[box](Washington D.C. July 13th, 2013) On Thursday, July 11th, 2013, James Huff and Robert O’Hara arranged a special Blogtalk Radio broadcast in response to the publicity Men’s Rights Edmonton (MRE) had been getting regarding its “Don’t Be That Girl” poster campaign. The posters, a parody of the now famous, “Don’t Be That Guy” poster campaign started by Sexual Assault Voices of Edmonton in 2010, were posted on the University of Alberta campus in conjunction with another set of posters intended to promote July 20th event hosted by the Canadian Association For Equality featuring Dr. James S. Brown titled “Our Underachieving Sons.” The charges of rape apology and cowardice thrown at MRE demanded a response and the radio show was intended to provide a public venue for feminists to debate with MRE’s representatives–Razlo, Judgy Bitch and Girl Writes What–concerning the matter.
It was a record breaking show for AVFM News and Activism and the number of guests in the chat room indicated a large audience of first time listeners. The show was publicized not only by AVFM but by MRE along with help from all of the media attention. Perhaps for the first time, a sizable audience from outside of the Manosphere tuned in to listen to what Men’s Right’s activists had to say for themselves and MRE as well as AVFM Staff were eager to debate with our opponents.
Dr. Leise Gotell and Edmonton Councilman Don Iveson, two of the most public voices expressing outrage at the posters, were both invited by AVFM to join the debate. They both declined the invitation in short order. The open invitation to all feminists interested in debate remained, however, and it was hoped that at least a few would call in.
With the exception of one caller sympathizing with the feminist camp having little to say about rape culture or false rape accusations, not one feminist chose to speak.
In fact, after taking several calls from supporters of MRE and several prank calls, producer James Huff requested of the audience “Please no more MRAs we only want to take feminist callers” in hopes at least one would call in to discuss the posters and their message. At that very moment no less than 20 people dropped from the chat room associated with the show and all callers left the call-in cue. Whether or not those who chose to leave the chat room and call-in cue were trolls or feminists unwilling to talk after a second thought is unclear. One thing is clear though, the only people left on the stage were men’s rights activists.
This was interpreted to mean that feminists had absolutely no desire to publicly defend their positions from MHRAs who had offered an opportunity to engage in a civil discourse concerning sexual assault and rape culture. It seems that feminists, who have spent billions of dollars over the course of several decades to promote their ideas through the media, indoctrinate young people in our education system and pass laws based exclusively on their ideology concerning violence against women and sexual assault were not willing to talk to anyone who disagreed with them.
This did not mean that they have stopped the public assault on MRE. A petition has been started to file a Human Rights Complaint to the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission in order to have MRE cease and desist their poster campaign. [/box]
