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!
It’s to do with cramming too many seats in to maximize profits, isn’t it?
@cassandrakitty I find that when I fly regular coach seats, my knees are literally touching the seat in front of me. And I’m really not all that tall. My father, who is 6’5″, has to get an aisle seat and put one leg out in the aisle and kind of twist his other leg around, or else the person in front of him would have some series knee-in-back issues. Luckily for my father, he is rather thin so he has some maneuverability.
But practically, he always tries to get an exit row seat (the airline people can usually accommodate this request since he is so very tall) or a “economy plus” seat. Or first class.
Me, I’m fat as well, and don’t fly very often, so I buy first class.
cassandra: that’s exactly what’s going on.
(1) I don’t think Esmay was really trying to convert anyone; he was mainly trying to recruit already aggrieved men to join (and hopefully contribute to) the Cause. That being the case, projecting a persona of being rude, arrogant, and hostile to women was probably a tactical decision. Dressing in a way that would turn off most women (e.g., the Tie) could be part of that. If he performed well, and the contributions pour in, then his boss might be willing to pay to get his tooth fixed.
(2) I think a lot of male habits like spreading out are in part the result of social conditioning — in my generation, at least, young boys were terrorized with the admonition to “not do [whatever] like a girl”, the implication being that behaving like a girl in any way was the absolute worst thing you could possibly be. (The most prominent, and most destructive of these is the prohibition against having, let alone expressing, real emotions. I am convinced that one of the bases of male hostility to women is jealousy that THEY get to have feelings — but of course no man could ever admit that.) Society has always been pretty ruthless about forcing people into their assigned sex roles and trying to make them feel seriously defective if they can’t or won’t conform. I would guess for some men (including Esmay) the spreading out behavior is deliberately aggressive, for others is is simply the inability to perceive the problem it causes for others (or care about it), and for others it’s just conditioned behavior, pretending to be masculine as one was taught.
(3) Somebody mentioned George Will’s column but people should actually read it; it is really one of the most amazing piles of steaming dog feces that has ever been published by a theoretically respectable pundit. Here’s a link:
http://nypost.com/2014/06/07/colleges-mad-with-political-correctness-over-campus-rapes/
GW claims that “victimhood [is] a coveted status that confers privileges” and by inference a woman who is raped should be thanking the rapist for making her eligible for this status. He also doesn’t seem to understand that there are instances of sexual misbehavior that may not deserve a 20-year prison sentence but still merit some fairly significant disciplinary response by a college administration. There are some thorny issues here — for example, almost everyone agrees that having sex with a woman too drunk to understand what is happening is rape, and most people would agree that at some point before stupor a woman becomes incapable of truly consenting, but it is fairly difficult to specify where the line should be drawn — but just because a problem is thorny doesn’t mean you don’t have to face up to it. Sexual situations are often very complex because people are complex; men, being rule-oriented, want rape to be defined with a bright-red boundary which they are allowed to go right up to the edge of as long as they don’t cross over, whereas women, being in general more sensitive to interpersonal relations, tend to feel that the issue is the need to respect a person’s right to control their own body and not to have their wishes violated, and therefore one needs to try to be sensitive to what the other person WANTS (which admittedly may not always be easy to determine). I think everyone will agree that it is better to prevent sexual misconduct than to punish it after it has happened. The question is how to get across to young men, against much more social pressure that I think most women imagine, that one does not prove one’s manhood by pressuring a woman into having sex with you when she doesn’t really want to or is not clearly capable of consenting — that doing so, in fact, proves the opposite of manhood. This will not be easy. Woman are painfully aware of the virgin/whore dichotomy, but perhaps not so aware of the stud/hopeless wuss dichotomy that is inflicted on young men. Elliot Rodger and the PUAHaters are merely the most extreme examples of the damage caused by social pressures on young men to prove their masculinity repeatedly on a daily basis, in myriad ways including sex. For the last 50 or so years, women have been going through the difficult and often painful but ultimately rewarding process of redefining what it means to be a woman. Men desperately need to go through the same sort of process — I wish I knew how to make it happen.
Uh oh
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140610/OPINION01/306100008/0/OPINION01/-Men-s-rights-misrepresented
I’m 6’4.
Usually I just slouch down into the seat and put my knees up around the headrest of the seat in front of me. One of the only good things about Marfan syndrome is that I have hyper flexible joints, so I can contort myself for long periods of time without discomfort.
I propose an alliance between the Tall People and the Short People. Let us unite against our common enemy; The Average Sized People!
@Kitteh
My thinking is that you’re contributing to the amount of shit in the world, then you’re an asshole. Unfortunately, my thinking on what defines a creep has no easy joke to make.
@katz
I don’t get it… I have to admit, I haven’t seen Maleficent yet, but I don’t understand why atheists would be offended by it? Does she become a baby-eater after becoming an atheist or something? Maybe I should watch it?
@Emilygoddess
It seems odd, doesn’t it? For a human rights organisation to post hateful rants on one of their primary sites. Even if it was good satire (for the sake of argument, I’m accepting that it actually was satire at all), it’s a massive PR failure, and surely they should realise that? When you consider that they spend so much time obsessing over the few occasions when feminists have written fiction with “misandrist” comments in them, or when college students make over the top statements in news interviews, surely they understand that spouting violent rhetoric, even as satire, just makes you look bad. If it was so important that he get his “satire” out there, he really should’ve used a different venue – somewhere that isn’t essentially MRA HQ. It’s much easier to pass it off as not representative of your actual ideals when it’s not sandwiched between the things that actually are representative of your actual ideals.
@cassandrakitty
We don’t. We just don’t. You don’t manage and you don’t manage and you don’t manage until the discomfort goes through into pain and then dissolves into the background. And then, at the end of the journey, you try to stand up, and then you know pain.
I usually manage better when there’s some room underneath the seat, so I can tuck my legs under there and cross at the ankle, but the knees? The knees are never safe. Never.
I’m 5’5 with a long torso and short flexible legs and there isn’t enough leg room on planes. I always feel sorry for tall people. I like having the window seat though and am always willing to take it and let long legged people stretch into the aisle.
Nice to see they will print letters to the editor from out of towers, but not from locals (or even make corrections to factual errors unless Dean Esmay tells them to.)
I’d be curious to see how many of those things attributed to “MRAs” in that letter are actually attributable to MRAs. Maybe they’re telling the truth and they have managed to do some good, but I can’t help but suspect that the “MRAs” who got those things done were not associated with the MRM in any way, but were merely activists who promote men’s issues. This, for the record, is why I fucking hate the label they’ve given themselves. Anything positive that happens because someone addresses problems that men face? Well, how could that possible have been anything but the work of a men’s rights activist? It couldn’t, could it! Therefore that person was an MRA! Ugh. Hopefully the people who were actually involved in those things, weren’t MRAs and will sue for libel. I know I would, if they tried to claim that I was an MRA.
I don’t fly because of some really bad experiences I had – an emergency landing due to lack of cabin pressure is always loads of fun, and so is going into anaphylactic shock from the oil on the recirculated air because they actually served peanuts. Both happened during the same connecting flight! Haven’t flown since.
But when taking buses or trains, I can’t imagine how average sized people manage. I’m somewhere around 4’10” or 4’11”, with a 27″ inseam, I often buy clothes at kids’ stores, and I find I have just the right amount of room on most buses and trains. Make of that what you will.
And WWTH, I’m seriously torn on the Emmys it’s not even funny. Peter Dinklage and Aaron Paul both did amazing work on amazing shows. It’s a coin toss. As for who wins for the best show, I’m pulling for Breaking Bad, partly because they raised the bar for tv for me forever, and mostly because it’s their last chance to win, whereas GoT will have plenty more! And I cannot wait for the finale! I’ve been waiting to see this bit for a loooong time! I’m almost as anxious as I was for the Purple Wedding!
Re: The soap
It was terribly irresponsible of me, but I was flying high on my pain pills, and found out that my sister used up all her soap, so I just HAD to buy more, because SOAP! It’s lovely stuff, really, made with beeswax. I bought four pounds of the stuff to share with my family.
But now I can’t buy a Flying Rhinos T-shirt, so I’m sad.
When it is delivered, I’ll see what sort of soap-box I get. If it’s cardboard, it won’t hold my weight, so I will not pontificate, but if it should actually be wood, I shall compose a long and moving speech upon some subject or other.
Re – pedestrians/cars/etc. Yikes! I had to start skimming those comments, but I am very glad that I do feel safe enough walking or riding my bike around my immediate neighborhood. Also, downtown in my little town, there are sidewalks and I do feel safe enough there. But I’ve lived in places where drivers were downright HOSTILE to pedestrians and bikers. :shudders:
I was actually hit by a car, once, while I was crossing at a crosswalk. The car was stopped, looking for traffic before turning right. I DID have the light, but the car was going to turn right, so it was allowed to go. She looked left for cars, but not right for pedestrians. Fortunately, she was moving so slowly that I was only bruised. I, however, in a panic, pounded the hood of her car hard enough to leave a dent. She was horrified at what she had done, apologized profusely, and vowed to always look for pedestrians, so it was a learning experience all around. I learned that just because the car is stopped, doesn’t mean they’re stopping for you, and I try to make eye contact before crossing. Also, lights are, apparently, just “guidelines.”
Being in a wheelchair must be extra hard, because you’re shorter, and thus harder to see.
Drivers need to be careful! For their own peace of mind. Yeah, the pedestrian may very well be foolish enough to cross at a bad time, at a wrong place, but if you kill that pedestrian with your two-ton vehicle, it will haunt you for the rest of your life, so yeah. Be careful! You are driving a lethal weapon. Rude and entitled drivers scare the bejeebers out of me.
Re – Peter Dinklage – I cheered when I saw him listed first in the credits on Game of Thrones! Not just because of who he is, but because I just adore Tyrion, and want to marry him. Seriously, though, I’ve seen him in other things, and he’s always done just a bang-up job. I would dearly love to see him play a part that was not written specifically for a little man, but just a man, and have him get the part, anyway, because he just nails it. Why not have him as leading man in the next big rom-com? Peter Dinklage FTW!
Ugh. I just realized how entitled I sound. “I bought soap, and now I can’t afford a T-shirt.”
Really, I’m just lucky I had a bit of an money come in lately. Normally, I’m more careful with my money. I’m living on my savings this year, and am hoping to build up an income via a new job, in the near future.
However, I’ve been there. I’ve actually gone around parking lots, picking up pennies and other spare change, just to get by, so I truly hope I didn’t offend anyone with that. It wasn’t meant to be hurtful or bragging.
Also, if it’s the choice of food for humans, food for animals, and soap, pick two, I’d drop the soap, every time. Food first.
Average-sized people aren’t the enemy. They are uncomfortable, too, just not to the same extent.
Really, the “enemy” is whoever it was who decided to cram us all in like sardines in a tin can, and then cram some more. And then a liiiiiiiiitle bit more.
I recently found a website – sorry I don’t still have the link – which gave the specific sizes for seats in coach class, business class and first class, for a slew of different airlines, and different planes within those airlines.
Amazingly, in one airline, the first class seats were a whopping ONE INCH wider than coach, and were, in fact, the same size as American Airlines coach, which is still smaller than a standard stadium seat. So the whole idea of fat or tall people buying first class tickets to sit in comfort didn’t even apply there!
In first class, you get a meal, a few more inches of room, but only a few more inches, and you might get a pillow and blanket. You really don’t get the extra $700 worth, though, that’s for sure.
And you still have to go through the whole security check-point business.
And you still can’t get up and use the toilet when the plane is descending, ascending, or waiting for approval to do so. Remember that flight that had to circle for hours on end? No bathroom breaks! Remember that flight that was stuck STANDING on the tarmac for hours? NOOOOO bathroom breaks!
I will fly if it’s an emergency. Otherwise, I’m driving. Should I ever have to go across an ocean, I only hope I’m rich enough to sail there.
Driving is great. You can stop any time you want, stretch your legs, use a real bathroom, eat at a restaurant, see the scenery, and even take a side-trip to see the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota.
This! I was in New Orleans last month, and at pedestrian crossings, there were times when BOTH the orange hand AND the little white walking person were lit up. What does that mean? Walk? Don’t Walk? Walk with your hand facing forward? Go back to the bar for another drink? I just don’t understand.
IIRC, The Station Agent wasn’t originally written for a little person.
@Athywren – I think the MRAs would be horrified if they found out how many of the activists actually accomplishing something for men were actually feminists.
@WinterWalker – Oh, that’s terrible! I’m so sorry you had to endure that. I thought that was why peanuts were no longer served, and it was all about crackers and pretzels, now.
And as for buses and trains being designed for even smaller people – well, there again, the people designing these things are trying to cram in as many people in as possible.
It used to be that coach seats on planes were the same size as first class is now. Same with trains. I haven’t really done any research into seat sizes on buses, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they crammed in a few more rows than they used to, in the same length.
Trains – ten years ago, I did some research on a possible train trip. I found out that it wold take three days to get to my destination, because I would literally have to go from the southern part of the U.S. to the northern part of the U.S. and then back down south again, because there was not east-west route to take! So, three days. I could either spend it all sitting up in a coach-class seat, or… I decide to dream a little (I was well-employed at the time), and see what first class would be like. A room to myself, with a private bath? Awesome! Of course, that would cost me nearly $2000, so I decided against it. I flew. Blergh.
Recently, out of curiosity, I looked up the same trip. The train trip would cost me a bit less, even going “first class,” because “first class” was more like second class. Yeah, I could get a private room, with fold-down bunks, but the private bath was a thing of the past. On some trains, a private toilet and sink were possible, but showers were shared down the hall. And the pictures of the cabins didn’t look nearly as swanky, either. Also, no checked baggage was allowed on the first leg of the trip.
BUT, they could fit more of these cabins into the train. Yeah.
For that money, and that time, I’ll drive, and stay at a fancy hotel along the way. Or, save the money, and save the time, and drive and stay at a Motel 6-ish stop. It’s only a two-day drive for the same trip as a three-day train-ride.
@sarah: I see the same names in the FB comments supporting the piece as I do everywhere else. In fact, I see the same approximately 15-20 commenters spouting the same 10 dot points on every site. Generally, people aren’t stupid.
Re AVfM’s “it’s all satire” defence. Well, that would work on a *satire* website but activist websites are known for hosting activist pieces, not satire. So which is it AVfM:
– are you an activist site, in which case you need to lose the “satire” pieces completely, or
– a satire site, in which case you admit that you don’t do any activism?
The Oatmeal’s Matthew Inman, while his role is a cartoonist, has done more successful activism than you – he helped get the land for the Tesla museum funded. That was a couple of million dollars (US).
And you know, it’s pretty hard for the MRAs to convince people that they’re not a hate group, when most of their posts, their comments on their posts, and their comments in Twitter, under posts on other sites, are vitrolic and hysterical.
AVfM: hoist by your own petard.
When I moved from NY to WA, I took the train. I didn’t have a room, but I was lot younger and didn’t care. Now that we’re moving back to WA from TX, we’re driving and doing it with four cats, so it’s gonna be tiny motels that take pets. I don’t care, I just got an electric bill that was almost my car note, I’m ready to GTFO of this heat.
I’m saving up for one of those!
@Unimaginitive – I vote for “go back to the bar.”
@Puddleglum – Yeah, I’m saving up for one, too. Maybe for my birthday. Had I seen that, before I saw that my sister had run out of soap, I would have had a T-shirt, and she would have gotten Ivory. But I didn’t read about them until afterward.
Ugh. I just attempted to read that George Will piece. Couldn’t get through it.
I’m just gonna go play games now. Later, y’all.
@pallygirl
Yes, its the same idiots on every local news site. I gave up on arguing with them, as you can see. I can’t conduct 20 arguments at once.
I am curious about TeflonExpat’s repeated claims that the letter was hoaxed to make us look violent, though.
@michelle
Oddly enough this is the argument I use why motorcyclists should always wear a helmet, which is optional in the state I live in. I also use this argument for why people should always wear a seatbelt. And while I don’t disagre with you it is still easier to stop walking than to stop a two ton vehicle even if its only going 25mph in a neighborhood. We already teach drivers to be cautious, though all do not listen. Defensive driving is at the crux of driver’s ed but we do not educate pedestrians and people do indeed run out into the street all the time. As the driver, if I am just minding my own business driving the speed limit and someone runs out and I hit them, sorry, but I’m not gonna feel too bad if they break their leg, though I would feel bad if it was a child. That may sound cold but there are a lot of entitled people out there and it just aint drivers.
Btw, that pedestrian incident you were involved in? That driver was 100% at fault. While they had a green light, you had a pedestrian walk sign, but because they were turning they had a greater degree of care. I used to insure cab drivers in DC, turning right into a pedestrian in the crosswalk was the most common pedestrian incident. Thats always the driver’s fault and wasnt at all the scenario in my head when I was on my soapbox.
Fuck crosswalks, parking lots are what scare me. I am SURE if I ever get hit it will be in a parking lot, since all logic seems to fly out the window in them. Please, do come zipping up an aisle and turn without a signal without bothering to check if anyone is crossing. Not like there’s a crosswalk they should be in.
We need VR if only to make parking lot designers try to walk from street to store in their proposed design.