So there’s a depressing (but very much a must-read) piece over on Yahoo News at the moment chronicling how a lawsuit by Men’s Rights activists (allegedly) led to the demise of Chic CEO, a small company offering support and advice for women entrepreneurs in the male-dominated tech world.
As Yahoo Tech writer Alyssa Bereznak explains, the whole debacle started when two men decided that they needed to be part of a Chic CEO networking event. Because, clearly, men need a leg up in the tech world.
Two men named Allan Candelore and Rich Allison, who had each prepaid a $20 registration fee on the Chic CEO website, tried to enter the restaurant. According to a legal complaint that they later filed with National Coalition for Men president Harry Crouch, Burns turned them away at the door, saying the event “was only open to women.” They took a photo, left the premises, then promptly initiated legal action, turning to a 1959 California law written to prevent discrimination against minorities and women.
So yeah. They’re like Rosa Parks, but for dudes.
Bereznak notes that this is not the first time the 1959 law has been used on behalf of the struggling, suffering male gender. Alfred G. Rava, the lawyer representing the two men turned away at the door,
has built a career around gender-discrimination lawsuits, filing approximately 150 complaints against California businesses over the past 15 years, according to CNN Money … and, as the secretary for the National Coalition for Men, he offers free consultation for NCFM members who feel they’ve experienced public discrimination because of their gender.
Rava has fought baseball teams giving out free mammograms and assorted swag to women as part of Mother’s Day promotions and has taken a stand against the evil tyranny of Ladies Night at a number of San Diego nightclubs.
And he’s often worked in concert with the other men involved in the ChicCEO case.
Candelore — who has been a member of NCFM for four years — has been the plaintiff in 10 civil cases since 2011, not including his case against Chic CEO. In nine of those 10 cases, he was represented by Rava. In eight of those, [NCFM president] Crouch joined him as a plaintiff. In seven of those cases, Allison was a plaintiff.
They’re like a “Reverse Discrimination” Superteam.
For her part, ChicCEO’s Stephanie Burns told Yahoo Tech that her company “does not discriminate against men,” pointing out that it has male clients and board members. But, apparently unable to afford the cost of fighting the claims in court, she chose to settle the case instead.
The strangest detail in the Yahoo News piece? This parenthetical aside from the author:
(Rava refused to speak to me on the phone because he said he was concerned Yahoo News would misquote him. He also later emailed me to say: “I hope you print all sides to your story, because I am sure you would not want someone to publish a story about you on the Internet labeling you a ‘predator,’ a ‘gigantic bitch,’ an ‘elitist,’ a ‘soulless harpie,’ a ‘narcissist,’ and a ‘dumb woman,’ without that story presenting facts or opinions to the contrary.”)
Apparently Rava has been taking lessons in public relations from the folks at AVFM.*
NOTE: THAT LAST SENTENCE WAS A JOKE. I HAVE NO PROOF RAVA IS TAKING PR LESSONS FROM ANYONE.
Naturally, MRAs have swarmed the comments over on Yahoo News — last I checked, there were more than 1400 comments on the post. Meanwhile, A Voice for Men has reposted a long and tedious piece by the NCFM’s Crouch presenting what he sees as the “truth” in the case.
AVFM chose to illustrate its repost with a picture of a white man in chains. Because a couple of lawsuit-happy men turned away at a women-in-tech networking event are pretty much the equivalent of actual slaves.
@AbominableSnowPickle
That IS a crucial distinction. Sorry for missing it.
@ReallyFriendly + David N.: Can’t say I’m surprised: GamerGate has been eating their own since they started, pretty much. Now, granted, I wouldn’t quite say that *all* GGers are monsters: there are indeed some out there who are simply badly misguided and genuinely unaware of the serious problems within that movement-I have actually read confessions to that effect from a few folks who used to be in GG before they got out, by the way-but yes, even with that, we can’t deny that there are a LOT of assholes, too, not just including many jerkass trolls, but quite a few genuine dirtbags, too, such as Milo Yiannopoulos, Adam Baldwin, Mike Cernovich, etc.
Poorly drafted legislation, strict technical interpretations and excessive pointless litigation? It can only be US Laws!
Apologies to American readers but every contact I have had with US Law as an AUS law student has been confusing, painful, poorly drafted, overly technical and riddles with obvious loopholes. The cases seem to involve a near puritanical obsession with black letter lawyering (focussing on strict dictionary definitions of laws meaning rather than purposive and practical interpretation), are riddled with ridiculous technicalities and seem to be near immune to reason.
In particular I must snipe at the notion that this incident wouldn’t have happened if Chic had better lawyers and used better “non-discriminatory” language. That’s absurd, people shouldn’t need a lawyer to look over their invitations or events to avoid discrimination lawsuits it should be possible by mere common sense and the choice of wording should be less than important.
Their brains are probably freezing like mine, resisting this information because, if true, the suit was 100% frivolous and should have been thrown out, but it wasn’t and this is depressing. Just a thought.
@Mortarius
In theory you’re correct. In practice this is the logic people who chose to represent themselves use and we know how that usually works out.
Where’s the feminist defense for Kim Davis? I believe she is being harshly and abominably discriminated against by patriarchal men who want to set up patriarchal households with no women in them. she is the real new Rosa Parks in my honest and honorarial opinion.
I saw many good comments here,thank you.
Dumb question, for anyone who’s been following this–if the guys who sued had prepaid, how come they were turned away because the event was full?
Re Moses’ horns, it’s a mistranslation of Moses’ face shining from the reflection of God when he came down from Mount Sinai:
‘the Hebrew word meaning to be radiant or cast a glow which is used in the above-quoted Biblical passage is “karan.” When Jerome’s Vulgate, the Catholic Church’s Latin translation intended to be the definitive interpretation of the Bible, was composed in the 5th century CE, Jerome took the verb “karan” to be a literal form of the noun “keren” which means a horn.
So rather than meaning, “to emit rays,” he understood it to mean “to grow horns.”’
In some subcultures this somehow permutated into the idea that all Jews have horns–I have, no shit, been asked if the asker could feel mine, and I’m not the only Jew I know this has happened to. A friend of mine (not a Jew) plays in a Klezmer band that ran with this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_with_Horns
Wat.
Wat.
Waaaaaaaaaaattttttt.
@kupo
Ugh, that is so fucking annoying.
As I’ve learned from MRA talking points and incomprehensible meme pictures, these men just love women so much that they will do anything to protect women from all imaginary threats, against their wishes.
I suspect they will try this again.
BTW, if you could trigger an MRA with a picture, would you do it?
davidknewton,
Thank you for the news!
That lawyer really reminds me of the joke:
The difference between a lawyer and a bucket of shit is the bucket.
That’s this lawyer.
That’s not the weirdest rumor about Jews I’d heard. Google “Jewish male menstruation.” (Unfortunately, most of the scholarly papers can’t be read past their abstracts without paying.)
I’m…assume that is about cismen…and if you know a Jewish cisman that is bleeding from anywhere, you should get him to a doctor ASAP.
@guest:
That’s… that’s easily the most puzzling piece of anti-semitism I’ve ever come across. That is, to quote Neal Stephenson, well past the boundaries of the merely offensive and deep into the realm of the bizarre.
There should be more protection for events held with an affirmative action/positive discrimination purpose in mind. Events should be allowed to be exclusive if their purpose is to help correct an imbalance working against a demographic, such as the underrepresentation of women in STEM, and the discrimination they face. Without it, I doubt that the men dominating STEM fields are going to take the initiative to correct the problem, themselves. Hopefully California law can be reviewed to include provisions for this sort of thing.
Panda: As the belief was most prominent in the 17th and into the 18th century, the concepts of cis- and transmen were relatively unformed.
I admit when I first heard of it, after making a face somewhat like 0_o I was tempted to jokingly ask the friend of mine who practices Conservative Judaism if he’s ever felt “not so fresh”…
@guest: You know what makes the idea that some people even now think that Jews have horns extra weird? There are dozens if not hundreds of pictures of WWII Jewish POWs with shaved heads. You’d think THAT would be enough to put paid to that crazy idea…
You know, I didn’t phrase that comment about “the concepts of cis- and transmen” very well, but what I was trying to put across is that the modern concepts pertaining to cis- and transmen probably weren’t around at the time.
Nequam:
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the sets “people who believe that Jews have horns” and “holocaust deniers” probably overlap a lot.
@davidknewton,
thanks for the summary, that drama just keeps on giving.
Btw, did anyone read Matt Forney’s recent hit piece against Thunderf00t on his blog? In it he armchair diagnoses TF as only going after Aurini out of PTSD, TF’s father passed away not long ago. I recall Forney was butthurt after TF didn’t credit him when he used excerpts from Forney’s podcast in his hit piece video on The Sarkeesian Effect.
However what’s really shocking is that Forney is claiming to have been a victim of a false rape accusation(!!!!) Has anyone heard about this? He goes on about how worried and stressed he’s been these past few months that feminists would find out and go after him. Am I the only one who finds this extraordinary? Here’s a donotlink to his blog post, trigger warnings for Forney’s usual unpleasantness:
http://www.donotlink.com/gkgo
@Thomas Hobbes
Because gay women don’t exist. Gay marriage is only between men. And traditional marriage isn’t the least bit patriarchal.
Shoo, troll. Go back to Opposite Land.
How does a “patriarchal household with no women in [it]” work, exactly? Ha ha, we men are so devious! Now we can create a household where women are so oppressed that they don’t even exist! Genius!
… So who makes the sammitches now?
But seriously, no. Words mean things. Rosa Parks defied a law that allowed discrimination, Davis is trying to defy a law that forbids discrimination. They’re complete opposites.
Who?
*Googles*
Oh, some homophobic idiot loudly refusing to do her government job because teh gayz. Yeah, sorry, try again.
@Thomas Hobbes: Kim Davis swore an oath to uphold the law of the land, and now she’s saying she had her fingers crossed when she did it. That’s not worthy of defense, feminist or otherwise.
(Hey, Hobbesy, are you the same Thomas Hobbes who posts genocide fantasies on ROK, or just another random MRA adopting the name of your favourite 1500s philosopher?)