Fever_Discordia: But seriously, you can't see why a con organiser who just wants everyone to have a nice, pleasant event and come back next year isn't going to see people to align themselves with groups that.. are know to be deliberately provocative and express extreme views as people who are just there to cause trouble?
Especially with the press that GG and AVFM get- I'm not expressing extremist opinions about those groups, I'm saying how the majority of the people who have heard of them are going to characterise them, as my link to the SPLC, which is not some feminist fringe site but a well respected legal advocacy site indicates. Whether that's just our sides propaganda working or if they are genuine hate-mongers or somewhere in the middle, I can see why they wouldn't want them there...
I can't speak for the convention organizers, but I would assume people would want an environment of different ideas that can be shared and respectively challenged, otherwise how are you going to grow as a creative group and open your mind to new ideas? I wouldn't want a homogeneous group that is only there and sharing the same ideas and the same type of products. How dull and uninteresting is that?
Also, I kindly ask that you specifically point us to evidence of them causing blatant trouble. You keep making the claim, but I personally have not seen any. The only thing I have heard is them asking for permission from a panel to field a question, who then said "sure." They were also there to promote the idea of leaving creators alone. That was their goal from the very beginning, as they promote freedom of artistic expression. I would think this is something we all would strive for, yet all I can see is a certain group trying to shut down anything that does not fit with the current radical narrative.
In regards to the SPLC, until they are equal and have a page on misandry, it is hard to take them seriously. I certainly know over the course of the past year I have seen nothing but hate for the "cisgendered white man" and people wanting to wipe them from the face of the earth. I have seen my friends, who are nothing but really great guys, trashed and berated for simply being men. Funny how that works. Nobody seems to care about that. Maybe that is why some people feel the need to band together into MRA groups in trying to find balance.
Fever_Discordia: I love the way you imply that anything MRAs have to say is, in any way pro-equality and not about maintaining the current, un-equal status-quo, if not trying to blast gender politics back to the 50s or earlier!
What status-quo are they trying to maintain? The one where young boys are overdiagnosed with ADHD to make them behave more like girls, or the one where more women are going to college than men? Maybe they are trying to maintain the status quo of men killing themselves at higher rates than women? Or maybe they just want to keep the status quo of constant losing their children in court or maybe they want to ensure some men are forced to pay for child support when they aren't even the father? Or, most of all, maybe they want to maintain the status-quo of being disposable human beings for war.
I find all this fascinating because all anyone has to do is take off their little radical agenda goggles and see that
both genders have a lot of crap to deal with, and nobody has it easy regardless of how you want to paint it. All it takes is being a human being to see this.