The second not-quite-annual International Conference on Men’s Issues in London didn’t get a lot of media attention when it happened in early July. Actually, as far as I can tell, it didn’t get any, aside from a brief and somewhat silly post on a blog called We Hunted the Mammoth, which, come to think of it, is my blog, the one right here.
The media blackout may have had something to do with the organizers’ insistence that members of the press pay full ticket price — £265 — for the honor of covering the conference. Or maybe no one really cared? I mean, Men’s Rights is so last year. Or maybe so two years ago.
Well, the media has finally gotten around to covering the event. A piece in The Guardian today reports, rather belatedly, that Tory MP Philip Davies gave a talk at the conference, attacking “feminist zealots” for promoting a legal system that, in his estimation, discriminates against men. Davies’ speech seems to have been rather standard MRA fare, claiming that “militant feminists” want “equality … only when it suits [their] agenda.”
“For example, we hear plenty about increasing the numbers of women on company boards and female representation in parliament,” Davies and his Amazing Haircut declared. “However, there’s a deafening silence when it comes to increasing the number of men who have custody of their children or who have careers as midwives.”
In the US, at least, men who actually ask for custody get it most of the time. And are there really a lot of men clamoring to get into midwifery? Is anyone actually blocking them from this career path?
The Guardian article devotes nearly as much time to the event’s organizer — Mike Buchanan of the spectacularly unsuccessful Justice for Men and Boys party — and the other conference speakers as it does to Davies and his speech. As The Guardian reports,
Davies appeared alongside controversial figures including Herbert Purdy, an anti-feminist blogger who has written posts such as “The exquisite beauty of patriarchy”, and who argues that [female education activist Malala] Yousafzai could be more dangerous than Bin Laden.
Also speaking at the conference? The Canadian blogger and former Twitter activist known as Janet Bloomfield, whom, the Guardian notes,
has called single mothers “bona fide idiots” who don’t care about their children’s wellbeing, and writes blogposts with titles such as “Why Don’t We Have a Dumb Fucking Whore Registry? Now That Would Be Justice.”
Hey, all publicity is good publicity, right?
As is so often the case when it comes to Men’s Rights activism, the real action is taking place in the comments, of which there are more than 3000. (The total was 2966 when I started writing this post; by the time I got back to the comments they had been closed after reaching a staggering 3130.)
As far as I can tell from my quick scan through the comments — you don’t expect me to read them all, do you? — most of the story’s readers were not exactly impressed with Davies or his MRA friends. One referred to Men’s Rights activism as being “for people who find train-spotting too challenging.” Another wrote that MRAs “are only a little above the KKK in stupidity.”
“Christ, what an insufferable bellend,” one remarked of Davies himself. Another suggested that the MP “has raised idiocy to the level of performance art.”
The MRAs who showed up for this battle responded in kind.
“Women belong in the Kitchen and in Bed,” declared one.
“About [time] there was a backlash against the pansification of the country, good on yer son,” wrote another.
Amazingly. I didn’t see any of A Voice for Men’s flying monkey internet comment spam squad (AVFMFMICSS) in the comments. Maybe they’re all bored with Men’s Rights activism too.
H/T — Too many to mention!
It’s always great to learn a new slang term!
It’s nice to see that the Tories have cleaned up their act. I mean, they only sent a single back-bencher instead of the entire cabinet. This must be what progress looks like.
Hang out in bed all day, with occasional trips to the fridge? Sounds marvelous! Unfortunately I can’t pay for that bedroom or that food without an income, so sadly I need to work outside the home.
So I read this part and, desperately clinging to my last shred of faith in humanity, I thought “No way can this be true”. Wrong!
I was foolish enough to read Purdy’s column, Basically, his argument is that yeah, it’s bad that Malala got shot and all that, but feminism’s “women-as-victims narrative” has created “a climate of fear and loathing of men over the last forty years in our western societies, resulting in significant numbers of men turning away from marriage, refusing to sire children, and often going their own way without women.” Then he starts ranting about how much all this reminds him of 1984. An extraordinary performance, even by Manospherian standards.
P.S. Sorry to link directly to Purdy’s column, but donotlink.com seems to be down.
That’s a real problem for the Men’s Rights Movement. Is there subjects of concern and discrimination toward men in most society? Of course there is some, but almost all of them are inheritance from old, pre-feminist, society that defined masculinity and men in very reductive terms and ways. The MRM domination by anti-feminists is a huge problem for them since it alienate their most obvious ally. It also leads them to reject social sciences who support feminism as cancerous, blatantly false or manipulatable while they need them to demonstrate, explain and solve their own issues. Finally, this highjacking of the MRM by anti-feminists leads to akward situation where many «problems» discussed and presented aren’t well represented and misattributed to feminism (or women in general). This reduce the weigth of their arguments and leads us to dismiss men’s rights issues, sometime unjustly, which then leads to the MRM being dominated even more by anti-feminists and loons. Those really interested in improving men’s right status will sometimes shy away from MRM hubbs and title.
As far as I’m aware, any man who wants to become a midwife can do so with no inordinate obstacles.
$350. $350!! For why?
Ya wanna compare body counts or what? Impulse control. Ms Yousafzai is off limits, fuckers. And you definitely don’t compare her, someone violently attacked by terrorists, to the head of a terrorist organization
@personalpest
No, you stop right there. You do not continue that sentence. These people…
@epronovost:
You sound like you know more about this than I do: was the MRM ever *not* dominated by anti-feminists and misogynists? Was there a magical time when Warren Farrell had not come along and there was an MRM which worked to break down male social conditioning?
In my experience as a man, there is already a movement which confronts male issues and helps us understand our place in the modern world. It’s called feminism.
@Tulse
The Scots responding to Trump being Trump over on their territory introduced the world to some great swears.
http://9gag.com/gag/abZy938/scots-shower-trump-with-glorious-scottish-insults-after-his-brexit-tweet
“Shitgibbon” is my favorite but “Cocksplat”, “Weaselheaded Fucknugget”, “Mangled Apricot Hellbeast”, and “Toupéd Fucktrumpet” are great.
@epronovost
Is there any evidence that today’s MRM has roots in benign 70s men’s movements? Or am I misreading? I just assumed the MRM is old-as-dirt misogyny congealing in response to increasing freedoms for women.
No. Please read the comments policy.
The Guardian is doing something very very stupid by giving them media exposure and coverage.
They shouldn’t get any. It doesn’t matters that the article criticizes them and that the majority of commnts are not in their favour.
It is dangerous to give extremist groups like that a mainstream media platform to promote themselves.
Just like with hooligans, they feel encouraged in what they do if the media reports about them. Or mass-shooters etc.
Ignore them in the mainstream media. The best fight against them!
Oh and OT: Internet racists are super worked up that Obama’s 18 year old daughter, Malia, was caught on video smoking weed at Lollapalooza. Was so silly that as far as I know it didn’t even get Fox News traction despite being probably true.
I don’t know, I think the idiocy of the MRM/PuA members is on par with the Klan. They’re just too lazy to actually go out and cause as much real trouble.
During my pregnancy, I was scheduled to have one of my late-pregnancy checkups with one of the midwives on the staff of my ObGyn group who happened to be a man. He was by all evidence well-respected and completely accepted by his fellow midwives and other staff. The only difference I could tell was that when scheduling me, the admin asked whether I’d be comfortable with a male midwife examining me (but no big deal was made of it). Heck, when my regular midwife saw his name on my schedule, she took a moment to tell me “oh, you’ll love him, he’s great!”
My son decided to be born a few days before that appointment, so I never ended up getting examined by said male midwife, but I definitely got an impression that nobody at that ObGyn group doubted his choice of career.
” [female education activist Malala] Yousafzai could be more dangerous than Bin Laden.”
Fuck you ,Turdy. That is all.
Well, given that the “feminist agenda” is equality, then yeah, good tautology there bro.
@Neurite
I’ve had a gyne appointment with a male OB-GYN, who helped diagnose my fibroid condition and participated in my hysterectomy. Lovely gentleman, never had a problem with him or the other male gyne in the hospital who checked in on me while recovering from surgery and checked my incision..
…Okay, I had one problem. Getting that damn bandage ripped off with bonus bikini wax HURT, but that wasn’t his fault and definitely not that of whatever biological equipment he had.
Everyone belongs in the kitchen. That’s where the food is.
Damn right I belong in bed, Mr. Random MRA. It’s where the AC is and it’s not 100 degrees Fahrenheit on the bed.
Of course, I suppose you meant your bed, in which case: No. And you’re not welcome in my bed either. Which is where I’ll be going after I finish work at my aunt’s today (today is Filing Day. I hate Filing Day. But, my aunt gave me a cute, small Hello Kitty bento box as a going away gift before my move, so yay~). Straight to bed, under the AC.
Under the AC~
Under the AC~
Darlin’ it’s cooler
Down where it’s cooler
Take it from meeeee~
Up on my feet I work all day,
Under the sun I slave away,
I’ll be keeping
full time to sleeping
Under the ACCCCCC~
And I wasn’t aware there was any sort of blockage to men becoming midwives. I haven’t heard about this being a thing.
I have heard that male teachers or child care workers are slightly looked down upon (though there’s also an issue with patronizing praise that some men get when people are trying to overcompensate where a simple ‘good job’ would do), but that’s caused by patriarchy telling men that their place isn’t taking care of kids (especially if they’re someone else’s offspring), so I would argue the solution to that isn’t “MOAR PATRIARCHY!”, but instead a breaking down of traditional gender roles for people of all genders, which would make the idea of men caring for children less rare.
Y’know, feminism.
I think there would be plenty of parents who would be THRILLED if there were more male teachers.
Philip Davies is notable for his obstructive rants in Parliament. He has used filibusters to shoot down two bills. One would have prevented landlords from evicting tenants who had the temerity to ask for vital repairs. The other bill he killed was one that would have taught first aid to school children.
He cuts something of a bizarre figure. It’s astounding that he elected in the first place.
£265??!!! That’s more than I get to live on for a whole fortnight! Hahaha, “bellend” is such a satisfying insult though.
@Tulse: try gormless wazzock on for size. I’d seen both of those words on their own, but seeing them together today for the first time?
http://i.giphy.com/ykgOoTpUYmL60.gif
Oh come on, how can you say “Tory MP with bad haircut and worse ideas” and then not be talking about Boris Johnson?!
By the way, and slightly off-topic, I was explaining more of the stuff I learn from here to my mum and sisters over lunch today, including the Cock Carousel (“Why a carousel?” asks my mum. I had no answer), sexbots and what men think their mighty tools do to a womans intimate parts amonsgt other things. There was much misandric merriment at all this. There was a male person present, but as he was only two yesterday and entirely consumed in eating while trying to play with the Playmobil camper van I got him for a gift at the same time, he didn’t seem to mind.
Idiocy aside, I have to admit I’m fond of our British slang words and insults.