Petition to ban ‘pickup artist’ gaining ground
Thousands rally to prevent U.S. blogger crossing border
Writer and self-styled pickup artist Daryush Valizadeh, a.k.a. Roosh V., may be stopped from entering Canada this month to deliver talks in Montreal and Toronto, thanks to a petition making the rounds online.
The petition, started by Vancouver resident Sara Parker-Toulson, had gathered almost13,000 signatures by Thursday evening. Women in both cities are organizing protests to be held outside the events if Valizadeh is permitted to cross the U.S.-Canada border.
According to a post made on his forum on Wednesday, the original Montreal venue has backed out because they were “spooked by the media coverage,” and he had been looking for a space to accommodate about 40 men.
In a YouTube video titled “Battle of Montreal — I need your help,” he says a new venue has been found and is being kept secret.
Valizadeh runs “Return of Kings,” an instructional blog for “neo-masculine” men who believe “men should be masculine and women should be feminine,” and has written several books on how to seduce women.
Valizadeh is touring Europe, the U.S. and Canada, hosting events on “self-improvement for men” as well as “how culture is lifting up women and gay people while pushing (men) and their needs down.”
Parker-Toulson has been working with Montreal model Aurelie Nix to organize opposition to Valizadeh’s visit.
Nix, who was organizing the Montreal protest, says she has received rape and death threats online from his supporters and that she has reported that to police.
The Canada Border Services Agency did not comment specifically on Valizadeh’s chances of crossing the border.
Valizadeh has not disclosed the Toronto venue for his Aug.15 talk due to a “high risk of mob action by feminists and social justice warriors,” his event description says.
“Unfortunately, we live in a time of mob rule where a few agitators can disrupt a legitimate speech that does not promote illegal activity, so it is upsetting that I even have to take this action,” he writes.
The organizers of the petition say they believe Valizadeh will be violating section 319 of the Canadian Criminal Code, which prohibits gathering and organizing for the purposes of inciting hatred of an identifiable group.
Constitutional lawyer Mathieu Bouchard says that, although he hasn’t read through much of Valizadeh’s posts, to his knowledge they don’t qualify as hate speech.
In one of his most controversial ar- ticles, Valizadeh suggests making “rape legal if done on private property.”
“If we make a law change, women will take more responsibility for how they live,” he told the Star in an interview.
“This is to decrease the number of rapes, to decrease the harm against them.
“If a woman leaves her phone on a counter and walks away, and someone steals it, they’re going to call her a moron,” he continues. “But if a woman has 10 drinks in the club and willingly has sex in the apartment that she regrets the next day, it’s the man’s fault.”
Having read the post in question, Bouchard says there’s a distinction to be made, for example, between explicitly encouraging rape and saying that the law on rape should be changed.
“In a democracy, we’re allowed to advocate for the law to be changed without running into trouble,” he says.
“His other blog entries could be considered hate speech if they create a risk for an identifiable group of people, in this case women,” says Bouchard.
Osgoode Hall Law School professor Bruce Ryder says barring someone at the border based on what they might say while they’re in Canada is “a problematic restriction on freedom of expression.” “No matter how abhorrent we might find someone’s opinions, it is perilous to presume in advance that their expression will constitute hate propaganda in contravention of s.319 (2) of the Criminal Code, even if they have expressed hate on previous occasions,” he says.
Valizadeh, who says he makes his living mainly through his website and book sales, would not say how many tickets have been sold for the Toronto event.
In a viral, widely condemned 2013 post about Toronto women, Valizadeh calls Toronto the “worst city in the world for men,” for reasons including there are “too many Asian and Indian girls” and “girls are obese.”
Valizadeh is standing his ground and says he will either hold the event or go to jail as a result of a confrontation with protesters.