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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Fucking hell, I was going to say citation needed but you obviously aren’t interested in facts. Two quick notes: 1) AVfM can’t educate themselves, much less women in general. 2) Don’t publicly discuss rape in any compacity for the rest of your life.
Uh-huh.
Bumpy and Justin,
Nice(?) try. The conference was a joke and “Women are the worst. WHORE!!!!! Prison rape is funny” are not “salient points”.
But hey, if you liked it so much, go send Elam some more money. He needs it for *mumble mumble mumble* and stuff.
” 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.”
I love how, even when trolls are trying their hardest to appear neutral and not part of the MRM, they don’t realize how obvious their misogyny is. This is somebody trying his hardest to appear reasonable, to appeal to feminists and MRAs alike, and they are completely failing.
The one interesting thing Justin said:
Admittedly Justin may be incapable of judging any human thought correctly, but if this observation is somehow true then those speakers were even less impressive then we thought. If they couldn’t handle the questions of 150-200 AVfM fanboys who thought paying money to attend this train wreck was a good idea, then there is no way their arguments could hold up when critiqued by any sensible person.
Cloudiah: I feel your pain! I used to live in Ottawa which has heat waves like that for weeks in the summer PLUS the humidity.
Judgybitch pulled another grand faux pas besides telling us all that AVFM is going to keep attacking women online and offline.
She said Americans pay for Canadian’s great social nets by the massive spending on the US military to keep Canadian’s safe. That got some really low ‘oooo’s’ from the crowd. Yep, in a VFW hall she spit on the Canadian military and the Canadians in the audience as well as made the American vets squirm. Good goin’ Judgybitch. When it comes to good judgment you are seriously lacking.
https://twitter.com/rper1959/status/482916628804272129/photo
Here is a twitter pic of all these hatemongers from jb’s twitter feed.
The more I think about these idiots at avfm I contend it seems like a cult and should be on cult watch. They have all the traits of a cult group. Elam is constantly asking for money and donations. It seems he constantly is pleading for donations. Elam has this charisma where his disciples are blinded to his evilness. Whether it is Dr. Tara, JB, Esmay, O’Hara, they all seem entranced by Elam. They do not see the fact Elam has become wealthy off his vile group and seem blinded by his hate. Apparently Elam is living an affluent lifestyle without having a full time job, smacks of a cult leader. One of the speaker a right wing extremist named Dr. Helen said there were a lot of women at the conference and Elam has a campaign to recruit more women. Clearly Elam hates women( and a lot other people) but somehow is recruiting women to join a voice for men. Who knows he may even give some of his disciples money just so they stay with his group. From the comments I read on the msnbc article, all his followers revere Elam and the all seem to “drink the kool aid”.
This seems like all the traits of a cult. Charismatic leader, loyal followers, Leader becoming prosperous through donations from his followers, and the fact Elam is trying to recruit women all smacks me as traits of a cult. Avfm I know was investigated by SPLC as a hate group but also could be investigated as a cult. Elam should be investigated by the irs or government agency for all the money be is making and probably hiding or some type of fraud. What a waste of a a life.
“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.”
lolwut. I have to imagine this is just trying to undermine the inevitable bad press when it comes out: “Well, see, all of the reporters there were either hostile to us, or stupid.” Bonus points for emphasizing that the “clueless” people were women. Nope, no misogynistic stereotypes here. Human rights all the way.
Seriously. Have none of these folks ever heard of professionalism?
Anyone notice that the ONLY audience question about men and boys at the end got no answer, just some dribbling rhetoric from Elam? Feminism was the only thing talked about at the wrap up. I heard only one solution given regarding this ‘crisis’. Farrell wants a White House council, but implied the nasty radfems like me are stopping him.
The rest was rhetoric about shared parenting, which if you look it up it ain’t shared parenting. It’s FORCED shared parenting where Father’s rights groups want to get out of paying child support and make it impossible for a woman to move if she has primary custody. It’s a mess. That’s one area legally that needs serious attention, as well as this bs about Parental Alienation where fathers groups are blaming women for ‘turning’ their kids against them.
Molyneux was a real shocker. I think he said all of 2 sentences about circumcision and then went on a tirade about women not choosing the ‘nice guy’s and ruining the world.
The AVfM Conference 2014, where men are men and ties are long.
Ok, that makes me ragey. That’s… that’s so wrong it’s not even wrong. I don’t even have fucking words. OMG fuck.
Considering how few people are ever convicted of rape and how small the number of wrongful convictions within that already small number are, comparing that “phenomenon” (it’s not a phenomenon, its a rare occurrence) to rape, which actually does happen to lots of people, is ridiculous. On an individual basis, yeah, there may be a case where one person wrongfully convicted or rape suffered as a result to a greater extent than someone who was raped. On a societal level though one is a far more prevalent issue so, duh, it gets more attention.
And saying “women create rapists” is absurd. Choosing to commit rape, whoever the fuck you are, creates rapists and that rapist is you. Are there things we can do to decrease the likelihood someone will make the decision to rape? You betcha. That’s why we teach our kids that they’re not entitled to sex and must attain enthusiastic consent first. Doesn’t make women any more responsible for anyone else’s decision to rape.
Scapegoating women – it never gets old.
Oh boo hoo. I presume these bozos are weeping and wailing about all these “single mothers” bringing ruination on their children and thereby on the world at large.
Who do you think could convince them that many, if not most of, these children are born to couples who simply don’t want to marry right now, maybe ever? It does children little to no harm to be raised by parents who aren’t married. Equally it does little to no harm if they are raised by single mothers or single fathers. The big thing that has bad effects on children in any kind of household is poverty affecting that household and/or its neighbourhood.
I’m too be bothered to look up the citations just now. I’m really, really tired. (Should go to bed.)
@Jared
I think you may want to let up on the cult thing and you definitely should reconsider making Jim Jones “kook aid” references. Nearly a thousand people died in the Jonestown massacre and many of them were forced to drink poison at gun point.
It’s not surprising that women attended the event, there is a strong tradition of anti-feminist among conservatives. For instance, Fox News’ fave Suzanne “War Against Men” Venker is Phyllis Schlafly’s niece and anti-feminist demagogue successor. There are plenty of reactionary women that will rail against feminism along with Cultural Marxism, liberals, leftists, gun control, Obama, Hilary Clinton and all the rest.
@brooked
My significant other and myself were having a discussion at dinner last night about all that went down on this blog and twitter about a voice for men’s conference. He made the analogy of a cult given Elam the leader who has disciples, with his getting wealthy and trying to recruit people. We were talking about that analogy without realizing that it could offend people.
I apologize about that I will let up on the cult thing. Sorry if I offended anyone. It is just that by the way Elam is trying to recruit people, I was thinking of a cult analogy but I’ll squash that .Cheers
@brooked
Yes I just mentioned to my partner about what you referred and told himt the reference to “drinking the kool aid.” I have heard people reference that statement when describing group think but was unaware where it originated. That was from the horrific Jonestown Massacre in 1978.
A minor observation: Arthur Goldwag reports that Mr. Elam spoke about his blue collar roots and that he was a truck driver. This might be true but it comes as a surprise since Elam states in his own bio that he avoided manual labor and worked exclusively as a counselor.
@Justin:
No.
I do not mean to belittle the pain of any person wrongfully convicted of a violent crime, but this statement is so very wrong. I apologise, but this strikes a little close to my heart, so I find myself unable to rise to even my usual poor level of articulateness.
Oops!
The specific line I was trying to object to was:
“the consequences of conviction can be more life impacting than the act”
@jared
A lot of people make “drinking the kook-aid” references without knowing the origin or the specifics. People also mistakenly use it as an example of voluntary cult mass suicide, unaware that Jones had a death squad to force everyone to take the cyanide. I’m not offended, but l do point out to people that an enormous tragedy provably shouldn’t be referenced in a comical misappropriated catch-phrase.
One thing I noticed about Justin’s post is that he didn’t personally attack anyone here. That’s refreshing to see here. Too bad some of the loyal opposition did not see fit to extend the same courtesy. Sometimes this place sounds like Groupthink City. It doesn’t make me happy to say that.
It’s refreshing to see the number 200 serve as an overestimate. For years where I live the number of attendees at Pride was estimated at 200 with such regularity that it reminded me of Mrs Elton’s ten thousand pounds. One year I even got to the end of the parade route early and counted 3,778 people finishing the parade with plenty more still arriving before I had to go do something – and yet apparently the same two hundred of us from the previous decade and a half were the only ones the media noticed in attendance.
And now this year I don’t even know if there *was* a Pride here. I suppose obsolescence is a sign of victory. But I’ll miss all the debates, and how urgent it felt whether, for instance, one *always* said “lesbian and gay” or whether “gay and lesbian was still acceptable phrasing up to a third of the time – or was it a quarter? (This was back before the battle over bi inclusion, by which time I’d given up organizational positions, agreeing with the idea that the faces were too white and too male.)
At least the vast majority of MRAs give me the feeling that it wasn’t too extremist of me to feel deeply insulted back in the day whenever anyone mistook me for a non-same-sexer.
Newcomers are treated with perfect courtesy on this blog – I’ve witnessed this personally on many, many occasions – until they post a disgusting opinion.
Sometimes they manage several uncontentious posts before this stage (remember Ruby, the woman who found prison rape to be just about the most hee-larious thing going? She was absolutely fine until she let that slip), but sometimes they blow their foot clean off with their very first one, as Justin did.
And if you’re going to trivialise rape, or shift the blame to the victim (or indeed women in general), you are personally attacking several people here, whether you intended to or not.
Well, he told every woman here that they are responsible for rapists. I would consider that a personal attack. Because he didn’t use any slurs are we supposed to pretend that what he said wasn’t disgusting and stupid, and instead have a polite discussion about whether rape is really that bad?
Regarding Elam as a cult leader — so, as I’ve mentioned, I have a perverse interest in serial killers…and cults…many of the traits overlap, it’s freaky, and both give me that “just what the FUCK makes these people tick?”
That said, yeah, the “drinking the kool aid” thing…no. There’s plenty of evidence from the video Jones made (long, and disturbing, but on YouTube if you want to watch it) and from the survivors, that it was NOT mass suicide. However, Elam really does remind me of cult leaders yet to go totally isolationist. The blinded by charisma and lies followers, the cries for MAOR MONEY, the whole “they” are against us, etc.
Anyways, as far as out of wedlock kids, I know some, am related to some. Two are the offspring of parents who married later on, another is a veteran turned high school teacher, and another is a (*gag*) anti-vaxxer lactation counsellor doing autism related activism and raising an awesome autistic kid and his brother (and more four legged creatures than I can count!). One of these four is still in grade school, so I can’t be 100% sure, but I guess she doesn’t count for MRA “logic” anyways, the two men among them? Closest either has come to violence was being in the military. Single mothers raise rapists? I almost want to tell his mother that, I’m sure my second wave feminist aunt would have some choice words!
@Justin
“However, I did not get the impression at anytime that they endorse rape.”
Even rapists rarely “endorse rape.” What’s happening here is folks defining rape in such a way that most non-consensual sex is excluded. The distinction between “gray rape” and “rape-rape” creates a way to erase rape. It permits people to say, “we oppose rape, always!” without actually opposing most types of non-consensual sex. It permits people to claim that rape is not a widespread problem, because only a violent encounter between a virgin and a stranger “counts” as “real” rape, and all other forms of non-consensual sex are defined away as something other than 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.”
I think you’re making a true statement here, although not the one you think you are. Police departments have documented motives to downgrade a rape report to something else (a misdemeanor, preferably) or to discourage reporting or refuse to accept a report at all. Murder and rape are serious crimes and stats are kept on them. The stats are reported to the FBI, and are publicly available. In many jurisdictions a department’s budget is influenced by these numbers. It’s hard to cover up a dead body, but easy to cover up a rape, so a department has a fast and easy way to improve its numbers without expending any money or manpower by just not accepting rape reports.
There is no corresponding up side to a department if it upgrades a report to rape when rape did not occur.
So it’s true that due process is being “circumvented,” but it’s the due process owed to the victim that is being shortchanged.
“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”
I’d like to see the source you’re using to reckon how “life impacting” the act of rape can be. You are using a source other than your own imagination, right?
Here’s an interesting pair of statements:
“It is not disingenuous for them to observe that women have agency in this environment.”
“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.”
So, women have agency, but rapists are just the products of their environment. Okay!