The Warren Farrell Protest at the University of Toronto: An Example of How Not to Behave If You Want To Be Successful In Life

"You do not demonize your opponent. You don’t attack him or her as a person. It’s about the ideas. Good people can have terrible ideas and bad people can have excellent ideas."

Rationally, I agree that ad hominems impede intellectual progress. But if you're a lobbyist or a spin doctor working for a PR firm, it's not about intellectual progress - it's about winning. The Machiavellian part of me can't help but admit that if your job is winning, logical fallacies are indispensable weapons. I sometimes think of climate scientists who "stick to their science" and consequently lose out to climate change denialists. It makes me sad.

Of course, the students in the video are doing PR wrong. Like you said, not only do they fail miserably at their goal, they're discrediting the cause they stand for.

"they're discrediting the cause they stand for"

Well, it might sound strange but I think this is actually the cause they stand for. I mean the blockade was not a fluke or a mistake, that is what they mean by feminism.

I know this article is not about the actual opposition of feminism and antifeminism but I have to state that it is my recurring experience that the MRM is much more fact-based and reality-based and also a lot more open to debate than the feminist movement.

I'm a little confused - they're blockading the talk by Warren Farrell, so presumably their interests are at odds with the speaker's, right? I'm saying that they're trying to hurt Warren Farrell by denying him an audience, but due to their behavior they're more likely to make people sympathetic toward Farrell instead.

Because you know, Internet > crude forms of censorship.

When you said "they're discrediting the cause they stand for" I thaught you implied that their cause (feminism) is actually something else than censorship, bullying and the suppression of men('s rights). I say modern feminism is not much else than censorship and bullying, so they are not discrediting some benign cause, they are showing their true colors.

No harm done. We're both right 🙂

They are too stupid to think that, most people think "oh people are protesting against it, it must be bad."

Although the point is that no one has the right to censor speech, Farrell's ideas are very insightful. Feminism has had its positive effects but unfortunately has also negatively impacted society in a lot of ways for both men and women alike (esp my generation in which there is a lot extended adolescence). I have thought about this quite a bit, and it's good to finally hear a voice on this issue. Men deserve a voice just as much as any other group, and this subject definitely needs more attention than it's currently getting.

I have actually stopped reading some articles in the news (specifically about my industry, nuclear power) because I cannot get anything done if I do. All my time is taken up by responding to comments by 'environmentalists' whose grasp of logic is not far from those shown in this video. I know they won't read it, or attempt to understand it, but I can't help myself.

I actually had an argument with someone on the Huffington Post spanning a number of articles where he or she would make a false comment, I would respond with my correction, supplying my arguments and references to the information I supplied, to which he or she would make the same illogical comment on another article. I would say it was like arguing with a child, except children do listen on occasion. It was more like arguing with a tape recorder.

I will never understand the mental hoops people must have to jump through to ignore any other opinion. I admittedly thought like that about certain subjects growing up, but as an adult I came to realize that it does not do me any good to defend a fallacy. Maybe I will win in my mind, but I won't in real life. People say college is important, not so much because of what you learn, but that you learn how to learn. If that is truly the case, then every protester in this video should have flunked out.

That was back in the days when only the truly motivated/privileged people went to college. Now it's the norm. Standards have been watered down to accommodate the change in demographics. By that, I mean a lot of universities now admit anything with a pulse.

I had a girl who had couldn't find Alaska on a map. It's just one data point, but it's a telling one.

Bravo!!! Bravo to the author for supporting equality and freedom of speech! Bravo to Dr. Farrell for pointing out the obvious discrimination faced by boys in K-12 education and fathers in family court!

I don't know what State you are in but around here the courts favor Dad.

I don't know where you are, but it's not anywhere near California.

Quite right. I am thousands of miles from CA. Former Confederacy.

Why do the feminists not protest Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran etc...it's because they are afraid. Afraid of the consequences of those actions . Those countries play for keeps. Yes. It's happening now in Canada. You know Obama will not save you. Elder white gentleman are easy targets. Dearborne Mich. is coming to your town. Look and listen...

I have noticed a strange trend on the Left of simultaneously condemning sexism and defending Islam. Apparently, for many, cultural relativism trumps equality. Or in other words: cultures or collectives are more entitled to equality than individuals. I disagree. While I can see the argument that anti-sexism is somewhat of a parochial value, so is anti-foisting-human-rights-onto-other-cultures.

I tip my hat to you TLH and maybe you can answer my question. We know there are strength in numbers, and protests abound on the nightly news; but does the mob rule in our culture (or others)? Is this how to get what we/you/they want in today's world?

I've been struggling with this for a few years. One of my best friends from childhood has been discussing this. The more I think about it, and the more I reflect on the real world ramifications, I cannot avoid the conclusion to which I find myself constantly returning.

The simple reality is that all cultures are not equal and should not be treated equally. A culture that treats a woman as property is not worthy of respect. A culture that executes teenage boys because they fall in love with each other is not worthy of respect. A culture that calls for a person to commit suicide to prevent shaming their family is not worthy of respect. A culture in which the strong prey on the weak is not worthy of respect. A culture in which people are sold into slavery is not worthy of respect. A culture that mutilates the bodies of newborns is not worthy of respect. A culture that calls for the communal murder of dissenters is not worthy of respect.

Simply because a prejudice is ancient does not make it right; ideas are not automatically correct due to their tenacity.

I think whomever said it is correct: There is coming a fight between the scientists and the druids of the world. I pray the former win. We cannot afford another dark age.

The rub is that we are using OUR cultural values to perform these evaluations of others' cultures. Relativism is unavoidable. In the end, might is right. If enough people agree with you, you are "right." If you go out, today, and stop a circumcision you would be jailed. By the 22nd century that will be the job of the police. If Vienna had fallen, you might never have made these affirmations of Western notions of Human Rights.

I am a Muslim, but am more liberal in my beliefs. I beleive that gender equality should be a fundamental right. I wish most muslims would also do so.

i had a run in with toronto police (for hanging out on the roof of a skyrise), and they were the nicest, most helpful cops i think i have ever encountered. at these feminists hurling "pig" and "scum" at them, i must take offense on their behalf. very professional crew!!

I know Warren quite well and am sad for him and for the decline of fairness and true justice. Warren is a fine man who holds very worthy positions, well stated. We live in a world in which today's censorship and distortion from the Left far exceeds the McCarthyism from the Right that the Left relentlessly decries.

This is a great article, but with all respect to the author, it stops short of identifying the core of the problem. Bullying from gender ideologues, especially in academe, has a long and well documented history. If you look at the stories of esteemed academic researchers like Murray Straus, Richard Gelles and Suzanne Steinmetz, you will find that after they conducted exhaustive research documenting that intimate partner violence is perpetrated equally by men, and women, in conflict with the feminist narrative, all of them received death threats. Bomb threats were phoned in to conference centers at schools where there were scheduled to present. Straus later penned an article documenting the multitude of ways that feminist academicians bullied and harassed their peers into only presenting research that aligned with feminist dogma, as well as how they falsify research results to achieve the desired propaganda.

http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/how-feminists-corrupt-dv-research/

Erin Pizzey, the founder of the world's first battered women's shelter, received death threats after publishing papers saying that the women she worked with were as much or more violent than the men they were "escaping" from. She was stalked and harassed continually for years.

What happened in Toronto in November was only a microcosm of what has been happening for decades across the western world, and as a culture we have scarcely been willing to acknowledge it until very recently. Largely I think this has happened because the culture is so PC crazy about women's issues that few will take a stand against the lies and suppression.

The problem here is feminism. Not the idea, but the common practice. Until people start calling it out for what it is, the problem will continue.

The beauty of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly is that it allows for both sides to be given equal ground. The students were within their rights, just as much as Mr. Farrell was in coming to an open-minded, liberal university like UofT to spout his ridiculous bullshit.

Attempting to physically block someone's access to a building to prevent them from hearing a speaker while losing control of yourself and hatefully screaming in their face is not freedom of speech nor is it freedom of assembly. It is a form of violence.

You do not win people's hearts and minds that way. History demonstrates it time and time again. The most effective, shining examples of activism in the past century here in the United States involved Rosa Parks simply refusing to move to the back of a bus, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. peacefully marching through the streets and quietly sitting on bar stools at restaurants. The Irish couldn't throw off the British Government despite generations of bombs and bloodshed, yet Gandhi did it for India with patience and appeals to humanity.

No matter how righteous or just the cause, if people feel as if they are being attacked, they will shut you out; become defensive; write-off your intentions. There is truth in the Chinese saying, "dripping water wears away stone". The demonstrators in this video have done incalculable damage to that which they claim to love and protect.

Thank you Joshua for this excellent post. The evidence speaks for itself. Males are clearly getting the short end of the stick in our secular society. It's time to support our boys and young men as much as we can.

This was an interesting post to reflect upon and reread after I watched the Red Pill documentary. In that documentary, the narrator Cassie used John Stuart Mill's approach to make an interesting narrative by presenting articulate arguments from both sides of the debate. I also noticed that the commentator Paul Elam from this page was featured in that documentary.

I am glad you left up this blog article Joshua. But I also noticed the John Stuart Mill article is now deleted, which I think is a bit sad.

Personally, my take is that I intuitively sympathize with both male and female victims of power inequities. I know in computer science I and others support female computer scientists, because there is a "pipeline problem" where women are frequently not encouraged to consider careers in computer science. Many authors have written about this (just Google the phrase).

My take on these kinds of issues in general is that I feel: (1) People should be treated and judged before the law always as individuals, not as instances of a class, and (2) People should work together to combat class problems, such as racism and sexism. Yet, in contrast with this, what seems to unfortunately happen often in reality is that people feel a need for good and evil, and to demonize their perceived enemies. Thus, the world rarely exhibits any morality of perfect good or evil, but rather, morality in shades of grey due to flawed moral agents fighting against other moral agents who subscribe to different and conflicting belief circles. All of these agents internally consider themselves good though. A fascinating illustration of this can be found if one reads about the stories of inmates on what they did wrong: many of them do not think they did anything wrong.

I feel we also see this "need for good and evil" in the radical mens' rights and radical feminist debaters. I also feel that lot of the fiction authors that I like intuitively get that humans have this flawed internal need to perceive they are good, and that this is a psychological flaw.

I hope everything is going well with the new venture Joshua. How are things?