Canadian Association for Equality

The Canadian Association for Equality will be participating as a team in the upcoming June 16 Fathers Day Prostate Cancer Walk/Run to benefit Prostate Cancer Canada

Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer for men, and the second leading cause of male cancer deaths. Although generally considered an older man’s disease, in the case of certain more aggressive forms of prostate cancer, mortality can actually be higher at younger ages, a surprising discovery that is under intense study.

You can help CAFE by either joining us at the event or sponsoring our team.

Go to this link to our Team page and click on the button to either join or sponsor the team. Then email us at info@equalitycanada.com to let us know you’ve joined!

http://my.e2rm.com/TeamPage.aspx?teamID=377146

The Good Men Project kindly invited our spokesperson Iain Dwyer to defend the significance of men’s issues programs at university campuses:

Two men from opposing sides in the debate about a men’s issues group at the University of Toronto come together to wage peace. Find out how they got on…

Last month we reported that violent opposition to a series of talks on men’s issues at the University of Toronto has become a cause célèbre for men’s rights activists around the globe. We decided to bring together two men from opposing sides of the debate to see if they could wage peace.

Iain Dowie of CAFE (Canadian Association for Equality) and Ron Couchman of Men for Equality and Non-Violence spoke with the Good Man Project’s International Men’s Movement editor Glen Poole.

Read the full exchange

On December 20, 2012, after a four month wait during which dozens of emails and phone calls went unreturned and unanswered, the University of Toronto Students Unions (UTSU) finally sent a single response – to reject – the application to ratify a Men’s Issues Awareness Society. The UTSU opted not to take the student leaders up on their multiple offers to attend UTSU meetings to answer any questions or concerns they might have.

Here is the letter sent by UTSU President Shaun Sheppards (the text version follows). We’re providing this now in response to requests for evidence of the coordinated prohibition by the Canadian Federation of Students and its Student Unions to block the important activities of Men’s Issues groups.

December 20, 2012

To the attention of:

Men’s Issues Awareness

This letter serves as a notice that the Clubs Committee has reviewed the Men’s Issues Awareness club recognition application. The committee wishes to inform the Men’s Issues Awareness club that your application has been denied for the 2012-2013 fall and winter semesters for the following reasons:

• There have been several concerns that the group has hosted events in contravention of the University of Toronto Students’ Union policy on Discrimination on Campus. The policy is available in full at www.utsu.ca.

• The membership of the organization does not meet the requirements outlined under Article 6 of the Recognition Guidelines of the UTSU Club’s Policy as determined by the attendance of recent events and the received application package.

• There have been several concerns that the group has been in contravention of the Ontario Human Rights Code by creating, fostering, and otherwise associating with spaces, both physical and online, which perpetuate harassment towards women.

Regards,

Shaun Shepherd President

Notably, no arguments are provided to justify the claim that the campus activities violate either the University of Toronto Students’ Union Policy on Discrimination on Campus, or the Ontario Human Rights Code, while the point about attendance is ironic considering the UTSU itself was responsible for impeding the attendance of the student group’s largest event, the talk by Dr. Warren Farrell. Meanwhile, CAFE has argued that the UTSU has led a coalition of groups that have been directly responsible for harassment , vilification and the breaking of University of Toronto policies, as documented in the following posts:

Media Advisory & Statement: Groups Promise “Militant” Response to Thursday’s Building Dialogue on Sexism Event at U of T

The New Hegemony: CAFE Responds Against Student Union Oppression, Harassment, and Policy Breaking

Hypocrisy on Campus: Hate Speech, Safe Space and the Vilification of Dissent

To provide some fairness, this is the public statement circulated by the UTSU

http://www.utsu.ca/content/3316

We leave it to our readers to consider all sides and then judge whether an educational group focused on the health and welfare of boys and men should be prohibited from existing within a Canadian university.

An article from the Wall Street Journal addressing how the very core and foundational principles of justice in our democracies are turned entirely upside down in those instances when political correctness and radical feminist doctrine get involved, and how disappointed one feminist mother was when she saw a movement once committed to fairness used to bully and nearly ruin her son.   

Judith Grossman: A Mother, a Feminist, Aghast
Unsubstantiated accusations against my son by a former girlfriend landed him before a nightmarish college tribunal

Pertinent excerpts (emphasis added): 

I am a feminist. I have marched at the barricades, subscribed to Ms. magazine, and knocked on many a door in support of progressive candidates committed to women’s rights. Until a month ago, I would have expressed unqualified support for Title IX and for the Violence Against Women Act.

But that was before my son, a senior at a small liberal-arts college in New England, was charged — by an ex-girlfriend — with alleged acts of “nonconsensual sex” that supposedly occurred during the course of their relationship a few years earlier.

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In fact, Title IX, that so-called guarantor of equality between the sexes on college campuses, and as applied by a recent directive from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, has obliterated the presumption of innocence that is so foundational to our traditions of justice. On today’s college campuses, neither “beyond a reasonable doubt,” nor even the lesser “by clear and convincing evidence” standard of proof is required to establish guilt of sexual misconduct.

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My son was given written notice of the charges against him, in the form of a letter from the campus Title IX officer. But instead of affording him the right to be fully informed, the separately listed allegations were a barrage of vague statements, rendering any defense virtually impossible. The letter lacked even the most basic information about the acts alleged to have happened years before. Nor were the allegations supported by any evidence other than the word of the ex-girlfriend.

That the recollections of these young people (made under intense peer pressure and with none of the safeguards consistent with fundamental fairness) were relevant — while records of the accuser’s email and social media postings were not — made a mockery of the very term. While my son was instructed by the committee not to “discuss this matter” with any potential witnesses, these witnesses against him were not identified to him, nor was he allowed to confront or question either them or his accuser.

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I fear that in the current climate the goal of “women’s rights,” with the compliance of politically motivated government policy and the tacit complicity of college administrators, runs the risk of grounding our most cherished institutions in a veritable snake pit of injustice — not unlike the very injustices the movement itself has for so long sought to correct. Unbridled feminist orthodoxy is no more the answer than are attitudes and policies that victimize the victim.