Uni-Präsident spricht Machtwort: Männerrechtler müssen kein Schutzgeld gegen feministische Gewalt zahlen

Gestern berichtete Genderama darüber, dass die Universität Ryerson im kanadischen Toronto für den Vortrag einer prominenten Männerrechtlerin eine hohe Summe an Schutzgeld forderte, weil sie Übergriffe von feministischen Gewalttätern befürchtete. Am selben Tag skandalisierte Barbara Kay dieses Verhalten der Universität in der auflagenstarken National Post:

This is outrageous. The demand for a security fee, which most groups cannot afford to pay, is almost invariably a transparent strategy to force the group to withdraw their event. It is the university’s obligation to ensure the security of bona fide speakers – and this one certainly is; Straughan’s talk, like all CAFÉ talks, will be a responsible, thoughtful dissertation on an objective situation, and the opposite of incendiary – and to impose such a hardship on a group in anticipation of irresponsible and bigoted behavior by intolerant activists is to blame and punish the victim. (....) We know that if feminists’ discourse was threatened with activist resistance, no university in the land would dream of charging them a security fee. On the contrary, the university would if necessary call in the Armed Forces to ensure their right to speak.

CAFÉ has been through this wringer before. The University of Toronto, where most of their events have taken place over the last few years, also tried to dissuade them. Their first few lectures had taken place without incident, but as awareness of them spread, organized resistance gathered. Before long, attempts to disrupt and scuttle events became downright ugly: the ringing of fire bells, barricading entrances, inflamed harassment of attendees and shouting down speakers in the lecture hall. But the speakers persisted, and over the howls of the would-be censors they were heard: Warren Farrell, longtime men’s rights advocate, Janice Fiamengo, University of Ottawa literature professor, and impeccably credentialed McGill academics Katherine Young and Paul Nathanson, authors of a magisterial series of books on misandry in our culture and in our courts.

Mehrere Stunden nach der Veröffentlichung dieses Artikels wurde er auf der Website der National Post um die Nachricht ergänzt, dass der Präsident der Universität Ryerson die Entscheidung getroffen habe, alle Kosten für eventuelle Schäden, die durch gewalttätige Feministinnen entstehen, selbst zu tragen, da die Forderung eines Schutzgeldes dafür, seine Ansichten äußern zu dürfen, eine Barriere für die Meinungsfreiheit darstelle.