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!
(Jaw hits floor)
You’re right, that does sound pretty damn cold.
…What city do you live in? I want to avoid it.
Yes, because a proportionate response to a pedestrian making a mistake is to give them grievous bodily harm. And, of course, breaking someone’s leg with blunt force trauma always means a clean break that heals fast with no permanent damage.
WTF?
The fuck is wrong with you? Yeah, it sounds cold.
… that does sound cold.
As a driver, I have had pedestrians and cyclists scare the living daylights out of me. I’ve hit the brakes hard enough to cause mild whiplash. Even if the pedestrian is an idiot, I really, really don’t want to hit them.
I may joke (in bad taste) about pedestrian polo, but I never want to play it.
They may be absolute idiots (I’m talking to you, Mr. Jaysprinter from behind the lamp-post, and you, Mr. Construction sign dude who stepped down from the median and out from the coned area right in front of me, and then waved me on like I was an idiot for hitting the breaks when you just stepped into the lane of traffic in front of me) but they don’t deserve to be hit.
Today on Manboobz, we began with a bunch of regulars getting really angry with each other, and everyone figured that was enough unpleasantness for one day and things would get brighter and more positive from there, right? And then a new kinda-regular declared themselves to have a nice clear conscience in the event that they were to cause another person grievous bodily harm.
…Tomorrow is going to be better than this, right?
Don’t forget another self-professed feminist declaring herself arbiter of what can and can’t be posted in open threads.
Cassandrakitty, definitely hope so!
Can I donate a few chirruping cheetahs?
http://youtu.be/jSickcDomwo
http://youtu.be/2btR9rAcdzo
Also, if you can ignore the loud talking, this little guy has an adorable chirrup as well:
http://youtu.be/QBjKntYuUIk
Did anyone catch the infuriating moment at around 6:14 when the male host implies that the fact that there are more female judges now lends credence to DE’s claim that courts are biased against men???
Okaaaaaay, so by your logic that one gender cannot possibly remain unbiased towards another gender, the courts would actually be pretty biased against women. You know, since the number of male judges is still triple that of the number of female judges (in the US).
Despite the hair-pulling, tea-sputtering, and incredulous-snorting elicited by that moment, I do love it when someone’s point is disproved even by their own ridiculously flawed logic.
Also, this:
http://youtu.be/9mOxeblIF5k
Love you all, but I’m retreating from the interwebs, and doing other things for a bit, now.
Cheetahs make everything better.
Here’s a cute owl video:
I sure as shit hope so.
I sat on the outside seat in the regional trains going home from work, because my stop was the first on the line and I’d rather not clamber over someone getting out – but I’d always stand up to let someone into the window seat. Going to work, I’d be on a metropolitan train, and our station is the end of the line for them, so I’d be free to pick a corner seat and have something to lean against while zzzzzing.
LOL!
Most cramped plane I’ve been on: American Airlines. My gf and I are about 5’4″, she’s very slim, and we were squashed.
😀
Kitties large and small!
http://youtu.be/x7Bo0wleT7o
I hope so. Today was fucking terrible.
Is now a bad time to come clean about my baby-eating habit?
Only if you don’t post recipes.
Perhaps we should post recipes* in the open thread. That would piss off the Ur Not Talking About What I Want To Talk About uber-feminist.
*not baby-eating recipes, obvs
Or pony eating recipes! (Bad David! No ponies for you!)
What the what now? Uhhh, I don’t think anyone seems to have understood my comment at all because at no point did I ever imply I wouldnt attempt to avoid hitting a pedestrian. I said I was a claims adjuster for petes sake. I would never intentionally cause someone harm with my vehicle (or harm in general unless in complete self defense) nor have i ever hit a pedestrian or even come close, and i worked in DC! I dont even know why I am saying that other than the responses being so wtf.
Anyway, as a driver I can only be responsible for my own actions, and while one makes every effort to be a defensive driver you cant control a person running into the street (ive been using this particular scenario the entire time) and if you are unable to avoid hitting them I dont think it unreasonable to feel less sorry for someone who contributed to their own injury. That is not to say i wouldnt feel sorry for them at all, and of course I would offer aid,, but not as much as someone whose injury was my fault for which I would accept full responsibility and feel suitably horrible for what I’d done. Empathy and sympathy are two different things.
I respect everyones opinion but all the responses seemed to be responding to something other than what I said. No worries, moving on.
I’m just not getting how even if you’re convinced you weren’t fully responsible you could not feel bad about having injured someone. If someone jumps out in front of my car on Halloween and says BOO and I hit them, I’m still going to feel terrible, because I hit them and now they’re injured.
That was a priceless moment. 😀
Enhancedvibes: No, we were responding to the words you gave us.
Go and do it! It’s the American dream!