Good evening Mr. Elam,
As the original registrant of whiteribbon.org, I would like to express my thanks that your crew at AVFM have done such a great job of putting this website together, and I’m confident that this resource will help many men, women and children find the balance in their lives that is sorely missing when situations of domestic violence occur.
As you know, since I originally publicly announced that the domain whiteribbon.org was available in the comments of this AVFM article in 2012 http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/activism/pankhurst-white-feather-day/, (8th or 9th comment maybe) the only organization that expressed interest in acquiring the url was A Voice For Men. Despite being offered as a resource on AVFM, a website that garners over 20,000 hits a day and is scrutinized heavily by all manner of people, despite the domain garnering over 16,000 hits in the (almost) two years I owned it (without any promotion whatsoever, I merely redirected the domain), not a single other organization or individual came forward and expressed any interest in owning this domain or helping me create a resource that could help people who suffer from domestic violence.
My contact information was available to the public, yet nary a peep from anyone other than AVFM. No other organization or person seemed to care enough, which does not speak highly of their commitment to promoting white ribbon. It was no secret that I owned this URL. It also does not speak well of the competence of other organizations that centre on white ribbons that this domain was available in 2012. Shoddy at best.
Since the white ribbon is a powerful symbol, used by many diverse causes around the world, from the Quebec Peace Movement to the Russian protests earlier this decade, one would think that this domain would have attracted some interest from other organizations than just AVFM. Dot-Org domains are highly valued.
I really do appreciate the fact that in our subsequent conversations you never once brought up the fact that I owned this domain, nor ever tried to influence me one way or another to do anything with it, even when we spoke personally in Detroit despite the fact that AVFM obviously wanted this domain to publicise issues of domestic violence without a feminist filter. I am thankful to you for allowing me to make up my own mind with what I wanted to do with this domain.
It was a difficult decision to hand this domain over to AVFM since there are other organizations that are involved with domestic violence issues that use a white ribbon as a symbol, so it’s not a decision I made lightly. I was convinced by two factors. AVFM has an incredible array of advisors on domestic violence issues, most notably Erin Pizzey and Senator Anne Cools, the two women who were instrumental in starting shelters for battered women in the U.K. and Canada respectively.
The breadth and depth of those two women’s experience and the incredibly impassioned talks that they gave at the International Conference on Men’s Issues in Detroit impressed me very much. I’m very confident that AVFM’s approach to domestic violence is the correct way forward.
The second factor is a little darker, I have included 3 screenshots of my twitter account to help explain. It is a twitter conversation that I had with White Ribbon Canada in which they lied to me. Not just a lie, but they lied to discredit another Canadian charity, the Canadian Association for Equality. I ask you Mr. Elam, what kind of organization deliberately creates a falsehood to discredit another? Is this the ethos of whiteribbon.ca? As you can see, White Ribbon blatantly changed the wording in a blog post by CAFE member Adam McPhee to change the meaning of what he was saying.
They then used this altered meaning to try to establish “misogyny” in the blog post. You can read his original blog post here:http://eyeofwoden.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/a-conversation-with-men-is-needed/ This is highly discreditable conduct for any charitable organization, never mind one that purportedly helps solving social issues. The Canadian Association for Equality is a government approved charity that has raised enough funding to establish the Canadian Centre for Men and Families. The Canadian Centre for Men and Families, although in its infancy has already established programs that help men and boys in Toronto. It’s an incredible breach of ethics to libel another charity in the manner that they did.
Why was White Ribbon Canada so invested in discrediting CAFE at the time, especially in light of the fact that they seem to be reaching out to CAFE now and inviting CAFE members to their events now that the wind seems to be changing a bit? It occured to me that whiteribbon.ca lacked the maturity to deal with the serious matter of domestic violence properly.
My further investigation into whiteribbon Canada revealed a disturbing pattern of an organization that is run by people who merely want to ingratiate themselves to the “Social Justice Warrior” type of people. In fact, my twitter conversation with whiteribbon was accidental, prompted only by their anxiety to rush into the defence of Steph Guthrie
This is the mentality of the people who direct the whiteribbon.ca campaign. This is the gravitas of people who are in charge of the white ribbon name, people who don’t seem to be able to handle the realities of life and treat existence as an extension of high school. Immature people who are willing to say and do anything because they believe that the end justifies the means despite their own laughable lack of life experience, people who think that they should be able to direct how others should live. Believe me, I’d rather listen to Senator Anne Cools talk about life than Steph Guthrie or any other of those vacuous twits.
Anyhow, Mr. Elam, thanks once again for your patience and allowing me to make up my own mind about what I should do with this valuable domain. I know I have made the right choice. Nobody else seemed to care enough to even contact me, but AVFM’s dedication to ending the scourge of domestic violence in a forthright and mature manner made the decision a no-brainer.
Yours Truly,
Malcolm Johnston
[Editor’s addition/clarlification] Related to image number 1 and the assertion that White Ribbon Canada had purposefully altered the intent and content of Adam McPhee’s statement, we have the following, which is what McPhee actually said on his blog:
“Telling men to do nothing but listen to women is precisely the kind of conversation we do not need, nor is it a conversation at all, but it is precisely what we are being told to do.”
The rep from White Ribbon Canada used the following to quote McPhee:
“listen(ing) to women is precisely the kind of conversation we do not need”.
It’s an outrageous change in context, never mind actually altering the quote itself.
Attachments
