UPDATE: This poster (apparently) isn’t an official AVFM poster, but they have endorsed it. See bottom of post for details.
Is the appearance of this poster at a Toronto train station an example of inadvertently terrible timing, or an act of astounding assholery?
The poster in question was spotted at Toronto Transit’s Ossington station yesterday, a day after reports of online threats against University of Toronto women hit the media. Classy, AVFM, classy!
Adding to the ick factor: As one Twitterer pointed out, the bus line that goes through the U of T campus connects to the subway at Ossington Station.
Even if the timing of this little poster campaign is purely coincidental, it’s a little hard to fathom how anyone associated with AVFM would think that the best way to recruit Toronto women to their cause would be to essentially tell them: “We have no respect for you and no understanding of feminism; we like to imagine you suffering; come join us for some epic mansplaining!”
But AVFMers seem to have perpetual troubles telling the difference between “brilliant PR move” and “shitting their pants in public.”
Twitter parody account @TTCwelps had what is probably the best response to the poster.
https://twitter.com/TTCwelps/status/642376748919746560
And here’s a reminder that not everything that starts out with the phrase “hey ladies” is automatically terrible.
UPDATE: Here’s an official statement on the poster from AVFM’s Facebook page. It’s a little … confusing, in that they’re not entirely sure if it’s one of their posters or not.
Postering like that on TTC property is illegal and whomever put it up should be fined. Do we know if this really was an AVFM-created-and-approved poster? I know that they’d deny that they produced and/or posted it, which is certainly plausible given that it looks like something someone printed at home on legal-size paper, but the poor phrasing is certainly classic MRA.
If that is Ossington Station, then that’s not the main entrance on Ossington Street (which leads to both trains and the bus platform), but rather the automatic entrance/exit on Delaware Street that isn’t staffed (no collector/station agent) and only leads directly to the train platforms. Anyone arriving at Ossington by the 94 Ossington bus that runs through the U of T downtown campus between Ossington and Wellesley stations wouldn’t have been confronted by the poster.
(I don’t mean to diminish the U of T connection, but there are so many other and better routes to and within the campus, and the campus itself is so walkable, that those taking the 94 really are a minority. The 94 is the only bus that runs east-west through the middle of campus, but it does have a history of being notoriously unreliable in keeping on schedule, and as Ossington station itself has some serious accessibility deficiencies, it’s not a route that students who need elevators or escalators would use.)
http://map.utoronto.ca/
What the hell are they on about? What has marriage got to do with feminism? Feminism is about equal rights and giving women the freedom to make their own choices regarding marriage, employment, having kids, etc. As for the whole unmarried at 30 thing, they do know that the average age of marriage for women is around 29, right?
I have to admit, though. That sign is so much more comprehensible than they usually are. But I have no idea what they are trying to achieve by this other than making a quick jab at feminism and women. Do they really think many women will go to that site? After all it is called A Voice for Men. Also, do they SERIOUSLY think that the women that will go to the site will stick around once they see that it is full of misogynistic garbage? I sure don’t.
@misseb47
Exactly my thought process as well. I went to AVfM just to see what I would be faced with, trying to put myself in the shoes of this imaginary 30 year old unmarried feminist woman. Top stories: “Another campus rape hoax”, “The Blair Bitch Project”, “Say Goodbye to Crazy – Introduction to Crazy: Divorce Bitterness”.
Just.. which one of these stories is supposed to help with the whole dating thing?
@misseb
I think the general reaction of women who would actually check out AVFM’s site out of curiosity would be “holy SHIT did I just dodge a bullet here!”
Also I got married at the decrepit age of 42 last year. Neener, manurespherisns.
Off topic, but flipping through the articles on AVfM on my phone in bed last night (FML), I found this incredibly poorly written MGTOW fantasy/true story. I wanted to quote something from it, but now on my laptop I can’t find the story because the layout of the site is completely different. Anyone ever tried to navigate AVfM? It’s such a fucking mess.
I give up. Can’t find it. I’m gonna approximate the quote from memory. So, this story is by a MGTOW talking about his experiences as such. At one point in the text he claims to be a rape victim, and that he was raped by another man. Obviously I don’t have any particular reason to doubt this claim. But his description of his interaction with the police seemed a bit strange to me. It was something like: “they only said I could not have been raped because men can’t legally be raped, and in fact as a man I was by definition a rapist”. Now, I don’t think very highly of the police, but I kinda doubt this actually happened as described. It’s pretty telling of the AVfM readership and commenters that people simply accept that a police officer said all men are by definition rapists. They don’t even reality at all.
There are many ways in which police officers respond in negative, unhelpful, or actively hostile ways to male victims of rape, but “you must be the real rapist because: man” is not one I have actually heard of happening in reality.
@PoM
Yeah, and also.. the rapist and the victim in this scenario were both men. So, by the alleged logic of the alleged police officer, they should’ve both been arrested? I don’t get how this even makes sense if we accept the general MRA narrative.
@alaisvex, I thought AVFM was inherently beta, because if your an Alfa you inherently have a voice and people hear it regardless, cos you’re alfda, not the shouty, complainy, posturing of “look at me I’m a big loud man and shouting isn’t whining and you’d better listen, otherwise I’m gonna shout (whine) louder”.
Feminism made it okay to be 30 and unmarried. Only in the tiny realm of backwards-upside down-AVfM Land, where it’s still 1800, is it not okay.
They’re furious at feminism because feminism took away the only weapon they had with which to maneuver women into submission. They’re still trying to brandish it at us, only what they’re holding is a pathetic styrofoam pool noodle with a daisy stuck in the end.
It’s also total false advertising, given the constant, deafening anti-marriage refrain in the manosphere. You’d be hard-pressed to find much stable, happy LTR experience at AVfM. If a woman really wanted to get married, why would she ask a bunch of guys obsessed with plate-spinning, serial banging, and divorce rape? Why would she go someplace where “oneitis” is considered a disease?
The sign should be more like “Hey fish! Have you reached age 30 and haven’t found a bicycle yet? Doesn’t feminism suck?? Go to “A Voice For Committed Pedestrians Against Wheels”! We have all the answers on bicycles!”
@dhag85
Well, as I’m sure you know, there are many in the MRA and adjacent crowd who advance the position, with a perfectly straight face, that the natural extension of “having sex with someone too drunk to consent = rape” reasoning is that all parties to drunken sex are mutually committing rape. The scenario you describe is just a new color on that … erm … “argument.”
I think I get it:
Much in the same way that a Nigerian 419 email self-selects the people who might fall for it through a wildly implausible story and poor spelling/grammar, this poster is using absurdities to target only women who are entirely ignorant of feminism.
Whether this implies that the person who made the poster knows that AVfM is a scam is left as an exercise to the reader.
It’s possible they’re fishing for unhappily single women to come to AVfM so they can gloat at her, and use her relationship woes to validate their revenge fantasy that feminism causes all of its adherents to end up bitter and lonely and desperate after hitting the wall at 30. “See”, they’ll say, “We TOLD you so! That’s what you get for riding the cock carousel for too long!” *echoing peals of dank, backlit laughter*
And then they’ll ignore her, because women over 25 do not exist in their world. They’re certainly not marriageable – MRAs regard older women as “spoiled milk” – so the idea that they’d be offering any sort of help or good advice is ludicrous.
Also, LOLOLOL at “high condo fees” (those are, what, a couple hundred bucks a month?) and the assumption that all single women buy condos. Because yardwork is a mayun’s job and feeeemales need to rely on condo services to keep the lawn mowed and the hedges trimmed.
@ Policyofmadness
In England that is now the position under our latest Sexual Offences Act (although any non penetrating party would be guilty of ‘sexual assault’ as penetration is an element of rape).
There’s a new offence of ‘permitting’ sexual activity by a non consenting party. This was to deal with people who ‘passively’ allow a non consenting person to engage in sexual activity with them, or even in front of them.
In practice the CPS would consider whether the circumstances to see if there was evidence of capacity to consent, but as a matter of law, if neither party had capacity through drink or drugs then both would be guilty of an offence (in English law you can be a victim and an offender at the same time).
In such circumstances the CPS are likely to take the ‘well, if you press charges, they’ll press charges, so are you bothered about this?’ approach that they’re fond of when they can’t figure out who’s responsible for an act (you see this a lot in assault cases).
@buttercup
I’m not even quite sure how to respond to that. A condo is not cheap. They’re generally more expensive than an apartment because you have homeowners association dues on top of the mortgage payments, and let’s not forget that you need to be wealthy enough to convince a bank to give you a mortgage, which they’re not wrong about that being difficult to do on a single income. Actually, women successful enough to own a condo in the first place are probably the last people AVFM should be targeting with this, so that shows how out of touch they are.
In Toronto the average price of a condo is $416,728. I put that into a mortgage calculator along with the property tax rate value in Toronto of 0.7% on a property of that value and left the default interest rate of 4%, and the payments came out to $2,232.61 per month. That doesn’t include homeowners association dues, which I couldn’t find a good estimate for in Toronto, but on one mortgage advice website it said, “Typical HOA fees can range anywhere from a couple hundred dollars per month up to nearly a thousand dollars.” For what it’s worth, when I owned my own condo before moving in with my husband, it was over $400 per month.
@kupo – Around here, median condo fees range from $100 – $400. Condo fees shouldn’t be confused with mortgage, which is entirely separate (ditto property taxes and insurance). That’s why I was mocking them, because condo fees are typically much cheaper than rent or mortgage. (Heck, I wish I was only paying that much per month for housing.). If someone is only paying condo fees, it means they own, and are in a very different financial position than someone who’s also having to make mortgage payments. They’re less likely to be struggling financially.
If they meant mortgage, or total housing costs, they should have said so. For people who pride themselves on logic, they sure are sloppy with their terminology.
Also, banks take condo fees into account when approving loans, so the total monthly payment ends up being about the same for single family house vs. condo. You’ll get more square footage for a comparably priced house, but then you’ll have to do all the exterior maintenance yourself, or pony up for landscape services.
TL;DR: the idea that condo fees are “high” compared to rent or mortgage is ridiculous.
@buttercup I read “high condo fees” as meaning the total cost of living in a condo, not the HOA dues.
Given that most condos in Toronto are high-rises, and that there is little or no yard around them at all, there isn’t even that. Unless they’re talking window-washers (who can be of any sex), they got bupkus.
BTW, kupo’s right. Women who WOULD be able to buy a condo in TO, are the very last women who’d take AVFM’s juvenilia seriously. Now, if they’d mentioned renters, they might be onto something. Apartments in TO are cramped and ridiculously overpriced. Renting a house is barely possible there. Owning one, especially in the Beaches, is almost impossible.
I think what they’re trying to do is just take pot-shots at any woman who’s scratched out even a modestly satisfactory life for herself. “Oh, so you think you’re successful because you have a good career and a home of your own? Sorry, honey, but if you haven’t married before you’re 25, you’re SCUM! SCUM! SCUM! Green slimy pond SCUM!” >whine whine sulk pout<
(And let's not forget, either, that oh-so-big-and-macho Paulie has had anything BUT a successful career, and is maybe still mooching off his girlfriend, if she hasn't left him already.)
@kupo – “Fees” to me sounds like what the homeowner’s association charges. I’ve never heard a mortgage officer refer to a bank loan as a fee.
“Tired of high housing costs?” would have been a better catchall phrase.
High cost of living – particularly housing – is an issue globally in many large cities. It’s an issue in their beloved Asia which they view as devoid of women with opinions. I know it’s a problem in Tokyo and Hong Kong. I’m guessing it probably is in Seoul too.
Sigh. I didn’t finish my thought before posting. I’m just saying high housing costs have fuck all to do with feminists and reasonable people blame other factors for it. Only in the manosphere is “everything bad is feminist’s fault” a tenable position.
Also, there’s a lot of irony in the fact that high housing prices have been a major driver of women entering the workforce over the past few decades. For many families, having two incomes is a matter of survival. It’s the only way they can afford a roof over their heads.
But no, let’s blame feminism!
In all honesty, this poster is probably a good thing. Anyone interested enough to look into it and ignorant of the manosphere would get a pretty quick education in organized misogyny.
As others have pointed out, the website’s current articles are like “women: literally hitler?” so AVFM, again, shoots themselves in the foot.
Then again it’s possible the target audience is actually disgruntled manchildren. The poster actively attacks women and advertises AVFM, so it’s possible they’re just trying to recruit more manbabies who are literally too afraid of women to talk to them.