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!
LOL child. LOL.
Your delusions of feminist grandeur are amusing. Dance, monkey.
Finally, we’ve found a “feminist” equivalent to those MRAs who come here to “debate” and then run back to their buddies for high-fives!
Is it comfortable up on that soapbox, child? Would you like a loudhailer for shouting at all the feminists doin’ it rong according to the Holy Book of St Felisha?
So troll accuses people of not being activist enough when they object to slurs, then claims hir activism which seems to revolve entirely around junior high school levels of backstabbing/gossiping nonsense with MRAs is somehow better?
So insults, and then claims of activism which apparently include debating with Esmay online and insinuating that no-one here does anything but complain.
I may be completely off base, but perhaps the reaction you’ve received is directly related to the manner in which you have posted here, consistently, since… well, you started posting here. Just perhaps. Might be worth a think.
My thoughts on Esmay, FWIW, are that he’s an intelligent guy who believes some really abhorrent shit. No brainwashing required. There’s no talking or reasoning him out of it, because in all likelihood he reasoned himself into those beliefs because they jived with what he already thought. Because he is an abhorrent poopy-head who spews forth verbal shitnados of poopagery.
tl;dr You’re being rude, and Esmay really believes what he believes. One of these things might change, if one of the people involved decided to change them. Hint.
She seems to have exactly the same definition of activism that MRAs do. It’s a match made in…well, not heaven. A sad and rather pathetic corner of the internet.
Maybe Felisha should go and weep into her beer with Wooly Bumblebee about how nasty and cruel their respective movements are and nobody appreciates them.
Also either an attempt at doxxing or a person who’s too stupid to understand how easy it would be to identify people if they told you exactly what real-world activist projects they’d been involved with.
Curious.
I thought feminists tried to talk to people to share their points of view and spread a good, valuable message. I didn’t think we engaged in ideological manipulation solely to lessen the numbers of perceived “opponents”. I thought you kept people from joining a hate group because joining a hate group is a terrible thing, and could seriously impact their lives, not to win cheap points in some debate about who has how many internet activists.
Curiouser.
I thought you tried to sway people to your way of thinking because it’s worthwhile and good, not to lessen their control of their own life and turn other people into drones who do your bidding. I thought peace and happiness were sought because they’re worthwhile, not because one can’t let other people have their version.
Is it comfortable up there on your morally superior mountain made of mole hills?
What kind of care free, happy, sedate and docile life do you lead that you can repeatedly come back and make the same point about mere words, when the easiest thing by far is to merely move on and say “All right, so this crowd doesn’t want that kind of communication – so anyway, how about them current sports team?”
But Kitteh, she was harsh with Wooly Bunblebee. They’re not BFF anymore.
DEan has always struck me as an odd bird at AVFM, because at various times I’ve noticed that he’s backed off from or clearly felt discomfort with some of the obvious bullshit and lying of PE and JTO. There did seem to be some sort of conscience working away in there, although he was obviously beating it down. I can see how someone might think — at least for a fleeting moment — that he was the one person at AVFM who could somehow be reached by logic or an appeal to decency.
I don’t think he ever really was — for one thing, he would sound all reasonable at one moment, and then become a sputtering ideologue the next. On a few occasions I’ve actually emailed questions to AVFM about this or that controversy just to see if they would answer them; Paul would send along some internet tough guy non-response, but Dean would actually respond and try to act reasonable. But them the next day he’d launch into some bizarre conspiratorial rant against me.
And obviously he’s had some crankish beliefs, and has engaged in some assholish behavior, for a long time.
At this point he really does seem to have fully embraced the AVFM ideology, though.
So you get to define whether other people are allowed to find your jokes and uses of slurs offensive or not? Hmm, who’ve I heard making that claim before …
You really are stupid and egotistical, aren’t you? Just like cassandra said. I’ll also repeat: you’re a troll.
When someone has tried on every wacky movement for size over the course of many years it seems pretty unlikely that they’d suddenly transform into a reasonable non-crank in middle age.
I love how she called the three of us kids, when our combined age puts us somewhere around Granny Weatherwax.
This one makes me feel more like Susan (ie. if she keeps indulging her inner child I’m going to be forced to be the inner babysitter).
That made me laugh too, hellkell.
I love the way you’re apparently only allowed to read this site if you’re a Felisha-Approved Feminist™.
I’ll go for Vetinari’s line – “Don’t let me detain you.”
Woah, I didn’t refresh the browser before writing my comment and missed the last hour or so of comments.
I’m sorry, but I don’t understand all this hostility towards Felicia. I understand that some of you carry over some ill-feeling from older threads, but, seriously, this is a different thread, a different topic, and nothing she said in this thread warrented the hostile and distrustful response she got to some perfectly reasonable comments about Dean (that actually match pretty well with my own experience with him).
So you got her pissed and she called some of you “childish.” So you’re going to get on her case about that? And start making stuff up about her?
Serously, step back for a minute. This whole thing started because she made a joke using the word “pussy.” It wasn’t directed at anyone, It wasn’t part a joke intended to attack women. It was dumb wordplay.
Yes, ideally when people suggested she not use that language here she should have said, ok, and moved on.
But now I’m asking you all to move on.
I mean, seriously. There are actual misogynists out there saying and doing all sorts of horrible shit. I’m not sure what exactly this sort of discussion is supposed to accomplish.
David, if she hadn’t doubled down on that original simple request and written walls of text ranting about us in the original thread then none of this would have happened. I’m perfectly happy not to interact with her, but don’t put it all on us.
There was another thread where she seemed to be very determined to uphold the right of people to continue using offensive terms, too. This is actually round 3, iirc.
In any case, I’m quite happy not to interact any further.
I feel so confused and behind everyone. *weep*
Um, if a topic change is in order… uh, I might be able to get a good pair of forearm crutches cheap? :D? Is good news, yes?
That is good news, LBT! Those things can’t be cheap ordinarily.
Kitteh, I agree she should have let it go in the original thread, and I think I posted comments to that effect there.
I actually put something in the comments policy warning about this sort of thing, inspired by that thread and by that other dude who liked using the “tw” word.
In the future, if someone starts arguing back we can point them to that and if they keep going they’ll go on moderation or get banned. But if they move on, I think the rest of us should move on as well.
Thanks, David, that’s a great short-cut. 🙂
You’d be astounded how much crutches cost. There’s some really nice ergonomic ones I saw, they look incredibly comfortable, but they’re something like $112 plus shipping. *sigh* It doesn’t really matter anyway, I suppose. I live on a third-floor walkup, and no matter what crutches you are, stairs are a beast and a half to traverse.