This was the big weekend, folks! The weekend of the historic International Male Issues Conference in London!
Wait, that’s not right. International Male is the clothing company with that famous catalog. I meant the International London Men Conference. No, that’s not it either. Oh, wait! The International Conference on Men’s Issues in London. I’m pretty sure that’s it. Catch the excitement on the conference’s official Twitter hashtag!
Now, it’s true that the event this weekend did not draw a ton of media coverage.
Or any, actually: As of Sunday afternoon, a Google News search reveals that the only media outlet, and I use that term loosely, to report on the conference was Breitbart. Last fall. (The conference got a brief mention in the Jewish Chronicle online, and someone mentioned it in a comment on The Guardian’s website.) Indeed, media interest in the event was evidently so tepid that the organizers cancelled their press conference at the last minute.
The lack of media interest might have something to do with the fact that the conference organizers — led by political failure Mike Buchanan of the Justice for Men and Boys party — refused to give out press passes to the event, instead demanding that reporters shell out £265 for the privilege of hearing a bunch of idiots talk nonsense about the supposed oppression of men.
Not even the prospect of getting autographs from “Janet Bloomfield” and/or Paul Elam was enough to lure the media there.
But one wily media outlet was able to sneak a photographer into the event — We Hunted the Mammoth, the very blog you are now reading.
And so I present to you these EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS of ICMI16 from our man in London. Who might possibly be a cat.
Wait, is that Tiger Woods? Sitting next to Rod Stewart? With Ozzy Osbourne, Madonna, and Sean Connery behind them? Except that none of them look quite right?
Sorry, folks, I think this is just some picture of a bunch of celebrity impersonators.
Wait, is that Austin Pow…
Never mind, it’s more celebrity impersonators. Besides, I can’t imagine that this many people made it to the ICMI.
All right, that’s just a bunch of dudes dressed as Abraham Lincoln.
And that’s a bunch of people dressed as Albert Einstein. What the hell.
THESE AREN’T EVEN PEOPLE!!11!
I’m beginning to think that our photographer didn’t actually go to the ICMI at all.
Luckily, one Youtube doofus who did attend the conference posted this footage of some of the conference goers milling around awkwardly outside of the venue.
https://twitter.com/6ame/status/751795513549328384
Ah well. At least that’s more than the zero who attended their conference last year.
@Mark, honey, since I’m a lovely person and totally want to suck your dick, I did the googling about women not wanting to be on the front lines for you.
I searched “women dont want to be in the front lines poll”.
Got a lot of polls about “should women be allowed the military”, what appeared to be a reddit rant about the death of chivalry (such noble action, to consider women incapable of opening doors, and to consider opening doors for women great for opening their legs) at the hands of feminism, which used a poll that showed most people are ok with women going to the military, some stuff saying that many women are ok with women getting drafted, a lot of misogynistic stuff complaining both about how oppressed men are for having to go to the military and how women are too inferior to go to the military, and so on.
I didn’t found, of course, the poll you mentioned.
Sorry hon. Can you post it here or not?
@ Oogly
Which antidepressant is it? Odds are, I have been on it (or a very similar medicine in the same class) at some point.
The placebo effect may well have kicked in already, it’s immediate and very, very real despite it’s entirely undeserved reputation as somehow being “lesser” or a sign of gullibility on the patient’s part. Let’s hope it’s a powerful placebo response and not just a random mood and energy level fluctuation, and that you continue to get better and better efficacy out of your meds as the pharmacochemical effect kicks in, too.
I strongly recommend a mood diary. Otherwise it may be difficult for you to know in a couple of months how much the medication is helping. I’ve had this problem many times, and have spent many years on medications that may have been entirely useless or even harmful, instead of looking for more effective treatments.
Mood diaries have many other uses too, like being incontrovertible proof in your worse moments that even though you feel certain that everything is hopeless and have perfect faith in your memory of how ugly the world is and how bad life is, none of that is actually true. The level to which a completely normal, healthy human being’s memories and perceptions of reality are constantly being filtered through their mood is staggering. You don’t even have to be psychotic to lose access to your own normal reality (let alone the reality that would be normal for you if you were healthy and happy). I’ve sometimes been able to find it again by looking at stuff that forced me to remember my own actual former mental state, like a mood diary.
It took me a long time to discover that method, because other people were always unable to pull me back from a dark mental state. They regularly only succeeded in making things worse. They’d try to show me how my depressive views were wrong; I’d start arguing against them and defending my views. It was necessary because I genuinely found their views unconvincing and needed to point out their weaknesses so they could address them and make a more convincing case to help me. Unfortunately, it’s just really fucking harmful to start proving that things really are just as dark as they seem. I don’t know whether it’s a feature of the world or the depressed mind, but I’ve never seen general optimism about the human condition come even close to beating general pessimism in a debate. So that was a dead end, and I assumed the same thing would apply to using my own evidence to convince myself. But there is something about reminding myself that I did already see things differently at another time, and they felt equally true as my beliefs feel now, that has been able to shift my thinking when nothing else has.
Sorry if I’m just telling you things you already know. I’ve recently recovered from 20 years of depression and I’m still a bit giddy about it. I literally feel almost like I can transmit my success to other patients by sharing things I’ve learned <: of course it isn't going to work that way, but maybe you'll at least derive some encouragement from this.
@ Futile
I googled it too, and actually found what he was referring to:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/25/us-army-women-combat-jobs-survey
Also found this: http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/24/do-military-women-want-combat-jobs-the-survey-numbers-say-yes-and-so-do-more-than-9000-combat-action-badges/
Seems there are several issues with the reporting. We don’t, for example, know anything about how to interpret that number, given that similar data doesn’t exist about men. And the disparity in numbers between the two secondary sources citing the same survey. Wasn’t able to find the survey itself published anywhere, not that I looked particularly hard.
What I don’t see is, what it should imply even if very few women compared to men did want combat roles.
Hmm, that’s not too bad. So about £12k for the weekend. But most of the speakers had to be flown in and provided with accommodation in London, not the cheapest place to visit. Unless they’re all in tents in the Excel car park, but I think there are rules against that kind of thing.
@ snork maiden
You can tell you’re not from Yorkshire!!! 🙂
With regard to the speakers; there’s a rather nice passive-aggressive post on their site about Milo pulling out (they do like to turn on each other don’t they?). The fact that he could just do that though suggests that they didn’t have any formal contracts in place with their speakers; certainly they weren’t paying at least the ones of Milo’s calibre. Probably just an “if you turn up we’ll find a couch for you” deal. Would be interested to see a breakdown of the finances though.
The contract has a lot of protective language around not photographing the event or the rooms without the prior permission of the organizers, ostensibly to protect “the privacy of the participants”. No doubt they didn’t want unsanctioned images of poorly attended speeches being leaked online, or a repeat of the Jeff Sharlet fiasco.
I wonder if phony death threats and lack of funding count as Force Majeure?
So I missed catching the troll-trouncing live, but egads did I enjoy it in hindsight.
I especially liked this particular cognitive dissonance:
– Mark: *complains about women having all of the rights and none of the responsibility*
– Also Mark: *thinks men should have the right to get paper abortions*
Which is kinda the whole red pill internet in a nutshell.
Speaking of political parties; looks like well have another female Prime Minister by next week. Theresa May is now running unopposed for the Tory leadership.
My skills as a political pundit demonstrated by this post I made a while back:
@ IP
Just imagine that NOBODY is in their underwear and you’ll do fine.
@snorkmaiden:
That’s definitely not Bademantelbube in the video, sorry!
But they all look like fine and upstanding citizens, and not at all indistinguishable from (a certain subset of) the crowd at any gaming related convention 😛
And as someone talked about chivalry earlier, here’s a fine and funny piece of writing about chivalry
I wonder what Mark’s doing now. Is he bragging to all his MRA/MGOTW buddies that he totes told off those feminists–sorry, he spells that “WRA,” doesn’t he?–and they’re all metaphorically dead with a stake in their non-sparkly vampire-like hearts? Or is he curled up somewhere reassuring himself that he’s a big alpha boy?
Eh. That’s all the time I should spend thinking about that troll. I have a bagel to eat.
@dust bunny:
Congratulations on beating depression! That would make me giddy too.
Come on, no one wants to join Mark in his solitary vigil on Sour Grape Island?
If you don’t, then…then….the princess in the copypasta fable might still live happily ever after. And someone, somewhere, might benefit from something they didn’t personally build.
That’s just no way to run a society.
@Alan,
I understand there are two kinds of englishperson, those from Yorkshire, and those who wish they were.
I take it ‘not too bad’ is not a common expression up there?
Milo pulling out doesn’t surprise me at all, he probably went out on the lash the night before and was too hungover to bother showing up; isn’t that what happened when he stood up some libertarian society at some American university a while back?
I’m now getting the image that the ICMI conference was a lot like child beauty pageants are these days, where only the families of the participants are allowed to attend anymore. I see all the speakers and special guests clapping and cheering each other as they all go up to give their prepared speeches, and possibly do glittery gymnastics displays afterwards?
http://i.imgur.com/mlKhYXz.jpg
Mark is still not posting any support for his views and positions outside of their own assertions? Sad.
In related news I have started that project for talking about how social conflict works that was discussed here several months ago. I was accepted as a blogger on the Freethought Blogs network. I only have an introductory post and a single long case study up right now, but I’m turning that case study into a topics list.
I also finally got a job. I’m hoping that it does not take too long to drag myself out of this asocial slump I’ve been in. Long-term unemployment is psychologically brutal.
I know I’m verrry late to this party, but Mark said:
But all I hear is “Waah! I DESERVE sex with no consequences!! But women should still TOTALLY have consequences for having sex, especially if it’s not with ME ME ME!!1!
Paradoxy said:
Right? We’ve got so much horse shit, the garden is looking mighty fine! We’ve also got a herd of teal deer, a stable full of high horses, a rocky beach positively crowded with sea lions, and a unicorn or two. Mark’s contributions here are nothing new.
@Brony
Congrats!
Which, presumably, Mark is directly on.
@ snork maiden
If any Yorkshire person ever said “not too bad” in relation to the price of something they’d be sent to a re-education camp.
As this collection of local sayings demonstrates the correct response to any offer is “Ow much!!!”
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0995/1140/products/badge_group_1_d61e7204-0301-43dd-96e6-c75eed4f178b_large.jpg?v=1452691513
Brony, I am so so glad to hear you’ve found a job! That’s such incredible news. Wishing you all the best through the transition.
I really enjoy lurking about FTB, so I will definitely check out your blog. 🙂
@Dust Bunny
Yeah it’s so far just the placebo affect, taking Buproprion HCL SR. Good thing I have a spare notebook to write a mood diary, will keep that in mind.
@Brony, Social Justice Cenobite
http://i.giphy.com/Ve20ojrMWiTo4.gif
@ mark
If you’re still around and you genuinely do care about men sent off to fight, then my mate is trying to raise some money for this worthy charity. So if you’d like to put your money where your mouth is I’m sure a donation would be appreciated.
http://www.talking2minds.co.uk/tm/about-us/history/
@ mark
If you’re still around and you genuinely do care about men sent off to fight, then my mate is trying to raise some money for this worthy charity. So if you’d like to put your money where your mouth is I’m sure a donation would be appreciated.
http://www.talking2minds.co.uk/tm/about-us/history/
@ Imaginary Petal, Tizio
Thank you!
@Viscaria
Thank you! I managed to get an entry level position in a mental health facility, a “rehabilitation technician”. Long term behavioral modification and/or therapy support for extremely troubled and/or traumatized male children in the 12-17 year range. It’s very challenging, but it feels right and the intensity does not stress me. I took the position not only to get some real experience in mental health, but also as an experiment in this sort of work being compatible with my natural aptitudes. I guess we will see how this goes.