‘What is a man?’ asked Frank Sinatra in one his more famous songs, ‘What has he got?’
Had Sinatra attended Saturday’s March for Men in Melbourne’s Federation Square, he might, perhaps, have received an answer. Or, then again, perhaps not, given that the rally organised by conservative YouTuber Sydney Watson presented such a diversity of perspectives on the problems allegedly bedevilling the Australian male.
Some 150 or so protesters eventually assembled on the forecourt of the SBS building where they were welcomed by veteran anti-Muslim agitator Avi Yemini.
“We are going to show the Victorian socialist state that there is still hope,” Yemeni said. He led the crowd in a chant of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi”, before explaining that he wasn’t interested in hating women.
“I bloody love women,” he said. “This is about empowering men, about giving men a voice.”
Later, the marchers heard from veteran men’s rights activist Robert Brockway, who complained about the cruelty of terms like “mansplaining”, “manspreading”, “manflu” and “man babies”.
“It’s time to stop the name calling!” he pleaded.
Yet Brockway’s sensitivity about such indignities (he also objected to “man child” and “deadbeat dads”) sat rather strangely alongside the priorities of other attendees, such as the members of the Infidel Brotherhood, the fascist Antipodean Resistance and Blair Cottrell’s Lads Society.
The white T-shirts being sold by the organisers raised funds, Yemini said, for “Dads in distress” while the event attracted a sizeable contingent from the Australian Brotherhood of Fathers.
“It’s OK for you to stand up,” Watson said, “to have your rights listened to, to have your issues addressed.”
Yet even as speakers spoke of male fragility and the legitimacy of men’s feelings, a contingent from the Australian Proud Boys loudly denounced the 100 or so supporters of the rival Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (Carf) as “soyboys”, “cucks” and “manginas”.
Later, one of the Proud Boys launched himself bodily at the counterprotesters before being subdued by police and dragged away.
With the environs of the forecourt officially declared a “designated area”, the speeches – and indeed the rally as a whole – quickly became almost entirely unintelligible to the passers-by at Federation Square.
Inside the nearby ACMI theatres, the literati attended the opening sessions of the Melbourne Writers Festival. Outside, police on horseback held back anti-fascists chanting, “when the Nazis come to town, shut it down, shut it down”.
“What’s going on?” asked a woman on her way to the football.
“An animal rights protest,” explained a friendly policeman, presumably thinking of the event simultaneously taking place at the Fitzroy Gardens.
“It’s like all the nutjobs have come out at once,” muttered someone else.
Eventually, with Carf distracted on the north side of Fed Square, Yemeni led his followers south down Swanston Street, chanting: “March for men, respect for all.”
Did Watson get what she wanted?
In the US, an anti-feminist backlash played an important role in the rise of the Trumpist alt-right.
The Gamergate controversy activated a sizeable number of young men who weren’t necessarily concerned about Muslims, Mexicans and the other key enemies of grown-up Trumpism. Chancers like Milo Yiannopoulos could transform, via Breitbart.com and similar sites, hostility to women in gaming into a more general anger against political correctness and, eventually, into support for the Trump campaign.
The “Trump 2020” banner waving at the March for Men suggests that some conservatives here – particularly from the campuses – harbour similar ambitions.
“I’m a woman standing here,’ said Watson at one point, ‘telling you that women have the same rights as men. It’s ridiculous to suggest we don’t!”
That drew a raucous cheer.
Yet, despite that shared hostility to feminism, it’s hard to see the conflicting sentiments expressed at the rally cohering into any kind of stability.
The Proud Boys – with their “The West is Best” banners and fight club enthusiasm for violence – possess little in common with, say, musician Jarryd Chircop, who shakily told the crowd about his experience of abuse.
What is a man? What has he got?
The March for Men showed that some men, at least, have got considerable amounts of amorphous anger – but whether that’s a foundation from which a new right might emerge remains to be seen.
• This article was amended on 20 September 2018 to remove a reference that may have suggested Avi Yemini has ongoing connections with Blair Cottrell, Neil Erikson and members of the local fascist right. Yemini says this is not the case.
