[nobodysfool2]

It seems to me the men were laughing because the woman was objectifying herself in her selfie...

In any case, the woman in this article had her own experience, yet it is only a single person's experience, and as I can see, it is colored by her own pre-conceived notions and judgements. I appreciate that women are willing to listen to the message, but disappointed that she chose to focus on one thing she considered negative to ridicule their points of view and make ad hominem attacks on the speakers.

[CocaKoala]

What do you feel is the one thing that the author "considered negative" which was used to ridicule the points of view of the presenters, and what do you feel are ad hominem attacks made by the reporter?

[pdabbadabba]

I think you're being awfully generous to the conference-goers, and a little unfair to the author of the article. That article highlights far more than "one thing she considered negative."

How about, in addition:

>When the conference’s MC, Robert O’Hara, asked a woman in the audience a question and she responded with a no, he quickly shot back “Doesn’t no mean yes?” The audience burst into laughter.

> Molyneux said that because 90% of a child’s brain is formed by the experiences it has before the age of 5, and women have “an almost universal control over childhood,” violence exists in the world because of the way women treat children.

> Women who choose a–holes guarantee child abuse . . . All the cold-hearted jerks who run the world came out of the vaginas of women who married a–holes. . . . Women worship at the feet of the devil and wonder why the world is evil. . . . And then know what they say? ‘We’re victims!’

I have no doubt, having taken a look at avoiceformen.com and related websites, that these were only the highlights.

Maybe it's debateable whether these statements are offensive, unreasonable, inappropriate, or incorrect. (Though I would contend emphatically that they are all four.) But I think it's fair to say that these statements reasonably contributed to Roy's negative experience.

And, on the other hand, I think there is little in her article that is fairly described as "ridicule." In fact, I was pretty surprised by how restrained and, on some points, openminded Roy was in her article. Her closing is representative:

> When you talk to someone like 68-year-old Steve DeLuca, the legitimate need to remedy some of the issues raised by men’s rights activists becomes more evident. A Vietnam veteran who was injured in combat, DeLuca spoke movingly to me about the two brothers he lost to suicide, and the unfathomable toll the high suicide rate among men can take. There are men out there, like DeLuca and Brendan Rex, who have a real stake in the movement’s success. The paranoia and vitriol of its leaders can’t possibly do anything for them.

So, yeah, as Roy points out, there are a lot of serious issues affecting men that could really be helped by the movement's success. But there comes a point when it comes with so much objectionable baggage that a person can't simply be expected to ignore, e.g., the rape jokes, for the sake of getting at the "real" issue.

I would think that the burden should be on the presenters at the conference to refrain from that sort of nonsense, and not on Roy to ignore it all.