Geoff Stone delivers his talk at the CAFE Conference in Ottawa, at City Hall, on Saturday, September 17th, 2016. The theme of the conference was "positive activism" What does oppression sound like. Does anybody have an idea? Because I think I know. It sounds like Muhahahahahahaha. Right? It sounds like laughter, which is kind of like a punchy sound like a face getting punched with a brick. Right? It's Terrible! I mean...I think personally that what we want to do is create a better world, a less oppressive world, a safer world, by getting rid of laughter. Because it's pretty clear to me that nothing positive comes from laughter. That's the sound that the arrogant alpha dominant male makes while he is displaying his dominance. Right? It's the very essence of privilege. But yet, our culture promotes it, normalizes it, tolerates it, and even celebrates it. Which, to my mind, proves like that like we totally live in a patriarchy. This is further evidenced by the jokes that I hear all of the time which promote violence against women. I am not going to repeat any of them because that would promote violence against women, obviously, so you will just have to take my word for it. Just kidding, this is a pro-humour lecture. It's not that kind of lecture. What do I mean by this slide? Life is hard so go suck a lemon? When life hands you a lemon, humour helps you to make Mike's Hard Lemonade. Or you can take Mike's Hard Lemonade and turn it into humour. It's kind of a bad analogy thought because there is sugar in there and alcohol and that's not going to be good for you. But humour is good for you. The lemon, as I see it, very often issomething called relational aggression. And I have a recent example where we caught wind of an email that was sent out. There was a pretext and threat narrative about an anonymous online threat against feminists, it could have been posted by anyone, and it doesn't actually target anyone specifically. And yet they are still using that as something to rally behind, and to set the tone of the email. They are suggesting that there is a danger, and specifically naming CAFE as a danger. They are calling us MRA's and saying that MRA's and Men's Issues are the same thing. They say that "the reality however is that MRA's on campus are not interested in "positive activism" (which is the theme of our conference) Instead, they stalk, harass, and attack feminists...they have NO PLACE on campus..." Anyways, My point is that, this is an example of social aggression. The whole point is to exclude a group that they don't like. The "reason" doesn't really matter so much. The point is, you have to chose between having a positive relationship with us or with them. What is Relational Aggression? It's also known as Indirect Aggression, because it is usually behind the scenes, and because rather than attacking the person directly, you attack their relationships. It is also known as Social Aggression for obvious reasons. And sometimes it is called Female Bullying because we live in a misogynist patriarchy that blames women for bullying. It involves backstabbing, slander, gossip, covert ostracism, drama, false accusations, and threat narratives. The victim does not always know who the perpetrator is. The Goal is to socially alienate the target, through sabotaging their relationships, even perhaps their career. It is highly conspiratorial. It causes trauma and paranoia. It is characterised by "frienemies" because you don't really know who your friends and enemies are, they can switch very quickly. You know, you keep your friends close and your enemies even closer. And it just overall creates a very toxic and hostile environment. I would think that anyone who has lost all of their friends would have some issues to deal with, and they do. Relational aggression is caused by the competition for status and power, just like all aggression. Also, for security, because the best defence is a strong offence. So who do you blame? Nobody. Relational aggression has a life of it's own...

• published: 25 Sep 2016
• views: 202