Not that long ago, an 18-year-old student named Carly, appalled by the rampant misogyny on display at A Voice for Men, sent a critical but thoughtful email to a number of the men associated with the site challenging them to rise above their hatred of women.
AVFM “Managing Editor” Dean Esmay decided to take her email as an opportunity to reach out to all the Carlys out there in the world in an attempt to win them over to AVFM’s peculiar brand of “human rights activism,” penning what he called an
open letter … not just to you, but to any young woman who has an open mind and is willing to be challenged on her prejudices.
Naturally, given that Men’s Rights Activists are some of the most verbose douchebags in history, it was long as hell — some 3000 words. But Esmay’s diplomatically worded attempt at outreach didn’t go quite as well as he might have hoped. Carly responded with a note saying that his open letter had merely
reinforced everything I believe. It seems we are at a stalemate, you will never agree with me, and I will never agree with you.
So where might poor Dean Esmay might have gone wrong in his attempt to win Carly’s heart and mind?
Let’s start here, with 5 Arguments Least Likely To Convince A Young Woman That A Voice for Men Isn’t a Woman-Hating Piece of Shit Hate Site, in the form of direct quotes from The Esmay himself. Since Esmay is so long-winded, I’ve highlighted some of my favorite bits in bold.
1)“[Y]ou’re 18, and so, not to put too fine a point on it, you are still a young skull full of mush.”
2) “[M]en have few to no voices speaking about issues that are specific to men, or defending men as a group, in this society. Until very recently in history men never have had such a voice. Because pretty much all civilizations for the last few thousand years have prioritized the needs and desires of women over those of men. For hundreds, even thousands, of years.
3)“If you believe men have silenced women for thousands of years … you believe something that just not true. … Furthermore, if you believe that, what you have to believe is that Asian men have been oppressing Asian women for thousands of years, black men have been oppressing black women for thousands of years, European men, Australasian men, and so on, have all been oppressing their women for thousands of years. And those weak women could do nothing about it. So what you believe here isn’t just wrong, it’s racist.”
4) “For most of history, being female was a privilege. It carried certain special rights that only applied to women, and special responsibilities that only applied to women, and through most of history, being male was a burden, a burden which carried certain rights that only applied to men, and those rights were there mostly so they could discharge their duties to women properly.”
5) “[Y]ou may occasionally see angry remarks or articles on this site. What I would hope you would do with that, when you do see it, is contemplate that there is a difference between righteous anger at real injustice, and what you seem to have misinterpreted as hate.”
The funniest thing about Esmay’s “open letter” is that this bizarre crackpottery, easily seen through by anyone with any knowledge of history or sociology or, hell, the real world, is his attempt to sound as reasonable as possible. He’s reined in the wild conspiratorial ranting he often indulges in when arguing with ideological foes; he’s avoided the misogynistic slurs (cunt, bitch, whore) favored by other AVFMers like Paul Elam and Diana Davison. And this is the best he can manage.
The Men’s “Human Rights” Movement isn’t ready for its close-up. And I suspect that it never will be.
EDITED TO ADD: A commenter has pointed out another quote I should have included as well. So here is BONUS EXTRA LEAST CONVINCING DEAN ESMAY ARGUMENT NUMBER SIX:
6) “The truth is, the most privileged class of people in the whole wide world are young women living in places like the US, UK, Canada, etc.–and if you want to be treated like an equal, you should not flinch or cry like a little girl if someone tells you that.“
How dare you accuse us of sexism, you spoiled little girl!
I had issues with Paul has “brainwashed” Dean argument and it had nothing with who posted it.
I had assumed it was just a poor turn-of-phase in the first post and had more reservations over the idea that she could have “turned” Dean by debating him. However, in her second post Felisha is arguing Elam has “brainwashed” Dean in the last year, to the point that she’s claims to have seen Dean undergo a discernible shift in his personality, capacity for individual thinking and/or ability to reason.
When I and others argue against her use of the word brainwashing, she sticks with her amateur psych evaluation. I don’t mean to harp on this, but I think this is a silly and unsubstantiated claim. First, I don’t think you can get a full sense of a person from some Youtube and Twitter exchanges. Secondly, Dean has a long history of championing crank causes and I’d argue the MRA is just the latest.
If we’re playing armchair psychologist, perhaps AVFM gives him sense of community and purpose, and keeping in Elam’s good graces is the price of admittance. The only thing I’m pretty positive about Dean is that he likes to masquerade as an “expert” of some importance and a fringe “movement” is the best, in fact the only, place a doofus like Dean can pull that off.
As side note, brainwashing is a controversial idea that’s has a complicated and sometimes ugly history, from questionable legal activities of deprogrammers/kidnappers in the 1970-80s to horrific CIA-sponsored psychiatric experiments documented in the book The Sleep Room. I’ve seen some experts say anyone can be brainwashed and others say no one can be truly brainwashed. Like “cult”, it’s a word I don’t take lightly. I didn’t bring this up before, but thought I’d throw that out there.
The thing about a lot of those old texts is that they’re foundational in the sense that if you haven’t read them, you won’t be able to understand the other texts that were written later that take ideas outlined in the earlier texts as their foundation.
It frustrates me when people refuse to read books because they think there might be some problematic elements. If it’s Mein Kampf then OK, sure, but when it’s Dworkin you have to filter her stuff through when those books were written and the perspective she was coming from. There’s tons of useful ideas in there that influenced tons of other feminists, seems silly to just write her books off because there are some things in there that you’re not going to agree with.
I’m going to drop the … other topic. But if anyone is looking for ebook versions of radfem texts, check out http://radfem.org/
Obviously as you’ll see some of the authors there are famously transmisogynistic, and/or problematic in all sorts of other ways, but it’s a very handy resource.
Also, one should avoid trans women TERFs like the plague. People here might look at me funny for saying this, but I am more afraid of trans women TERFs than MRAs. For trans women like me, the things they say are extremely triggering because they know how to get under trans women’s skin and exploit their insecurities. I remember this one trans woman TERF on Tumblr who was talking about how all trans women are in denial about “how manly they are.” It really hurts to hear that from someone who is supposed to understand and respect my experiences.
Cis people generally don’t have the same experience with trans women TERFs, but they still should be avoided by cis people because trans women TERFs have an extremely flawed radical feminist theoretical base. Just like that of cis TERFs, it is racist, classist, colonialist, and misogynistic. I’d be happy to elaborate on why I consider those labels accurate in case anyone is curious.
Thanks for the link, David! I just downloaded a PDF version of Intercourse from that website.
I’m glad those books are being put online, since some of them are out of print now.
(Used book stores are a good source if you want a hard copy, though, especially in college towns.)
@Brooked, I’m with you on the “bloody hell, not armchair psychology again!” bit re brainwashing, hence why I left the post I did.
Setting aside the technical definition, it’s also tautological: Dean’s brainwashed because he’s heavily in AVfM. Dean’s heavily in AVfM because he’s brainwashed.
/sigh
@cassandrakitty
I know you live in the Bay Area, but in downtown Santa Cruz (Pacific St.) there’s a bookshop called Logos Bookstore, and it sells all sorts of used books. It has a nice selection of books on radical feminist theory and leftist politics. If you’re ever interested in used radfem theory books then you might want to consider checking out Logos.
I actually own most of the basics already (oh noes, secret radfem!). Berkeley is another great source for those kinds of books, especially the stores on Solano.
@ Brooked and Kiwi Girl
Yeah, I’m honestly confused as to why David isn’t seeing the fact that people aren’t just objecting to Felisha and therefore picking on her for some random inexplicable reason, they’re actually objecting to stuff that she’s saying. And every time she comments, she seems to say some new thing that annoys a lot of people. I don’t think she’s intending to troll, but that doesn’t make it any less irritating.
I certainly wouldn’t. I can’t quite articulate it but it makes perfect sense to me. I guess it’s like MRAs are fuckwits who know jack shit about trans issues, but trans women TERFS have been there. They’re much closer to home.
Another thought about Dworkin – I first read most of those books in my first year of uni, so I was 19. Even at the time I ended up sort of filtering out the bits that just didn’t speak to me, and recognized that the reason those bits didn’t speak to me was because my life experience had been so different from hers. The really radicalizing part of that, though, was realizing that the fact that those bits didn’t reflect my experience didn’t mean that they weren’t true, it just meant that I was lucky. Integrating that realization into my understanding of how the world works, and particularly how misogyny works, was both really hard and really important.
The hardest part about reading those books is realizing that some of the stuff that she’s saying that you really, really don’t want to be true actually is true, at least for some women and some men, and the fact that those things haven’t been true for you is pure dumb luck.
If only AVfMers could be brain bleached instead of brainwashed. They need massive doses of kitties and corgis and mice and fish and parrots and … well, all the Furrinati.
I hope all these links get through! Be a pity if the Great Furred/Feathered/Scaled Ones’ representatives went into moderation. They would not be pleased.
One recommendation for mindfully reading radfem texts: bear in mind the assumptions about sex and gender. In particular, TERFs hold the idea that trans women have male privilege. But the reality is that, by virtue of our identification as non-male, we do not occupy the same structural position as men. We lack the patriarchal male subjectivity that men directly benefit from.
Another assumption is that one’s position within a system is insignificant compared to the privilege resulting from perception. AMAB trans women generally are perceived as men at some point in their lives, but even when they are in the closet they are not treated exactly like cis men. I have been sexually abused and mocked for not being like a typical cis man. People thought I was male yet realized that there was something about me that made me different. And I was different, because I lacked the subjectivity that cis men being socialized as men have. One might say that the abuse I received is a result of mere gender non-conformity but it really isn’t the same. Not only is my identity erased constantly via the presumption of maleness, but even the presumption of maleness is shaky at best and fails to protect me from transmisogyny.
I still am keenly aware of any masculinity I express – not because I like being masculine, but because maintaining a masculine persona is how I protect myself from transmisogyny. I litter my speech with masculine expressions and titles intentionally so that no one sees me as “too feminine”.
Sorry for these walls of text – I am at once thinking out loud and talking about some trans issues that most cis people are completely ignorant about.
Yeah, I mean seeing MRA bigotry is certainly upsetting, but seeing trans woman TERF bigotry is almost a form of torture.
@Ally S
You said a whole lot of cool shit in this thread. People tend to not see the variety and diversity that exists within minorities, and this is especially true with trans women and men. There’s cool trans feminists and then there’s Valerie Keefe. That’s how humanity works.
I’m disappointed when people turn all of Rad Fem into a monolithic “Rad Scum” threat, and toss the whole thing in the garbage. It unfairly demonizes all radical feminists and leaves other groups transphobia and ignorance unchallenged.
The gay community has a real checkered past with trans issues and it was pretty bad until recently, with HRC and Dan Savage being only tips of a very big iceberg. I bring this up in part because just read a thread on r/men’srights, of all places, where they were shocked and/or disappointed to learn that many gay men are transphobic and feminists/women are not the sole villains.
Through out within LBGT community, there are assholes who treat their own, and themselves, like crap. That’s how humanity works as well, unfortunately. Personally, whenever I get a sense a person is trying to shame others, I immediately jettison them. Shame is something to be defeated.
*Sorry about how rambling this post is.
Ah, Valerie Keefe. The white trans woman who says that indigenous people aren’t people of color, has a history of outing trans women of color to their former abusers over the internet, and asserts that transmisogyny is really just a form of misandry. Yep, she’s terrible.
Also, the almost gleeful way certain social justice factions have leapt on the opportunity to frame a group of women/feminists as bad guys makes me uncomfortable.
Seconded.
By the way, I would like to point out that I keep talking about being TERFs being transmisogynistic because they tend to direct their hatred towards trans women rather than trans men. Of course, most TERFs also have shitty attitudes towards trans men, but because of TERFs’ emphasis on “female socialization” they actually tend to be supportive of trans men, assuming that they are just confused butch lesbians. Another reason is that I believe all transphobia is rooted in transmisogyny (just as all sexism is rooted in misogyny), but I digress.
Yeah, there are a lot of trans women TERFs on Tumblr. The worst I’ve run into is snwflkspcl. I devoweled her name because I don’t want Man Boobz possibly turning up in search engine results, but you’ll know who she is if you see her.
Ally, thanks for the info you’ve posted here. It answered some things I’d wondered about/been completely ignorant about, particularly about the considerable limitations of male privilege for trans women.
Technically, an AMAB (assigned male at birth) trans woman who is able to pass as male may be less likely to be a victim of misogynistic violence, but this is not the same as male privilege because she doesn’t identify as a man. And a person who doesn’t identify as a man is unable to internalize the same subjectivity that the patriarchy imposes on men, thus AMAB trans women, however well they can pass as male, never experience anything as male privilege. I hope that makes sense.
I never heard about this gay, Dean, before and I don’t really care, but I would dare to get involved in the discussion to say that he definitely doesn’t deserve the fight around his name. I really enjoyed reading David. I enjoy his humor. I really don’t care if Dean is a good or bad guy deep down inside, is he brainwashed or is he a poor little puppy. I can say for sure he doesn’t have sense of humor and it is a horrible sin from my point of view and he has no idea about simple logic on the top of lack of humor. It is a double screw up. The proof is in Dean’s writing:
“If you believe men have silenced women for thousands of years … you believe something that just not true. … Furthermore, if you believe that, what you have to believe is that Asian men have been oppressing Asian women for thousands of years, black men have been oppressing black women for thousands of years, European men, Australasian men, and so on, have all been oppressing their women for thousands of years. And those weak women could do nothing about it. So what you believe here isn’t just wrong, it’s racist.”
Racist believes that certain race is better than another. The sample of thoughts he exposed actually treat all races and ethnical groups equally. Are you saying here that Dean is intelligent? This example of the thought process makes me doubt he even can graduate from high school. This thought process is probably ok for a 5-years old, but for the guy on the photo… it shows retardation.
I’ll attempt to partly illustrate what I’m talking about:
Imagine there was child named Eric by their parents. Due to the maleness of Eric’s name and Eric’s appearance, people regularly refer to Eric as a (cis) boy. But subconsciously, Eric wishes she were called Erica instead and she could “become a girl” someday. She firmly identifies as a girl and so is trans.
No one has ever thought that Erica is somehow not a boy, so one may expect that Erica is granted some form of male privilege as a result of her being raised as a boy. Yet among all of her male peers, she is unique in that she likes wearing dresses and “pretending to be a girl.” As a child perceived as Eric, she faces bigotry in that her habit of doing feminine things is shameful for a “boy” to like.
Suppose also that Erica has a male-identified friend named Tom. Tom also dresses as a girl on occasion and pretends to be a girl, but he thinks of himself as a boy unlike Erica. Like Erica, he is bullied for being feminine.
At first, this seems like a situation in which both children are bullied for the same reason: gender non-conformity. While that may be the object of hatred that both Erica’s bullies and Tom’s bullies share, Erica doesn’t experience the bullying in the same ways Tom does.
From her perspective as a child who identifies as a girl, to be bullied for being feminine implies that it is wrong and shameful to want to be a girl. She experiences the hatred as misogyny because she identifies as a girl. Tom, by contrast, lacks the subjectivity that Erica has. When he is bullied for being feminine, he instead sees the bullying as a result of him “acting like a girl” even though he’s a boy.
The difference is subtle occasionally (such as in this example) but it’s extremely important. Even with all other things equal, the trait Erica has that Tom doesn’t have is her subjectivity as a little girl, and so they are not hurt by the bullying equally. I am again very high today so I apologize if nothing I said makes sense.
Another reason trans women do not experience male privilege is that very often they are, even while passing as male, seen as non-male in a way. For example, I am almost always recognized as a guy, yet I don’t experience sexual harassment and abuse as a man because I have a female subjectivity. I perceive sexual harassment and abuse as a personal attack on me as a woman, so I am hurt in distinct, more severe ways. Yet it isn’t just my subjectivity that makes me not a recipient of male privilege. I am also perceived as a “man” who is very different from other men. Despite being gendered as male there is something about me that makes the masculine gendering seem off-the-mark and inaccurate. My existence subverts expectations regarding identity because I am seen as someone whose assigned identity as a man is unstable and indicative of me literally wanting to “be a woman.”