When I first watched the video by a handful of young men, apparently from Edmonton, Alberta, it did not come as any surprise. Still, I sat through it, and listened to the hyperbolic accusations of misogyny, rape apology and victim blaming. I also listened to the smug “suggestions” that A Voice for Men change its name, because it was not a voice for those men.
Aside from the fact that it is A Voice for Men, not The Voice for Men, and the fact that no one at this site has ever even claimed to speak for all men, even men in the men’s movement, much less men across the board, I still sat and listened attentively, wondering if there would be anything new. Of course there was not.
That includes the fact that the video posted on YouTube as a “response” to the work of Men’s Rights Edmonton had comments and even ratings disabled to prevent the listening public from expressing their opinions about what was said.
Well, I have suggestions for the men in that video. One, the word “response” is not a word you should be using with a straight face. A response implies some sort of dialog. A response indicates some sort of exchange of ideas. Your blanket censoring of any opinions other than your own betrays the fact that dialog and exchanging ideas are not concepts you have picked up along life’s road. Either that, or those ideas have been stripped from you courtesy of your “education.”
Also, if you don’t understand the difference between “a” voice and “the” voice, something as complicated as the open vetting of conflicting ideas in the arena of public opinion is probably too much to pile on your already taxed minds.
Or perhaps something else is the problem. Perhaps in order for A Voice for Men to qualify to speak for men like you, we actually do need to change the name. A Voice for Cowards, maybe? That is, after all, exactly what you are. And so is anyone who stands on the platform of social media with such defiant bravado, but then calculatedly preempts any dissent or dialog before it even has a chance to be expressed.
And in that I am speaking most pointedly to you, Barret Weber, sociologist from the University of Alberta.
I have a bit more understanding for young college students, eager to please both women and their professors, parroting the ideologically tainted teaching of concepts like rape culture and male privilege. I am also well aware of the academic and social peril faced by many who might otherwise stand up to challenge such ideas in the very environment that should be fostering and encouraging dissent and passionate debate.
You have them quite literally over a barrel. And in this video, which you now have laughably listed alongside your dissertation and other academic papers, you demonstrate the only way to keep those boys on the farm is have them emulate your cowardly control of the discourse.
I understand your fear. And you do have every reason to be afraid. What will become of these young men’s minds should they too often see the reasoned rebuttals and challenges to concepts like rape culture, male privilege, patriarchy theory and other fanciful feminist concoctions that can’t even survive the scrutiny of a YouTube audience?
My God, would they start to think for themselves? Would they perhaps come to the conclusion that they have been sold a bill of goods by a system ruled by insulated and arrogant academicians?
The shame is that they will find out anyway in due course. The first time one of them winds up in a family court fighting to retain some of his income, or a shred of his relationship with his children, he will get a dire and different view of male privilege, Mr. Weber.
His view of the matter might be so stark and disturbing that he becomes one of the men who kill themselves at a rate 11 times that of women during divorces in your country. If he is strong, though, and perseveres, by the time the divorce is over he can return to the norm, which is to suicide at only four or five times the rate of women.
Perhaps one of these young men will get a glimpse of real power by being falsely accused of sexual assault or intimate partner violence on your campus. I am sure your disciplinary proceedings will be quite a lesson on due process and justice, on where terms like presumed innocence do and do not apply.
Perhaps it will be just a matter of time before you can hold hearings on YouTube, where you can control evidence the same way you do opinions.
Better not to speak of these things, though, eh? After all, if these young men really started looking at the realities faced by men and boys in the culture in which they live, they might do something really terrible.
Like counting.
They might just start looking at how many of them are even on that campus to being with. They might notice just how disproportionately they are outnumbered by women, and seeing it as something more than increased opportunities for sex.
If they do that they might also do some checking and find how the numbers of male students are dropping across your nation at an alarming rate. Just knowing this might make some of them question precisely why they are being coercively indoctrinated into placing all the focus and concern on the negative experiences of women, and why indeed the frequency and severity of those experiences are so often manufactured by ideologues like you.
Admittedly, it is likely not going to happen with this particular group. They look well trained and obedient; primed to lift their “I need feminism because…” cards for the camera seeking only a nod of approval.
That, however, brings me to the real reason for this post, professor. While you have them now, the writing is on the wall that the days of ideological scumbags owning the sexual discourse, and the academic bullying to maintain that hegemony, are finally within reach of seeing the curtain close.
As I am sure you are aware, there is a great controversy brewing in your country, and now in mine, over the establishment of men’s issues groups in institutions of higher education. Not men’s issues groups of your vision, but men’s issues groups with the vision of men like me and others who have had enough the poisonous orthodoxy and demagoguery from those of your ilk.
These are men’s groups that actually focus on issues that affect men; that see them as human beings worthy of attention and worthy of more than obediently reading cue cards for people who could not be less interested in their well-being.
And that is why you and your kind are so completely and totally fucked.
You see, any objective analysis of the lives of the men on your campus reflects the reality that they do not have privilege, at least not compared to the women on your campus. That examination also reveals that people like you have demonized them and indoctrinated them into self-loathing and shame in order to further your own agenda. You have convinced them that they are all potential rapists and abusers, congenitally defective because of their sex, and in need of paying homage to your personal worldview in order to find any sense of worth or redemption.
It has worked for quite some time because sycophants like you owned the discourse; because there was no counter-theory available to these young men to help pull them from the mire of disinformation; because there was no milieu available for them to provide support, a route of escape and an intellectual safe haven.
And now that alternative is emerging. You see it happening. Everybody does, which is why this subject is starting to draw obsessive attention from the media. It is the only reason why you set these young men out to make their impotent statement on your behalf.
Do not think for a moment you have fooled anyone. The days are gone when your lies go unanswered, and you cannot stop it by getting boys to speak for you and disabling comments on your propaganda.
Not only can you not stop it, you just accelerate the process. So please, professor, continue. Round up your student puppets again and again. Make a hundred more videos and tell a thousand more lies. Each lie you tell and every student you use strengthens us more than you know. We will run them on this site every time. And we will use your actions to grow this cause, which is dedicated to flushing your insane ideas down the toilet.
The poster campaigns will continue. The men’s issues centers, run on a philosophy that recognizes the toxicity of gender feminism, and geared to correct it, will continue. The activism done by this website and other men’s groups will continue. We are going to burn your sick ideas to the ground. Then we will paint our faces and dance circles around the fire.
There is nothing you can do to stop it.
Editorial update: Readers wishing to comment on this video may wish to visit the video’s story on Huffington Post. –DE
