So Susan Morris, the Conference Manager for A Voice for Men’s allegedly upcoming “Men’s Issues” conference this year. has posted a rather puzzling statement attempting to answer questions she’s been getting from AVFM readers “concerning there being fewer speakers on the programme this year and the ticket price being higher.”
Morris — described on the site as “a British woman, an experienced general and event manager in public service” — assures potential conference goers that, “contrary to the headline which I saw somewhere, the ticket price has not been set at $649!”
And that’s true. If you go to the conference’s website, you can see that, in fact, full price tickets to the event are only $645.
That is FOUR WHOLE DOLLARS LESS than the amount reported by the scurrilous press. And … by Morris herself, later in her post.
But hey, she suggests, only suckers will be paying the full $649.
The Early Bird Discount ensures that if you purchase your ticket by the 30th of April, you will only pay $399. Buy it between 1 May and 30 June and you’ll still get it at a good discount, at the price of $449. The price will increase in $50 steps until it gets to the buy-at-the-door price of $649 and we expect very few, if any, to do so. In fact, that price has been set to deter people from doing so, so that they don’t hold up those people who have been entered into the pre-registration system and only need to book in.
Morris also insists that
Contrary to the efforts made by our detractors to blacken our name, the ticket price is not aimed at making a profit but breaking even would be nice.
Yeah, it’s not like AVFM founder and chief donation-receiver Paul Elam ever said that he hoped to make some actual profit from the conference. You know, except for that time he said he “hope[d] to make some actual profit” from the conference.
So what’s to blame for the higher price? Apparently, it’s largely due to, er, time-traveling protesters from Detroit?
Last year, you may recall, a group of Detroit-area activists held a protest several weeks before AFVM’s conference was scheduled to happen in that city. There were no protesters at the event itself.
This year, the conference is being held in Elam’s hometown of Houston. But evidently — at least in the fevered imaginations of AVFM’s brain trust — that won’t stop last year’s protesters from driving 1300 miles from Detroit to Houston to protest this year’s event. At least that’s what Morris seems to be suggesting:
The protesters from last year have already vowed to shut us down this year and though we know they will not achieve their aim, they will still be protesting (as is their right, of course). Security and safety of our attendees, speakers and volunteer staff will always be of prime importance and so, to avoid a repeat of last year’s emergency appeal for funding, we have built into the costs additional but reasonable security cover.
Aside from “security cover” from time-travelling protesters, what will attendees get for their $649 — sorry, $645 — that no one is really expected to pay?
Fewer speakers!
“Last year,” Morris writes
in our naivety and enthusiasm, we overbooked the number of speakers for the two day event. During the conference it became clear that the programme was too full and did not allow sufficient time for decent length talks followed by full question and answer sessions. This year we have arranged ten speakers.
Greater punctuality!
And this year we will ensure that we start each session on time.
Longer lunch breaks! And afternoon breaks!
We have extended the afternoon break and the lunch time and we will be opening the doors each day at 8am. So, provided you arrive early, you will have over eight hours across the two days to mingle with other attendees and to network. And that’s not including the time spent at the evening events, socialising and networking with other like-minded people over dinner or pizza.
Dinner is an additional $20; Pizza is $15. But the time you spend eating is ABSOLUTELY FREE.
A larger number of unpaid staffers than you would think would be even remotely necessary for an event of its size!
Another factor which people tend to forget is the cost of flying in the speakers and volunteer staff and accommodating them all. Between speakers, panel discussion members and staff, we’ll have some forty five people there.
Free taxi service!
We’re arranging an optional taxi service to collect you from your hotel and take you to the venue and then to return you afterwards.
Wait, scratch that, the Taxi service will cost you an additional $15!
But talking to the cabbie is INCLUDED IN YOUR TICKET PRICE.
And finally, FREE ACCESS to an actual BRITISH WOMAN — namely conference manager Susan Morris herself.
I shall be flying in to Houston from the UK. It will be my first flight, a long one around ten hours and I can’t say I’m looking forward to it. But the end result will be worth it. I am looking forward to meeting as many of you as I can.
Because why not fly your conference manager all the way from the UK at the conference-goers’ expense? Sure, makes perfect sense!
I wonder if a single person has bought a ticket for the conference yet.
Oh God, Kate Minter is actually trying to do marriage counseling. I can’t watch!
Starting a betting pool now. How quickly is Kate’s advice going to take to focus almost entirely on how rugbyyogi should change/adjust/be accepting of their spouse’s faults?
Presumably immediately if the answer to “is there adultery, abuse, or addiction” is no.
@katz:
Yeah… that second paragraph of Kate’s really did have the air of “is your situation absolutely horrible in every way? No? Well then, maybe it’s not as bad as you thought and you can learn to deal.”
And if you take her endorsement of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus into account… well, the pool is pretty skewed towards “she basically already has.”
Why five things? What if I can only think of four? What if I could list 15 if you got me started? What if there’s only one, big, glaring thing? What’s magic about the number five?
I mean, this is asinine. The important question is, “If he never changes, can you live with this situation as it stands for the next 5, 10, or 20 years?”
Minter is plagiarizing Fats Waller.
“Find out what they want, and how they want it /
And let ’em have it just that way
Give ’em what they like, the way they like it/
Without a single word to say!”
Except I don’t think Waller was entirely serious, and Minter clearly is.
John Gray is just the old advice “you can’t change him so change yourself to please him” dressed up in 1990s psychobabble. I once bought one of his books (in a thrift shop, thank goodness) and had to wrap it in four layers of newspaper before I could safely put it in the trash.
Yes, men are socially conditioned to think and behave in certain ways. But they have to understand that if they want to spend most of their lives alone in their man-caves (whether physical ones or merely non-communicative metaphorical ones), they probably won’t be able to find a woman who’s willing to put up with that,
I have a terrible confession to make:
I have never, ever read a single one of John Gray’s opuses.
And, by the looks of things, I haven’t missed a thing.
“The important question is, “If he never changes, can you live with this situation as it stands for the next 5, 10, or 20 years?””
I see an error in this line of thinking. The first is to assume that no one’s behavior changes over the course of that amount of time. The second is to assume that person a’s change in behavior will not cause person b’s behavior to change.
Maybe the poster does not wish to answer the questions for understandable reasons, so let’s use simple logic and equations.
The current situation is as follows: a + b = c
If person a changes: d + b = no longer c
if person b changes: a + e = no longer c
if both people change: d + e = no longer c
If you want a different outcome, you must put different variables into the equation. It is the only way change is even possible.
The only constant is change. So, even if you feel trapped, you must remember that that feeling will not last forever if you have The Courage to Change (an AA book you may find helpful).
Also, I am a cavewoman. I got that from my dad.
Here’s a thing I haven’t seen anyone in this thread say, so maybe it’s so obvious it doesn’t need saying (but Imma say it anyway):
The whole Mars/Venus thing, the man cave, all of that, is giving cover to men to be lazy.
He doesn’t want to do any of the heavy lifting in the relationship? Retreat to his man-cave, bang around some power tools or have a couple of beers, emerge an hour or two later and hope it’s all blown over.
“Men think differently than women do” means at the least, shut up and let him do what he wants, and at the most, mold yourself into his negative spaces.
… And now we’ve come to the bit where my argument suggests I should say “Absolutely never give a guy a free pass,” but I chicken out because 1) I’ve never had to confront a guy over a relationship problem, and 2) it feels mansplainy to me.
First, assume a perfectly spherical spouse….
Holy fuck, did you just compare people whose husbands don’t love them to alcoholics?
Does Kate Minter’s comment,
strike anyone else as really personal and prying?
Also the assumption that the behavior doesn’t change in 1, 5, or 10 years, I thought was to counteract the unrealistic hope someone will eventually change for the better, at least this was how it came across to me when I read it on Captain Awkward.
Sure sounds that way.
And frankly, it takes more courage to leave such a person than it does to accommodate to him and stay, even though he makes one miserable. So that’s seriously shitty relationship advice, right there.
Holy fuck, indeed.
Of course people change. That’s why I said IF HE NEVER CHANGES.
You can’t change anyone. Nobody can change their spouse. No amount of glib bullshit from you will give anyone that power. One always has to worst-case-scenario, assume that Terrible Partner will never change and work out what the exit strategy for that situation is. That way when (not if, because major personality changes are the exception and not the norm the way you’re glibly asserting) one will know what to do when it becomes apparent that couples counseling is not working and Terrible Partner is actually really comfortable with the status quo and not at all interested in changing it.
Don’t use the word “logic” until you know what it means. Maybe person A decides to “change” by filing for divorce. Yes, that would certainly produce a different outcome, wouldn’t it?
Let’s apply simple logic and equations to human interaction!
Oh, Bullwinkle, that trick never works.
@davidknewton:
Suddenly that phrase has started sounding to me like Pratchett’s Black Ribbon Society (a temperance league for vampires) and I’ve started imagining men avoiding banks and paling in the presence of an open cash register.
The only person’s behavior you can control is your own, but Minter, doing so in the hope that it will eventually lead to someone else’s behavior changing is just foolish and will almost always lead to disappointment.
What a wonderfully verbose way to repackage “Men just don’t see dirt!”
…and yet, oddly enough, not one of them has ever considered living in a monastery. Which would be kind of a natural place to practice voluntary poverty and avoidance of women.
But monks have to be humble and dedicate themselves to servitude and in some orders at least, be silent. I really don’t see that from an MGTOW.
Yeah, me neither. If anything, these guys have delusions of grandeur; they seriously think that if they keep their obnoxious schtick up long enough, one day they’ll rule the world and end up rubbing our noses in it.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world, if it thinks of them at all, thinks of them as That Drug-Addled Wanker Who Abandoned His Kids, That Bathroom-Crawling Creep Who Pestered A Woman At A Convention, and That Sad Sack Who’s Obsessed With Female Butts.
Not exactly ruling-class material, them.
Official time it took Kate Minter to tell the wife she needs to change: 3 hours, 2 minutes