Dean Esmay Vs. the Princess Studies Professor
Posted by David Futrelle
A Voice for Men’s media blitz continues apace. On Sunday, fresh on the heels of his colleague Robert O’Hara’s often cringeworthy Al Jazeera interview, AVFM “managing editor” Dean Esmay appeared on the unfortunately named “Let it Rip,” a news show on the local Fox affiliate in Detroit, to discuss that upcoming “Men’s Issues” conference we’ve been hearing so much about.
The excitable Esmay, wearing a tie at least a foot longer than necessary and facing off against a far more polished Heather Dillaway, a feminist sociologist from Wayne State University, did not exactly dispel the notion that the Men’s Rights movement isn’t ready for its close up just yet.
Esmay robotically rattled off an assortment of the sort of phony “factoids” that go over well only in the echo chambers of the Men’s Rights movement, and responded to questions not with answers but with rapidly regurgitated talking points — at one point declaring, to the bemusement of Prof. Dillaway and the rest, that
Ideological feminism is a multi-billion dollar hate industry funded by lies about rape and domestic violence, and they are the cause of a lot of very civil-rights trashing laws like the Violence Against Women Act even though we know that domestic violence is not a gendered issue.
Yes, he did say “a lot of very civil-rights trashing laws.”
Esmay also set forth a few arguments that he seemed to have made up right there on the spot, and which probably could have used a bit more workshopping. When the female half of Fox News’ tag team of hosts asked him “do you think you’re at a disadvantage because you’re a man,” he replied
I think many men are at a disadvantage specifically for a man. I’m certainly a working-class man. You see me sitting here with a missing tooth cause I can’t afford to fix it. This lady [gesturing at Dillaway] probably makes four times what I do.
Never mind that whatever differences there might be between their salaries have prety much nothing to do with gender and everything to do with class, and education, and probably most of all with the fact that Esmay is working for a dude who’s evidently bogarting all the donations for himself. Never mind that women still earn less than men for the same work. (And yes, MRAs, they do.)
Apparently, as long as there’s any woman in the world who makes more money than Dean Esmay, men are oppressed.
Let’s just call this the Esmay principle.
Anyway, I’m not going to bother to transcribe anything more. The only other memorable remark from Esmay was one he slipped in at the very end, suggesting that A Voice for Men might possibly be pulling out from the Doubletree hotel. What this means for their conference, I don’t know.
Back on A Voice for Men, meanwhile, Esmay was treated as a returning hero for facing down “two raving lunatic feminists and one Purple Poodle” –that last term the AVFMers’ new synonym for the old standby “mangina.”
“Standing O for Dean Esmay,” wrote his boss at AVFM, Paul Elam, in the comments. “Perfect delivery of our message and our attitude. Well done, brother.”
Susie Parker, meanwhile, wrote:
I thought Dean was pretty great. Measured, thoughtful, implacable. Any one of us feel we could have gotten more people on the Titanic lifeboats, but Dean was the man who held his cool and actually did the heroic deed.
I just hope the “people” she imagines Dean helping into the Titanic lifeboats were men! No “women and children first” for the AVFM crowd!
The reviews for Prof. Dillaway were a little less kind.
“[S]tupid ignorant bitch,” wrote one.
“What a self-centered bitch,” another agreed.
Others in the comments, and on the AVFM Forums, described her as a “cunt,” “the jabbering feminist liar,” the “smirking feminit [sic] professor,” and “the feminastie ‘Prof,”’ among other epithets. Indeed, perhaps half a dozen commenters referred to her professorship in derogatory terms, or put the word “professor” in scare quotes.
Some of the commenters were especially galled that Dillaway reacted to some of Esmay’s most ridiculous flights of fancy by … smiling. Several saw this as proof of the depth of her feminist depravity. Mike Buchanan remarked indignantly that
Early on, while you were outlining a number of areas in which men’s and boys’ life outcomes are so poor, the ‘professor’ was smiling through them all. As always, these damnable women don’t even PRETEND to care, so deep is their misandry.
Yeah, that’s not why she was smiling, dude. At that point, I was smiling too. That’s what you do when your opponent in a debate basically soils himself onstage.
Even those who offered – almost invariably mild – critiques of Esmay’s appearance couldn’t bring themselves to say anything positive about his opponent. Wrote PlainOldTruth:
At least we can say Esmay earned his paycheck here. Mopre than you can say fort the Princess Studies professor whose every paycheck represents an act of larceny and fraud: a slap in the face of people who do real work and who, when they teach, teach the truth.
Not that anyone at AVFM would recognize the truth if it came riding in on a Purple Poodle. Indeed, Darryl Jewett managed to win himself more than a dozen upvotes from his comrades for his distinctly revisionist precis of world history:
Throughout history and in every society including all of them today, women are and always have been the most privileged demographic. Where ever and whenever you hear women whining that they are oppressed, men are oppressed far worse. And usually by the women . On average, women consume way more than men and produce far less. To replenish those resources which women consume in great excess, men are sent to fight endless wars and forced to work as slaves long past the time they should be working and can. Children are often used as excuses to force men to work under threat of imprisonment even if they can’t anymore.
The strangest reaction of all, though, came from a commenter called DEDC, who used the occasion as an opportunity to attack, er, me, and to suggest that the real problem was that MRA’s weren’t using the words “bitch” and “cunt” often enough.
No, really.
The whole reason we are a hate site is because fucktards like Futrelle, failed journalist (see Bart Sibrel) that he is, keeps seeding these attacks based on nothing other than that we refer to some women as cunts and bitches (who desperately deserve it). Nobody, not even US, say that calling a man a prick or asshole (gender specific) is misandric just on that basis. The level of projection and hyper-sensitivity and denial are mind-boggling in magnitude. Just look at that entitlement. It shocks us to use these slurs against a woman because they have never really encountered them before.
It is like I say with Islame-O fascists: the answer to their hypersensitivity to jokes or cartoons of their prophet is MORE! It shouldn’t even be a second thought at all to call a female a cunt who IS a cunt.
I’ve rarely seen any group of people so determined to learn less from their mistakes.
–
If you actually managed to sit through more than a minute or two of that TV segment, you deserve a reward. So here’s a video for the song Nunki, by the band Dva, off their album NIPOMO, which I was listening to on repeat while writing this. The animation in the video was all done by children!
Posted on June 9, 2014, in a new woman to hate, a voice for men, antifeminism, Dean Esmay, doubling down, entitled babies, evil women, imaginary backwards land, imaginary oppression, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, none dare call it conspiracy, playing the victim, the c-word and tagged a voice for men, anti-feminism, antifeminism, men's rights, misogyny, MRA. Bookmark the permalink. 485 Comments.
“say that calling a man a prick or asshole (gender specific)…”
Huh, I didn’t know only men had assholes. Wait, wasn’t that other MRA arguing that women’s butts were oppressing men? How do they oppress with their butts if they don’t have anuses? This doesn’t make any sense!
Back to Anatomy 101 for this one..
Purple Poodle??
OMG
Esmay never smiled once, how broody and serious.
The biatches and ho’s should be falling at his feet.
When even Fox News hosts are incredulous, it’s time to re-evaluate your strategy. Which of course they won’t.
That crap about women consuming so many resources that the poor dudes have to slave their lives away and go to war to pay their horrible, female oppressors’ bills makes me so angry that all I can think of is Madeleine Khan’s rant in “Clue” . . . “Flames! Flames on the side of my face!”
…
This is low-hanging fruit, with the jokes just writing themselves.
That’s right. Women couldn’t own property or vote? Well, um, probably they were just plain allowed to kill men in the streets, and the law applauded! What’s that? Oh, it was often the other way around? Well, then, obviously… obviously there’s something worse than death, and it was happening to men!
…
And I’ll think of it ANY MINUTE NOW.
Also, yeah, the idiot who thinks that women–especially feminists–are shocked by being called “cunts” and “bitches” because it never happens to them is so far out in orbit that we might as well strap a tape recorder to him and call him Voyager.
“say that calling a man a prick or asshole (gender specific)…”
I think this aptly demonstrates that the MRAs are the same people who are shocked when they find out that women poop too.
I would have liked to hear the professor a bit more. They kept cutting her off when she tried to speak.
Auntie Alias: Fox News and the news on Fox affiliate stations are two different things. I don’t know about Detroit, but the Grand Rapids affiliate is pretty horrible, the one in Denver not too bad.
I’m struck by how much he talked and how little she did! He has a weird monotonic rattle-off-dubious-factoids style that’s probably less offputting on the internet than in person.
MRAs seem to have learned everything they know about women from 50’s and 60’s TV and popular culture about the idle rich.
Women have always worked. And they’ve always done it for less credit and less money than the men.
So, in Esmay’s puny little mind no women have ever put off or skipped dental care for financial reasons?
These guys have their heads so far up each other’s asses they pretty much form the human centipede.
Reblogged this on little bit cold.
MRAs just don’t realize how ridiculous they sound. They assume that they win when someone can’t find a way to respond, so all they really need to do to ‘win the argument’ is to say the most self-evidently ridiculous things, so no one can think of anything to say.
Yes… a university professor who spent a decade (give or take) earning a PHD probably earns more money than someone who writes for an internet magazine. That is not really an injustice unless Mr Esmay feels that everyone should earn the same amount of money no matter what job they do. There are people who could make a compelling argument for that, but something tells me their values don’t quite line up with the libertarian leaning folks over at AVFM.
Does Esmay have another job besides writing for AVFM that would qualify him as “working-class”? I often wonder how many MRA’s actually are of the blue collar/working class variety. They seem really out of touch with most modern blue collar issues that effect people in developed countries. My parents are blue collar workers, and I myself worked in a factory as a student. Factory jobs (of the union variety, at least) are actually quite sought after. My dad makes an awful lot of money for someone who I’m not even sure graduated high school. When my father’s employer started hiring women a few decades ago, women were lining up for jobs. It was like winning the lottery. Women were already filling lower paid, less safe positions in crummier factories at the time, anyways, because the thing about being a working class woman: you almost certainly have to work outside the home. My grandmother worked full time her entire adult life until she retired. Even my great-grandmother worked.
Maybe ol’ boy up there could get a better job if he learned how to dress himself.
Dean Esmay works in a coal mine and is a first responder in every disaster and doesn’t get a lifeboat on the cruise ship and died in every war in history and pays all the taxes.
I called the newsroom to ask for a retraction on the false statement that AVfM “has received” threats, but there is no update on the page with the video clips.
Meanwhile, one if the local papers had a “correction” from Esmay claiming the offensive and hateful material on their website is “satire”. :(
Off-topic here, but David – have you listened to the BBC radio show Late Junction. It showcases experimental music, is streamable on-line and is the only other place I’ve come across the same artists you post link to, along with lots of other stuff that seems to have a similar feel ( to my very untrained ear).
One of my friends lost a tooth after years of putting her kids’ medical, dental, educational needs ahead of her own. I’m guessing that in MRA-land, the bills for feeding, housing and educating kids count in the “women consuming” category, while the effort expended on supervising, disciplining, feeding, cleaning and literally PRODUCING those children don’t count in the “women producing” category.
Though far as I know that’s also how the gov’t counts it.
But you know, patriarchy is long dead, and it never existed, and it’s the only thing holding civilization together.
ALSO: this has driven me crazy for years, but on one hand people will ascribe the pay gap to “choices” women are taught to make early in life, to basically order their lives around the demands of motherhood lest we find ourselves infertile and unwanted at 35.
But then if we don’t do that, and either forgo motherhood or drive on with both career and kids, expecting our workplaces or governments to work with us around those challenges as if we and our kids are also important parts of human society, then we’re being unreasonable or socialist or something.
It’s like we don’t make these neutral, slightly stupid “life choices” in a vacuum, or something.
I’m mad that he brought up the racism angle but failed to mention how white men raped black women for many years without any punishment
How do I become a “professor”? Is there a separate degree I have to get to add the scare quotes around my name? Can I just profess mean things about MRAs on the internet and have that count?
JakeFromStateFarm – that bothered me as well. Ugh.
Dean Esmay probably thinks it’s a victory because he got to ramble off a bunch of “factoids” unchecked. Any positive impacts relies solely on the hopes nobody will do the research themselves.
Anyway, I’ve been leaving comments on the Facebook page here – https://www.facebook.com/pages/FOX-2-Detroit/363658042993
@ceebase Yeah – the male host and occasionally the female host talked over the professor practically every time she tried to speak, but let him go on. She was amazingly polite.
Yeah, that’s their tactic. Say seriously fucked up shit, and then smirk and say “It’s satire!” when called on it. Never mind that they couldn’t identify satire in the light of day even if it was wearing those neon coloured safety clothing – everything is just “satire”
Check out my redundant redundancy! (Seriously, what kind of social justice movement isn’t ideological?)
Also, domestic violence isn’t a gendered issue because of gender symmetry? Dude, the theory of gender symmetry doesn’t sufficiently counter the feminist thesis that DV is a form of patriarchal violence. While the gender asymmetry of DV does indicate an institutional bias against women, one could still argue that DV is a gendered phenomenon even if men are just as likely to abuse women as women are likely to abuse men. Gender symmetry alone does not prove or disprove what feminists say about the etiology of DV. Moreover, the fact that female-on-female DV is far less common than male-on-female DV also reflects men’s privilege over women. Esmay doesn’t know shit about feminist theories of DV.
Hi there! I’m a woman who has difficulty accessing healthcare and has literally no income. I have not been to the dentist in 10 years just because of financial instability in my family. That’s because of class, not gender. You undoubtedly make more money than I do since you actually have job – does that support the feminist notion that women are oppressed by men?
It’s so easy to turn MRA arguments on their respective heads.
Because clearly domestic work and childcare are totally useless and aren’t forms of production at all. Oh wait. I wonder if this dude is trying to interpret Marx in the most MRA manner possible. I hope not.
And while we’re playing oppression olympics, let’s point out the fact that many women in poverty are under an even greater threat of abuse and sexual violence due to lack of resources, the fact that many women and girls are manipulated/deceived by men and then trafficked, and the fact that even a lot of women (including lesbians and trans women) who are sex workers often have to deal with abusive male customers and, beyond all of that, an form institutionalized oppression that reduces their opportunities for legal recourse and access to basic amenities. Oh, and the fact that women haven’t been drafted as much as men because they are actively pushed out of the military through intimidation tactics (such as rape by male peers) and male supremacist narratives.
I just don’t know what happened to Dean Esmay. He used to be one of the more liberal bloggers in the days after 9/11, and in fact got in trouble with other “warbloggers” because he went on a tear about how he would not tolerate any more anti-Muslim activity. How did he happen to fall into this particular rut, I wonder. (I quit following him ages ago when I got bored with the whole warblogger thing.)
Anyway, I have several missing teeth (well, I don’t have them), because I couldn’t afford to get them fixed. I mostly blamed myself for not taking care of my teeth better. I guess I should have blamed people with PhD’s instead!
Many women have lost their teeth over the centuries to repeated pregnancies. It also cost them their bone density. That hump old women used to regularly get on their backs? That’s from their bones turning to dust, usually from pregnancies. See, when a fetus needs calcium but your diet doesn’t provide it due to malnutrition, it takes it from your body. It still happens. Having babies is hard on the teeth and bones. Dental care being unaffordable is not just a problem men face.
These guys think every tiny problem they experience is the worst problem in the world, because they’re so entitled and self centered. They minimize other people’s struggles because they only care about themselves. If they have a headache and you have a GSW, they think their headache is the bigger problem.
Essmay thinks his horrible decision to write for a hate site as a career doesn’t bring in a salary comparable to a professor with her PHD because he’s discriminated against? That’s hilarious.
He’s luck she only smiled. I’d have laughed until I fell out of my chair.
Actually, Dean should probably take up his salary issues with Mr Elam. Well Paul, why aren’t you paying your totally worth more male staff as much as a female university professor? Misanderer.
Amen.
That’s because they don’t actually care about racism. They only appropriate the suffering of minorities when it suits their agenda.
We get alot of this in the atheist community too. The Dudebro atheists like to use the suffering of women, disabled people, LGBTQ people and POC to rail against religion. Then when you point out how overwhelmingly white, male, etc atheist events and orgs are or how much blatant bigoted harassment is coming from douchebro atheists, they do not want to hear it. How dare you tarnish the name of their (self appointed) great leaders and precious movement with the truth! Then it’s, “Simma down and shut up minorities! The well off white dudes need to pat themselves on the back again. But please, buy our books and send $ to our orgs.”
They especially don’t like to be criticized for how linked MRM and atheism are right now. They don’t want to hear that fact at all. But, the cat is way out of the bag and currently shredding their curtains and pooping in their shoes. :) So, that’s good.
I find it interesting how every time there’s one of these debates, whether it’s Esmay or Straughan (yawn) or whoever… the people in the comments, whether on YouTube or elsewhere (and by people, of course, I mean MRAs here) always seem to go “Look at that feminist, look at her reaction at 2 seconds in, look at her reaction at 5 seconds in, look at how she’s smiling” – it’s always, ALWAYS, related to how the feminist (male or female) looks and acts etc. while the MRA Supreme is speaking, who of course is always praised for being “composed,” “measured,” “takes a lot of guts,” etc.
It’s the same empty argumentum ad hominem that they use ad nauseam.
Also invented fire, the wheel, and (of course) HUNTED THE MAMMOTH!
I love this quote:
So, apparently, only men have anuses? I guess that goes along with the whole “Ladies don’t poop” thing?
I watched the whole thing, and I agree with the point about why she was smiling. She was just sitting back and enjoying the show, as he dug himself deeper and deeper.
Men going to prison without being convicted, based on a civil case? He said it happened in specific cities, but how about giving us a name or two?
Also, in the twitter comments, someone said he spouted statistics, which they all ignored. I never heard any statistics from him. I heard generalized statements. Very few actual numbers.
HA! The very first comment was the same as mine. I ought to read comments before posting, but I just HAD to point that out.
Second one, too?
You know, this might just be a T-shirt quote.
@Howard Bannister
BWAHAHAHAAAA!
I always love your comments, Howard.
Maybe this was hopelessly innocent of me, but I thought everyone had an anus. Also, for the longest time I was pretty sure calling someone a prick was like saying they were like a poke from one of the spikes on a prickle-bush.
Singularly unpleasant, but really really nasty with lots of other pricks.
I was sad when I was informed otherwise.
@grumpycatisagirl
ROFL! I think you nailed it.
Only in MRAland could “asshole” be gendered. I’m guessing he doesn’t understand they come factory installed for everyone.
Oh, I didn’t know that lies actually have monetary value. Can I go on a false accusation spree and buy a polo pony?
Oh! A “women don’t produce anything” comment! That means I get to pull out my favorite sci-fi passage about that topic!
Lois McMaster-Bujold gives the best description of this problem in Ethan of Athos. (For the non-Bujold fans [ed. what are you people doing with your lives? :) ]“Athos” is a society entirely of men, where babies are generated using cultured ovarian tissue and grown in incubators. It has been many generations since it was founded, most Athosians have never encountered any women, and they are raised on stories of how aggressive and terrifying women are. Ethan, having left Athos to complete a task, is talking to a woman, Elli, and basically asserts that no society could raise an army from scratch, the costs of rearing the soldiers from babies being enough to bankrupt the society if they were then wasted in such non-productive activities as war.
I would have smirked — then I would have held up a little sign to the camera that read, “WTF???” I mean, she had the time, since everyone kept talking over her.
Also, this is a little funny if you read it in Christopher Lloyd’s voice:
“As always, these damnable women don’t even PRETEND to care, so deep is their misandry.”
It’s also a little funny since misandry isn’t a real thing.
Do these MRA people have secondaries that chime in when critics get really pissed at them? Like, their job is to remind the talking heads to claim all their unchecked and hateful talking points are satire when things get heavy. Their websites are up and open for public consumption — anyone can find out that their beliefs are in fact beliefs and not satire.
And, whoa mamma, what a seriously stupid tie.
Maybe MRAs think Barbie dolls are anatomically correct? Blow up dolls don’t have anuses either I’m guessing.
@weirwoodtreehugger who says
just in case you ever need an amusing visual — from the delightful blog ‘craftastrophe’
Oh, yeah. This is just… I have no words.
Body language assessment?
Male host — interested, but not terribly, couldn’t tell if it was real interest or the kind he fakes daily because that’s his job
Female host — spent the first half as far away from Esmay as she could get while staying in her chair, tried asking if some of these issues weren’t because of men’s choices (e.g. sure more men are in jail, but do they commit more crimes), got shot down, seemed to relax thereafter? Like, idk, “well I might as well not bother so I’m just going to enjoy the show”?
Esmay — LOVE the “let me tell you what!” body shake at the beginning, and the eye rolls when he *gasp* isn’t talking
The professor — lots, and lots, of facial expressions that read as “he’s wrong but I’ll hold my tongue to say why”, but she never got to (also seems to be trying to sit as far from him as possible, though this might be because he’s stealing her arm rest)
Literally the only point anyone but Eskay got to make was when the Prof commented “but that’s racism”. Really love the claim that any hints of violence get you booted from AVfM though, Esmay took full advantage of the fact no one would have time to fact check his shit.
And yeah, how do you screw up tying a tie that badly? He’s more than tall enough that it shouldn’t be hard to get it to fall somewhere between the back tail showing and “dude, it’s supposed to end before your pants”.
@Arete – Oh, Bujold! I simply adore her works, all of them! The entire Vokosigan saga is brilliant. I have a special place in my heart for the infamous couch confrontation scene in “A Civil Campaign.”
Oh, have you read “The Curse of Chalion?”
Ethan of Athos was really interesting in how it used a completely misogynist society to teach feminist messages. The whole book was quite fascinating, but that particular scene – yeah. If it’s a man doing the work, it’s valuable.
Interesting to have an MRA come on here and be so instantly completely clueless.
First: get your PhD. Then work your way up the promotion ladder in your department, until you get to Professor. Which is a very senior position and one that commands respect.
So fuck off with the notion that you can just say crap on the internet and get the title. We all know you’ll never get there.
And Dean got the privilege of using the middle arm on the chairs between them.
“Only in MRAland could “asshole” be gendered. I’m guessing he doesn’t understand they come factory installed for everyone.”
Random — not quite everyone, a very small, unfortunate, set of babies need the anal opening repaired/created. Because if a congenital defect could theoretically occur, it probably does, thank you genetics! (Last sentence is sarcasm)
I’m enjoying this new “feminism is a multi-billion dollar hate industry” line. I like how they just keep trotting it out without feeling the slightest need to explain where these billions of dollars are coming from, what they are being spent on and who exactly is profiting from them.
Pallygirl — look at the angle of the chair backs and the hosts’ chairs, that’s not a shared armrest, he’s using hers and his.
By “mean things” the troll meant true things.
Didn’t the Human Centipede have women in it? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?
@Argenti Aertheri – Ooooh, that is just awful! I’m so glad that we live in a time when such operations are possible, and in a culture where they are available. It’s things like this that really push up the infant mortality rate when good medical care isn’t available. We still have a long way to go with medicine, but I am so grateful for what we have.
Being able to poop and fart – I shall add that to the list of amazing things my body can do, that I should appreciate whenever I feel down about it.
… Maybe my sarcasm-dar is off, today.
I totally thought jayemgriffin was posting facetiously and in good faith, with a whole ‘this is what MRA’s probably think because it’s really, really silly’
My troll-dar might need recalibrating, too.
Actually, contrapangloss, you may be right. My troll-dar might need an oiling too.
It could be a Poe.
What is a Poe, please?
Basically, Poe’s Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law
Sometimes people are accused of trolling, when they’re actually being sarcastic and therefore being a Poe.
“Without a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.”
I love when people attribute the wage gap to choices. They are wrong, of course — women are paid less than men of the same race* for the exact same work, but some of the gap can be attributed to what jobs men do vs. what jobs women do and how those jobs are compensated. I just think it’s hilarious that these guys never bother to examine why women choose careers that do not pay as well. Could it have something to do with the fact that as soon as women start doing a certain job in high numbers, that job becomes devalued? Maybe chilly work environments for women entering male-dominated fields plays a role? How about the expectation that women should handle the majority of the unpaid work for the household? Nope! Women hate money. That’s the best explanation.
*Specifying because white women are better paid than men of colour
I know. I am so sorry I forgot to mention the tiny number of babies with this condition.
Yeah, I thought it was a joke about a “professor” vs a professor, too, but I’m sleepy today so idk.
I’m reminded of that guy David wrote (Christopher in Oregon, is it?) about some time ago who thought he was being highly instructive in informing people that women poop.
I read jayemgriffin’s comment as a facetious thing, for what it’s worth. A good reminder to use /s at the end of a sarcastic comment!
Seemed to be a clear lampoon of AVFM’s bizarre attitude to professorships. I actually find it quite hard to read it any other way.
That’s why my wife got out of midwifery and retrained in a less obviously gendered medical field where there was a shortage of skilled staff. NOW she’s earning impressively big bucks (about three to four times as much as I’m bringing in), but she certainly wasn’t for much of her career.
@Viscaria
To add to your list a personal gripe: also that certain high-prestige jobs have policies or cultural expectations that are just more hostile to the realities of being female than they are to those of being male. I’m in academia, and I have encountered, on the whole, more support and encouragement as a female scientist than hostility (I am aware of how lucky this makes me). However, it is still expected that if you are “serious” you will prioritize work over family at least until you are well into your tenure-track job, if not until you actually achieve tenure. This means that taking ANY time off, showing ANY indication at work that you have a family life (such as, you know, needing a few weeks to recover from giving birth and adjust to having a helpless screaming larval human depending on you), regardless of how productive you are, or how little it actually affects your output, indicates a lack of seriousness–you should have waited until you were at a more advanced stage of your career, or figured out a way to work through it (rather easier to manage if the child didn’t come out of your body, and does not continue to depend on your body as a food source). Since that stage is usually achieved when a person is late 30s to mid 40s, this poses a pretty substantial problem for anyone who doesn’t want to forgo/avoid child rearing*, but doesn’t have a female partner to do all of the difficult physical labor involved in making a baby. Pretty much, if you were a “serious” scientist and you wanted a family, you shoulda thought of that ahead of time and been a man.
*BTW, I’m not suggesting that having kids should be the default assumption for women, just that it is a legitimate thing to want, and that just as I completely support those who choose not to parent, I think we ought to actually support people who DO want to, rather than insisting that everyone has to, but hey, you gotta do it alone, we aren’t helping you in any way, it was your CHOICE to have a baby, you deal with it. And stay at home, no babies in restaurants or on an airplanes or in malls or anywhere, ever.
BTW, Hivemind, I’m still waiting for my cut. Mama needs a new pair of frivolous, unnecessary shoes to misander with.
We should send him a pic of my horrendously misaligned teeth, which I have never been able to afford braces for. Also, thanks for the reminder Dean, I need to sign up for what passes for dental insurance at my workplace.
I don’t get why people keep buying this. Or why AVfM keeps claiming it. Are they saying they’re really feminists, and AVfM is their Onion-like take on what MRAs sound like?
They might have some leeway if they were claiming it was hyperbole or that they were being delibarately over the top to make a point, but satire? Nope, not if they really believe it.
Or how they continue to exploit the gap in policing coverage to rape Native American women (tribal police don’t have jurisdiction once the perps leave the reservation, at which point the case gets kicked up to the FBI. You can imagine how urgently the Feds pursue these cases, I’m sure).
This is actually the factoid that made me go from “pro choice because liberal” to adamant, arguing-with-picketers, abortion-loving pro-choice. The state has ZERO RIGHT to force someone to endure ANY condition that can cause such damage and trauma to the body.
Of course they do. You know how much straight dudes love the idea of anal.
Pallygirl, I think they were riffing on the comment upthread about how “professor” must be a different title than professor (no quotes).
This is one of many ways that dudes feel entitled to take up space, especially around women.