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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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kittehserf
10 years ago

brooked, I’m with you on banning and even petitions to that effect if this imbecile tries that topic.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

Can we fine him $50 for each act of aggression towards the English language?

Wetherby
Wetherby
10 years ago

Almost everything you wrote here is torturous and borderline gibberish, but you are pummeling the English language in the post containing these three sentences. Put down the thesaurus and slowly back away.

Seconded. My internal copy-editor was writhing in agony at every painful syllable.

And I’d have thought the definition of “a hate group” is a group that indiscriminately expresses hatred for people, usually on the basis of something they cannot control. As opposed to expressing specific dislike for an individual rape apologist who by his own admission has deliberately attempted to rile the commentariat here.

You don’t even get that reaction by posting something controversial – you get it by deliberately and cynically trying to push people’s buttons before doing them the courtesy of letting them get to know you first. In other words, behaving like an asshole.

So how is calling out an asshole for being an asshole equivalent to “a hate group”?

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

I want to smack him in the face with that thesaurus like a knight challenging someone to a duel.

Alice Sanguinaria
10 years ago

So how is calling out an asshole for being an asshole equivalent to “a hate group”?

Because you hurt their fee-fees. Duh.

Wetherby
Wetherby
10 years ago

Of course. How unobservant of me. I do apologise.

ToolBox
ToolBox
10 years ago

It’s always amusing to me to see how antifeminists/MRAs actually seem to think that feminists don’t critique and analyse their own movement; that feminist positions have grown and changed over time. It’s like they feel that they need to teach us about the “evil” the feminists did, as we are all just misguided children. How we need their wisdom…

titianblue
titianblue
10 years ago

How do you think this might influence my future behavior?

Who gives a flying fuck? (Hint for Justin: no one).

Alice Sanguinaria
10 years ago

Well you know that those feeeeeeeemales can’t do any activism themselves! They just need a man to guide them!

The fact that they’re seeking to reverse the gains for women’s rights in the past century or two is just coincidence!

[/sarcasm]

Alice Sanguinaria
10 years ago

titanblue – wait, is that quote suggesting that it’s our fault because they misbehaved?

Wow, way to weasel out of responsibility. And they say the MRM is about making sure people take responsibility for their own actions. *eye roll*

zoon echon logon
zoon echon logon
10 years ago

Hey, Justin. Read this.

Jargon

Avoid it. You may have to think harder if you are not to use jargon, but you can still be precise. Technical terms should be used in their proper context; do not use them out of it. In many instances simple words can do the job of exponential (try fast), interface (frontier or border) and so on. If you find yourself tempted to write about affirmative action or corporate governance, you will have to explain what it is; with luck, you will then not have to use the actual expression.

Avoid, above all, the kind of jargon that tries either to dignify nonsense with seriousness:

The appointee…should have a proven track record of operating at a senior level within a multi-site international business, preferably within a service- or brand-oriented environment

declared an advertisement for a financial controller for The Economist Group. Or:

At a national level, the department engaged stakeholders positively…This helped…to improve stakeholder buy-in to agreed changes

avowed a British civil servant in a report. Or:

The City Safe T3 Resilience Project is a cross-sector initiative bringing together experts…to enable multi-tier practitioner-oriented collaboration on resilience and counter-terrorism challenges and opportunities

explained Chatham House.

Or to obscure the truth:

These grants will incentivise administrators and educators to apply relevant metrics to assess achievement in the competencies they seek to develop

said a memo cited by Tony Proscio in “Bad Words for Good” (The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation). What it meant, as Mr Proscio points out, was that the grants would be used to pay teachers who agreed to test their students.

Or simply to obfuscate:

A multi-agency project catering for holistic diversionary provision to young people for positive action linked to the community safety strategy and the pupil referral unit

was how Luton Education Authority described go-karting lessons.

Someone with good interpersonal skills probably just gets on well with others. Someone with poor parenting skills is probably a bad father or a bad mother. Negative health outcomes are probably illness, mutilation or death. Intelligent media brands for the high-end audience that clients value are presumably good publications for rich people.

The Economist’s style guide’s entry on jargon.

brooked
brooked
10 years ago

Justin’s first post was so appalling on so many levels that it was hard to wrap my brain around the wrongness. How about this charming sentence:

Women’s groups are never shy to educate young men about the fact that they do a lot of raping and rightfully so.

“Do a lot of raping”? JFC. I see what you did there, you smug little shit. You did a fine job of portraying feminists as mouthy man-haters who accuse all men of being rapist while pretending to be sympathetic to rape victims. The ban hammer can’t come down soon enough, IMO.

zoon echon logon
zoon echon logon
10 years ago

I got that too.

Tuhaf.

kittehserf
10 years ago

David – could have been worse, could have been Spanish Russian.

Wetherby
Wetherby
10 years ago

Is Spanish the one that uses that funny alphabet?

brooked
brooked
10 years ago

I believe Spanish is a crazy moon language.

(That’s a Tick cartoon reference and probably isn’t true.)

Flying Mouse
Flying Mouse
10 years ago

Oh, look, Justin came back. I couldn’t make my way through his new batch of blather, except to see that he tried to justify triggering a bunch of rape and abuse survivors by classifying it as a social experiment. Sure thing, exploit those human emotions for all their worth. If only we could all be as highly rational as you, Justin. Vulcan-like you are (if Vulcans were deliberate jerks who liked to stir the pot, that is).

Oh, look, he admitted that he pulled all of his damning statistics off the first link that comes up when you google “statistics fatherless children.” I found that when I double-checked his facts yesterday. It’s a blog. Which is exactly what he said that we feminists could not use for a source and still maintain intellectual integrity. I thought, he must have found these somewhere else. He is rational, he must have something to back this up, and my mortal mind and inferior computer skills just aren’t hacking it. But nope, here it is. Got ’em from a blog. Didn’t check the source materials, didn’t even bother to link it in the original “challenge.” Just copy-pasted and called the rest of us lazy. Double standard, what’s that?

And you wonder why no one else will pick up your gauntlet, Justin?

Flying Mouse
Flying Mouse
10 years ago

Gah! “for all their” = “for all they’re

I’m very disappointed in myself, that one is a particular pet peeve of mine. 🙁

bunnybunny
bunnybunny
10 years ago

Love the smell of assfax in the morning.

Tessa
10 years ago

So Justin thought he was in moderation because he was too boring in the posts after his “successful” one? Did he not read the responses up to the point someone said they emailed David? And i wasted time responding to him. Blah.

Jenora Feuer
Jenora Feuer
10 years ago

Love the smell of assfax in the morning.

… It smells like… idiocy.

emilygoddess
emilygoddess
10 years ago

Second wave feminism also gave us gender-neutral job listings, put names to phenomena like marital rape, date rape and the glass ceiling, shone a light on women’s unpaid domestic labor, and fought for access to birth control and safe abortions. The second wave is the reason no one questioned me for going to college, forming my own career, living with a man I’m not married to, using birth control, or knowing the names of my sex organs and how they even work.

As for there being no backlash against the first wave: fucking LOL. Did you know the standard complaints about pants-wearing, castrating, ugly feminist harpies date back to the push for voting rights?

Don’t talk about shit you don’t even understand.

As long as feminists see no problem with boys being burned to death but are outraged at girls being kidnapped by the same people,there will always be people ready to call out the feminists for the hate filled animals they truly prove themselves to be.

Which manosphere guru fed you that line? ‘Cause that’s a lot of bullshit and I doubt you came up with it on your own.

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.

Allow me to answer that question with another question: how the hell does any of this “create rapists”?

So here is my question to the moderator and anyone else for self-examination. Is this a serious blog that you think matters?

This is not a debate blog. This is anot an educational blog. This is a mockery blog. Congrats on wasting so much time trying to “prove” something we all freely admit.

I levied an intentionally controversial remark in my first post to see what would happen. The behavior was highly rewarded.

You hurt people. On purpose. And consider their pain a “reward”. I don’t even have words for how fucking appalling you are, but I hope you get banned for this.

These posts were blocked at first then delayed by moderation to limit detection. Was this because they did not reward the site by inciting controversy?

t’s cute that you think you’re some kind of intellectual giant challenging people’s worldviews with your rehashed arguments, but no. You were on moderation because of the aforementioned hurting people. You’re not a threat, you’re just an asshole.

How do you think this might influence my future behavior?

We didn’t ask or agree to be part of your ~social experiment~, assface, and you’re responsible for your own goddamn behavior.