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.

–

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.

–

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.

–

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.

From Lucien Khodeir, columnist for Troy Media

I have written so far ten columns on the Federal Child Support Guidelines (FCSG):

http://www.troymedia.com/tag/lucien-khodeir/

My editor wants me to start telling real horror stories about the FCSG.

If you have one such story or know one who does, please submit it to me

Please try to limit your story to 1,000 words.

Please change the names of the players in the story if you want to protect their identity.

Thank you.

Cheers,

Lucien

Contact us at info@equalitycanada.com so we can put you in touch with Lucien.

The Canadian Association for Equality issues support to the University of Toronto Men’s Issues Awareness Society and allied campus groups, in response to attempts to organize against “men’s issues” groups on campus through any means necessary, including the breaking of the law and University policies.

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

The Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE) has been active in supporting campus outreach for the past year or so, and has had both positive and negative reactions to our efforts. We have tried to stay above the petty attacks and name-calling that some of our opponents have engaged in, but the activities of some students have put us in a situation where we are forced to respond to them.

Over the past year, we at CAFE have been proud to put our energy toward supporting the emerging “men’s issues awareness” societies that have begun to appear on university campuses. We saw an opportunity to broaden the discussion around gender, particularly around underrepresented issues such as the declining academic performance and rising suicide rates of young men. Universities have traditionally had a strong commitment to freedom of speech, so they’re an ideal place for debating new and sometimes challenging concepts. Part of the university experience is to put forward new ideas and see if they hold up to scrutiny.

Generally we have been well received. Even students who don’t agree with us have been open to talk and exchange ideas. Sparked in part by our success, dedicated groups are forming at Ryerson, York, and Waterloo as well as new CAFE branches in Ottawa and Vancouver. When we have had to deal with university administrations they express a strong commitment to freedom of speech and have done their best to make sure our voices can be heard.

We cannot pay the same compliments to the student governments we have dealt with. So far, without exception, they have shown themselves to be insular, partisan, ideologues that would censor new voices before engaging with them. We do not say this lightly. We draw our conclusions from the activities of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), the University of Toronto Student Union (UTSU) and the Ryerson Student Union (RSU).

Those groups have consistently misrepresented our organization, misled community members about our activities and goals, and done their best to prevent our voice from being heard in the open forum of the university campus. The story that follows has some facts that will be known to our readers, but also includes new details we have not yet disclosed. It focuses on the University of Toronto, but includes other campuses as well.

Student leaders at the University of Toronto submitted paperwork to the UTSU in order to get the group ratified, but were ignored by the student union. Most groups take a few days to a week to get approved. The University of Toronto Men’s Issues Awareness (UTMIA) group took four months to be rejected. The main reason they gave was low attendance at our event, where they had helped to organize an illegal barricade.

Meanwhile, the UTMIA decided it was important to put a spotlight on the increasing seriousness of the problems faced by boys and young men. They resolved to invite Dr. Warren Farrell, an authority in that area, a best-selling author and a Financial Times top 100 ‘thought leader’ up to Toronto to give a talk on boys issues. CAFE supported the event. It would stretch our budget to the breaking point, but we hoped that the background of our speaker, who has succeeded in bringing together men and women in productive dialogue, would raise our profile. We didn’t know how prescient that would be.

In the weeks leading up to Dr. Farrell’s talk, we had posters vandalized with ‘misogynist’ or ‘rape apologist’ scrawled across them, or just torn down. When we learned that people planned to protest our event, the UTMIA let the campus police know but otherwise didn’t worry about people outside shouting at us. Campus police insisted on having a presence. UTMIA insisted on it being a small one, since they didn’t want to intimidate any people who wanted to attend.

We were all surprised when we were ready to open the doors to our biggest event to date and found protesters barricading the entrance. A group of people had decided that our voices were too ‘dangerous’ to be heard on campus and in the ‘best interest of the community’ they kept other people from hearing about how we could keep so many young men from killing themselves (one protester actually told a man who had attended to get some closure on the recent suicide of two of his friends that he wouldn’t be allowed to attend the event, and should seek only feminist channels for understanding male suicide).

Campus police called the Toronto Police for help and ended the blockade about an hour after it started. The talk proceeded as planned, but behind schedule. We put video of the talk online as soon as possible after the event to mitigate any claims that the content was misogynistic or otherwise adversely affected women. Steven Brule published a video of what he captured of the protest. Accounts from the protesters differ from what Steven captured, but even five months later they haven’t produced evidence to contradict what he presents. As you will see later, they will claim victimization from these events, but calling their evidence shaky is giving it more credit than it deserves.

To start, the U of T administration distanced themselves from the protests and reaffirmed their support for freedom of speech. We believe that sentiment is genuine. The Office of the Vice-Provost has stayed neutral on the message of the UTMIA group, but they have been very supportive of their freedom to assemble and speak, and for that they deserve commendation.

The student unions have been less honest than the universities they are associated with. For starters, in the weeks leading up to the November event the CFS passed an un-debated motion which proactively prohibited groups focused on men’s issues from existing as any campus in Canada. That, along with the explicit support of the UTSU for the illegal protest at the same event has led us to the conclusion that the student government of many universities are hostile to even the existence of men’s issues groups on campus.

We saw further evidence of this in March of this year when the RSU made a change in their policies that excluded any discussion about gender that did not “centre women’s voices” and dismissed the concept of misandry. This was a week before a new Ryerson  group that had “men’s issues” within its mandate was up for their approval. It was clearly targeted at them. Ironically, they used this policy to reject a men’s issues group run by two female students, thus violating the policy they had just passed.

The barriers that student unions put up have not been limited to bureaucratic meddling. In November they were involved in organizing the illegal protest of the Warren Farrell event. More recently in March they organized a so-called “Town Hall on Sexism”. Rather than discuss actual instances of sexism, the entire event was set-up as a condemnation of CAFE. Their first speaker, a former UTSU executive named Danielle Sandhu, repeatedly lied about the November protest, referring to Dr. Farrell only as “the rape apologist” and claiming that CAFE members and the police assaulted protesters. She also conflated our talk about boys issues as being against women’s rights, promoting rape culture, and promoting incest. Finally, she claimed not to have spoken at the event, despite video evidence to the contrary.

It was this most recent meeting that prompted our response. The most worrying part of it for us was that several people at the townhall wanted to “track them down, find out where they live, where they work” along with discussing further plans to disrupt our events and vandalize our posters all in violation of University of Toronto policy.

What is most frustrating about these experiences is that our detractors primary complaint about us is that we create “unsafe spaces on campus”. This is a constant refrain, but it is nothing more than an excuse to justify their illiberal behavior. When one group barricades doors, screams epithets at the public, and pulls fire alarms during talks while the other hosts public events with open question periods, which is creating the unsafe space?

When one group welcomes everyone into their events, and the other makes McCarthy-esque accusations against those they don’t recognize immediately as allies, banishing them from their public events after outing them as “Men’s Rights Activists” bent on “infiltration,” which is creating the unsafe space?

When attendees at a town hall talk about taking a “militant” approach and making the campus “inhospitable” to our activities and nobody speaks against it, who is creating an unsafe space?

The attitudes we have seen from the student unions in the past few months have drawn attention to the fact that although they say the right buzz words about inclusiveness and freedom of expression those words ring hollow. Anyone who does not agree with them is to be suppressed, vilified and excluded. This is not limited to our group. The UTSU faced a revolt amongst their own members at their November Annual General Meeting. The RSU preemptively passed motions with the intent of rejecting a campus group affiliated with us without even meeting with its members first. The CFS did the same thing in November. At the recent “Townhall on Sexism” they photographed all attendees while insisting nobody record what went on. During that same meeting a large man claiming to represent the UTSU forced several people to leave, claiming they had been identified as MRAs. He refused to give his name, but has been identified as Guled Arale of the Scarborough University of Toronto Student Union. They are creating unsafe spaces in the name of fighting them.

The actions of the student unions and their supporters have only served to strengthen our resolve that the conversations around men and men’s issues need to happen. If a talk about the challenges boys face can inspire this amount of vitriol and coordinated interference then it is a clear sign that there is a serious problem with gender equality on university campuses. Battling with the student unions has consumed more of our energy than we would like, but it has served to illustrate exactly the kind of institutional discrimination that someone can face if they do not toe the accepted line on gender discourse. In that sense, demonstrating the biased attitudes of those in positions of power has been very productive.

CAFE intends to continue these conversations on university campuses and in the broader community. Men make up one half of our society, and voices on their issues – from both men and women – cannot continue to be dismissed, derided and excluded. The challenges they face in attitudes around fatherhood, their role in society and their health will not be resolved by pretending they do not exist, or with empty platitudes that “patriarchy hurts men too”. We must have real productive conversations and the disruptive actions of groups like the UTSU and their allies only serve to bring more attention to our issues.

CONTACT
Amber Taylor
Canadian Association for Equality
info@equalitycanada.com
416-479-0718

-30-

By Adam McPhee, CAFE Board member and Advisor

Recently the Ryerson Student Union (RSU)passed an amendment to their policy on women’s issues. This amendment was not in regards to protecting women’s issues, but focused on rejecting any consideration or acceptance of men also having issues. The  amendments were:

[The RSU opposes...]
4. Groups, Meetings or events [that] promote misogynist views towards women and ideologies that promote gender inequity, challenges women’s right to bodily autonomy, or justifies sexual assault

5. The concept of misandry as it ignores structural inequity that exist between men and women

6. Groups, meetings events or initiatives [that] negate the need to centre women’s voices in the struggle for gender equity.

Many people of diverse identities openly accept that men have issues. They also accept that men have issues that differ from those that women face. As such, these amendments do not make any sense. Let’s look at them in order:

Amendment #4: Would it not have been more effective to draft an amendment about gender equity to be gender neutral? How about not allowing events that promote misogynistic, misandrist, or plain old sexist views that promote gender inequity, challenge a person’s right to bodily autonomy (do men not also have the right to bodily autonomy?) or justifies assault, sexual or otherwise.

This language would be more open and accepting of men’s and women’s issues groups. Why is it that the RSU is so opposed and fearful of discussing men’s issues that they felt the need to immediately propose amendments in an attempt to stop their momentum? This language change would also be more embracing of the entire gender spectrum. The original language ignores not just men, but also the trans community. After all, when does a trans-identified person achieve bodily autonomy if this right is only extended to women? Is it when they have transitioned to being a woman, or before they have transitioned to identifying as a man?

Amendment #5: Misandry ignores structural inequity across genders? No, it more fully encompasses it. It acknowledges that the gender pendulum creates gender inequity on both sides. Men’s Human Rights Groups (MHRMs) don’t deny that misogyny exists, but they do acknowledge that sexism is not a one-way street. Misandry does not ignore structural inequity; denying the concept of misandry does. Disregarding misandry also fosters ignorance of many other forms of inequity, such as systemic inequity.

Amendment #6: It is women’s voices that should be centred in conversations of gender equity? This is where the RSU is furthest from the mark. How is it equity if we centre one gender’s voice over the others? I fully embrace the importance of including the voices of women, and there are many women in the MHRM who do just that.

However, are men not allowed to discuss their own feelings of where they are having issues? Let’s say we’re discussing violence against men, whether at the hands of a man or a woman. Should we centre women’s voices here? How about if we are discussing the alienation of fathers from their children’s lives; the effects of divorce on men; men who have been victims of rape (by a man or a woman); or the high rate of male suicide? I fully welcome women’s voices on these subjects, but I would certainly reject any notion that it is the voice of women that should be the centre of such gendered subjects.

Neda Hamzavi, who proposed the amendments, was reported as saying “I think it’s important to remember that when we’re talking about dismantling patriarchy, we’re talking about supporting men, we’re talking about supporting women [and] we’re talking about supporting the entire gender spectrum.” No, you are not. A woman trying to silence the voice of men is not dismantling patriarchy. If anything, it is establishing a matriarchy and supporting only one part of the gender spectrum.

Do Men’s Rights Equal Anti-Women’s rights?

“There’s been a lot of work across campuses not only in Ontario but also across the country that have been working sort of [as] anti-women’s rights groups.” -Neda Hamzavi

Human rights and men’s issues are not anti-women’s rights. Applying a critical lens to a women’s rights group is also not anti-women’s rights. Were Neda to have simply applied a feminist lens to some of the issues that concern the MHRM, I would have thought nothing of it. However, actively engaging in an obvious attempt to block groups interested in men’s issues, under a thinly veiled guise of protecting women, is an attempt at censorship and a direct infringement of section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Marwa Hamad, the RSU’s vice-president of equity, claimed that these additions were regarding misandry and “reverse-sexism” (reverse, the opposite, would mean no sexism, not sexism towards men). I don’t see how stifling the perspective of the male voice, the male perspective, simply because it may or may not agree with yours is in any way a promotion of equity?

This stifles the voice of women too, who according to the proposed amendments, should be the centre of the subject of gender equity. Sarah Santhosh, one of the two women in a group of three Ryerson students trying to start up a men’s issues group on campus, stated that “The ironic thing is my voice is being silenced right now because I can’t even form a group without having to face this really back-handed deal that’s really attacking our group.” Even when women have two thirds of the voice on men’s issues, this is still not “centred” enough for the RSU. If misandry does not exist, then what is this if it is not fear or hatred of the very notion that men may have issues?

Those Who Forget The Past

I’ve known Neda Hamzavi for a couple of years now. As such, when I first heard this, I sent her a txt message asking if she had forgotten my speech to the RSU from about 3 years ago. She said “no, of course not”, and so I voiced my concern over what I had read was going on at Ryerson. She went on to say “What I said wasn’t saying bad things don’t happen to men, it was saying men are dominant sex and therefore there’s no such thing as “sexism” towards men,” she said before switching to straw-man arguments with “just like there’s no such thing as “reverse homophobia” or “reverse racism.”

This is a juvenile interpretation of structural issues. I already stated above that so-called “reverse sexism” is just sexism pointed at men. As such, it should be called what it is, sexism. I’ve also never heard anyone claim “reverse homophobia”, though Eminem sang about heterophobia (he apparently understands social language better than Ms. Hamzavi and Ms. Hamad). I suggested she look into the Irish, Scottish, and Jews as examples of racism to white people, but I digress.

I met Neda with some friends when I was in my 4^th year of Social Work at Ryerson and she was, I believe, in her second year of nursing. A couple of days later, Neda and one of the other nursing students I had met that night asked if I wanted to go to an RSU meeting. I had not been to one yet, and figured why not.

Much to my chagrin, I noticed on the agenda that night was a discussion about a women’s crisis line for Ryerson students. They had two microphones set up, and people who disagreed with a subject would speak at one microphone, and those in favour of a subject went to the other. When the subject of the crisis line was brought to the table, a number of female students immediately went to the “agree” microphone. I apprehensively went to the “disagree” microphone, which was on the other side of the large room, knowing what kind of thoughts would be going through people’s minds seeing a tall, white, able-bodied, cis-gendered, presumably straight, “privileged” man going to a “disagree” microphone while the subject of a women’s crisis line was being discussed.

Before I got there, to my surprise, another person went to the “disagree” microphone before me. This was an older woman who got around through the use of a scooter. She was from my social work course, and I will call her Jessica to avoid identifying her. She was a vocal woman who often spoke out in class, and was open about herself. As such, I knew that one of the reasons she relied on a scooter to get around was because a former partner of hers had thrown her down a flight of stairs.

The women on the agree side said the usual pro-women talking points. They spoke about how violence against women is wrong, out of control, and especially that “one is too many!” I let Jessica speak first, partially because I wanted her input knowing her past. She felt that this women’s crisis line fell short, as it did not give any attention to those in the LGBT community, or to men. The summary in the agenda mentioned no one but women. It was called a women’s crisis line. She, a woman who had previously been thrown down a flight of stairs by a man, felt that everyone needed to be supported and included, not just women.

When I spoke, I revealed an incident from my past (I will likely publish in more detail later). When I was 16, and going through a rough patch, I got completely wasted with some friends one night. Wanting to be alone, I had wandered away from the group to be alone with myself for a bit. I had a blackout that night (the only one I have had, as such incidents as this put me off of drinking, especially to excess).

It took me a week to piece together that night from friends, but the final piece was that when one friend had wandered off to take a piss, he saw one of the girls who had been with us going down on me. I may have only been 16, but this girl was only 13. Where would I go? If I went to the cops, statutory rape and I’m seen as the abuser. When a high school teacher asked me if anything was going on at home, after I did a presentation in class on how our textbook had a whole section on men as abusers and women as victims, I said no and began to tell her about that night. She cut me off and said she didn’t want to hear about it and that she just needed to make sure it wasn’t going on at home.

At Ryerson, when I told two of my fellow male Social Work students the story, one’s response was “cool”. Cool. As in, “Hey man, it’s totally awesome that you were sexually assaulted while passed out.” I chastised him for it, though I was used to that kind of response by that time. So where was I supposed to go? Who was I supposed to call? What if this had happened at Ryerson? I looked at all the women lining up and saying how much this crisis line was needed, how one was one too many, and shouted that yes this is a good start, but there is too much exclusion, too much focus on women. If one is too many, I would be that one for the men not being represented.

There was a lot of applause after I spoke, which was quieted down by the moderator, as it could apparently “skew the vote”. Another man went up and spoke after me saying he, too, was the victim of sexual assault by a woman in his past. I don’t know if he felt the courage to do so after I spoke, or if he would have done so on his own, but the important point is that here were two men, in one room at Ryerson, both of whom had been sexually assaulted by a woman (I specify this only because that is what it was, and a male being sexually assaulted or raped by a woman has its own societal complications compared to when committed by a man. Cool?). Neither of these men felt Ryerson was adequately addressing their needs or that what it was proposing would provide other male Ryerson students with support if faced with a similar situation. Two men willing to speak up, despite being in a setting where the reaction to merely approaching a “disagree” microphone would be looked upon with hostility, and filled at least one of us with anxiety and apprehensiveness about speaking up. Two men who felt men had issues similar to those women face but that, because they were men, that these were not being addressed.

Neda was present for that speech and now, with the support of the RSU, is looking to stifle the voices of Ryerson students who may find themselves in need of a group that supports and examines men’s issues. Ryerson Students who may have a friend who could use some supports and not know how to help. Students who may disagree with the notion of putting women’s voices front row and centre for all things gender related. Neda, Marwa, and the RSU do not feel misandry exists. They just feel the need to explicitly put it into RSU policy, like writing “no boogeymen in here” on their closet door.