One last AVFM Conference update, with links to two more stories about that historic event.
The first, a gently skeptical Washington Post story by Monica Hesse titled, with a certain irony, “Men’s rights activists, gathering to discuss all the ways society has done them wrong.”
The whole thing is worth reading. My favorite bit:
One presenter, a military veteran speaking on the treatment of veterans returning from war, put up a PowerPoint slide alleging that 70 percent of men returning from war get divorced, and 90 percent do so within five years. When asked about the source of this statistic, he said, “That particular statistic is from my personal observations. I’m just speaking here as a dude.”
Ah, the prestigious Journal of Statistical Dudeness!
The second, well, it’s a bit more disturbing. DarkHorseSwore – a regular in the AgainstMensRights subreddit who raised money to go to Detroit to cover the convention only to be turned away at the door – managed to finally get an audience with some of the conference attendees and organizers – after the convention, as they celebrated at a bar and then in a hotel lobby. She got this access because none of them knew who she was. (Eventually Dean Esmay showed up and had her escorted off the premises.)
Now DarkHorseSwore has set up a website – DarkHorseSwore.com – and has started posting about the strange 5 ½ hours she spent amongst the AVFMers. She tells the tale of a strange encounter with one of the Honey Badgers and then an even stranger tale of an even stranger encounter with an old man and his camera. You’ll have to go read it. Be warned: It’s creepy as hell.
Oh, and she picked up some amazing conference swag as well. And by “amazing” I mean “possibly the worst conference swag I’ve ever seen, I mean, what the hell, and also why are they all beige?”
thewatchingdog: I’m trying to gently help him along. He’s young and surrounded by the idiocy of youth. On the plus side, he clearly telegraphs the way he is by wearing a fedora and growing a neckbeard. (No joke. He really does.)
It seems to have gotten much worse when he was at a Christian college – now that he’s home, I’m hoping the head-arse extraction process will begin.
http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/250×250/49877048.jpg
@starkidina
welcome here sorry to hear about your brother. It seems from reading the article on this thread by Ms. Hesse, these men think they have been somehow damaged goods by the system and they scapegoat women and may have fear of women for whatever reason.
A lot of these guys Elam recruits come from bitter divorces, or are angry about the economy, and it seems many have had poor experiences with women and have been hurt from childhood perhaps maybe mother issues.
The shame is these mra’s will blame all women based on a poor experience from a few .I am not sure that relates to your brother but I think a good psychotherapist would help these dudes instead of becoming mra’s like many angry young men are so it seems.
There are some good mens organizations that David has linked on the home page and a lot of good resources here at whtm about these mra’s.
DarkHorseSwore has set up a website revealing these guys and that is becoming a good resource as well. Good luck.
@Starkidnia I would suggest extensive kitten viewing clockwork orange style to begin the extraction process.
I miss being able to wear my fedora in public.
Smear campaign? I have to admit that I’m having a hard time taking Jared seriously, after the endless avalanche of breathless descriptions of business executive/cult leader/smooth operator Paul Elam.
Hi schismtracer!
I thought it was a deformed maple leaf, too, but a bug splat made me laugh.
Barbara Kay wrote a shitty column about CAFE getting booted from the Toronto Pride parade and of course she blamed feminists for tipping off Pride. She tooted her own horn about speaking at the Detroit conference and told a big, fat lie:
@starkidnina
Oh I want to mention Michael Kimmel’s book “Angry white men” is a good read I can recommend for you which can help understand these guy. In it Kimmel writes about men who feel alienated and hurt joining groups such as a voice for men or other mens rights groups to obtain a sense of belonging and feel community.. These men have lost any meaning in their lives, and joining and becoming an mra’s gives them a sense of false hope and meaning in their lives. Elam preys on these type of guys.
Darkhorseswore — if you see this, you should prolly do yourself a favor and remove the meta widget from your footer sidebar, particularly where these assholes are involved, that’s a security hole waiting to happen.
As for creepy dude, you have more restraint than me, but I guess yelling at him questioning if he’d photograph his daughter like that wouldn’t have gone over well in that context.
——
The only part of that dudebro “stat” that might bear resemblance to reality is if the 90% bit meant that of those marriages that end, a great deal do so in the first five years. That would mesh with common sense. Of course, 90% of the 3.7% cloudiah quoted would be about 3.34%. Versus the claimed 90% of 75% = 67.5%. Assfax aside, I find it hard to believe that just over two thirds of veterans are divorced within 5 years.
Oh! I know! He knows four veterans, three divorced, two of whom did so in the first five years! A little rounding and BAM! 75% divorce, 90% of whom do so in the first five years!
…did I just reverse engineer assfax?
Yeah…no. This is no more a smear campaign than opening windows smears the grunge on the floor. That is, shining light on bad things doesn’t smear it.
@jared
Thank you! It’s kind of strange, because he’s never dated or really been burned by a woman (that I know of). I have recommended therapy before, but with no success. I might link him to a few key posts here.
While I think Dark Horse as got a hell of a lot of guts to do what she did, she missed a major chance to test something.She should have asked if this old man would mind deleting those pictures seeing how they don’t really know each other or some equal innocent reason. it could have been even more instructive then it already was. as a side note i still don’t get honey badgers. I’ll be honest and say that I really only started to look into MRA as a real threat after seeing Karen G.W.W. aka the babbler.it was like what the hell if they can rope in a woman too these guy are much more then i thought.
I thought maybe that symbol was the concept of gender being exploded, which would be a nice idea if it wasn’t diametrically opposed to everything they actually do.
@starkidnina–
One, hi! Welcome! I am still new here, too, but this is a great community and you’ll love it here.
Two, my little brother also had a brush-in with Manosphere thinking when he was around the same age. While he didn’t self-identify as an MRA, he was buying “red pill” ideas pretty hard and was a budding PUA. I also managed a video game store and had a young man who was much in the same camp. This is what was helpful in my experience:
Be there.
Show up. Listen. Go out places together. Talk together. I personally strayed away from sending a lot of literature to my brother and to my employee, because I felt like it might be overwhelming. Instead, I talked with them and heard them out. If either said something that was off, I would gently point it out and then start a discussion about that topic. I would share my personal experience, but also validate theirs–but still questioned and pointed out toxic ideas. It’s a slow progress, but it helped a lot.
Thankfully, my brother ended up growing out of that phase–he got into therapy for the depression he was experiencing, and dealing with his depression helped to heal some of the anger and isolation he was feeling. With my employee, he started to question some of his own ideas surrounding women and about masculinity and started to see that in a lot of cases, his thinking had been off.
On my end of things, I also just try to live my feminism and provide an example of what it looks like on action. I think it helps to put a face on the idea, separating it from the idea of the Evil Empire or whatever the Manosphere is calling it now.
I hope that is helpful. Best of luck!
I think I understand the honey badgers. They see men as tigers. You wouldn’t blame a tiger that mauled a person who climed into its cage in a zoo. Zoo keepers always respect the tiger and are cautious around it , watching its behaviour and mood when deciding on their actions. They won’t show the tiger their anger or emotions as they know this would lead to trouble. Similarly the honey badgers feel men who aren’t treated with due care will hurt women physically or emotionally because they can’t not. When men don’t hurt women the honey badgers seem to see it as a major achievement.
I can sort of understand the attitude after my last relationship and also in other relationships I see.
I also get the impression from male friends that being single is a bigger deal to them than me. Almost like male self worth comes entirely from relationships and not from achievement or joy for its own sake. I find it very odd.
What are you talking about everyone knows we hate new people and do everything we can to drive them away
Katz–
How silly of me to have forgotten. I’ll have to meditate on this mistake at my Shrine of the Cock Carosel and light an extra scented fucking candle in penitence.
@brooked
I don’t have a dog in this fight. I am a gay jewish NY liberal I so really mra’s hate me as well I guess. I hhave always been an activist and a humanitarian . I was raised as a reform jew which is non religious but I remember as a kid in Hebrew school my rabbi mentioning religion is not about preaching but trying to help humanity,. I’m an agnostic though.
In college I did a lot of outreach and was in the student union. I like helping people Brooked.
I just feel not angry Brooked but sad when I read about mra’s and their bigotry. Maybe your right I am making more of the mrm and Elam than it is. I just feel sad people can be mean to each other.and I want to help. See when horrors happen such as the holocaust not to compare this to that but no one said anything back in Germany when they heard of a hateful leader. I feel why remain silent and I found this community,
Brooked again I just want to help I’ll smash the cult references but I just want help people. I do volunteer work on my off days for my local community service clinic for mental health not to announce it is better to walk the talk than talk the walk. I just get sad when I read this stuff and this has a cathartic effect. Thanks for all you being here I get depressed and so many of you have been open about stuff. Thank you.
@WatermelonSugar – Thank you! That is a really good reminder. I have sort of started avoiding my brother, just because he has been so unpleasant to be around since picking up these awful, toxic ideas. But I do need to make sure to hang out with him and call him. I really do think this will be a short-term phase.
@Katz – Yes, I have noticed you are all hateful feminist lesbians with hairy armpits. Which is exactly why I feel so at home!
That wooden necklace thing is going to annoy me for the rest of the day. What is it?! It’s got the male and female symbols in there, and yes, I think a maple leaf. So perhaps whatever the heck else is in there must be a symbol of the US? But I don’t see a star… An eagle maybe? I don’t see it, but it could be there. You know what, until further information, I’m going to go with a maple leaf mashed with an eagle mashed with symbols for male and female.
@brooked
Plus Brooked plus I hated myself for years for being gay as a teen and had the crappiest self esteem and have had many bouts of depression, so I feel I was know what it is like to be vulnerable and just feel powerless that these dudes are being led astray and it is not right to have a freakin hate group trying to fool the mainstream like this.
But I am feeling a bit sad now after all this and I understand your comment about the cult reference to Elam. Again I apologize it was not meant to offend it’s just trying to warn people because everyone matters in life and no one without hope because I know I’ve been there myself.
@Jared
Ok, but google “smear campaign” because it’s not a compliment to call this blog that.
@jared, I’ve enjoyed your posts here. I see what brooked was saying in a way however as I was a bit taken aback by the term “smear campaign” to refer to David’s blog.
@jared
It seems you are doing a lot to help people around you. Maybe the depression is a bit of compassion fatigue. I know that at times, it became necessary for me to slow down or take a step back from volunteering. Maybe it would be worthwhile for you to look into an activity to do just for the pure fun of it. There is a great book, The Lifelong Activist, by Hillary Rettig that you may want to check. She has also a great website. So far I’ve found it the best to learn to attend to your own need while helping others. I’ve found that quote by Edward Abbey very useful, and maybe you will to:
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”
@Pear_tree
I think that’s far to nice a way to view honey badgers. I think their hoping when there movement wins they will somehow be elevated above other woman. to para-steal from Malcolm X they are “Aunt Tammys.” has a short hand for what honey badgers really are.
as far as the symbol goes my guess i that it represent the meeting of the Canadian and american MRM. also being it was originally in Detroit proper it might be a allusion that Windsor is close enough to drive a golf ball to. Like this is the place where the countries meet and so do there MRAS.
@starkidnina – My brother went through an aggrieved “Women are so shallow and just wont looooove meeeee” (when he had yet to ask anyone out) phase, too. He didn’t go for the fedora, but was more along the backwards cap / skulls on the shirt / tough guy look. It took some time, but I think the fact that we get along really well, and I am, in fact, a woman, helped him realize that maybe he was projecting and generalizing just a teensie bit.
He thinks MRA’s are idiots, but still has the occasional headdesky-moment of parroting their lingo without realizing what it is.
In other words, it was indeed a phase with my brother, and I have high hopes that it can be such with yours as well. 🙂