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.
It’s kind of like Dubai. Awesome, beautiful surroundings that are somewhat spoiled by the giant, tacky monument to capitalism stuck in the middle.
Is this a good place to share favorite local nature spots? It seems more interesting than MRAs. Here’s my favorite place in Minnesota, Gooseberry Falls. It’s near Lake Superior.
Ok I was reading the MSNBC article and the quote from Dr. Tara Palmatier stuck out as very telling:
I wish I had the full context of what exact part of “just being men” they are getting shamed for. I can guess. Usually this is in regards to treating women as sex objects. Like the scary “it’s like putting steak in front of a hungry dog and not expecting him to eat it!” The slideshow pics I’ve seen seem to confirm it.
The women part is easier to interpret. But put together they’re really interesting.
You shouldn’t shame men for their behavior towards women.
Women should be shamed about how they dress themselves.
Basically, “if you girlies don’t want the men to treat you like sex objects, keep your body covered.”
How do they not see how disrespectful to men that is? Men are all urges and unable to be anything else. It’s up to women to control men’s behavior by not triggering their sex response.
It reminds me of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. “Don’t move, its vision is based on movement.” So for men it’s “cover up ladies, their vision is based on skin.”
I’m sorry, I have more respect for men than that. I think men are capable of seeing me as a human regardless of what I wear, or don’t wear. And really, how can we expect the MRAs to agree with “the radical notion that women are people” if they don’t even seem to believe that men are people.
MRAs keep men at the lowest level of self-control.
Dare a man see side boob, he may be compelled to hump the woman’s leg. And then he may be falsely accused of rape, all for the injustice of trying to ‘become her fantasy’ or something.
It’s funny, ’cause they bleat about misandry and rape hysteria, and yet it’s their very views that give rise to concepts like Rape Culture and Schrodinger’s Rapist. All because they believe men cannot control themselves when they see things like a sexy ass. And then they call us the misandrists….
Jesus! Even the Atheist convention in Australia drew a crowd of over 1500 people from all over the world in its first year (in a pretty remote part of the world), then approx 4500 the following year. We are yet to have another, but something tells me…
I love how this is front page msnbc and I love the tears here after everyone figured out: No wait, don’t protest, it makes us all look stupid… and how the conference still got attention.
Or rather, “their vision is based on you existing while female,” since it doesn’t matter how covered a woman is, men will still harass her and worse, and blame her for it.
All because they believe men cannot control themselves when they see things like a sexy ass.
Not only cannot, but should not have to. Any suggestion that they should treat women as people brings screams that we are demonising men’s sexuality. These are the same men who insist that men are the intellectuals, the rational ones, not prey to nasty squicky emotions or base desires.
Luckily, we have Erin Pizzey and Karen Straughan to inform us that women like such abuse.
Only man hating lesbians with abusive fathers hate being controlled and harassed by a good man.
Feminists are unreasonable, throw wine glasses at them.
Oh my goodness, that pathetic picture with only like 30 men in the audience. Someone please fetch the extra strength smelling salts, I think I might having a laughter-induced fainting fit.
Hey now, I think they reached the 150 – 200ish number at their peak. Sure didn’t need the increased capacity provided by the VFW facility though….
@ marinerachel
my bad
Someday I will successfully use the HTML on this site.
Here, this works too.
What a bizarre argument. Do you want to have another go to see if you can get it to make sense second time round?
Does Bumpy think the MSNBC article is flattering? I think he doesn’t quite get who and what are stupid in all of this.
I wonder if Bumpy is so unused to reading actual news sites that he’s failed to notice the bemused mockery radiating from that MSNBC article.
kittehserf :
All because they believe men cannot control themselves when they see things like a sexy ass.
Not only cannot, but should not have to. Any suggestion that they should treat women as people brings screams that we are demonising men’s sexuality. These are the same men who insist that men are the intellectuals, the rational ones, not prey to nasty squicky emotions or base desires.
But that’s the brilliance (evil) of it.
1)Men are intellectual unless a woman is around.
2)This is completely natural so must not be questioned
So only aspect that SHOULD be changed is proximity to men when intellecting.
This also means that even if they believed women were equally intellectual, they are still a distraction. So any possible contribution will be lessened by making men less intellectual. None of this is the man’s fault and must not be questioned!
So basically the talks were just the usual crap only spoken out loud rather than written down? Hm. Still, maybe the presence and charisma of the speakers was enough to make it worthwhile to the paying audience.
Congratulations on being achieving attention! Not that it’s good attention, but hey, people are looking at you! Attention=success, right?
What is all the hoopla about? I watched some segments of the Men’s Conference online and viewed many of their current website offerings. I did not agree with all of their opinions and found the speakers somewhat resistant to well thought out challenges from the audience. However, they at least met the low bar of discourse set by much of the mainstream media these days such as the daily spew from Fox News. They did voice a number of salient points impacting men and I would argue this is needed.
I think everyone agrees that the handling of rape culture by the Voice for Men crowd is unfortunate and self defeating. However, I did not get the impression at anytime that they endorse rape. What they were trying to address is the dangerous temptation for law enforcement and the education system to circumvent due process over a very emotionally charged issue given the poor handling rape has received in the past. While false imprisonment and false accusations of rape are arguably far less common than rape itself, the consequences of conviction can be more life impacting than the act so it’s important to get it right. Both victimization by rape and convict for rape or any sex crime for that matter are very serious things.
The conference did present an interesting viewpoint in addressing their beliefs on the cause of rape culture as a cycle of violence stemming from child abuse and fatherlessness. This is a point worth making. It is not disingenuous for them to observe that women have agency in this environment. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, women are 3 times as likely to abuse children as men. Seventy percent of divorces are initiated by women (American Academy of Pediatrics) who in turn garner sole custody of children in the overwhelming majority of cases, and 40% of children are born out of wedlock. Women’s groups are never shy to educate young men about the fact that they do a lot of raping and rightfully so. However, I find it equally appropriate for a man’s group to educate women that they create a lot of rapist through ever more casual life preference decisions like choosing to have a child out of wedlock or leave a marriage. I am sure women are largely unaware of the frequency with which they physically and emotionally abuse their male off-spring. Of course, both camps deflect blame with flippant attitudes like “women invite rape” or “the kids drive me crazy” and “I don’t need a man”. Never the less, both camps need the criticism.
Unfortunately, the Men’s Conference did not quite connect the dots on two calls for action under their own rape prevention theory: family law reform to allow fathers access to their children and educating the ever withering numbers of fathers that do have access on the importance, amount and type of involvement conducive to raising a healthy child. At least they are having the conversation so maybe they eventually will.
In the Manosphere there are a lot of blogs that equivocate to skinhead levels of hate speech. A Voice for Men is not one of them. They are certainly intentionally hyperbolic and provocative in an attempt to cut through the noise, but they are not there yet. They have not received any mainstream media exposure that I can find. If and when they do, they will have to temper their delivery if they would like to be relevant. Until then, I think attempting to organize to fill a vacant social need is an admirable thing even without perfect execution. I think it might be prudent to withhold judgement and see how they develop. In comparison, I find the whole of Fox News and the lifestyles blogs on the Huffington Post more damaging both in message and proliferation.
Oh look it’s Woody’s pompous twin.
Every time MRA types or their supporters try the “well you have to admit they have some valid viewpoints” you just show how much they really don’t. Are we actually supposed to treat statements like “women creat rapists casual life preferences” or “conviction of rape can be more life impacting (than being raped)” like they were reasonable, intelligent arguments? They’re not, and the fact that you think they are only shows you’re own misogyny and lack of intelligence.
*er, that last you’re should be your.
This is taking victim-blaming to a whole new level of stupid. I’d almost be offended if it wasn’t so pitiful.