Spring is in the air (in the northern hemisphere). Flowers are starting to bloom, bird’s nests are being built, the days are getting longer and the cycle of rebirth and renewal has begun again.
And it brings with it our seasonal fundraiser for AVFM.
Each fundraiser it is my task to remind you of why it is important to help fund our work, and to show you more of what you have to show for it.
The struggle for putting men’s issues on the map is slow and arduous. It is about so much more than growing a website (which we have done beyond our dreams). It is about shaking an entire culture out of an ideologically and even biologically induced coma and forcing a discussion that few people want to have. Results are difficult to measure.
After all, since AVFM was born till now, and despite many other men’s rights initiatives, we still have VAWA, the plague of a completely corrupt family court system, an apparatus of higher education that is quite literally insane (and in places fundamentally evil) and a morally bankrupt feminist narrative that clings to the mainstream media like toxic sludge.
That being said, in my mind we have made clear and convincing progress.
Not only have we built, maintained and strengthened the undisputed online flagship of the Men’s Human Rights Movement, now measuring our annual traffic in the millions, we have also attracted the participation of virtually every significant academician, writer, advocate, journalist and thinker alive on the issues facing men and boys.
The days of leading advocates who would shy away from AVFM because of our refusal to play nice with the proponents of hate and bigotry have all but disappeared.
The key note speakers at our upcoming conference on men’s issues in Detroit, who span across most every line of sex, sexuality and race, include a blogger and a senator, a YouTuber and an internationally recognized journalist, online activists and leading academicians. They are all standing with AVFM.
Do I think it is coincidental that the dialog across the board on sexual politics is beginning to change; that feminists are starting to backtrack, wail and claim they have cared about men and boys all along? No, I do not.
While we certainly cannot take direct credit for the incredible work of others, we can take credit for hacking away relentlessly at the taboo against speaking out rationally and morally on the subject of feminism. We can take credit for being the first ones to start popularizing the idea of pointing to the lies and injustice being perpetrated on this culture by feminism and saying “No more!”
So it no longer shocks me when I see an organization like RAINN, the largest anti-sexual violence organization in the US, reject the concept of “rape culture” as an ideological canard and urge the government to end the star chambers now plaguing our colleges and universities.
Nor does it surprise me to see the American Enterprise Institute calling out “rape culture” in the same way, while granting us permission to run works by the people doing it.
I am not shocked the Wall Street Journal now runs articles that could have been written by the most unrepentant of MHRAs at A Voice for Men.
I was not dumbstruck by the fact that ABC News 20/20 came looking for us, or that they backed off after making fools of themselves.
I am not even particularly surprised that an award winning filmmaker is now making a documentary on this movement, with AVFM very much in the center of it.
Sure, there have been attacks, and there will be more. That is the nature of shaking up a world running on delusion. Even Saturday Night Live has joined the effort to paint a picture of us as though the SPLC was holding the brush.
But one thing in my mind is certain. The men’s movement is now officially on the map. And AVFM was a huge part of putting it there.
As I tell you with each fundraiser, it takes money to make this happen. I really wish that we could run this place on duct tape and baling wire. And sometimes we do. But the fact is that the more we grow, the more it costs.
So, again, I am here asking you to pitch in with what you can to help us carry on. At this point I am happy to say I am not asking for you to help us start a movement, but to keep the one you helped us start going — and to help drive us home.
