This article is in response to an article posted on the openDemocracy 50.50 website entitled “Young men should be furious”: inside the world’s largest gathering of men’s rights activists. I’m not going to respond to the specific problems with this article as Hannah Wallen has already done that. Rather, I’m going to talk about what happened after it was published.
It all started with a hit piece [archived copy]. Lies, half-truths and misrepresentations abound in this fine example of feminist reporting. I was among the first to notice publication of this article as I happened to be searching for new articles on ICMI18 only half an hour after it was published. I started reading. It was awful. I emailed Mike Buchanan and Paul Elam. A few of us dived in to the comments and that’s when the fun began.
I made my first comment and asked for the author to back up some of her claims:
Some 12-24 hours after making my first post I noticed that two replies to my original post (above) had silently disappeared. While it was possible I was looking at a problem in WordPress, I suspected something more nefarious.
Others started to report their posts silently disappearing too. Eventually the openDemocracy 50.50 admins posted this:
So every comment that was deleted had this occur because of a breach of their policy huh? They backed themselves right in to a corner. The deletion of one post in particular seemed entirely out of order:
After I complained this post actually got restored!
Now posts were marked as deleted so at least so they were easier to keep track of.
Then the deletions really kicked off. Deletions were copious and erratic with some innocuous posts deleted while others were left. The post they had restored was deleted again! The moderators at openDemocracy 50.50 seemed to be on a (small) power trip.
I think this post speaks for itself:
They even started deleting comments by radical feminists who were being openly misandrist. I was disappointed with these deletions too as I could counter their points easily.
In the end I had 19 posts deleted and 9 were left but I was never banned. Many others had the same experience.
It was becoming quite a problem as conversation threads were breaking down under the strain of comments disappearing in an eratic manner. Many of us did have a good laugh at openDemocracy being so authoritarian though. Their true nature shone through.
I still insist that they answer my original question or withdraw the statement. To wit, what claim did Lara Whyte hear Mike Buchanan make that she doesn’t think was backed up sufficiently and requires more evidence?
These are our opponents. Authoritarians who cloak their activities in the nomenclature of openness and inclusiveness.
Rumour Mill
One Reddit user claims that Lara Whyte is planning a more extensive article on ICMI18. I’m sure it will be just as honest and fact-filled as her first article on the subject was.
