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!
@cassandrakitty
Yeaaah, you’re still reading shit into what I said that wasn’t there especially since I said I do care. Also, there is a difference between empathy and sympathy. My “rant” was merely intended to serve as clarification, because again, the responses were all sorts of distortion of what I said. I dont feel the need to engage further in rehashcakes over what i said, but I respect everyone’s opinions and perspectives here so I thought a little clarity was needed there initially. Let’s move on shall we?
No, now I’m mocking you. For throwing a tantrum about being called out, not for the initial comment, which wasn’t funny at all. Also, just out of curiosity, why are you only responding to me? I’m not the only person who took issue with your creepy comment.
@hellkell
Posted before I was done there, my bad. But no, if you go back and read my initial comment and the resulting responses they were all just wild inferences into what I said. It was mostly lack of reading comprehension imho. Thus i clarified. I’m ok with my clarification and consider this issue asked and answered.
Fucking bullshit. Try living in Melbourne for a while.
We did read your initial comment. It was cold. That’s what this is all about – we read your words.
Hmm. I’m reading up on pedestrian fatalities in the US and I found a new source of misandry. 69% percent of pedestrians killed were male. Are evil feminists running over men on purpose? I seriously wonder how the MRAs missed this one. My theories based on my own highly scientific observations is that men take more risks when jaywalking.
Here’s the pdf if anyone cares. http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811888.pdf
enhancedvibes: but if you all automatically thought so horribly about me because of my innocuous comment that was clearly begging for clarification BEFORE responding so wtf like, y’all need to look within about that.
If you knew it was begging for clarification, and chose not to make it clear, then you were the one who stepped into traffic, and I can’t say I feel badly you got taken at face value.
Athywren: Ms. Pecunium said it was perfectly correct, in context; but she wasn’t impressed.
enhancedvibe: Posted before I was done there, my bad. But no, if you go back and read my initial comment and the resulting responses they were all just wild inferences into what I said.
Didn’t look all that wild to me. You said you wouldn’t feel all that badly because they brought it on themselves.
I may be a bit biasd based on where I’m from (Calif. has a doctrine that pedestrians have right of way, even when they ought not be in the street) and where I live (the NYC area, where there were 0 prosecutions for deaths of pedestrians caused by drivers; the only things the cabbie who fell asleep at the wheel and severed a woman’s leg was to lose his hack-license), but when someone tells me that legal freedom of liability means they don’t feel too badly if they break someone’s bones… I think them a bit lacking in human decency.
If you’d said someone who had what you posited ought not be punished; because they didn’t do anything culpably wrong, and probably feel awful, that’s one thing, but when you said: But yeah, I never said or even implied I wouldn’t feel bad about someone getting injured by something I did but was not my fault. I compared it to : 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.
Looking at that, “I’m not gonna feel to bad if they break their leg” and I’m not seeing much empathy; Esp. because you’d already said that the don’t deserve to have a general right of way, even though they are soft, and cars aren’t.
And who the fuck are you, exactly? Show your ass and expect to get called on it.
Not to mention that enhancedvibes’ original comment read to me as if she didn’t even include trying to brake in that scenario.
Let’s hope that nobody who runs into the street because, say, they’re running away from someone attacking them, ever runs into this driver. Because, hey, they shouldn’t have done this, should they?
Again, these comments just seem way out there to me. For example- not mentioning I would attempt to brake, which should be a given because that is a normal reaction for any driver when something like that happens, does not automatically mean I wouldnt attempt to brake or was at all implying I wouldnt. We use this same reasoning against MRAs all the time, absence of something in the discussion does not mean it does not exist. That anyone’s immediate assumption is she didnt mention braking so maybe that means she wouldnt have even attempted to brake in her madeup scenario seems like a huge leap of logic.
As for human decency I dont see it that way. I still perceive the responders as mixing up empathy with sympathy big time. To me, a comment like “i would feel less bad” refers to sympathy. Empathy is at the center of human decency and while sympathy follows empathy accordingly it’s less a measure of human decency than empathy as a whole. I know who I am and I’m ok with that. This conversation has been enlightening to say the least but everyone’s life experiences lead to them having different opinions on all manner of things and that is one reason I like this site so much, a difference in perspective.
If you want to use the “we bring up this argument with MRAs all the time” you might remember the other one – that if a whole lot of different people are getting the same message from your words, maybe you didn’t actually say what you thought (or in their case, claimed) you did.
I’m a pedestrian. I do not drive. The way you wrote about driving along, minding your own business, then hitting a pedestrian who’d run out, sounded exactly like no, you didn’t make much attempt to brake.
Saying you’d feel less bad is not the same as saying you’d feel less guilt, because you knew it wasn’t your fault. Do you really not see how it reads as you more or less shrugging off what you, what your car, did to someone?
enhancedvibes: Lets look at the grammatical content of your comment:
I’m not gonna feel too bad. Simple statement. If “x” happens you won’t feel too bad.
Exemplae gratiae: If he leaves a chair in the middle of the room and stubs his toe, I’m not gonna feel too bad. If he fails to campaign and loses, I’m not gonna feel too bad. If he leaves his drink the sun and his beer gets too warm to drink, I’m not gonna feel too bad.
These are parallels to the construction you gave, where you were just minding your own business, in a couple of thousand lbs of steel at 25 mph (and F=MA), and someone stepped into your way.
This is reinforced by the rhetorical device of comparison you used to contrast it:
By placing emphasis on the difference in sentiment you would have were it a child (which are seen culturally as being less responsible for the effect of their actions, because they are less worldly) you make it the sense that the person you hit with the car is more beneath your notice. It’s not as if they were a blameless child, they were adults, and ought to have known that streets belong to cars; and that failure to notice something moving at a speed between 36-51 ft per second makes it justifiable to “not feel too bad” if the person in control of that object uses it to break their leg.
That’s what your choice of words conveys. You admitted your words were “begging for clarification”, so you acknowledge your rhetorical choices weren’t well thought out, but somehow (unlike the non-child with the broken leg) you demand that we consider what you claim should have been understandable (i.e. you are decent person,and didn’t mean what your words actually said).
So, tell me, since you were careless, why should we feel bad that you are being held to account for your actions. As the “rhetorical adjuster” here I see that you were the one in error, why shouldn’t you be considered responsible for the consequences?
I thought I’d already conceded my words were misconstrued, and by that I meant I explained myself poorly, used poor wording, and for that I apologize. Ive never been in such a situation, thankfully, but knowing what type of driver I am, I know of course I would brake, so to me that was a given and probably why I excluded it in my initial post. I thought it would be obvious for any reasonable person to do the same, so yeah that’s why I didn’t mention it, it seemed as though it should be assumed rather than automatically the opposite. Maybe I’m not that much of a skeptic, I dunno.
Whoever mentioned vehicular homicide, I think you need to look up the definition of that.
I will also point out that, as a driver, the business you are supposed to be minding is the road, and the hazards in it, e.g. the pedestrians who might step out.
As a guide I offer:
So even though the law says the pedestrian must yield, it also places an incumbent burden on the driver, to “exercise due care”, which means there isn’t really any, “minding your own business” when controlling something as lethally dangerous as an automobile.
enhancedvibe: I thought I’d already conceded my words were misconstrued, and by that I meant I explained myself poorly, used poor wording, and for that I apologize. Ive never been in such a situation, thankfully, but knowing what type of driver I am, I know of course I would brake, so to me that was a given and probably why I excluded it in my initial post.
Dude…I’m not taking you to task for the lack of using the word brake. To pretend that is the problem is dishonest.
pecunium, I mentioned that enhancedvibes’ original statement read to me like braking wasn’t necessarily involved; that’s where that bit came from.
It still does read that way, with “I’m not gonna feel too bad.” That’s a shrug-of-the-shoulders statement of indifference, and it’s frankly astonishing to see it in connection with seriously injuring someone with your car.
@sarah, Sorry for the late response. The quote was taken from http://www.donotlink.com/keN
@enhancedvibes
Thanks! I’ve been beating my head against a brick wall with those assholes tonight on the muckraker article. I keep calling them terrorists and they kind of object to that. 😉 Like you, I have a hard time believing those case numbers represent threats allegedly made against the hotel.
I want this to blow up in their lying faces so badly. They’ve pulled out all the stops to promote this event in the media and if their lies are exposed they’ll never live it down.
“A difference in perspective”? Well, I guess that’s one way to put it.
Since apparently this has to be explained to certain people, I here offer a handy script for what to say if you wrote something and everyone is taking it wrong.
“Sorry, that post came across totally different than I intended. What I meant to say was X, but I see how it sounded like I meant Y. I didn’t mean that at all.”
To those of you with massive egos that require stroking, notice that you’re not admitting to doing anything wrong except being unclear, and you’re providing yourself a chance to clarify your position. And, instead of antagonizing the other people and prompting them to argue, you’re prompting them to find common ground with you and possibly to apologize in return for jumping to conclusions.
You know something? I feel empathy/sympathy for people when bad things happen to them even when it’s directly their own fault.
I don’t claim moral superiority about this; it’s just how I feel. Even if something was entirely preventable and you brought it upon yourself, if it sucks, it still sucks and I still feel for you. Not as sorry as I feel for people who suffer because of things beyond their control, sure, but I don’t think morality is about a sliding scale of sympathy based on how much other people deserve it.
In order for me not to feel empathy or sympathy for someone who gets hurt, they have to have done something pretty bad. In fact, they typically have to have knowingly, deliberately hurt other people. So, child molesters who something bad happens too? Not too much sympathy, if I’m being honest, and no empathy at all. People who do something that could arguably be considered foolish who get hurt? Plenty of sympathy, and empathy too, because everyone fucks up sometimes.
People who feel neither scare me, unless there’s a damn good reason for them to feel that way (see earlier comment about child molesters).
Thinking about it further, even in those specific cases it’s not really “lol you got hurt, you deserved that”, it’s usually more a sense of relief that maybe that particular person won’t be able to hurt others any longer.
I have to admit I have zero fucks to give when people taunt animals and then get attacked by said animal.