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.
Well since you asked….
Five things I’d change about him: 1) his utter self-absorption and man-cavery (sometimes 60+ waking hours each week), 2) the complete lack of outside socialisation beyond RPGs which I don’t care for, 3) his inability to take responsibility for anything, 4) his habit of reading and absorbing racist and sexist websites and wanting to tell me about it*, and 5) spraying toothpaste spittle on the bathroom mirror and countertops – I mean that stuff is EVERYWHERE.
Abuse: yes, he is verbally abusive on a frequent but sporadic basis. Adultery: yes, after 15 years of a poor sex life including three years without sex at all despite me asking, I outsourced. I happen to like men. I mean, I really, really like men.
__
*actually after many arguments and me saying I don’t want to hear this crap, this has improved, but he still reads the stuff and occasionally tells me about it.
I’m a cavewoman too, but that’s just because I’m very asocial. I don’t like interacting with people, and it’s unfortunately gotten worse over the years.
I can be social if I choose to, but for the most part, I usually try to refrain.
I’m a cave woman too. My brother on the other hand is very much an emoter. He talks and talks and talks his problems, sometimes rages. We’ve always been chalk and cheese though.
Oh my stars, that “wave” passage. Where to begin. A woman’s self-esteem is like a wave *only when she feel’s loved*? Why? What happens if she doesn’t feel loved? Is she just miserable at all times? Or — and this is a creepy thought — does he have a stable and healthy sense of self when she’s not in a relationship? If that’s what Mr. Gray has in mind, that suggests that he knows on some level that his model is abusive, but won’t acknowledge it.
Also: One sentence their self esteem is doing a wave motion. Next sentence, we learn that sometimes they will be up and then quite suddenly be down. Which is it? Sine waves go down at the same rate they go up, dude.
Thank you for your response, rugbyyogi 🙂
(Correction to the above post. Courage to Change is an Al-Anon book.)
I couldn’t help but smile about the toothpaste. I honestly sometimes think if you left most men to their own devices for a week you’d come home to a garbage dump or the place would be burned to the ground 😉 I mean, clearly, men can take care of a home, but sometimes you just have to shake your head! If you can afford it, having someone who helps clean the house might help your marriage as well. Professional services are often costly, but if you can find someone who works as a custodian in a school, they very often know someone who cleans houses to supplement their income who might have a complementary schedule to yours.
Cleaning up toothpaste spittle is not a wife’s job. It is something a mother might cheerfully do for her child until they learned to become responsible. But if he doesn’t clean it up, doesn’t even “see” that it is there because he’s busy thinking about other things, it starts to make the wife feel that mother/child dynamic with her husband, which is not a good thing at all. So, here’s what Dr. Gray would say. He would say to use these specific words: “Would you clean up the bathroom counter and mirror, please?” If he doesn’t do it, you practice “assertive asking” by continuing to ask in the same manner and same words at intervals over the next day or two until the goshdarn counter is clean!
Regarding his reading habits: if you don’t want to listen to what he says regarding what he’s reading and you’ve already told him verbally you don’t want to hear about it, it might be another example of him not really getting the point because he “hears” differently. New “converts” to this information can become a bit verbose. If every time he brings it up you either ignore it, talk about something else, or physically leave the room, he will probably “hear” you better. Don’t worry about feeling rude for doing it. Just calmly get up and go to another room and do something else.
So, I hear you saying that you want him to pay more attention to you, to take you out, and to make the plans. And that you’d like to have sex. And have him be good at it. Here is a suggestion. Look online/in the paper/wherever and find some event two weeks from now that you’d like to go to. Say to him these words exactly: “I’d really like to go to x on y. Would you take me to it?” Dr. Gray is big on using “would” versus “could” or any other replacement word. If you give him enough time, let him know it is something that would make you happy to do (in other words, he isn’t going to fail by picking the wrong activity), and leave the planning of it up to him, when you show pleasure in it and thank him for it, its going to give him the motivation to think of other things he could do to make you happy. If he doesn’t respond or says no, use that “assertive asking” thing and ask again *using the same words*.
As for the sex issue: I am going to assume that if it is not a health or attraction issue, he knows he has failed you in that regard and stopped having sex because he knows he’s inadequate and doesn’t want to be reminded of it. I recently read a man’s comment about how he regretted sharing red pill information with his wife because she didn’t like it. It’s like seeing the toothpaste spittle instead of just seeing clean teeth. It isn’t necessary to witness the process, only the result. For book recommendations, of course, John Gray has a book called Mars and Venus in the Bedroom. Several men I know raved about The Sex God Method, which may or may not be your cup of tea. But you might look into it and leave the books lying around.
Actually, it’s both a wave and a particle.
… What are the actual odds that Kate Minter really is Mark Minter?
I mean, the writing style is pretty similar.
I’m not sure you’re in a position to assume unless you’ve met and talked to the man himself, or know anything about the marriage beyond a comment section discussion. Other than that you’re not making sense. What does the Red Pill stuff have to do with bedroom activity? And toothpaste spittle?
Also, are you going to address the VERBAL ABUSE that rugby mentioned, which is a damn good reason to leave a marriage?
Nah, sunnysombrera:
Instead, Kate’ll ask for specifically what words are abusive and then explain why they are’t abusive at all: just a reflection of how men think, of course!
Kate Minter, do you think you could break your responses down into smaller individual posts, perhaps one per paragraph? It will make them easier for me to read, because I find that suppressing the urge to vomit is easier in short bursts.
“If you know any paupers, perhaps one of them has a friend who will clean up your husband’s mess for pin money!” Jesus fucking Christ.
Anyhow. It’s good that people are trying to help other people. But I’m going to comment on the content of the advice anyhow.
Getting complementary cleaning services? Possibly a good idea!
Getting complementary cleaning services to avoid the hassle of your significant other not doing their part of the housekeeping, and because if you bring it up they’ll only ignore you / and or get angry? Possibly the worst idea!
Do: “Hey, you left a mess at XX YY. Please clean it up”. Then if they don’t clean it up, neither do you because it’s their mess to clean.
Do: Ask again if they forget! Sometimes people are busy and forget!
Don’t: Surreptitiously hiring a cleaning service to bail other people out of their problems.
Avoid a mother-child dynamic? A good idea!
Perpetually practicing “Assertive asking”? This is called repeatedly nagging and reinforces a mother child dynamic! Terrible idea!
Do: Ask people to help with things and look after their stuff and point out specific, actionable ways in which people can fix problems!
Don’t: Continually repeat your request until the sun ceases to shine and the mountains are worn away. This doesn’t work on teenagers, and it doesn’t work on adult people in adult relationships, oh my god, I have to actually write this, wow.
If someone consistently refuses to do something you’ve asked them to do that is also their responsibility, sit their ass down and ask what’s going on: “Hey, XXX, the toilet mirror still looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. I know you’re busy and I understand, I just also know I’ve asked you a lot and it hasn’t been done. Is there something we can do to make sure it gets done? Would it be better if I did it, and then you instead took care of the shopping / vacuumed / re-touched the wards holding the demons at bay?”
…. Communicating your lack of interest in other people’s hobbies? Possibly a good idea!
SIlently walking out of the room every time they bring them up? Certainly a terrible idea!
Tell people you are not interested, because it does not have your interest, but you will listen for their sake / actually you saw this movie the other day and can we talk about that instead / communicate your interests and lack there-of.
Don’t just get up and leave the room silently. That entire child-mother dynamic where you treat people as if they’re idiotic imbeciles that you have to harshly lead through life? Avoid perpetuating that!. The silent treatment is what six year olds do.
Taking other people out to things that is interesting? Possibly a good idea!
Making it a manipulative attempt at getting your way by nagging someone to take you to an activity and “leaving the planning up to them” but “pointing out where to take you” and effusively thanking them if they take you? Certainly the worst idea!
The script is: “Hey, XXXX, I love you / like you. There’s this awesome thing happening at YYY, in ZZZ amount of time. I want to go very much, and I very much want you to go as well! Do you want to together?”
If yes: Go together, have fun!
If no: Go to awesome thing and have fun on your fucking own because you’re an awesome person who deserves to have awesome fun
Do: Ask people again. Sometimes they’re busy and forget, sometimes they need a reminder! Not everyone can remember events months in advance.
Don’t: Ask people repeatedly “In the same tone of voice” in an attempt to get them to take you somewhere you really wanted to go anyhow but make it seem as if you leave the planning up to them to appease some idea of male-ego where they’re the “mighty mars who is in control” jesus fucking christ my head and then thanking them repeatedly afterwards that they’ve lived up to your manipulation.
Do: Say: “That was very fun, I like doing things with you”.
… Hilariously, I know what the sex god method is. It’s not bad. I mean, as far as PUA books on sex goes it’s possibly the least shitty book. The main idea is something called DEVI, which from memory I recall as dominance, emotional, variance and intensity. Any book that makes sure to mention emotions and connection are important parts of sex and that some people might like to vary things a little is at least okay. A bit heavy on the “All women like being spanked” and the “Pull their hair, they love that!”.
Stop staring at me like that, I bought a hard-drive with 1.1 TB of ebooks on it once and if you see a title like “The Sex God Method” you can’t bloody well tell me you wouldn’t be at least a little curious / horrified.
Anyway.
DO: Tell your significant other that after 15 years of poor sex / no sex, you have some serious doubts about your combined sex life and is there something you can do?
DO: Consider if you want a divorce after 15 years.
DO: Talk to your partner, read a book on fun activities.
FUCKING DON’T: Buy a book and leave it “Lying around” in the vain hope your partner will come across the book, read it, absorb its learnings and attempt to woo you with their new found sexual provess learned from some book you manipulatively left lying around in the hope they’d do just that.
FUCKING DON’T: Consistently erode and destroy your relationship by manipulating your partner and treating him as some natural force of nature that must be appeased at all times and by all means.
The spittle thing is a bizarre, irrelevent tangent, but not incomprehensible. She’s saying that we want our partners to have clean teeth, but we don’t want to see the evidence of the process that produced the clean teeth. (Toothpaste.) Similarly, we want our husbands to have alpha tingle macho moves, but we don’t want to see the evidence (red pill literature) of the process that got him there.
Notice: Although Kate is lifting an image from Rugby’s life to illustrate her claim about the hidden virtues of the red pill, she is not *responding* to that fact as it affects Rugby.
@Fibinachi “If no: Go to awesome thing and have fun on your fucking own because you’re an awesome person who deserves to have awesome fun”
Or go with a friend if you’d rather not be alone.
What? That’s preposterous. Clearly, what you need to do is to print out 17 flyers for the thing you want to go to, leave them around the house, and coyly ask: “Hey, have you seen the flyer for XXX? That looks really fun!”.
If they say anything about it, run out of the room to preserve your feminine mystique.
For fuck’s sake. Men are perfectly capable of cleaning up after themselves. Every man I’ve known who lived alone or with other men has managed not to live in a garbage dump. On average they probably aren’t as clean as women, but most can maintain a reasonable standard of living just fine.
Some men will avoid housework or feign incompetence because we’re all socialized to view it as women’s work. Some men know they can get away with not doing it because of this and they will take advantage. These men, if they aren’t willing to change this behavior, aren’t worthy partners.
Having grown up with a neat freak dad and brother it always cracks me up when people make arguments about how men just manage simple housework. I’m the slob in my family.
Why do these Red Pill “Men are From Mars Women are from Venus” types seem to believe that outside of the house men are far smarter and more adept than women at everything, but as soon as they set foot inside the home they become hopelessly incompetent buffoons at the simplest of domestic or interpersonal tasks?
Add to that their concept of nagging emotional women and I swear, it’s like their whole philosophy is based on ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’.
Or ‘The Simpsons’, even. FFS Kate please give men in general more credit than you do. They’re not children. They can and do keep a house clean, AND do their share of emotional heavy lifting in a relationship. EVEN MAKE PERSONAL CHANGES FOR THEIR PARTNERS. BREAKING NEWS.
Is Kate getting kickbacks from John Gray?
@rugbyyogi
My heart goes out to you. Hugs if you want them. I am in an eerily similar situation as you. I hope things work out for you.
@POM I was was wondering the same thing. 🙂
The idea that Gray would ever suggest that a woman be “assertive” seems laughable to me. Even more laughable is the idea that “assertive asking” involves repeating yourself like a broken record until the thing you want to happen, happens. That’s passive; broadcasting your request into the aether and waiting for it to occur on his time and on his terms.
Here is what Gray’s actual advice looks like in the context of a woman offering criticism to her husband. Ctrl+F for “Approach.” It involves a bit less parroting, and a bit more apologizing if your criticism seems to upset him.
(The “translation” of what women actually mean with phrases like “we never go out” is rage-inducing, but in some ways hilariously awful as well)
By the by, the best way to give relationship advice is to do so when you’re directly asked. Chiming in with “advice” based on a situation you know very little about using a general-advice book that, even if it were good advice, may not be targeted at that person’s particular situation, is reckless at best.
Suffering Sappho!
rugbyyogi. I feel for you (and for Myriad too).
Ignore all that crap from Ms Minter. And don’t feel insulted by her condescending tone. We all know you’ve tried your best and now you’re working out what to do for the best for yourself and how to go about it. Don’t feel guilty or inadequate because you’ve allowed too much hope to keep you there for a bit too long. The one thing you can be “grateful” for (I can’t think of a better word) in doing that is that when it’s all — eventually — done and dusted, you’ll be content in your own mind that you really did give him and your marriage more time than enough to for him to straighten up and fly right and for you to work together as a couple. He’s made other choices. He can live alone with their consequences if they drive you away.
By a remarkable, if meaningless, coincidence, I just finished cleaning the stovetop, oven front and overhead hood. Why? My husband walked in and asked me (politely) if I would do so. As it turned out, I did a perfectly adequate job, despite my Y chromosome.
Minter’s antediluvian blather has inspired me to go clean the bathroom mirror. Apparently, it is possible for household cleaning to happen without incessant nagging or maddeningly indirect manipulation. Who knew?
Oh man, we let the wards in the kitchen lapse once and it was a nightmare. We had imps in the dry goods for months.
But if he doesn’t clean it up, doesn’t even “see” that it is there because he’s busy thinking about other things…”
LOL Kate let’s cut the shit. Men don’t “see” the toothpaste spittle because they don’t have to- because they expect women to be the ones to see it and clean it up. Believe it or not bachelors are perfectly capable of keeping a clean house without a woman being involved. Of course manipulative men don’t want to tell us this, so they make up some BS about innate female superiority in “seeing” toothpaste spittle, and hope that we’ll be so charmed that we don’t think about what they’re saying logically.
Ditto for the idea that men don’t “hear” women. Men don’t hear women because they are taught by assholes like John Gray that women exaggerate what they say. And they are taught that it’s unmasculine to take influence from a woman by society at large. Because of these faulty beliefs, far too often when a husband hears his wife say, “change this or I’m leaving”, he just rolls his eyes, assumes that she’s feeling stressed and is making a mountain out of a molehill, and thinks that with time she’ll get over it. After some time of not being heard the wife stops talking and internalizing her disappointment and anger. Meanwhile the husband assumes that she’s “over it” because she’s stopped complaining. Then the day comes where the wife has all her ducks in a row, initiates divorce, and the now desperate husband begs her for a chance to change but it’s tooooooo laaaate . The relationship is now damaged beyond repair by buried anger. It’s the “walk away wife syndrome”.
“If he doesn’t do it, you practice “assertive asking” by continuing to ask in the same manner and same words at intervals over the next day or two until the goshdarn counter is clean!”
“Assertive asking”? Is that what the kids are calling “nagging” these days? Yes, it’ll work, but don’t fool yourself, it’s aggressive, not assertive. Real assertiveness is asking for *exactly* what you want instead of asking undefined questions like “Would you clean up the bathroom counter and mirror, please?” With a vague timeframe given like that, it’s no wonder that the guy assumes that he’s free to do the chore on whenever he feels like it. It’s much better to directly ask for whatever time frame you’re thinking of; ex “Could you clean up the bathroom counter and mirror sometime today please?” or “Could you clean up the bathroom counter and mirror before I take a shower in an hour please”? This way, he knows EXACTLY what you want, no nagging required.
I apologize for my lack of proof-reading I’m tiiired from a cranky 2 year old keeping me awake last night.