As we have already made a part of public record, AVfM is conducting outreach and investigation into the identities of the persons involved in the violent protest against the rights of men and boys orchestrated and conducted by the University of Toronto Student Union and other antisocial elements within that institution.
To that end, one individual has already been identified, and you will be seeing a story on her here in the near future. Our search for the woman highlighted in the video of the protest continues, with some leads.
As happens with each time AVfM undertakes such an operation, I have encountered some objections from a small number of people who claim to identify as MRAs. They do not come from people I recognize, or that to my knowledge are visible in the movement, but their objections are consistent and impassioned.
Most of it boils down to generalized hand-wringing; fears of ‘stooping to their level’ or ‘surrendering the high ground.’
I have also gotten other objections, such as the idea that putting a public spotlight on these ideologues amounts to “online bullying,” as I recently heard from one dissenter.
I find none of this to be convincing, and I am not swayed in the least. But I do think, given the gravity of the work we do, that answering the concerns with my own name attached to it is in order.
First, this is not surrendering higher ground. Quite the contrary, shying away from outing these violence promoting ideologues is the approach that lacks a moral compass.
Let us consider the woman at the protest who was issuing epithets, punctuated with flying spittle, at the young man who sought attendance to the Farrell lecture. This was conduct that one detractor attempting to dissuade me from action, called “misguided.”
She was aggressively harassing and degrading a stranger, based on his sex, and for wanting nothing more than to hear about issues affecting the group to which he belongs at an institution of higher education.
Now, imagine a white student talking that way to a black student for attempting to attend a lecture on problems faced by that community. Or, better yet, a man standing there screaming “fucking misandrist scum” “pro false allegation, pro child abuse fucking scum,” at the top of his lungs, at a female student, blocking her from passing through a door where she was merely attempting to hear a lecture on women’s issues.
Would that be “misguided”? No, it would be outrageous and criminal, and the only video we would have seen of that would have been the young man being placed in cuffs and tossed in the back of a squad car. I would have agreed with the arrest.
I submit there is only one possible reason for this kind of mindless minimization of the actions of the woman in the video, even from someone claiming to be a men’s advocate.
Misandry. Ingrained, socially learned misandry; the very thing the men’s movement is supposed to be fighting.
I also submit that any men’s activist who demonstrates such complicity, enabling and rescuing of this kind of criminality is not holding the high ground anywhere except in his or her imagination. There is a distinct difference between high ground and a high horse. Some so called MRAs would do well to learn it.
Would we call the public identification of racists who harass other people based on ethnicity, or actual misogynists engaging in similar conduct with women, “online bullying”? If you think that, I would say you have mental health issues that need to be addressed…or intelligence issues that defy amelioration.
If we are going to defeat misandry in this culture, it must begin with accepting once and for all the innate value of men and boys as much as we do any other identified group. Failing to recognize their right to be free of this kind of harassment, or by minimizing the severity of it, or by calling for a somehow different, lesser reaction to the bigotry and hatred they face is a failure in and of itself.
It is a failure of principle, a failure of understanding and a failure to the men and boys we purport to defend.
Additionally, I reject the notion that we are in any way, “lowering to their level.” To do that we would have to try to censor their free speech, advocate for the better treatment of one sex over the other, promote ideology based on lies and hatred and gleefully persecute anyone called us on it.
We would have to be the ones on a college campus harassing people for trying to address the concerns of their group.
Gender ideologues absolutely hate the light of day. They hate it shining on their ideas and on their lies. Many of them also don’t want it shining on their identities. They seek anonymity for the same reason Klansmen wear hoods.
We have a moral imperative to deny them the protective cloak of remaining incognito. Otherwise, we are helping them sink to their level, stay there, and do more damage.
I’ll be damned if I will be a party to that.
Yanking off the hood
