UPDATE 5/16: Perrins has called off his hunger strike. Here’s his explanation.
Dan Perrins, a famously confrontational Canadian Men’s Rights Activist and staunch supporter of A Voice for Men, has launched a hunger strike outside the Queen’s Park Legislative Assembly in Toronto. As of this writing, he’s on his fifth day, taking in, he says, nothing but liquids.
What does he want? Surprisingly, that’s not an easy question to answer. Perrins’ demands are vague and grandiose — and probably impossible for the Ontario government to meet — and he has not set any specific conditions that would need to be met in order for him to end the hunger strike.
This seems, at the very least, reckless. A hunger strike is a very serious thing.
The idea of the hunger strike came to Perrins, as he explained in a video discussion with AVFM head man Paul Elam, while he was in the midst of a 75-mile walk across Ontario that was supposed to raise awareness about male suicide and mental health issues.
Not altogether happy with the diffident reception his walk had gotten from police and government officials in some of the cities he passed through, he decided to launch the hunger strike when he finished up his walk in Toronto. It was clearly not very carefully planned. Neither Perrins nor his supporters at AVFM seem to have consulted medical professionals and (at least at the time of Perrins’ last video update) no one from the group is there to monitor his well-being, which seems to me unconscionable.
And then there is the question of his demands, which even Perrins’ supporters at AVFM have had a hard time figuring out. In a post announcing the start of Perrins’ protest, AVFM’s Dean Esmay wrote that
Dan has already delivered his demands at the footsteps of the Queen’s Park Legislative Assembly, who at first refused to even accept his demands for review. After some discussion they reversed and accepted the documents.
But the document Perrins handed over — or at least the document that Esmay linked to — wasn’t a list of demands. It was a muddled manifesto titled “Men’s Rights March 2013 Internet Statement,” ending with a laundry list of goals for the Men’s Rights movement including “[d]evelopment and availability of a male fertility control device, drug or method that is safe, affordable, effective and reversible” and a call to “[f]oster the emergence of a new cultural narrative where all men and women are encouraged to live their lives as they see fit, without preferential treatment, while also being expected to bear the responsibility for their personal choices.”
Perrins then explained that these were not his demands at all. In a comment left under Esmay’s post, he wrote
Yes, one of his demands is that those who’ve “libelled” MRAs like himself be arrested and brought before a criminal court.
The first demand is not only so vague as to be almost meaningless — what is “full funding,” how quickly would the government need to provide it? But it also would require the government to do several impossible things.
Ontario’s premier Kathleen Wynne — as far as I can figure it, she’s the person Perrins expects to respond to his demands — cannot dramatically alter hundreds of millions of dollars of government spending with some dramatic proclamation in order to appease a man on a hunger strike. Or for any other reason; that’s not how government works.
Even if Wynne could suddenly produce “full funding for men’s DV shelters” out of a hat, where exactly would this money go? Domestic violence shelters don’t grow like flowers after you sprinkle the requisite amount of money on the ground. They have to be built, by devoted activists prepared to raise a lot of the money on their own, and prepared as well to deal with endless obstacles and opposition along the way.
The only reason we have DV shelters at all is because feminist activists built them, starting in a time when there was precisely zero government money to help them and a lot of public hostility towards even the idea of them.
Like a lot of Men’s Rights activists, Perrins seems to want a duplicate version of the network of DV shelters that feminist activists have worked for and fought for over the course of many decades to be simply bestowed upon MRAs by government fiat.
Instead of banding together in a serious attempt to build the DV shelters they think should be theirs by right, MRAs have largely devoted their energy to attacking DV shelters for women — including some that actually offer services and shelter (usually in the form of hotel vouchers) to men. Indeed, in his online discussions with Elam, Perrins seems as angry about the money women’s shelters are getting than he does about the lack of money going to non-existent men’s shelters, complaining several times about what he sees as excessive spending by shelters to provide beds for women.
Frankly, Perrins seems a good deal more invested in his second demand: that those who libel “non-feminists” be arrested and criminally charged.
This is not quite as bizarre a demand as it sounds: in addition to having extremely plaintiff-friendly civil libel laws, Canada also has criminal laws against “defamatory libel.” But, as Ontario’s Law Times reports, “[c]riminal charges for defamatory libel are rare in Canada.”
Further, according to one expert the Law Times spoke to,
[t]he line between what constitutes criminal libel and what constitutes the more commonly used civil libel is often blurred, and there’s doubt as to whether these criminal provisions are constitutional in the face of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms … .
Indeed, the Law Times notes, s. 301 of the Criminal Code — under which “anyone who publishes a defamatory libel is guilty of an indictable offence and can be imprisoned for up to two years” — has already been declared unconstitutional in four Canadian provinces, including Ontario, where Perrins is conducting his hunger strike.
Under section 300 of the Code, Canadians in these provinces can, at least theoretically, still be charged with criminal libel, but only if they know what they are publishing is false.
Perrins, for his part, claims he’s been libelled by Canada’s Sharp magazine, by GQ, and by other publications. He’s evidently angry at Sharp’s Alex Nino Gheciu for saying that
Perrins wrote a hateful missive against [a feminist activist], labelling her “Little Red Frothing Fornication Mouth” and posted her pictures and personal information online.
Well, Perrins did indeed write a hateful AVFM post attacking the activist in question, in which he called her “Little Red Frothing Fornication Mouth.” The post was accompanied by a drawing of the woman. But, as far as I know, Perrins did not himself post her personal information online, though it’s possible, I suppose, that the folks at Sharp know something I don’t.
Perrins seems angrier still at writer Jeff Sharlet, who, in his highly unflattering GQ account of AVFM’s summer 2014 conference, wrote that Perrins claimed to have taken the infamous red pill of Men’s Rightshood on
the day he ended up in jail, after he says he lodged a complaint against his ex, the beginning of a legal battle that led him to a hunger strike. “I should have killed the bitch five years ago,” he tells me. “I’d be out by now.”
Unless Sharlet simply made up the quote, and GQ’s factcheckers let it stand, I’m not exactly sure how this would count as “defamatory libel.” It’s not libellous to quote what someone has said to you.
Sharlet lives in the United States, where Canadian law (as you might imagine) does not apply. But never mind; Perrins (and Elam) want there to be an arrest warrant waiting for him in case he ever crosses the border into Canada.
In one of his discussions with Elam, Perrins also goes on at length, and with considerable anger, about the alleged evils of the Southern Poverty Law Center; Elam reminds him that there isn’t much the Canadian government can do about the American organization either.
It’s not exactly clear to me what Perrins expects the Ontario government to do about any of this alleged libel. The Premier of Ontario cannot order the Canadian police to arrest all of those whom Perrins thinks have defamed him, nor would anyone with any sense want politicians to have this power.
It’s also not clear why Perrins doesn’t simply sue for libel in civil court instead of going on a hunger strike to compel the Ontario government to do things it cannot actually do.
In his discussions with Elam, Perrins talks a lot about how his life isn’t worth any more than that of the Canadian men who commit suicide every day; he also says that if he ends up in the hospital he wants a Do Not Resuscitate order enforced.
It’s hard not to worry that Perrins’ hunger strike — evidently launched without medical consultation and with vague and impossible demands that it’s not clear he’s even presented to government officials — is in fact a form of slow-motion suicide, a bid for Men’s Rights martyrdom.
Those who are encouraging him in this hunger strike are, I think, playing a very dangerous game.
EDIT: I added a reference to the specific section of the criminal code that is still considered constitutional in all Canadian provinces.
EDIT 2: A May 14 post by “Solaris” on AntiMisandry.com, a long-running message board that Perrins now runs, claims these are Perrins’ demands:
Dan has stated that he will end his hunger strike when assurances are made that men in Ontario will receive equal funding for domestic violence shelters as women, and when the Director for Public Prosecutions commits to launching appropriate criminal investigations under Section 300 of the Criminal Code against those libelling MRAs for their support of men’s rights.
Of course, even these slightly more specific demands would be impossible for the Ontario government to fulfill.
@Anenome
Well, that’s good, since he won’t be hurting himself.
It’s also good because hahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
But just you wait, because he’s now preparing to launch his big “holding his breath until he turns blue” strike.
Here’s his “official statement.”
http://www.avoiceformen.com/allbulletins/update-a-statement-from-dan-perrins/
Well, THAT was a foregone conclusion. “Dan WHO? Wants WHAT? I’m sorry, WHO???”
From the statement:
Today the chief of staff of a provincial cabinet minister, tomorrow the world!
What a crap article. I didn’t even bth finishing it. It just repeated itself a lot of times. And pretending that his demand for funding for men’s shelters was not possible and criticising his wording was disingenuous. I thought media was supposed to report on the news not attempt to judge events and skew public opinion.
Clearly he was raising awareness of a serious issue of inequality for men, which he had a legitimate right to do and has resulted in a lot of people becoming aware of the problem. If it prompts them to start asking the government uncomfortable questions which lead to the fully funded men’s shelter programme that we both need and deserve, in fact to which under equality laws in some countries we should be entitled to, then Dan has achieved his goal and done more for men than the last 30 years of the Feminist ‘equality’ movement!
Guys, guys, some guy named Rex thought this was a news sight! What an honour, Rex, what an honour! But you are mistaken, seeing as how: “[t]he point of this blog is to expose misogynists and the terrible things they say.” That is directly from the Mammoth FAQ, and is also the Comments Policy section. Never once claimed to be a news-anything and never once claims to be unbiased. Also, blog. As in, a personal web journal of sorts for whatever the writer wants to post. Learn2internet.
As for men needing DV shelters, WHY AREN’T MRA’S FUNDING AND VOLUNTEERING AND WORKING HARD TO SET SOME UP AND RUN THEM? WHY DIDN’T DAN SET UP A FUND FOR HIS SUPPORTERS, OR SET UP HIS OWN NON-PROFIT, OR LOOK INTO HOW TO GAIN GOVERNMENT FUNDING? Feminists didn’t yell until they got government funding. They set up and staffed and ran shelters on their own, as non-profits and charities. Government funding came later, hard-won after proving the need.
Meanwhile Elam fund raises absurdly huge amounts for running AVFM, the Honey Badgers have raised thousands for a vague lawsuit over a convention booting them, the Sarkeesian Effect duo are still fundraising (with questionable opt-out ethics to boot) for a movie they were supposedly already done making…all these thousands and thousands of dollars for little to no tangible result. Well, other than starting a tiny and exclusionary annual convention. Why do THOSE OTHER causes get so much more cash than the DV shelters men supposedly need and so many of you are so upset over?
And, what makes you think men can’t get very similar or identical help at the regular DV shelters? Or that there even needs to be a male-only DV shelter? We have an actual worker from a DV shelter just a few posts up from you. Another poster mentions the UK’s sole male-only DV shelter closing due to lack of use…
Oh, and Rex, on feminism not helping men…please contest these examples. 1) More women able to work alongside men means less pressure on the men to be big breadwinners and supporters. That’s less pressure on men when they find themselves unemployed or unable to work. 2) Women being able to work and support themselves means they don’t need to be needy and clingy; i.e. women don’t NEED a man in order to get basics like food or luxuries like jewels. 3) Encouraging women to be able to be sexual without being shamed for it means less guilt, less reluctance, and more fun sex for everyone (i.e. tossing out the old ‘he’s a stud, she’s a slut’ bullcrap). 4) Men don’t have to do all the approaching and leading and paying in dating and love anymore.
How has any of this harmed men more than it helped them?
So, if you aren’t a troll, Rex, you’ll actually respond. I don’t have much hope for that, but I’d like to be surprised. To everyone else, I hope you don’t mind the double wall ‘o text.
Why? Because it not only challenges your bullshit beliefs, it MOCKS them? And presents actual facts, as opposed to more counterfactual “Men’s HUMAN Rights” regurgitated glurge?
And of course, you had to at least scroll through it to poop here. So, naturally, I call shenanigans.
Rex didn’t read the article, but he’s sure it’s crap. Because… I don’t know?
Why, Rex. If you had finished the post, you would have realized that your points were addressed. Really honey, we can’t talk to you when you’re all emotional and irrational like this.
It’s kind of weird to see Rex’s kvetching, since I am, right now in fact, trying to find a local men’s group for sexual abuse survivors. I’ve realized that despite being abused by both men and women, I tend to be more afraid and feel more detached from men, and I want to actually CHANGE that. I’m tired of feeling like a fraud who can’t connect with other guys. I’m tired of letting my victimizers control me that way.
I hope you do find one. MRAs are jackasses on behalf of male abuse survivors, but I’m guessing most actual male abuse survivors feel the same way and struggle to find and connect with other men who have been the same thing.
Hi Asterose. I’m not an MRA as such, I support human rights for all. That includes equal treatment for both men and women. You invited me to to defend my position on feminism by raising a couple of points.
Reading through them now, I see that the problem you have is in not appreciating innate human drives. This would make sense if you are yourself a feminist as not believing such things exist lies at the very heart of feminist academic ideology alongside Patriarchy Theory. That’s a problem because it means you automatically dismiss things which might have an impact on our social interactions and our motivations. If you’re unwilling to accept human beings have instincts, like all animals, I’m not sure I will be able to convince you of anything but I’ll attempt to answer your points anyway.
1. Pressure on men to be breadwinners. You could argue it’s a societal pressure, but I would suggest men have been under this pressure for a million years, long before we even evolved what you’d call a society. What is ‘breadwinning’ if not to supply food and offer protection and shelter, typically for yourself and for others you care about who are less able to obtain it themselves. You are suggesting that having more women attain these things themselves takes some of that pressure off men, but you are talking about an instinctive drive that’s been built into us for a very long time. That is not to say we can’t change it, but you tampering with a fundamental part of male instinct. It’s not like we can say ‘oh thanks guys we can take it from here, as you were’ as just go back to letting women fend for themselves. There was never a ‘before’ time for us to return to. It has just always been this way. Is female independence a bad thing? No, of course not. But where does this leave men? Guys are struggling to find a way of adapting in a very short space of time, just a generation or two, and we get the likes of Dr. Phillip Zimbardo claiming we’re all becoming addicted to porn and video games now apparently because they are more readily available, when in fact this is a side effect of men’s displacement as primary providers.
2. Women don’t need to be clingy if they can support themselves.
Ok, again you suggest that women are ‘clingy’ as a result of needing a man and for no other reason. Maybe that’s true, but even if it is, again it’s something deeply ingrained in women. And again your not going to be able to change those inner feelings overnight. It’s not as simple as ‘changing society’. A bigger change needs to come from within and it takes time and understanding.
2b – Women can get their own food and jewels – Just a note on this. Yes women can go to a shop now and purchase these things with the money they earn themselves… but they aren’t actually obtaining them ‘in the wild’ so to speak. They didn’t locate and mine the gems, process them or craft the jewellery. Some women do the manufacturing of jewellery of course, my sister makes her own stuff, but getting the raw materials is difficult and dangerous and something which men typically do.
3. Sexual liberation of women. Again you need to look back into our evolutionary past to see the reasons behind these attitudes. I could go into this at length, but I’m not sure you would agree that it’s not modern societal values at play behind this so in brief, women are the only ones who can bear children and they have a limited amount of time in which to do that.
Before their early teens and after their menopause they cannot have children. Men, once sexually mature, still can. With men as providers in the past and women’s greatest value in providing children, women who are no longer able to bear kids become of lesser value. This is in part why men aging is still seen in a positive way and women aging is not. A man in his 70’s could still hunt and father a child, but a woman that age could not have children, nor would she have built houses etc. They would not have been of much sexual appeal either, so their only use was in domestic chores, weaving etc and looking after younger womens babies. It sounds harsh and unfair and it is and not all cultures developed this way. Old women were revered in some asian cultures. But this whole stud vs slut thing does come right back to this. That a fertile womans greatest value was in being able to provide children and if they slept around, they were not suitable as mothers and therefore reduced their own value. Feminism has rightly tried to change this valuation and liberate women to be free to enjoy sex just as they are free to enjoy work and I support this. But that was second wave feminism, which fought for abortion and contraception rights, not third wave which is fighting against triggers and microaggressions and more petty issues.
4. Male courtship. A great many animals in nature have males fighting for the attention of women and this has carried through into modern human culture. A woman’s greatest value as said was her womb and she could only give it to one man at a time, so she needed to make damn sure he was able to provide her with all she needed and take care of her and that his genes would give strong children. Which means women themselves were discouraged from giving away their bodies freely and they encouraged men to fight over them. The problem we have now is one of an increasing female population, outnumbering men and of women achieving higher status levels than men. Because women don’t want to date guys who are ‘beneath’ them. Feminism is not working to create equality in this area. It’s happy to promote women to executive roles and leadership, but it does little to convince women in those roles that it’s ok for them to marry men who sweep streets or work a cash register. The movements ‘equality’ is highly selective in choosing only things deemed desireable to women and that’s not true equality. You have to take the good with the bad. So if we’re encouraging men to equally share home making with women, we need to encourage women to not look down on men who aren’t rich or who don’t hold status.
5. Has any of this harmed men more than helped? Have a look at the statistics. Male suicide levels are hitting record highs and the numbers are increasing. Happy men don’t kill themselves. Men with something to live for, don’t take their own lives. The issue is not so much of changing societal attitudes its one of making sure when you take things away from people that you provide them with something else to take it’s place. We’re doing that for women, but not for men and yes that is harming them. Helping women should not come at the expense of men, it should be done sensitively and with mutual respect for both parties, but all I find from feminists is vitriol, hatred, anger, demands and accusations, demonisation of men. There’s no support for us, no acknowlegment of our needs or of our pain. Male disposability was built into our society way back in the stone age too, just like everything else I’ve talked about, but feminism, rather than pushing for a greater appreciation of the value of male life, seems intent on the exact opposite. Surely, that’s counterproductive to it’s so-called aims? We should be encouraging men to get better healthcare and pouring equal funding into that but we’re not. And so the perception of men as dispoable continues and feminists are happy to continue enjoying the privilege of that.
Sorry for the long post, but if you want to debate I will do so seriously, without making snide personal attacks on you unlike others on your page and I will try and answer fully otherwise we just go round and round in a circle of insults which gets us nowhere. I’m not a troll, I genuinely believe this. If you don’t wanna read it, no problems, but don’t say I ignored you or failed to try defending my viewpoint.
@Rex
Any research, particularly in anthropology and sociology, to back up your “suggestion”? Do you realize that a breadwinner is someone who earns income to support their dependents and an income requires an economy and money? Do you know that the earliest remains of humans are around 200,000 years old, so “a million years” is way off and I’m assuming a wild guess on your part.
This is gibberish, you clearly don’t even have a passing familiarity with cultural and social anthropology but enjoy randomly guessing at gender roles in some generic imaginary pre-industrial society that existed uniformly throughout the globe. Let’s see, you’ve got hunting, house building, domestic chores, weaving and child care. Yup, that’s all a community of people need, right?
This entire paragraph is mostly focused on having sex with young women, something men can do in their 70s, because a lot of men were robust contributors at that age 10,000 years ago. Then you dither about as you try to imagine a social role for women in early civilization other than baby making, because once men hunt and build houses, everyone’s good.
FYI, my Grandmother, a hearty peasant immigrant, built herself a house at age 60.
I don’t know about you guys but I’ve managed to fill in a LOT of squares on my bingo card with this Rex dude.
1) I’m not an MRA but
2) Evo psych argument
3) We hunted the mammoth (and mined diamonds)
4) A woman’s value is her womb
5) Feminists are just being petty
6) Waah hypergamy!
7) Waah male disposability!
8) Feminism is at the expense of men
9) And feminism doesn’t even care!
10) Teal deer
My marker has run out of ink, I think.
4. Male courtship.
Your personal dating history and sex life don’t actually factor in my political beliefs. Both you and I have a social life that society as a whole is not required to improve.
Brooked – re breadwinner. I am talking about the concept and what it represents. Economies are irrelevant. They are a much more recent invention and have nothing to do with the innate drive to provide in itself. Earning money is simply another means by which one can provide for others.
I was going to add that anyone interested in Feminism and the history of courtship should read http://britishheritage.com/eleanor-of-aquitaine/ about Eleanor of Aquitane.
Brooked – Where did I make a personal reference to my sex life in point 4?
Re ‘gibberish’. Sorry I didn’t write you an exhaustive list of all the things people do in society. I thought my post was already quite lengthy. Did it really need to be said though? I think you are picking at straws here. Your personal anecdote of your grandmother is nice and all, but its not relevant if you deem personal anecdotes are not evidence.
Great, another random post with less substance then a polo mint hole.
And it’s fucking huge – that’s not a teal deer, that’s a teal bison. How can anybody write so much and yet still write so little?
Sunnysombrera – What is your point? I was invited to respond to some points and I did. They necessitated discussing ‘hypergamy’ and ‘male disposability’. Are you suggesting those issues are not relevant to the the wider discussion of gender roles and attitutdes in our society? Do you even believe they are a real ‘thing’?
It seems clear from the kinds of comments on this page and from similar crao going on over on Twitter, than a good many people who identify as feminists are merely trolling and blinkered in their viewpoints. Instead of responding in a civil manner to points raised, you launch straight into sarcasm and personal attacks, which not only are unnecessary and say so much about you, but are also unhelpful, which goes against your stated aims of fighting for equality. How can you work together with someone when you respond to a debate with personal insults. It makes you look like you are 5 years old and very immature. Try raising the level of this and maybe you won’t in turn receieve quite so much ridicule from the MRA groups.
Rex, in all seriousness, can you back up your factual claims with the actual science you’ve read that says these things, and link to it?
Thanks to insomnia, I read or at least skimmed your teal deer and I predict that you will fail to defend your viewpoint.
Most posters here are adults and for the most part every single one, including females, get their own food several times a day with their own money. I don’t have the same daily need for jewels, you should probably worry less about that one.
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/421/220/c76.jpg
I hate to break this to you, but you’ve never actually looked back into our evolutionary past. You make things up, cobbled from your limited knowledge and your huge pile of preconceived notions, and inexplicably think it’s actual information that you need to share and discuss. I’m sure there are places where people might take you seriously, particularly on reddit, but sadly this is not one of those places.
He’s put aside the made-up anthropology and fake evolutionary psychology; he’s gone full sealion.