First International Conference on Men’s Issues, Hosted By AVfM

[Sumanguru]

We're only a few days out.

http://blogs.metrotimes.com/news-bl...roup-relocates-conference-opposition-follows/

Following plenty of ruckus, men’s rights activist group A Voice for Men announced their first international conference would be moved from its initial location to a venue about 14 miles away at The Veterans of Foreign Wars outpost in St. Clair Shores.

The event was originally scheduled for the Hilton Doubletree Guest Suites at Fort Shelby downtown. Doubletree asked AVFM to provide security due to an influx threats, and AVFM garnered more than $30,000 to pay for several off-duty Detroit Police officers. Doubletree and AVFM mutually agreed to part ways, organizers said.

The Detroit Police Department had previously said that the Doubletree filed a police report — but a police spokesperson was not specific about the level of threat. Opposition to the event suspects that there may have been another reason the hotel and men’s rights activists parted ways, especially after a protest in Grand Circus Park and a petition to cancel the conference on change.org currently boasting about 6,000 signatures.

The protest drew around 150-200 supporters, says Amanda Levitt, a blogger and activist, though protesters said they were filmed and even followed to their vehicles. . Levitt added that groups like AVFM have a history of violence, and that she was worried about them aggregating in a city as populous as Detroit. Levitt adds she’s happy the conference has been moved to a more suburban location, but still wishes it weren’t happening at all.

However, conference organizer Dean Esmay tells the Metro Times that the conference required a larger facility, and that about 300 people had signed up so far, while Doubletree would only allow 275 attendees. He adds that some of the $32,000 raised will still be used for security, but the rest will be used to help pay for next year’s conference. Donors who want their money back can contact AVFM, according to Esmay.

The conference is planned to run the same schedule, and there will be a press conference at the VFW outpost June 26. Esmay says the likes of The Washington Post and Time are expected to be present.

AVFM is also prompting conference attendees to stay in local hotels in the nearby Roseville area and offering a shuttle to and from the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, but has asked attendees not to disclose their exact location for fear of drawing more media attention. Esmay says he is expecting subsequent protests at the new venue, and that he would be “surprised if there was nothing.” Esmay refused to comment on the purported threats.

Levitt says that despite what Esmay has said previously, there are no planned protests for the press conference. She added that she is working with a representative with HAVEN in Oakland County, a nonprofit that provides shelter for victims of domestic and sexual abuse. The representative is a veteran, and organizers are working on a letter-writing campaign calling on veterans to write to the VFW on why they should not hold the conference there.

 

[Dr. Howard]

From the same article

Levitt added that groups like AVFM have a history of violence

whaaaat?

 

[Collide]

Levitt added that groups like AVFM have a history of violence

 

[Quintus Curtius]

Supposedly David Futrelle debated some MRA that appeared on Al Jazeera America a day or two ago. I can't find the link.

If anyone finds it, please post here for general amusement.

 

[WestIndianArchie]

From the same article

Levitt added that groups like AVFM have a history of violence

whaaaat?

It's a different set of Neckbeards!

Like protesting a comic book convention.

WIA

 

[Turnaround]

From the same article

Levitt added that groups like AVFM have a history of violence

whaaaat?

My guess is that she's referring to when some internet trolls with no known affiliation to any group sent "I HOPE U GET RAPED!!!!1" to that horrifying red-haired woman in the video on page 1 of this thread.

 

[BadWolf]

If these are Americans gathering in an American venue, this is the first and only time I would recommend the men arm themselves and be on the defensive. You never know what these radicals are capable of and I'm pretty sure most people would back away if they knew the attendees were carrying.

Its funny, there's almost NO women protesting sharia law but when white 'academia' want to gather for a forum, WHITE women go nuts..

I really think this boils down to boundaries. Muslims would not take this sh1t lightly and probably doll out a good helping of AK47 among their attendants while American men will take any abuse and write letters and make forum posts in defense. You can't deal rationally with criminals when the only thing they understand is violence. American women are so used to abusing men they think they can threaten men with death and expect no re-course. If these men were smart, they would meet and marry immigrant women and breed this whole generation of feminists completely out of existence. All of their 'man hate' would be rendered null and void by supporting foreign wives. Mine hates feminism and calls it out whenever she's around one, I'm so proud of her I do not mind devoting my entire sexual life to my marriage. When men and women stand together, nothing can stop us. They can separate you from being with local women but can't divide you from marrying foreign.

Next time they want to have a Men's conference, I think they should consider hosting it in Russia or China. Ain't nobody gonna tell Putin and the yellow menace what to do. Any mention of pro LGBT/Feminist bs would carry the Gulag or a quick dip in the Yangtze as penalty.

The best way to protest against feminism is to marry foreign women and give them the lives you had reserved for your ideal local girl. Anytime I get flak for marrying a foreign women from a western, I simply play the racism card, stops them right in their tracks.

 

[Dr. Howard]

If these are Americans gathering in an American venue, this is the first and only time I would recommend the men arm themselves and be on the defensive. You never know what these radicals are capable of and I'm pretty sure most people would back away if they knew the attendees were carrying.

Its funny, there's almost NO women protesting sharia law but when white 'academia' want to gather for a forum, WHITE women go nuts..

I really think this boils down to boundaries. Muslims would not take this sh1t lightly and probably doll out a good helping of AK47 among their attendants while American men will take any abuse and write letters and make forum posts in defense. You can't deal rationally with criminals when the only thing they understand is violence. American women are so used to abusing men they think they can threaten men with death and expect no re-course. If these men were smart, they would meet and marry immigrant women and breed this whole generation of feminists completely out of existence. All of their 'man hate' would be rendered null and void by supporting foreign wives. Mine hates feminism and calls it out whenever she's around one, I'm so proud of her I do not mind devoting my entire sexual life to my marriage. When men and women stand together, nothing can stop us. They can separate you from being with local women but can't divide you from marrying foreign.

Next time they want to have a Men's conference, I think they should consider hosting it in Russia or China. Ain't nobody gonna tell Putin and the yellow menace what to do. Any mention of pro LGBT/Feminist bs would carry the Gulag or a quick dip in the Yangtze as penalty.

The best way to protest against feminism is to marry foreign women and give them the lives you had reserved for your ideal local girl. Anytime I get flak for marrying a foreign women from a western, I simply play the racism card, stops them right in their tracks.

Disagree, images of a bunch of attendees carrying sidearms into the conference will have them labelled 'open carry gun nuts', perpetrators of violence or something along those lines. I advocate for heavily armed, intimidating private security, it will absolve the attendees of any violence and will perpetrate some sort of G7/protests image...which will be bait for the protestors to act even more silly.

 

[Sumanguru]

And the Conference is absolutely a go.

http://www.avoiceformen.com/allbulletins/important-message-for-avfm-conference-ticket-holders/

All tickets will be held in “will call” until your arrival at the event. You will need a government issued photo ID with you. We strongly suggest bringing a copy of the PayPal transaction receipt with you to avoid any confusion, especially in case the tickets have been purchased in a name different than who will actually be attending.

This includes Dr. Farrell’s workshop.

Also, there will be ideological opponents to the MHRM, including some members of the media, present at the event. Some will be looking for anything they can to hurt us with. They will be listening, eavesdropping, and if they can, gathering things to harm us with.

For that reason, ANYONE sitting around trash-talking women, men, making violent statements, even jokingly, will be brought to the attention of security who will issue ONE warning (or less). After that, they will be directed by security to leave. There are no exceptions.

Meanwhile,

http://www.avoiceformen.com/updates...ampaign=conference-twitter-feed-icmi14-icmi14

#icmi14 is for general info and @icmi14 is for messages
you want posed directly to conference speakers.

There is a Twitter feed, @icmi14 for the International Conference on Men’s Issues 2014 from which our Media Director, Janet Bloomfield, will be tweeting relevant updates. We invite listeners/viewers to tweet any serious questions they have for the speakers during their talks, and we will endeavour to have one or two asked on the floor. Additionally, select tweets will be displayed on the video feed (but not who they’re from). Remember that this is live television that bears AVfM’s logo, and constructive tweets free from profanity are more likely to be chosen than others.

There is the #icmi14 hashtag as well for sharing general messages about the conference (note that the thugs who protested it have promised to hijack it – and note that we’ll be blocking any trolls who send to @icmi14).

Edit: And the plot...thins?

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/...y-the-organizers-of-original-june-7th-action/

DON’T protest the AVFM Conference in St. Clair Shores, say the organizers of original June 7th action

Jun 25

Posted by David Futrelle

Keep your distance from A Voice for Men’s conference at its new location in St. Clair Shores.

That’s the basic message the organisers of the original June 7th protest against the AVFM conference want to get out to anyone thinking of protesting the conference this Friday and Saturday. In an open letter posted on Amanda Levitt’s Fat Body Politics, the original organizers urge would-be protesters to boycott the conference and stay out of St. Clair Shores.

While the original organizers reaffirm their opposition to the conference and to “the horrific and vile hatred that A Voice for Men spreads on their website,” they are concerned about the safety of anyone who might be considering protesting:

"We have had numerous people reach out to us to let us know of the very real danger we could be in by protesting. Due to concerns for physical safety we have decided the best way to oppose the conference that is now going on in St. Clair Shores is to keep our distance. With AVFM’s history of attempting to provoke protestors, harassing individuals by following them to their cars or home, and filming or photographing them in order to release their private information online we don’t feel that protesting at the VFW hall could keep people reasonable safe.

While there may be others who decide to protest the conference, we want to make it perfectly clear that there are real concerns for safety. If you are planning to protest the conference, please make sure the people who are coming are informed enough about the kind of vicious tactics that AVFM has used to derail and trivialize the response to their own ideology.

Be in solidarity with us this weekend as we ensure the safety of our organizers and other protesters by tweeting to #NoMRA about why this conference and the beliefs of AVFM shouldn’t be tolerated."

Emphasis added.

I should say that I agree with this approach: DON’T protest AVFM’s Conference in St. Clair Shores this weekend. Speak out against AVFM’s misogyny, and against its efforts to intimidate its critics — on social media and any other way you can.

But unless you are covering the conference as a journalist, don’t go to St. Clair Shores. Not only do you risk being doxxed and harassed by AVFM and its supporters, but you also will be giving AVFM what it wants: a confrontation, and yet another excuse to play the victim.

Make no mistake: AVFM and its supporters want to see protesters at their conference this weekend. Don’t give them what they want.

You will be far more effective critic of AVFM if, instead of confronting them in person, you speak up online, through letters to the editor, and by spreading the word in other peaceful ways that don’t involve actually going to the conference.

I don’t personally oppose AVFM’s conference taking place, but I think it’s very important to show the world what AVFM, its supporters, and its invited speakers really stand for.

I urge you to do what you can to publicize the video I helped to put together in collaboration with Mancheeze.com that highlights the hatefulness of a number of those scheduled to speak at AVFM’s conference– link to it, embed it on your blog, whatever you can do.

Hmmm, this is surprising...not the weak attempts at hacktivism, that isn't surprising at all, but the chickening out of any physical protest. I really was expecting a united front of Jezebel, Manboobz, and a few other liberal feminists sites. Their excuse (fear of doxxing, physical threats, etc.) doesn't make sense; if that was a legit concern from the get go then there never would have been protest talk in the first place. Is this because they don't want to look bad protesting a VFW?

 

[Carlos100]

Is this because they don't want to look bad protesting a VFW?

I think this is it.

 

[Dr. Howard]

We are going to protest the shit out of you! turns to we are going to hashtag the shit out of you? Check and mate I'd say.

 

[Hotwheels]

We are going to protest the shit out of you! turns to we are going to hashtag the shit out of you? Check and mate I'd say.

Actually I think the nutjobs realized, probably after reading comments concerning the first protest, that going on the warpath simply exposed the AVFM group to a much wider audience.

ie; No protests broadcast on the news means much less visibility for the Men's rights guys, keeping them essentially irrelevant and unknown to the greater populace.

 

[runsonmagic]

Wow, the feminist are so worried about violence and cardio if they leave their homes that they have to stay at home on the internet and be PUSSSSSSIEEEESSSSSSSSs

 

[Truth Teller]

I think it's both. Protesting increases visibility, but what does it look like to Joe Average if you see a bunch of people outside a VFW hall protesting? It looks like these people hate this country and our veterans.

 

[Sumanguru]

First report is out, from the press conference.

http://blogs.metrotimes.com/news-blawg/molested-mens-rights-conference/

After weeks of hullabaloo, the controversial activist group A Voice for Men kicked off their first International Conference on Men’s Issues with what was to be an hour-long press conference in St. Clair Shores. The past few weeks have seen A Voice For Men announce Detroit as the host of their first International Conference on Men’s Issues, feminist protesters demand the cancellation of the event, and the relocation of conference from the downtown DoubleTree hotel to a Veterans’ hall in the sleepy suburbs. With so much Internet vitriol being spewed from both sides of the debate for weeks (“MRAs are misogynists!” say the feminists, “feminists hate men!” say the MRAs), I was ready for something of a clash to go down in St. Clair Shores.

As a straight-white-cisgender-heterosexual-male, I was open-minded about the conference — it’s kind of easy to cast straight-white-cisgender-heterosexual-males as the bad guys and also easy to (perhaps unfairly) imagine the International Conference on Men’s Issues as being a straight-white-cisgender-heterosexual-male-apolooza. The backlash against the conference seemed, to me, a little heavy-handed. To deny the MRAs the right to peaceably assemble would only vindicate their feelings of victimhood.

Imagine my complete and utter shock as I pulled up to the lakeside Veterans of Foreign Wars Bruce Post 1146 and not a single megaphone-wielding feminist protester was to be found. Anywhere. Not one. At first I wondered if maybe I drove to the wrong hall.

It seems to me that if you wanted your protest to be visible, you would make it a priority to go to a press conference. Reporters from various national media outlets were there, including TIME. Did the protesters feel they were victorious because of the venue change from Detroit? Will they appear once the conference proper starts this weekend? Are they already tired of this whole saga (like me)? Or maybe in this age of easy Internet slacktivism they wrote “#NoMRA” on a piece of paper, took a selfie while holding it, tweeted it, and felt like that was enough?

Part of the reason organizers said they relocated the conference was due to the fact that the Veterans’ Hall could hold more attendees — more than 300 had signed up so far, they said, and the previous venue could only accommodate 275. Again, maybe it was because it was only a press conference and not the conference proper, but there were not 300 people present. Maybe 30 tops.

Everything seemed to be running a half hour behind schedule. I spent the time trying to explain the Trick Trick/Rick Ross beef to some curious out of state journalists — possibly the only topic I’m more sick of talking about than the MRAs.

It was at this point that I got molested at the Men’s Rights conference.

An older man came up to me and immediately complimented my hairy arms (a first). He then started telling me all this crazy shit about how he was from California and he makes movies and he wants to take me to Malibu. Regardless of sexual orientation, it was pretty weird. People started filling up the seats around us and I didn’t want to make a scene, so I just politely accepted the compliment and tried to deflect. The dude kept petting my arms.

It was at this point that I realized this is the kind of creepy shit women deal with … everywhere … every day. A part of me wondered if the feminists had planted this guy to hit on rape-apologizing MRAs to teach them a lesson about “rape culture.” If that is the case: well-played. Unfortunately I think I was just dealing with a garden-variety creep.

Finally one of the speakers did that thing that bands do at ill-attended gigs where they ask everyone to move to in and fill up the front. We had nowhere near filled up the conference hall. Then Warren Farrell, author of The Myth of Male Power, launched into a seminar about the problems boys and men face today.

It was a pretty bleak list, and frankly difficult to disagree with any of it. Boys have less educational opportunities than their fathers had. Girls outperform boys in school. With a lack of opportunities, boys, Farrell says, get their dopamine fix from winning at video games instead of succeeding in real life, and from watching porn instead of talking to real girls. Men who are unemployed can’t get married, men who have families have no choice but to be the breadwinners. Men are more likely to commit suicide than women. Farrell even paraphrased feminist Betty Friedan’s “desire for something more,” but swapped the genders.

Hey, wait a minute. All of these problems stem from treating the sexes unequally. It would appear that despite all of their comments thread flame wars, MRAs and feminists are more or less fighting for the same things — gender equality. So why can’t they get along?

Farrell then told an anecdote where he met a man who was depressed by the fact that he couldn’t take time off from his job to be with his son — he was afraid to ask his wife if that was a possibility. It was only after talking to this man for an hour that Farrell realized he was talking to John Lennon.

One of the leaders of the MRA movement didn’t recognize a Beatle. And to think some people criticize the MRAs for being out of touch with the real world.

At this point, Mr. Malibu was getting too cozy with me and though the allotted hour had passed, Farrell didn’t seem to be ending any time soon. I figured now would be a good time to split.

The molestation stuff seems weird. Not sure I believe it. Though if it did happen, why not just tell the dude to stop?

Makes me wonder about the amount of gay involvement with the MRM--do we have any idea how many MRM writers/activists are gay?

Edit: live audio stream. At this moment Senator Anne Cools is speaking. www.live365.com/stations/avoiceformen

 

[Dr. Howard]

^ from the above article, the author writes

As a straight-white-cisgender-heterosexual-male,

what the fuck. Thats as complicated as starbucks coffee.

The title was trolling, some weird dude touched his arm...so he wasn't even molested, he was raped....according to the current definition.

Maybe that's where the 'rape' victims will turn to next after that word is overused and no one cares. 'I was date molested at a frat party' so they can trivialize the experience of child victims now that they are done trivializing actual female rape victims.

Last, to the question of how many gay men might be involved with MRA, its to be expected I think...just think of how many lesbian feminists there are.

 

[Dr. Howard]

There is a live audio stream http://www.live365.com/stations/avoiceformen its good stuff from what I've heard so far. Certainly not 'game' related but information that I've never heard anywhere else related to domestic violence etc.

 

[Sumanguru]

Paul specifically addressed the "molestation" on the audio feed. Said the same dude came up to him yesterday and also touched his forearm. Thinks the dude is lonely and harmless. Very sarcastic, joking about having to get over his "trauma."

Didn't give the best impression of himself, tbh, really does come off as angry. May not be the best rep for the movement...

 

[runsonmagic]

There is a live audio stream http://www.live365.com/stations/avoiceformen its good stuff from what I've heard so far. Certainly not 'game' related but information that I've never heard anywhere else related to domestic violence etc.

They're filmming parts of it too. This is very smart stuff. Academic accreditation, video and audio content... they're going to get a lot of media out of this.

 

[Dr. Howard]

There is a live audio stream http://www.live365.com/stations/avoiceformen its good stuff from what I've heard so far. Certainly not 'game' related but information that I've never heard anywhere else related to domestic violence etc.

They're filmming parts of it too. This is very smart stuff. Academic accreditation, video and audio content... they're going to get a lot of media out of this.

yep, there is live video streaming today http://www.avoiceformen.com/men/international-conference-on-mens-issues-live-stream/