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!
For a failed journalist I would of thought you’d be above remarks about a person’s dress (tie). He was calm and patient throughout, while that ‘professor’ gave him the death stare whenever it was his turn to speak. For all we know, she might of been one of the ones calling in death threats to this conference. Funny how there was no mention of those death threats (to men), but bringing up death threats against feminists.
I do agree with your last line of “I’ve rarely seen any group of people so determined to learn less from their mistakes.” except for the typo where ‘people’ should of read ‘feminists’
I found the professor very condescending likening her rights as being like candy; but then most professors have no people skills to begin with. Shame that she gets paid more to teach useless gender studies (which will get you a job at McDonalds) while Esmay is an activist trying to make change.
Somehow I doubt this site will cover the hateful trend on twitter of #endfathersday. Daddy issues anyone??
I’m curious about your scare quotes. Do you think she’s not actually a professor?
I’ve studied body language (US Army, interrogation and interrogation instruction). Esmay was a nervous wreck. After I watched it the first time (which was painful, because he rushed, failed to stay on point to the questions asked, esp. in the first two statements, where he made sure to trot out every MRM talking point and catchphrase he could) I watched it again with the sound off.
That makes it more plain. He never looked the professor. He never turned to address her directly, even when it was plain he was breaking in while she was speaking.
Then, listening to it again, with time to study the body language further it got worse: His eyes were almost always half-lidded and didn’t seem to be directly engaging any of the other three people present. Even when he was interrupting he spoke about the professor, not to her. That’s a sign of someone who is trying to distance themselves from response. By not saying, “you do/are X” the direct challenge (or in, at least one case, insult) of the interruption is moved into a more passive structure; which both insulates the speaker, and pretends to reduce the other party to a passive object.
In short, Esmay’s entire performance was that of someone who looked as if they knew they lacked a fair bit of moral standing.
One can argue this is because Esmay really feels men are second-class citizens, but it’s hard to credit this as being true, given that he belongs to a group which feels that women should be afraid of having men treat them to a beating, and feels no compunction about using words like bitch, whore, and C***, in casual reference to them.
So no, I can’t say I think your presentation of what went down is all that congruent with the facts.
You have no basis to accuse the professor of calling in threats. Go the fuck away.
Also, #EndFathersDay was created by 4chan trolls. That’s been debunked for days. Shut up.
That was started by 4chan. Try to keep up.
Looks like this thread got linked somewhere.
katz, it could be from a link I posted in the Muckraker comments section five days ago.
Hey pecunium, I need a debating point. What do you say to the idea that Esmay was better prepared for the debate? Cuz I said yeah, he had his talking points laid out, and got told that that was the point of “better prepared” (no arguement that the entire thing was BS, and this was with the BF you met, but I’m curious how “better prepared” plays out when you’re reading a script)
For someone who knows so much about journalism, properly grammatical sentence construction seems to be beyond you. The correct word to use was “have” instead of “of”, but thinking isn’t one of your strengths anyways.
See, the thing about rights is that society agrees everyone should have them. You’d have found the professor condescending regardless of what she actually said, because you’re an ignorant asswipe who finds females with higher education threatening.
Why would it? This site is to mock misogyny. Piss off somewhere else with your mock interest.
What is this supposed to mean? People don’t snark on grammar just for funsies, you know. Part of the reason why grammar matters is that if you mess it up badly enough no-one can figure out WTF you’re trying to say.
Dean is the one who looks condescending throughout. He’s looking down his nose at everyone.
1: I don’t think it was a debate.
1a: it was supposed to be a “round-robin” talk-talk, which was of course doomed.
2: Esmay wasn’t prepared, he was primed, which is part of why he was so dismal. He had a list of “points” he wanted to make. He didn’t care if they related to the questions asked, so long as he got to prattle on about how feminism is a multi-billion dollar hate industry.
The whole side to side, with head-wobbling was him trying to keep his list straight, while he got the words out. His rushed delivery was because he was afraid of being cut off.
3: Had he be prepared (or something close to competent at this sort of speaking engagement) he’d have had an opening statement; short and memorable, and a number of segues prepared, so that in response to a question he could make a response, and then steer the conversation to a place of his choosing with a couple of connected thoughts; thoughts which were short enough to allow for, and tantalising enough to encourage a follow-up question.
4: If he’d done that the professor would have had to respond to the topics of his choosing, which would allow him to make a response; one which could be built in a way which let him refer to some set of “facts” from some study. That gives a veneer of respectability, and back-foots the his interlocutors, even if they have refutory evidence available off the top of their head.
5: Being able to cite something always causes talking heads to make an approving gesture; often a comment. That further puts the other participant in a defensive position, because the sense that everyone disagrees is more palpable.
All of those tricks are how one convinces the audience that one is, if not correct, at least sincere and reasonable; which make them less hostile to the moment one is supporting.
It’s how David Duke and Ronald Reagan worked the room, and why they were able to gain national presence on the political stage.
Prepared in the sense that he had talking points ready to go. But he doesn’t appear to have worked on presentation. And yes, that includes dressing professionally.
I made the mistake of going to YouTube to see the video there and wandered into the comments. It never ceases to amaze me that any dot point that comes out of Dean’s mouth is treated as a “fact” even though:
– many of them aren’t sourced from any research, but are assfacts stated by the MRA using them, and
– of the ones from research, they are a non-scientific MRAnlysis of the research that is not included in the original paper.
MRAs: the science community laughs at you too.
Thanks guys, I think I can verbalise “knows wtf ze wants to say in the debate” vs “has a set list of things to say NO MATTER WHAT” now. I was too used to the former (and always knew my position when debating semi-formally and knew my opponents potential points and weaknesses, working from those assumptions is no way to handle Mr. Weave and Bob Long Tie)
Lea!!! Attack on Titan is frigging amaze-balls! God I love that anime.
I’m sorry but OMFG that tie! The last time this dude was in the public eye his clothing was just as bad. He manages to look simultaneously like a toddler dressing himself for the first time and a homeless person.
Ordinarily I would not feel justified in being critical of the way someone dresses, but…
This group is trying to put forward the idea that they are real activists that should be taken seriously. If they can’t even bother to figure out basic grooming, how likely is it that their activism is going to be effective?
Secondly, this group frequently complains about how women look or dress. It certainly wouldn’t make it ok for them to be this way if they were more polished looking themselves. However, the fact that their public representatives all seem to be below average in looks and grooming just makes their complaining too ridiculously hypocritical to ignore.
Marci,
It is!
This is exactly why people say the MRM is more about attacking women than helping men: you assholes can’t even make a semi-valid point without tacking on some misogyny for good measure.
And now I see people saying #endfathersaday wasn’t even real. That’s a relief.
@emilygoddess
From the little bit I gathered, its based on one school in Canada that switched or was proposing to switch father and mother day for family day. And honestly, I think it would be a good idea. How many kids have primary caretakers which is neither their mom or dad? Even way back when it was the mythical time of mom staying at home baking cookies and raising the children. My grand-mother raised her cousin after the father became a widower with 10 kids. Actually, at least in Catholic French Canadian family, it was very common to place some of the children with the extended family members.
Isabelle, if schools in Canada run on the same schedule as the US, it would also make sense to combine the two days because father’s day would fall outside the school year.
I didn’t know anything about this #endfathersday day thing until I read this trend. So now I see sites like the National Review and Daily Caller picked up on it as proof that feminists suck. And then after it was discovered it was a hoax, they’re all like “yeah, but then feminists picked it up and ran with.
Such eagerness and desperation to hate feminists. :
Here one of the articles that started the ball rolling:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/no-more-father-s-mother-s-day-school-nixes-celebration-in-the-post-nuclear-age-1.1287370