I’ve long been an admirer of the journalist and broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer, and her contributions to Question Time are always impressive.

In March 2013, only a month after J4MB was launched, she interviewed me for her show on LBC – here. It remains my favourite radio interview to this day. She had taken the trouble to read the predecessor to our election manifesto, and commented intelligently on it. Now that rarely happens, and never on the BBC.

Katie Hopkins is a rare example of a British Honey Badger, and she was delighted when we presented her with a Maggie award.

So I was pleased to read an article by JH-B in the latest edition of The Spectator – I’m no Katie Hopkins! – and appalled by an article by Julie Burchill following her interview with Jess Phillips, the odious feminist Labour MP who initially blocked Philip Davies’s application for a debate on men’s issues on International Men’s Day. The article is titled, Lunch with the future leader of the Labour party.

Burchill’s article is deeply admiring of Phillips, as you’d expect. They’re alike both in terms of appearance, and having relentlessly gobby schoolgirl tendencies. Phillips had only this to say in connection with the International Men’s Day debacle:

BURCHILL: Do you get called a Tory a lot?

PHILLIPS: All day, every day, especially on Twitter. I get a lot of abuse from both sides – from the Corbynites who won’t ever forgive me for voting for Yvette Coper, and from the men’s rights mob who won’t ever forgive me for laughing at Philip Davies. But it doesn’t bother me a bit.

Burchill asks her if she thinks Labour suffers from being seen as a party with more concern for criminals than their victims. She replies:

I was always a typical lefty, everyone-deserves-a-second-chance type – and to some extent I still am. But when I started working in a domestic violence refuge I became very aware of men who had committed a dozen acts of violence against women being let off, basically, and put into perpetrators’ programmes. It does make you want to cut their balls off. [my emphasis] Lock them up, then educate them.

Hmm, what might Ms Phillips suggest is done surgically to female perpetrators? It’s a silly question, really. In this bird-brained woman’s world view, we can be sure female perpetrators don’t exist. Or if they do exist, men are responsible for them being perpetrators in the first place.

Ms Phillips was the inaugural Toxic Feminist of the Month. Her award certficate is here.

Our thanks to John for pointing us to this (video, 8:02). Cassie Jaye’s $100,000 kickstarter campaign (to fund the film editing) had reached only $20,000 when Milo Yiannopoulos wrote a piece for Breitbart. Within 24 hours the target had been met, and it has since exceeded $200,000. We have high hopes for the film.

We’re delighted with the number of people who have pre-registered for ICMI16, many of them in the past couple of days. There are now only 24 hours to go before the deadline of 22:00 GMT tomorrow, and this will be our final reminder.

A link to the conference announcement is here. You can pre-register (it costs only £22.00) here, using PayPal or credit/debit cards. Please email me (mike@j4mb.org.uk) if you experience any difficulty making a payment.

We plan to book a venue with a capacity slightly above the number of people who pre-register, so if you want to be sure of attending ICMI16, you need to pre-register.

Key points:

1. The fee will be refunded in full if the conference is cancelled, or a substantially smaller conference planned. The fee will be deductible from all ticket prices including the Early Bird Discount (£225.00), and the full ticket price (£265.00). The fee will not be refunded if the conference goes ahead broadly as planned.

2. Pre-registration places you under no legal obligation to buy a ticket for ICMI16.

3. Depending on the size of the venue, which is itself dependent on the number of pre-registrations, only those who have pre-registered by the deadline will be assured of a place at ICMI16, and only if they have booked and taken up one of the three payment options for their conference ticket by 22:00 GMT 31 December. One payment option is to pay for your ticket in four successive monthly instalments, starting in December. This option is not available for Early Bird Discount tickets.

4. We are planning to make this a ticketed event, and don’t plan to sell tickets during the conference.

5. Any surplus tickets will go on sale to the general public on 1 January.

6. It is important that you do not book travel or accommodation until a final decision has been made that the conference will proceed, and the venue and conference dates announced on this website.

A final point. Some people have expressed concern at the cost of accommodation in London. In the coming few months we’ll be investigating options for lower cost accommodation near the final chosen venue, e.g. student accommodation, or hotels further out from central London with good transport connections (including minibuses), and publishing details on this website.

Best wishes,

Mike Buchanan

Our thanks to John for alerting us to this, a piece by Martin Daubney – a speaker at ICMI16 – for the Telegraph three weeks ago, which somehow didn’t come to our attention at the time.

A preview (8:02) of the film is here.

[Note added 19.3.17: This piece was posted and later taken down in December 2015, when we became concerned that Amnesty International’s reluctance to host the 2016 International Conference on Men’s Issues might disincline other venues to accept our booking. In the end we held the conference at the leading conferences and events venue in the capital, Excel London. It was a resounding success, and no demonstrators turned up.]

My thanks to Paul Elam for this.

Mankind Initiative, a fine British charity supporting male victims of domestic violence, needs YOUR support. Yesterday AVfM published this. Please donate what you can afford, to fund their vital work. Thank you.

We’re huge admirers of Karen Woodall, and next Thursday she’s going to deliver the second talk arranged by John Barry and Belinda Brown for the Gender Equity Network, Gender equality and the family courts. Entrance is free. I regret I am personally unable to attend the event.

We have already announced many of the confirmed speakers at ICMI16, in addition to Erin Pizzey, who’ll be giving the keynote speech, ‘Intergenerational family violence v the big lie’. In surname alphabetical order:

1. Paul Apreda, Families Need Fathers (Both Parents Matter) Cymru – ‘The state’s assaults on fathers’
2. Janet Bloomfield (Judgy Bitch) – ‘How feminism infantilizes women’
3. Mike Buchanan, party leader, J4MB – ‘The political war on men and boys’
4. Paul Elam, Founder and publisher, A Voice for Men – ‘Gynocentrism – the root of feminism’
5. Dean Esmay, National Coalition for Men (NCFM) – ‘Men Going Their Own Way, and the new Renaissance’
6. Janice Fiamengo, Professor, Department of English, Ottawa University – ‘How Feminism is Destroying Higher Education’
7. Sage Gerard, Collegiate Activism Director, AVfM Operations LLC – ‘How to bring men’s rights to campus’
8. Tim Hammond, independent researcher – ‘Exploring the aftermath of male circumcision: Findings from the 2012 Global Survey of Infant Circumcision’
9. Anil Kumar, Save Indian Family Foundation – ‘Organizational models that made the difference: Success stories in India’
10. Herbert Purdy, anti-feminist blogger – ‘Their Angry Creed’ (the title of his forthcoming book)
11. Karen Straughan (GirlWritesWhat) – ‘Toxic Femininity’
12. Lucian Valsan, European News Director, AVfM Operations LLC – ‘The status of men in continental Europe: ideology, legislation and activism’

I am delighted to announce the MC and four more speakers at ICMI… drum roll, please…

Master of Ceremonies – Terrence Popp, Redonkulas, surely the funniest war hero on the planet. We can expect the conference to run with military precision, and have some laughs at the same time. New speakers:

1. Greg Canning, Australian doctor and MHRA – ‘The health gender gap’
2. Martin Daubney, a British writer on gender issues – talk title TBA.
3. Guttorm Grundt, Norwegian MHRA – ‘Discrimination against men and fathers in Norway, and MannForum’s strategy and actions for gender equality in practice’
4. Josh O’Brien, 19-year-old politics student and vlogger – talk title TBA
5. Thomas Walter, German MHRA, member of MANNdat – talk title TBA

Also at the conference, but not speaking, will be the popular 18-year-old British student vlogger David Sherratt, Spinosaurus Kin, as well as Carl Benjamin, the man behind the Sargon of Akkad website.

With Erin Pizzey, that’s 19 speakers at ICMI16. If you want to be sure of attending ICMI16, you’ll need to pre-register, and the dealine for doing so is 22:00 GMT on Sunday, three days’ time. You won’t be making a legal commitment to later buy a ticket (£225 – £265, less the pre-registration fee), and we’ll make a full refund if:

• the conference is cancelled
• the scope of the conference is markedly smaller than currently envisaged

As someone who’s pre-registered, you’ll have a few weeks to pay for your full ticket (or pay the first of four monthly instalments, at no additional cost), before the general public is given the chance to buy tickets. We’re planning to book a venue that will hold not many more people than have pre-registered, because venue costs rise sharply with delegate numbers. The potential strategy of booking larger venues in the hope of attracting many more additional delegates is too risky. In plain English:

If you want to be sure of attending ICMI16, you have only three days left to pre-register.

You can pre-register (£22) here.

I must repeat again that you should not make any travel or accommodation commitments until and unless we announce that the conference is definitely going ahead, which will be after we’ve signed a contract with a venue. For one thing, it may be that the dates of the conference will change, although we’ll do all in our power to minimise the risk of that happening.

Once we’ve settled on the venue, we’ll be embarking on research to track down more affordable local accommodation, to keep your bills down.

I hope to meet many of you at the conference. It’s going to be something special…

Our thanks to Sean for this.

The deadline for pre-registering for the 2016 International Conference on Men’s Issues is 22:00 GMT on Sunday, 6 December – just four days away. You can pre-register here, to be sure of the opportunity to attend the conference (by later paying for a ticket, £225 – £265, less the pre-registration fee, before the end of December). It costs just £22.00 to pre-register, and you won’t be making a commitment to later buy a conference ticket.

If you need a compelling reason to attend the conference, this should be it. Amnesty International, the leading campaigning organization in the world for human rights, is concerned about the human rights of women and girls, but not the human rights of men and boys.

We’re still in the process of researching venues for the conference, and one venue that appeared perfect is the Human Rights Action Centre, run by Amnesty International. I sent an enquiry, asking for the booking terms, and received the following response:

Hi Mike,

Our Terms and Conditions are a part of the booking form.

Unfortunately, the Justice for Men and Boys’ message seems incompatible with our very public campaigns specifically for women’s human rights here. As you will see from our terms and conditions, we are not able to accommodate any organisation that goes against AIUK’s ethos.

As such, we will not be able to accommodate your event at the Human Rights Action Centre and wish you all the best with your venue search.

Kind regards,

<name redacted>

I replied:

Thank you, but your rejection of J4MB as a potential client is based on a profound misunderstanding.

We are not against women’s human rights, but we are for the human rights of men and boys.

In the UK, men’s and boys’ human rights are assaulted by the actions and inactions of the state (in 20 areas at least, our manifesto is attached) while those of women and girls specifically are assaulted in NONE.

In rejecting J4MB as a client, you are saying AIUK doesn’t care about the human rights of half the population of the UK. How would that look, if the press got hold of the story? I would ask you to reconsider the matter, and I repeat my request to view the facilities on Wednesday, and if all is as I hope, to sign the booking form and pay the deposit there and then.

Might I ask, was this your personal decision, or the decision of someone higher up the organization? If the latter, could I please have his/her contact details. Thank you.

I left a message for the lady to call me, and heard nothing. I wrote again:

I should appreciate it if you have the courtesy of responding to the email I sent yesterday – the one with our election manifesto attached – and calling me. I hope you do so shortly, or one of your colleagues does.

We’ve taken legal advice on your position, and we’re informed it is clearly illegal under the Equality Act 2010. The Act requires equal treatment in access to employment as well as private and public services, regardless of the protected characteristics of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.

I repeat my request for a meeting with you or colleagues tomorrow afternoon or early evening, and an inspection of your Auditorium and other facilities with a view to possibly placing a deposit for our conference in July next year. Could you please email me a proforma invoice with that in mind? We are looking for the following availability for at least the Auditorium and Conference room, and possibly one or two Action rooms.

Thursday 7 July – evening

Friday 8 July – all day

Saturday 9 July – all day

Sunday – all day

We wish only to resolve this amicably and professionally, and we hope you’re of a similar mind. Thank you.

She replied:

Dear Mike,

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you but I have been (and am still) working a conference and have limited access to my inbox.

Unfortunately, we will not be able to accommodate your organisation within the Human Rights Action Centre.

I must clarify that this is not because you campaign for the rights of men but because your organisation is explicitly anti-feminist whereas Amnesty International UK is explicitly a pro-feminist organisation.

The building and all the work we do is paid for by our members and we have to be accountable to them. Our members would not approve of an anti-feminist organisation making use of our facilities for their own purposes.

We wish you all the best with your venue search and we consider this matter to be at an end.

Kind regards,

<name redacted>