So it turns out that I’m not the only one who is thoroughly underwhelmed by A Voice for Men’s lineup of conference speakers for their upcoming International Conference on Men’s Issues, By Which They Mean How Men Are Oppressed By Women’s Sexy Butts.
Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, some of the regulars are complaining that AVFM is delivering much less than it did last year, for a much higher price — with ticket prices running a steep $650, currently discounted to the high. high price of $399.
Yep, attendees of the conference will be paying as much as $650 just to get in to the event, not counting the cost of airfare, hotels, or even food at the conference itself.
They could easily end up paying more than $1000 for the privilege of watching Elam and a bunch of his AVFM cronies blather on about the same crap they blather on about in countless hour-long videos available for free on YouTube. The only “big name” in the mix is Warren Farrell, whose fame as a Men’s Rights advocate peaked maybe twenty years ago.
As fundude1 put it:
The lineup looks terrible with just Elam, Golden, Palmitier and Farrell.
Both Golden and Palmitier really bring nothing to the table. They are both psychologists (like Elam and Farrell) and are UNKNOWN.
Is it churlish of me to point out that neither Elam or Farrell are actually psychologists?
There is no diversity at ALL among the people in terms of academic backgrounds, general popularity, etc.
Last year’s conference had a much more broad array of characters that had FAR more popularity in general.
Fundude1’s outrage meter went further into the red after he discovered how much the whole thing was going to cost.
But he wasn’t the only one upset by the underwhelming lineup and overwhelming cost.
To take just one example: therock6658, a Men’s Rights subreddit regular with considerable sympathy for AVFM, wrote a long and mournful comment lamenting “the fact that AVFM is … half-assing this whole event.”
I hate to say this but I was looking forward to this announcement for months when Elam stated that he was going to put the tickets on sale for the second of April, but once they went on sale and I looked at the roster, it ultimately turned me off to the entire men’s rights movement.
Yep, that’s right: AVFM has bungled their conference so badly he’s reconsidering his support for the entire Men’s Rights movement.
Considering the price, he added, “it just does not look good for the outcome of this particular conference.” Nope.
As for the lineup, he complained, it
does indeed bother me as much as it does everyone else. It’s mostly people from AVFM and not enough people from external sources. 10 speakers present as opposed to the 14 from last year plus everyone involved in the panel discussions. …
I really hope that this is more due to budgeting more than anything else because I would hate to learn that this is really due to greed or anything like that. Yes, I do feel that donations to AVFM have been going down as of late and perhaps that’s the big reason why this conference shrank from last year.
Given that AVFM’s last fundraiser brought in less than half of what Elam had been demanding, I’d say that was a safe bet.
Also, you may recall that at the start of the year, Elam announced that he “hope[d] to make some actual profit” from this year’s conference.
Apparently Elam never took economics in college, because then he might have realized that you can’t simply make more money by jacking your prices as high as you want; if your prices are too steep, no one will buy what you’re selling.
But hey, as Elam apparently explained to therock6658, having fewer speakers means “more time for attendees to socialize with the presenters, etc.”
WIN A DATE WITH PAUL ELAM
Actually, that’s not quite right: PAY THROUGH THE NOSE FOR THE CHANCE TO MAYBE TALK TO PAUL ELAM
I actually pretty much have a good mind to make my own anti-feminist conference myself and do twice as much in 1 day than AVFM is trying to do in 3.
You know, I do too.
I think it’s fair to say that there’s a good chance AVFM’s conference won’t happen at all.
A number of self-appointed leaders of the “men’s rights” movements have been indicted for financially skinning the men who approached them by selling them overpriced products, illegally providing them with bad legal “advice” (which has led to some male suicides), etc.
Scum of the Earth,,,
Hey, if they want to diversify their roster, they could always hire this gun-suckin’ preacher man, who’s really proud of his “man’s world” sign. He’s so dissociated from reality, he’d fit right in!
Wow, what an awful, AWFUL human being. Truly horrific to see women who genuinely want their own gender to be subjugated and kept under men’s dominion. This level of self-hate is just sick… sick and twisted.
She and JudgyBitch should have a contest over who could back-stab and sell out the rest of their gender in the most grotesque manner… Actually, put them both in the same room with an audience and microfone – and that’s probably what they’d end up doing.
There are literally workplace safety people who will do 30 minute talks for peanuts.
They could play dangerous job documentaries as a timeslot. Renting the movies and paying royalties for older documentaries is also relatively peanuts — maybe a few bucks a head for projected viewer counts. Note, MRAs, I’m talking about reputable documentaries, not just a screening of your own awful youtube vids. The conference people have youtube. They’ve seen those.
They could probably find at least one disgruntled and retired vet to yammer on about the draft, and how women joining the military is a sign of the apocalypse, and on being real men for the low, low price of peanuts.
(most vets I’ve met aren’t like that, but there are people who wear their hind ends as hats in every profession)
…I could think of a couple other speakers and activities they could do, really easily.
@Binjabreel
‘Allo, Blockquote Monster. I have not missed you.
James
Elam seems utterly clueless. It’s fair enough when an “organisation” has its first ever conference that they can just take an “oh goody, here we all are” approach. But that’s once only.
If they’d ever looked at any other org’s conference schedules, they’d notice that they have titles or themes or topics. Some over-arching idea for most, but rarely all, speakers and panelists to focus on. How can you have a keynote speaker when there is no key issue for such a speaker to work with? For a men’s issues/rights group “Housing – where and how we live” (there’s a reason I’m not acclaimed worldwide for my creative or imaginative prowess) for a group like this could cover lots of interesting stuff —
vets housing issues like disability and homelessness,
how to live happily and comfortably alone after separation/divorce,
DV shelter arrangements and how to access them —
and maybe a political & economic summary of where things are now that the effects of the GFC seem to have abated in most countries.
Along with a “how you can help or be helped” table of resource groups and reading materials at the back of the hall.
And you could give similar conference treatment to employment — changes in industry, safety issues, training etc; men’s health —- sexual health, mental health, endless list here; family, fatherhood, raising sons.
It also means you have a handle to use to get interested/interesting speakers or panelists that you can introduce to your audience.
Of course, most of this requires you to spend money on accommodation and fares for at least a couple of speakers and I doubt any such novel concept would be agreeable to Elam in the first place.
So, you’re going to organise your own MRA conference. hhmmm
AHAHAHA they’re complaining about a lack of diversity! AHAHAHHAH!
LACK OF DIVERSITY, you guys!
AHAHAHHAHAA!!!!
@ scarlettathena
That’s actually a pretty good agenda. I wonder if there are actually any MRA’s in the non-pejorative sense (if there is such a thing) who would come along to something like that.
Someone should explain to these people that just calling something “reason” doesn’t make it reasonable, and just calling something “truth” doesn’t make it true.
Not especially on topic but here’s as good a place as any if this link works:
http://assets.amuniversal.com/40f3df60af230132cfe8005056a9545d
And the loser gets TWO dates with Paul Elam!
Does anyone know how much tickets were last year? A four-day badge for San Diego Comic-Con costs $185 (if you can get it), and that’s one of the biggest and most popular conventions there is. I can’t understand how on earth AVFM can justify even $399, let alone $650.
Wait, wait, really? I knew they were scam artists, but I never heard of an actual suicide as a result of fraudulent legal advice from MRA leaders. When was this?
Maybe I’m late to the party here, but it kinda looks like the entire MRA movement is just a relative handful of folks trying to make money off of a whole bunch of guys who are bitter about how their complete lack of human decency has made them persona non grata in modern society.
Honestly, it makes me want to write a bunch of stories that play right into their most fervent fears and market them to them and make a zillion dollars.
There’s an anime con I go to every year that costs $115 if you buy all three days separately and has way more content then what Paul seems to be offering.
Admittedly I don’t know anything about organizing a conference so this might be an apples-and-oranges comparison but still…
I take that guy saying he’s been turned off to the men’s rights movement by this about as seriously as I take the guy who said he’d move to Canada if Obama got re-elected, but if I was an MRA this would totally turn me off to Paul Elam.
@ Judas Peckerwood
“Maybe they could drum up better attendance by adding some rides, maybe a cock carousel or something.”
Too much work, just give them an extra hour in the ball pit.
Guyz, why are we not doing a Mammotheer conference to utterly trounce Elam at Men’s Rights Activism? 😀 Y’know – to show how it should be done! That would actually be awesome and I bet it would take the wind out of every MRA who loves to complain that “Feminists aren’t addressing men’s issues”.
We’ve already got some great suggestions from Scarletathena, JamesB, Contrapangloss and Mildlymagnificent – the whole thing is practically planned out and ready to go. 🙂 And even if we all cobbled a conference together in a week with a paltry budget, we’d have come up with something ten thousand times better than Elam could manage in a year.
I’m actually quite excited by the idea. 😛
These ideas about what a conference genuinely addressing men’s human rights might do are terrific. Speaking as a feminist, I would pay good money to support a conference that focused on those things.
AND how about discrimination or prejudice against men in childcare/early childhood education careers, “potty parity” legislation (yes! it’s a thing!) to mandate diaper-changing tables in men’s restrooms, analyzing “clueless dad” stereotypes in advertising and media about men and domestic skills…
Or hey, how about having an art exhibition by male artists working in media that are traditionally gendered female, such as fiber arts, papercraft, ceramics, etc.? And a panel on how certain kinds of “elite” forms of domestic or “feminine” arts are gendered masculine, e.g. for celebrity chefs or high-end fashion designers, while male participation in related arts is discouraged?
Damn, we could think up a WAY better and more interesting conference on the real problems and concerns of modern maleness than those AVFM chuckleheads.
ETA: ninja’d by AltoFronto, who is totally right that this is an amazing concept!
I would be soooooo up for that idea.
It’s a bit tricky doing a real world conference as we probably live all over the place, but we could do a virtual one. We could set an agenda of relevant topics and perhaps we could utilise our various interests to do short pieces in lieu of seminars?
I just love watching these idiots die a slow and painful death (as an organization and a movement) as a direct result of their stupidity 😉
How much was the ticket for last year event?
In all honesty, a real conference for men’s issues would be a very fascinating and exciting idea I would get behind %100. As well as all the others mentioned, one issue I’d love to see addressed is the reasons why men are less likely to prioritize their own health. Why not enlist medical experts to discuss solutions for encouraging men to seek regular preventative care? Provide resources for accessing insurance and low-cost clinics? Actual lives could be saved/extended if such a thing were initiated.
I am also totally for exhibition of art by men brave enough to work in traditionally female mediums. I myself am a plush animal maker and know dozens of talented others, but sadly only one male. And he is absolutely incredible at his craft. I hate to think of all we’re missing out on just because thread and needle is considered a women’s thing (that goes for other aforementioned mediums).
One more thing, yeah, any organized effort that actually focused on addressing men’s issues, no matter how effectively, would be rejected or even hated by the MRM if it failed to blame women/attack feminism while doing so. Let’s face it, that’s all they really want to do.
I have to say, this site is starting to grow on me. I wasn’t sure what to think of it at first. I’m still not even sure who most of the people are Futrelle talks about. The smug humor is awesome though. I’ve literally been snorting I’ve been laughing so hard at some of the latest articles This was hilarious,
“WIN A DATE WITH PAUL ELAM”
Although, I’m don’t know a ton about AVfM, why is Elam promoting this MGTOW cooking? I would have thought his Roosh interview where Roosh took shots at them would have turned most of them away?
The recipe articles on AVfM are bizarre to say the least. Seems to be a bunch of guys bragging about how they cheaped out and had some chicken and jello instead of taking a woman out to eat?