By Max Stirner
The night before the antifeminist meeting last weekend, I was strolling the streets of Zurich. The Swiss women I passed by looked quite attractive and had put a lot of effort in their colourful clothing. Unlike in Germany a lot of them walked in high heels. René Kuhn, who was one of the organizers of the meeting, was famous for his remarks on Swiss liberal women who he said were “dressed like tattered scarecrows”. This and other comments on his personal blog had cost him his political career in the Swiss people party SVP one year before. From my own experience I couldn’t really agree with him.
Finally under a bridge leading to the Zurich lake I found the first anti-antifeminist poster.
It said: “Fight sexism together! Give the antifeminists a tooth job!”, in the background of the poster was the deformed symbol of the female sex, with the upward pointing clenched fist. You will recognize the sign, once you see it. The text was rather long, first came a quote from the Swiss antifeminist website “www.antifeminismus.ch”: “Feminism is an unscrupulous union of certain women with inferiority complexes, megalomania and bizarre male fantasies. It is their ideology to acquire unfair priviliges by inhuman misandry.” Nice publicity, I thought. It continued with a boring part about how women are still suffering under a patriachial society.
Communists Protesting Conference
In a way, the author sounded insecure, almost defensive. The phrases that were meant to attack the political enemy were turning on him. Something was happening here.
The next morning I took the tramway to the airport feeling like I was in a spy movie. As there had been violent threats from left wing extremists to sabotage the conference, the new location was kept in secret. My information was: go to Zurich Airport, 9 am, Terminal A and find a man holding up the sign “Seminar Egala”. Right in the terminal I stumbled into a group of angry and sad men, that looked a lot like divorced dads. “Seminar Egala?”, I asked.
After they had checked our IDs, we were taken in private cars to the new location, a hotel in the countryside.
In the car conversation soon turned on divorce and child custody. Our driver – a guy from Germany – was especially frustrated with the Swiss law, which refused him child custody for his daughter, though her mother was allegedly hanging around with drug addicts.
René Kuhn shook our hands on the parking lot, looking joyous. Two security guards were standing at the hotel entrance looking rather nervous. There were about 50 people in the entrance hall, most of them above their 40′s, I had the impression that a lot of them knew each other. One guy with funny clothes in front of me looked like a muslim. Then it dawned on me: it was “Muslim” – nickname “Muslim”, who had commented on some of my postings in the manosphere blogs.
“Hey you are Muslim!”, I shouted- “Yes I am!” came the response. But “Muslim” was not the only one that I already knew from the web. All the German-speaking bloggers were there! What an amazing event!
The official press – some snobbish reporters and a TV crew couldn’t probably figure out what this fuss was all about. Left wing demonstrations in the streets of Zurich for a bunch of frustrated dads and bloggers? More people arrived. The congress started.
René Kuhn held the first speech, and for a politician he didn’t make too much of a show of it. He said that this whole act gave them a great deal of publicity and the IGAF (interest group antifeminism) was now counting 2000 members.
This conference is directed against feminism not against women – he continued. Because feminism only wants priviliges for women on behalf of men and not true equality.
Antiago Gasco a representative from italian and spanish groups for men’s rights held a short speech. He thanked for the rebirth of the prestige, for the role and rights of men and fathers. Discrimination of men is a europe wide phenomenon.
George Zimmermann from IGM the interest group of divorced men (www.igm.ch) was next and he held a speech about the divorce and custody laws in Switzerland and the strategies of the IGM. This organisation wants to help men who have to cope from the breakup of their families. Many of the laws and court decisions a direct result of uninhibited feminist policies of the last 20 years.
Eckkard Kuhla from “Agens e.V.” Germany (www.agensev.de) talked about the balance of the sexes between men and women. Agens wants to take a stand against aggression from feminists. He claimed that antifeminism is working because we have hit a nerve. Solidarity among men is growing and 2010 is the year of change.
Before the break we heard an amusing speech from Mr. Lassahn against language manipulation by feminism, which has spread like a disease in the german speaking world, and wants to change our way of thinking.
During the lunch break I had the possibility to have some private conversation about the future of our western world.
I was often asked why a young man like me would attend this conference, not having experience one sided divorce laws. One reason is that I am deeply bored by my liberal environment and the false promises it gives me, and the utter incompetence of the liberals to reconsider their ideas. I have to admit that I also have had negative experiences with women, so I don’t fall for all the artificial holiness that ist created around the female sex. Maybe it is also because I love philosphy and theology, and I have a mental aversion to indoctrination. Finally, I am single and a beta, so I have a lot of free time to think about the world. A blogger who sat next to me claimed that “Christianity was on the rise”. Who knows? At this point I have to tell my American audience that it is pretty difficult in Europe to find someone below the age of 60 who isn’t a liberal and living in a fantasy world. So it was a real delight for me to talk to people who know what a devastating mental (and sexual) situation the west is in right now.
After the break, the vibrant Afredo Stüssi from the Men’s Party Switzerland (Männerpartei Schweiz, www.männerpartei.ch) talked about the difficult situation fathers face in Switzerland. The Men’s Party was founded because feminism no longer had anything to do with equal rights. The Men’s Party wants to organise a Europe-wide platform for the rights of fathers, and plans to take part in the Swiss national election next year.
Michael de Luigi from “Mannschaft” (www.mannschafft.ch) gave a long speech about the nature of feminism. Mannschaft helps to connect men suffering from divorce and breakup, and also gives individual advice to men. In the Swiss family law men are second class citizens: Dads are there for paying, not for education and they should disappear from the lives of their kids. Switzerland may be a democracy but it is not a state under the rule of law.
My personal highlight was of course the last speech by Michail A. Savvakis (aka Maskulist, www.maskulist.de), author of the famous book “Medusa schenkt man keine Rosen” (Don’t give roses to Medusa). Michail analyzes the sick ideology of feminism with an intellect sharp as a razor blade mixed with acid sarcasm. Which structures created feminism? Today, it is institutionalized feminism within the state that is discriminating men. Emancipation was only reserved for women, because feminism is feeding the state, while male sentiment wants to deregulate it. Therefore, the well-being of women is much more attractive for the state. Never in the history of mankind could women emancipate themselves against the will of men. By his insufficiency and dependency combined with it’s love for the state, feminism inevitably creates misandrist structures in wealthy states, which can afford the luxury of feminism. The hate of patriarchy, which is essential to feminism, is a schizoid complex which today is haunting the western world.
After the standing ovations for Michail had faded we were urged to leave. “The news that “Seminar Egala” was in reality the antifeminist conference has reached the hotel management”, somebody joked. In the meantime about 100 anti-anti-feminists had marched through downtown of Zurich, shouting and waving red flags. The hotel had kept quiet.
On the way out I noticed some very attractive women sitting in lounge chairs in the lobby chatting in Russian. They were probably friends of Mr. Kuhn’s russian wife Oxana. The collapse of the Soviet Union came to my mind. Are we now the Soviet Union and Russia the new avant garde?
Some days later I went trough the press articles about the antifeminist conference. To my surprise the resonance was overwhelmingly positive. The sad stories of the divorced dads had probably softened the hearts of the liberal press, or maybe they left too early to hear Michail’s final speech. Of course male shaming was inevitable. One headline read “From divorce laws to schools – many men feel discriminated against by women, but the helpless whining of the antifeminists leads nowhere”. But even the big left-wing German magazine “Die Zeit” wrote in a sympathetic tone. Something has happened indeed.
press articles some in English
German blog of one of the organizers (you might want to use google for a translation)
