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The Chuckles Turned to Guffaws: AVFM conference Saturday wrapup

Janet Bloomfield PRs up a storm. Pic borrowed from r/amr.
Janet Bloomfield PRs up a storm.

Well, the AVFM conference is over. I thought I’d post links to some of the media coverage today. I’m not sure Paul Elam and co have quite attained the level of respectability they were going for with the conference. It probably didn’t help that their PR gal, Janet Bloomfield, kept posting about “whores” and then, during the final panel discussion, delivered a passionate defense of “doxxing.”

Anyway, here’s the press coverage today:

Men’s rights conference takes aim at feminism, by Adam Serwer, MSNBC.

Serwer presented a sardonic take on the conference, full of revealingly awful details. Some highlights:

What animated most of the speakers at the conference was feminism and how it needed to be defeated. …

At the conference, feminism was responsible for turning wives against their husbands, bleeding them dry in divorce proceedings and separating them from their children, levying false accusations of rape and abuse against good men, or creating an ever-present culture of hatred where men are vilified.

Though men’s rights activists who hosted the conference often say sexual assault against men isn’t taken seriously, the audience laughed when speaker Fred Jones mentioned his fears about his son being raped after being arrested in New Orleans.

“He’s kinda small and kinda cute, good looking, you know what I mean?” Jones said. “You know what they do with –” Jones cut himself off. But the audience laughed.

Barbara Kay, a columnist for Canada’s National Post, argued that …  [r]ape on college campuses … was a myth perpetrated by man-haters …

“The vast majority of female students allegedly raped on campus are actually voicing buyer’s remorse from alcohol-fueled promiscuous behavior involving murky lines of consent on both sides,” she said, drawing chuckles from the audience. “It’s true. It’s their get-out-of-guilt-free card, you know like Monopoly.” The chuckles turned to guffaws.

The First International Conference on Men’s Issues: Day 1, by Arthur Goldwag, Hatewatch

On the SPLC’s Hatewatch blog, Goldwag — who wrote that famous SPLC  takedown of the Men’s Rights movement — delivered up a surporisingly straightforward account of the first day of the conference. Some highlights:

A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam warned attendees to keep low profiles, lest they be harassed by protesters, and made much of the police presence he had secured. There were indeed uniformed policemen on site, and quite a few black-shirted security guards. There were camera crews from Vice and a number of reporters. But the only sounds to be heard outside the VFW Hall were chirping birds and the hum of passing traffic—there wasn’t a protestor in sight. I counted between 150 and 200 people in the hall. …

The Canadian Senator Anne Cools, who opened the conference, spoke at great length about how feminism has hijacked Canada’s family courts, quoting Blackstone on women’s rights, the song “Frankie and Johnnie” and even Euripides to give lie to the supposed feminist myth that women were historically oppressed. Frankie and Medea, she implied, both gave as good as they got. Erin Pizzey, the well-known novelist, ex-feminist, and founder of Chiswick Women’s Aid, one of the first women’s shelters, indicted the movement she had once helped lead as a radical Marxist plot to turn women against men, destroy families, and create a billion dollar social welfare industry.

My Experience at the First International Men’s Conference So Far, by Helen Smith, PJ Media

And then there was “Dr. Helen,” writing on her blog on the right-wing website PJ Media. Dr. H, one of the speakers at the AVFM conference, described her time amongst the MRAs as “quite a delight.” Indeed, her account was so chipper I found myself wondering if she had even attended the same conference as Serwer and Goldwag — or the conference I watched several hours of online.

The crowd of what looked to be about two or three hundred people were diverse and ranged from all ages to all ethnic backgrounds. There were more men there but almost as many women it seemed! … I was in awe and amazed at the great group of intellectual speakers and the audience who asked questions that were critically thought out and challenging.

Yeah, definitely a different conference.

She did have one worry, though: that other people were there to report on the conference besides her.

My only concern with the conference was the media that was present. It seemed that reporters from Time, MSNBC, GQ, and Vice.com were there. I got an uneasy feeling about a few of them though I suppose their stories could go either way, though I think I know which way to bet. There were a couple of women from Vice.com that we sat with at an appreciation dinner for speakers who seemed very nice but frankly, a bit clueless.

I’m guessing those women from Vice.com are a lot less “clueless” than Dr. H thinks.

See the AgainstMensRights subreddit for more discussions of the conference. I borrowed the pic for this post from here.

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Wetherby
Wetherby
10 years ago

An example of the nonexistent backlash against first-wave feminism – in 1913, the British film industry even made an anti-suffragette “comedy”!

emilygoddess
emilygoddess
10 years ago

This is certainly not the only issue affecting men, but it is where I would like to start (maybe we can talk about circumcision next)

Gods, you can see the entitlement from space.

pecunium
10 years ago

This is certainly not the only issue affecting men, but it is where I would like to start

How nice for you. I understand there are several blogging platforms out there for this. I wish you luck your future endeavours.

cloudiah
10 years ago

Oh dog, let’s not talk about circumcision. I’m completely opposed to the practice (male or female), but “intactivists” are SO infuriating I find myself wanting to rethink my position rather than being on the same side as them. (Not really, but almost.) If it’s not the casual anti-semitism, it’s the false equivalency, the minimizing of FGM, or just the general fuckwittedness of their representatives in the debate.

I am convinced that if we ever to end the routine practice for young boys, it will be in spite of these asshats, not because of them.

sparky
sparky
10 years ago

Yeah, I also vote to ban Justin. His first comment was full of rape-apologizing fail and he’s openly admitted to trolling and he’s boring as hell.

As long as feminists see no problem with boys being burned to death….

Well then, since feminists do have major problems with burning anyone to death, then I guess we don’t have to beat up any straw-feminists or minimize te kidnapping of girls then, huh?

Howard Bannister
10 years ago

So here are my questions to a female centric audience. Do you think there is parity in child custody outcomes?

Not that it matters much, but, no, I don’t think there’s parity in child custody outcomes. But I don’t think it’s men that are actually being oppressed there, either. Hmmm, whoops.

Isabelle
Isabelle
10 years ago

“Well then, since feminists do have major problems with burning anyone to death, then I guess we don’t have to beat up any straw-feminists or minimize te kidnapping of girls then, huh?”

And maybe we should point the obvious: the main constituency of Boko Haram is composed of angry misogynist young men and one of their “ideological” pillar is the Taliban’s Islamically Exemplary Educational Policy towards Women. Another is Sharia law. They have killed thousands of people we never heard about. I think there was a lot of focus on the kidnapped young girls because, well, they were alive, therefore efforts could be made to actually help them.

Here are a few choice morsels from a Nigerian forum explaining what is the position of Boko Haram,

“It is also haram to educate women in any non-religious subject beyond what is needed for their functions as wives and mothers. A level of literacy sufficient to read a cookery book or a Qur’anic story to a child is quite enough, and to go further is displeasing to Allah.”

“Under Shariah law women must be given the rights that Allah and His Messenger have instructed, that is the right to stay in their homes and to gain religious instruction in the seclusion of purdah. Women must not be educated in anything other than religion beyond the age of eight, or they may become disruptive to society.”

mmmm…sounds feminist….not really. The irony of trying to divert the attention from the culprits to women who would have figure among BH prime targets.

Argenti Aertheri
10 years ago

*sigh* why are they so bad at stats? It’s like an MRA requirement “must be bad enough at stats to find confirmation bias in EVERYTHING”.

Anyways…

“Argenti: you asked the question of whether the Worldpress statistics on fatherlessness, normalized for other factors including poverty. I do not know the answer to this, but I suspect that they do not or at least not in all cases. The information was derived from a secondary source, but most of the primary source information is cited. I will certainly follow up and digest the rest of the information that you presented. It’s a lot to cull through right now. Here was the original link: http://thefatherlessgeneration.wordpress.com/statistics/. ”

I’ll get to the link, but any study of “fatherlessness” needs to account for the differences between a single mother household, and a household with a stepfather, since presumably the later counts as a father. Particularly since EVERY stat you listed is linked to poverty, race, etc. Not accounting for those things makes the numbers meaningless.

As for the link I posted, the point of looking at women specifically was likely because looking at men and women would result in a very large overlap that would be painfully difficult to account for. The CDC data including singles and kids? Nope, wouldn’t just even out over time since divorce rates change, and unmarried couples are becoming more and more common — a fair percent of those single people and kids may never marry, and thus never divorce. And just using any given years marriage and divorce rates? Doesn’t account for things like cohort effects (when one cohort of people, in this case age is probably the most relevant one, do something more/less often than other cohorts) — given the age distribution of the population, the increasing age at first marriage, and the increase in coinhabiting without ever marrying, what that’s looking at is people married in the past, and now divorcing, versus people marrying now, a number that is likely to be lower than the number of people married in the same years as the people divorcing.

Give me a second to grab some data and show you what I mean.

Tessa
10 years ago

Sigh, I am kinda annoyed at myself for giving another serious response to Justin. Every sentence and wording of his spiels are sooo transparent and leading and a blatant attempt at manipulating words to attempt to hide his purpose. It’s so obvious. But since I plan to take a shower soon, I’ll respond and then wash the ickyness off.

So here are my questions to a female centric audience. Do you think there is parity in child custody outcomes? Do you think fathers are important? What do you think a father should do when he wants to be involved with his child(ren) and the mother does not want this? I welcome your responses.

Well, by parity, do you mean “fathers get the child equally as much as mothers?” See the problem there is that your goal in asking the question it’s very simplistic and ignores… You know, how society is. Women are expected to be and often are by default, the primary caregiver of the child. Feminists want to change this so no particular person is expected to be the caregiver based simply on gender. When there is a divorce, the child usually goes to the primary caregiver. If there was no bias on which person is supposed to be the primary caregiver, it’d be closer to parity.

So, as more evidence you are not here in good faith, I will once again post the quote weirwoodtreehugger provided in the other thread from the New England Law Review http://amptoons.com/blog/files/Massachusetts_Gender_Bias_Study.htm:

We began our investigation of child custody aware of a common perception that there is a bias in favor of women in these decisions. Our research contradicted this perception. Although mothers more frequently get primary physical custody of children following divorce, this practice does not reflect bias but rather the agreement of the parties and the fact that, in most families, mothers have been the primary [*748] caretakers of children. Fathers who actively seek custody obtain either primary or joint physical custody over 70% of the time. Reports indicate, however, that in some cases perceptions of gender bias may discourage fathers from seeking custody and stereotypes about fathers may sometimes affect case outcomes. In general, our evidence suggests that the courts hold higher standards for mothers than fathers in custody determinations.

As I mentioned, I don’t want stereotypes about gender with regard to child rearing. So, if you want more parity, encourage more stay at home dads! Encourage companies to pay women equally! Help us destroy the bias!

Oh! And the parity bit is only about initial assignment at the divorce, when men actively seek custody they usually get it. Actually, (I don’t have the exact figures (that last line in that quote supports it, though) but the percentage is a little higher than when it’s reversed and women are seeking joint custody when the fathers are assigned primary custody.

To the “do you think fathers are important?” bit. Well I think parents are equally important. I don’t think the gender of the individual makes them more or less important.

PS: Thanks to weirwoodtreehugger for providing that quote, it saved me having to search and waste more time.

pecunium
10 years ago

Justin: Do you think there is parity in child custody outcomes

Ah… the perilous yes or no question. Hidden in that simple choice is a veritable minefield*

It’s not a yes or no question, and the answer to the yes or no formulation depends on what the question means.

What do you mean by parity? By that do you mean a roughly 50/50 split in the selection of the custodial parent the event of divorce?

Do you refer to the rate of custodial parenting in the event of contested custody?

Are you asking us to determine the best interest of the child?

Is that best interest supposed to have an even split between parents? If so why?

Is it parity based on expressed desire to be the custodial parent?

Based on any one of those usages of “parity”, the answers will vary, which means; as you have left the crucial element of the question undefined, it can’t be answered. But hey, keep trying to set up a “gotcha” question so you can crow about how clever you are the next time you’re hanging with the boys bashing the “female centric”.

*Which is, I suspect, the the purpose.

Howard Bannister
10 years ago

I’ll get to the link, but any study of “fatherlessness” needs to account for the differences between a single mother household, and a household with a stepfather, since presumably the later counts as a father.

@Argenti

Also, the level of parental involvement by the father post-divorce/separation.

Because did you know that some fathers, after divorcing, can actually still be involved in their kids lives, even though they don’t live with them? This is shocking and new information, I know.

See also.

So, yeah. “Fatherlessness.”

Lea
Lea
10 years ago

I would not normally joke about circumcision. I do find the practice cruel and unethical. But last night an MRA in the comments over at Motor City Muckraker was claiming that women are responsible for infant circumcision because baby foreskins were sold to cosmetic companies to make wrinkle creams for women. My gast was flabbered. It was like he was spreading blood libel, but with foreskins. Foreskin libel?

My husband and I laughed and made jokes for at least an hour about the magical rejuvenating powers of foreskin. So many jokes about rubbing uncircumcised cocks on your face were made. Can you imagine the adds for spas offering “foreskin facials” ? The testimonials from satisfied customers? We did. 😉

“When I’m feeling a little run down, I make an appointment a Fabulous Frank’s Foreskin Facials and in no time at all, I feel great! Frank really knows how to put a spring back in my step. Bring a friend and get a discount on your next visit!”

Argenti Aertheri
10 years ago

All data is women only, in keeping with the other data. Numbers may not add to 100% thanks to rounding from three data sets. Looks of random math, the important bits are at the end.

1950
Percent 35 or older never married — 8%~
Average age of first marriage — 20.5~
Math from that: average year of birth — 1930~
Age in 2009 — 80~
Percent married this decade still married in 2009 — N/A
Percent of people 70+ ever divorced by 2009 — 21.4%
So, for people who married in the 50s the divorce rate, to date, is 21.4%

1970
Percent 35 or older never married — 6%~
Average age of first marriage — 22~
Math from that: average year of birth — 1958~
Age in 2009 — 51~
Percent married this decade still married in 2009 — 53%~
Percent of people 40-49 ever divorced by 2009 — 31%

1990
Percent 35 or older never married — 6%~
Average age of first marriage — 25~
Math from that: average year of birth — 1965~
Age in 2009 — 44~
Percent married this decade still married in 2009 — 82%~
Percent of people 40-49 ever divorced by 2009 — 31%
(Note that thanks to rounding this is the same as above)
So for those married in the 70s or 90s, the divorce rate, to date, is 31%.

2010
Percent 35 or older never married — 11%
Average age of first marriage — 27~
Math from that: average year of birth — 1983~
Age in 2009 — 26~
Percent married his decade still married in 2009 — …yeah
Percent of people 20-24 ever divorced by 2009 — 1.8%
I’m not gonna bother with this one, it’s clearly too soon to be useful…which is the point.

Average age at divorce for divorces in 2008 — 37.4
Average year of birth for those people — 1970~
Average percent divorced by 2009, born in the 1970-1974 — 15%~
Average percent married by 2009, born in the 1970-1974 — 71%~
2000 census count total for those born in 1969-1973 (aged 25-29 at time of census) — 17,722,067
Divided by 50/50 gender split — 8,861,034 (rounded up)
Number ever married — 6,291,334
Number ever divorced — 1,329,155
Actual divorce rate for those born 1970~1974 — 21% — more or less the divorce rate for 2009 (remember, the percent ever divorced is including those never married, which is just silly)

Average age at marriage for those married in 2008 — 29.5
Average age at birth for them — 1978~
Average percent divorced by 2009, born 1975-1979 — 7%~
Average percent married by 2009, born in the 1975-1979 — 47%~
2000 census count total for those born in 1974-1978 (aged 20-24 at time of census) — 18,257,225
Divided by 50/50 gender split — 9,128,613 (rounded up)
Number ever married — 4,290,448~
Number ever divorced — 639,003~
Actual marriage rate for those born 1970~1974 — 15%~ — more or less the marriage rate for 2009
For reference, divorce rate *of those who married* — 15%~

Average birth year for those married in 2010 (see above) — 1983~
Average percent divorced by 2009, born 1980-1984 — 1%
Average percent married by 2009, born 1980-1984 — 16%~
2000 census count total for those born in 1979-1983 (aged 15-19 time of census) — 19,819,518
Divided by 50/50 gender split — 9,909,579 (rounded up)
Number ever married — 1,585,561
Divorce data is useless at this point, this entire data set is useless for predicting trends

Divorce rate for those married in the 50s or 70s — 21%~ — the later group’s rate being roughly the divorce rate in 2009

So, by age in 2009/2010, percent ever divorced —
30-39 — 15%
40-49 — 31%

From what data I could gleam, and do too much math on, the divorce rate is falling. Compare to:

Number of marriages in 2008 (divorce rate 15%) — 844,000
Number of divorces in 2008 — 2,157,000
Which would suggest marriages in 2008 have a 39%+ risk of divorce (not all 50 states had divorce data)

Except that makes no bloody sense since the average age of marriage in 2010 was 27~, and the people a decade older had a divorce rate approximately half the divorce rate of the people a decade older than them.
Citations in next comment, as I suspect the number of links will send me to the mod queue.

Argenti Aertheri
10 years ago

Howard — yeah, you’d need to look at father involvement before and after the split, I’d imagine that the greater the difference between before and after, the greater the effect on the kid. But it could be a wash if equal numbers were good dads and abusive dads never coming around anymore — the effect of the former would prolly not be good, whereas having your abusive father go from controlling to never there? Well, two brain cells says that’s a good thing.

Lea
Lea
10 years ago

Trolls love to come here to tell us to shut up because we’re wasting our time and doing it wrong, blah blah blah.

They’re like the talking stone faces from Labyrinth, only more personally invested in our silence.

“Stop laughing at me! Nothing you say matters. You aren’t making a difference! You don’t bother me! No one pays attention to you. That’s why I came here and made several long and winding comments to try to get you to stop. So shut up! WAH WAH WAH!”

Yeah buddy, sure. Thanks for the encouragement.

Argenti Aertheri
10 years ago

Oh and Justin? Your site there has a MASSIVE failure in regards to absolute v relative risk, in combination with looking at things backwards. For an example of the latter, 100% of the mentally ill have drank water! But it be absurd to say that water causes mental illness since 100% of the population has drank water but 25%~ have a mental illness at some point — so 75% of water drinkers DON’T develop mental illness. So 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes? What’s the general rate of youth suicide, and the rate among youths from fatherless homes? How much does being fatherless actually increase the risk? (And you still need to account for all the confounding variables, poverty, race, etc)

brooked
brooked
10 years ago

I know a unmarried couple with three children whose 14 year recently relationship ended, but I guess since they never married she was a “single mother” the whole time. Also, the mother got primary custody, but the father lives nearby and sees them often so the children didn’t plunge into “fatherlessness” despite the lack of custodial parity.

LBT
LBT
10 years ago

Oh look, Justin totally ignored me. There’s a fucking shock. Told you I was just a fucking rhetorical idea with this chucklefuck. I vote for the ban, dude makes me fucking mad, with his whole, “Hohoho, from my armchair, let me pontificate about how you’re going to turn into an abuser, male rape survivor, and how it’s all women’s fault! That totally shows you how much I care!”

RE: BlackStarSix

there has been an epic backlash against 2nd wave feminism but virtually no backlash against 1st wave feminism.

What the hell are you talking about? There’s been tons of First Wave backlash, because it was hella racist.

2nd wave feminism is what created the anti-trans movement

No, that would be transphobia. Some parts of 2nd wave feminism merely became a vehicle for it. Don’t play dumb.

RE: farkennel

As long as feminists see no problem with boys being burned to death

…what? Is this a thing? What the hell are you even talking about?

RE: Lea

So many jokes about rubbing uncircumcised cocks on your face were made

So THAT’S how my husband stays looking so fresh!

Justin
Justin
10 years ago

Argenti, thank you for expanding upon Dr. Amato’s method. While the numbers seem sound, we should be careful in how we interpret this method as well. What these numbers say to me is that if you are in a certain age group and were married, this is the likelihood that you have had one divorce by the benchmark year. What the numbers do not say, as you have alluded to, is the susceptibility of a certain age group to one divorce over a lifetime. Obviously, this number would be much higher. The susceptibility of a certain year group to divorce could only be determined under this method after every member of that group who had ever married had died. This might be great for historians, but is much less useful in determining what is going on right now. It would also predict a necessary drop in divorce rates and marriage rates when looking at newer data, because over the smaller time sample less people would divorce or wed. To be useful in determining actual divorce susceptibility for a certain birth group, this method would have to make future projections based historic data which presents its own sources of error. As you have alluded to, no such projections are provided.
There is also the disparity that Dr. Armato’s method only looks at first marriages. The CDC method is agnostic to which marriage you are on. It just asks the question of whether a marriage or divorce happened in a given year. This may explain some of the disparity between the methods.
More germane to the conversation, neither Dr. Armato’s method nor the CDC method is entirely predictive of a child’s exposure to divorce. The presence of dependents is not considered by either source.
I interpreted a comment you made to mean you believe that the CDC method is skewed by the inclusion of never marrying populations. The numbers for couples married during a target year are taken as a percentage of the whole population. This is true of divorces as well. When you divide the percentage of marriages by the percentage of divorces, the never marrying population becomes irrelevant because they were factorial in both initial percentages. Assuming that we could predict which women in the U.S. would ever be married and then determined if they got married or divorced in a target year, the individual percentages for marriages and divorces in the target year would be much higher given the smaller population size. However, when you divided the new marriage percentage by the new divorce percentage the math would work out the same.
You and Dr. Amato still may have a point about co-mingling marriages and divorces from different age groups. According to the U.S. Census bureau the average length of a first marriage in 2009 was 20.8 years. http://blogs.census.gov/2011/08/25/how-long-do-marriages-last/. This would mean that the CDC data from 2000-2011 I presented is not a large enough sample size to ameliorate Dr. Armato’s concern.
Dr. Armato’s method may be great in a historical context, but I am not convinced that this is the best place to start for policy makers.

Justin
Justin
10 years ago

pecunium: To answer you. I am interested in all the facets of the question you presented regarding custodial parity. I was also interested in which facets you would tackle. I did not want to lead the witness. Please feel free to address any or all that you like.

cloudiah
10 years ago

@Lea, Those cells, the ones that are used in lady face creams (and no doubt, scented candles)? They’re fibroblasts. Which are also used to grow new skin for burn victims or to cover diabetic ulcers. Fibroblasts are the most common cells of connective tissue in animals. They’re not taken from foreskins because of some sinister plot to deprive men of pleasure in order to make our lady-faces extra supple, but because circumcision is so common they’re just a readily available supply. There are other sources. Ending routine infant male circumcision will not endanger our dewy complexions, and Oprah isn’t promoting male circumcision by marketing her cream.

And yes, intactivists focusing on that is kind of funny. Because face creams are really about as irrelevant to the issue as anything it’s possible to imagine, unless you’re just really interested in finding a way to blame women for a practice that was started by religions that were entirely controlled by men. Which, again, is funny–because we are dedicated to mocking misogyny here, and this is perfect fodder for us.

Also, I have to admit that “foreskin libel” made me legit LOL.

Justin
Justin
10 years ago

Argenti: With regard to the fatherlessness data. I was not suggesting that these outcomes are deterministic, neither is the website. The presentation is certainly a little agenda based. They are trying to get fathers more involved, which is a good thing. From this view point, whether or not other factors play in is not immediately important to their goal. Certainly some factors like single parenting and poverty are coupled. Divorce might also be coupled with economic factors before and after the proceeding. Financial issues are the third leading cause of divorce and divorce is the fourth leading cause of bankruptcy.

https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AlZwv4AkbGWmWQ0mD1Ipe5.bvZx4?p=leading+causes+for+divorce&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-901

https://www.institutedfa.com/Professionals.php?Articles-Leading-Causes-of-Divorce-74

emilygoddess
emilygoddess
10 years ago

Please feel free to address any or all that you like.

I’m sure he appreciates having your permission.

So are you gonna address the part where you were deliberately hurtful to people and considered their pain a “reward”, or just gonna pretend that never happened in favor of more bloviating?

Unimaginative
Unimaginative
10 years ago

My money’s on bloviating. I started reading his attempt to lecture Argenti on interpreting stats, snorted part of a cherry through my nose, and skipped the rest. Off to extract the nasal cherry.