves. So Elam is racking the money from people who paid for tickets. Elam gets funded throughout the year by his hatemongers for his organization. So this greedy sob has a nice car, house, lives well, does not need to have a full time job, and gets money. No wonder the Southern Poverty Law Center exposed avfm as a hate group.
@katz
I just had a couple of slices of seeded watermelon. I like the seeded over the seedless (although I love all watermelon) it tastes sweeter and so nutritious, refreshing and good for your body.
You need to look at JBs PR differently for it to make a lick of sense.
it isnt trying to attract regular people.
its intended to attract more angry bigots for paul elam to grift
I love that these are things that already existed.
I always wonder how they can simultaneously believe that women hitting men are responsible for most intimate partner violence, but also that all women only date assholes instead of nice guys, so all men hitting women are responsible for all intimate partner violence even though it’s secretly women’s fault because of MRA rule #1: Men lose all agency when there’s a lady butt involved.
But then, somehow Erin Pizzey had a dog that was simultaneously shot and killed by a roving band of evil feminists and also still alive after being shot by an unknown assailant with a bb gun. So it is possible that she has the ability to travel between different dimensions and realities and is simple confused about which one she’s in at which time. I can imagine that would be difficult to keep track of.
for anyone that cares to observe this garbage in Detroit, here is a live streaming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNNpmMTxt8oink
They are having lunch break and apparently Elam is ordering pizza for everyone. Geez, I feel bad for the pizza delivery person having to carry a bunch of pizza’s with probably no tip for these jerks at the conference.
And he just posted another AVFM beg-a-thon!
Chumps.
How about Mammoth International Twitter Correspondent?