International Conference on Men's Issues (2016)

A day or two before we learned the sad news of Angry Harry’s premature demise, I had a Google Hangout with Paul Elam. The (audio) file is on Paul’s YouTube channel, here (35:24). The main topics of discussion were MGM – in particular our planned pre-conference protests, including two in Golders Green, on the afternoon of 12 May – and the London conference. As always, Paul was forthright and insightful on the key issues.

Details of the planned protests are here.

If you haven’t yet ordered your ticket(s) for the conference, you have until 12:00 GMT on Sunday, 5 June, to do so – here. That’s when ticket sales will end, and there won’t be tickets for sale at the venue.

There has been some speculation as to whether there might be internet livestreaming of the 22 presentations at the conference. A number of people have held back from ordering tickets, in the hope of watching the presentations ‘live’ on the internet, at little or no cost. I can now confirm the conference presentations will not be livestreamed.

There are a number of reasons for the decision, but one key reason is the conference must be self-financing. This means we must maximise ticket sales, and livestreaming would reduce ticket sales. We wish it were otherwise, nothing would have given us more pleasure than livestreaming. Hopefully the day will come when demand for tickets for men’s issues conferences will be at a level that will allow for livestreaming to happen, but we’re not there yet.

We are, of course, sympathetic towards people who cannot attend the conference, for financial or other reasons. So we’ll be posting the presentations onto our YouTube channel in the course of the days and weeks following the event, once they’ve been edited. Hannah Wallen, an American Honey Badger, will be making an official record of the conference and associated activities, in terms of both a video and still photographs.

Video recording and taking of photographs will not be permitted in the conference room or adjoining covered balcony during the course of the conference, but the venue is a very large one, so people will have plenty of opportunities to take photographs and video footage outside those areas.

The list of speakers is here, and you can book your ticket(s) here. It is currently planned to stop selling tickets at 12:00 GMT on 5 June, giving us sufficient time to have the high-security passes produced. Tickets won’t be available to buy at the conference.

This announcement is, we think, a bit special. We already had 20 impressive speakers scheduled for the conference, and we’re delighted to announce two more. The following is drawn from the ‘Speakers’ tab on this website, just updated:

Philip Davies MP – ‘The Justice Gender Gap’

Philip has been the Conservative MP for Shipley since 2005. He’s a highly regarded advocate for men’s rights, the only such MP in the House of Commons. Examples of his work include revealing startling gender differences in prison sentencing, in 2012 – video here. On International Men’s Day (2015) he introduced the first parliamentary debate on men’s issues – video here.

Mark Pearson – ‘Facing my Waterloo’

Mark is an award-winning contemporary artist, trained at the Royal College of Art. He recently became the focus of an international news story, when he was falsely accused of sexually assaulting an actress when walking past her in Waterloo Station. He advocates an end to the institutional misandry in the Crown Prosecution Service.

The head of the Crown Prosecution Service is Alison Saunders, a recent Toxic Feminist of the Month.

We have a strict limit of 200 people in the conference room at ICMI16. Not many tickets are left now, so if you’re thinking of attending, now is the time to order your ticket(s). Please don’t contact me after they’ve run out, expecting me to perform a miracle and make a ticket available. That simply won’t be possible. You can order your ticket(s) here.

A fundraiser has just been launched in relation to four key people who need to attend the London conference. It includes a video (7:18) with contributions from the four of them. From the website:

Proceeds from this fundraiser will go directly to the cost of travel, accommodations and expenses such as meals and transport within London for Sage Gerard, Karen Straughan, Hannah Wallen and Janet Bloomfield.

Janet Bloomfield, the blogger behind Judgybitch.com, will be speaking at the event, as will be Karen Straughan, the video blogger and speaker known as girlwriteswhat and Sage Gerard, the founder of the male college advocacy group Zen Men. Hannah Wallen, a professional photographer and videographer, will record the event for posterity and for the benefit of all who cannot attend in person.

They are all volunteers, meaning they accept no fees or honoraria for participation.

J4MB has contributed 13 conference tickets, which are a ‘reward’ for making a donation to the appeal of US$375 (£265.00 at the current exchange rate of £1.00 = US$1.41).

Please donate what you can. It’s critical that these four extraordinary and inspiring people attend the conference. Thank you for your support, as always.

Our thanks to Richard Duncker of Men Do Complain for recently filming and editing this video (11:31).

We’re delighted to announce the launch of the online J4MB clothing store. We’re starting with polo shirts and T-shirts, bearing the logo of the conference on the front:

We’ve just taken delivery of a printed polo shirt, and we’re pleased with the quality of both the garment and the printed logo. A number of points:

– the shirts are available in a wide variety of sizes and colours.
– there are different garment shapes for men and women, reflecting the different shapes of men and women. We’ll have none of that unisex mullarky in the J4MB store.
– we strongly recommend you watch a short video (1:34) on selecting the right size, before ordering.
– polo shirts are available in either 100% cotton or polycotton, T-shirts in 100% cotton only.
– if you order more than one shirt at a time, the postage and packaging costs for shirts after the first one are dramatically reduced, to £0.60 (UK addresses). Orders can consists of a variety of garment types, sizes and colours.
– the shirts are printed to order by clothes2order, a major company in this field, based in Manchester. You will be placing your order with this company, rather than with J4MB.
– in the unlikely event you’re unhappy with your order for any reason, please raise the matter with the company in the first instance. Let us know if you’re unhappy with their proposed resolution.
– shipping is available worldwide.
– the price includes a donation of £1.00 to support our work.

Email me ([email protected]) if you’d like other products added to the store, e.g.:

– other garments
– other designs e.g. the J4MB party logo, ‘This is what an anti-feminist looks like’…
– logo on the back of the shirt, rather than the front

In response to a number of people telling us that the additional costs for booking flight tickets with a cancellation option are prohibitive, we are no longer advising people to take out the option. However, we continue to advise people to take out the option with respect to booking accommodation, where it should be available at little or no additional cost. Numerous hotels and booking agencies allow for payment on arrival.

Media representatives are required to pay for conference tickets under the same terms as delegates, but a decision has been taken to offer complimentary passes to media representatives for the press conference only, which will be held on the morning of Friday, 8 July.

Further details are in section 6 of the revised Booking Terms, accessible after clicking on the ‘Book here’ tab at the top of the page.

We am delighted to announce that Kathy Gyngell, one of the co-founders of The Conservative Woman, a website we and many of our followers greatly admire, will be speaking at ICMI16. A brief biography is here, and we’ll shortly be adding her details to the list of conference speakers. Her talk title:

Feminism and Family Dysfunction: A Disaster for Men, Women and Children

An excellent piece by Kathy Gyngell concerning BBC Newspeak. Our party’s position on abortion is on pp.5,6 of our 2015 general election manifesto.