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Dean Esmay Vs. the Princess Studies Professor

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!

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Isabelle
Isabelle
10 years ago

Its just bizarro how their interpretation completely end up distorting the original content…like, the school did not just look into father’s day but mother’s day. So why not #endmothersday?

cloudiah
10 years ago

Even though Dean and his ilk have shown over and over that they love to insult the appearance of their foes, I do wish we would hold ourselves to a higher standard. I include myself there, since I am sure I have succumbed to making fun of them on this basis–it’s just that there are much more valid grounds on which to criticize them.

Like for example, Dean’s pretense that domestic violence is an issue where there’s gender parity, when all credible studies indicate that it is not. They think if they say that enough, people will believe it. And they may be right, judging by the success of Reagan, Fox News, the War on Drugs, various other wars against Iraq and other nations, and so on, etc.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

I’m not nearly as kind as cloudiah and am quite happy to make fun of MRAs and PUAs based on their looks, but strategically speaking I’m not sure it’s a good idea to pick on things that they could counter-argue are a result of poverty (which they will then explain as women stealing all men’s money because divorce “rape” blah blah). So “you’re poorly groomed” may actually be even less of a good idea than “you’re ugly”.

cloudiah
10 years ago

Oh it’s not kindness, I promise. I extend them exactly as much kindness as they would extend to a woman they disagree with. XD

cloudiah
10 years ago

But yeah, Dean even tried to play the “I’m missing a tooth because this particular feminist professor makes more money than I do” card, which … wut?

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

But if that was true you’d have pointed out all kind of things about Dean that are, well, let’s just say less than ideally handsome.

(Granted that in the war of being vicious about women’s looks PUAs are beating MRAs by miles, which is why I will always point out Roosh’s disgustingly greasy hair and general lack of glamour.)

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

And yeah, that’s exactly why I think picking on the stuff that could easily be tied to lack of funds (like ugly clothes) is maybe not the smartest way to go, strategically speaking.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

Like, picking on the fact that he doesn’t seem to know how to tie a tie? That’s potentially class linked (he can say “well, I’m a blue collar guy, I’ve never had a job where wearing a tie is required, unlike you champagne socialist liberals”), so if we pick on that we’re setting ourselves up for a charge of not caring about working class men.

(I know that isn’t actually what was motivating anyone here, I’m just saying, strategically maybe not the best idea to go there.)

kittehserf
10 years ago

It’s their hypocrisy that’s the thing, of course. When they STFU about women’s bodies and clothes, then their own shortcomings won’t be worth a mention.

cloudiah
10 years ago

It’s so infuriating when they bring up class, though, given their incredible fucking blindness on both class and race. I mean, if they gave a shit about men in prison — or for that matter, men in prison because they’ve been falsely accused — they would be talking about the damn War on Drugs and how 2-5% of the men in prison for victimless drug crimes are innocent and how informants are used to make false accusations in order to raise the rate of incarceration.

But those are poor men of color, so they don’t give a shit.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

Oh yeah, I hear you. I’m just trying not to give them any extra weapons.

kittehserf
10 years ago

We’ve a whole page of comments here with no kitty videos. What are we thinking? The Furrinati will be displeased.

http://youtu.be/-InDy_7yXNk

cloudiah
10 years ago

Thank you for remedying that, kittehs!

kittehserf
10 years ago

I knows my dooty!

emilygoddess
emilygoddess
10 years ago

strategically speaking I’m not sure it’s a good idea to pick on things that they could counter-argue are a result of poverty (which they will then explain as women stealing all men’s money because divorce “rape” blah blah). So “you’re poorly groomed” may actually be even less of a good idea than “you’re ugly”.

Also, as a Poor myself, it makes me uncomfortable because I don’t really know how (or have the means) to dress myself for an appearance like that, either. And I don’t like things that make me feel empathy for Dean Esmay 😛

(I don’t remember who was making fun of his teeth, but as someone who couldn’t afford braces and needs them BADLY and was bullied over it in school: don’t. Just don’t.)

LBT (with writeathon poll!)

Yeeeeaaaah, I had to be taught how to tie a tie by a meteorologist from Colorado because I had no idea how, and I have long since forgotten.

And let me tell you, I looked and dressed like SHIT during the Homeless Year. Poverty + weight fluctuation + eating disorder = dressing like a broke twelve-year-old boy. It sucked.

kittehserf
10 years ago

The one thing I’d say is that Dean has internet access and it’s not like there aren’t videos and such with grooming advice. He’s not in a position where he can’t get that info. He’s not homeless, or without resources, even if he is getting miserable pay from Pauly the Grifter.

marci
10 years ago

Yeah, I have been homeless (with a 4 year old child) and I am pretty much on the tippy edge of poverty now, and yet, I have not had much trouble figuring out how to dress myself. This is in spite of having a weird boxy figure and short legs. To me it seems like this dude is trying to look like kind of a douche because it is another way that he can push his entitlement. I mean, of course women are required to work extra hard to be pleasing to look at, but dudely dude bros can slap on some black socks with sandals and everyone should still respect them.

pallygirl
pallygirl
10 years ago

I just think it makes our position weaker when we say things like “no body shaming” and then some feminists do it against MRAs. It’s hypocritical: do as I say, not do as I do. I just don’t think that anyone should be body-shamed or poverty-shamed.

Being wilfullly ignorant, on the other hand…

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

Oh, it’s definitely male entitlement that allows him to go on TV like that without worrying that it will lead to him being taken less seriously. I doubt he’s self-aware enough to have thought things through that far, though.

katz
10 years ago

Generally I agree that making fun of appearance, dress, and other such incidentals is counterproductive. (It’s why I don’t like mocking people’s handles unless the handle is itself hateful.)

But there’s an argument to be made that part of being a serious organization is presenting oneself professionally, and that AVFM has the budget to make sure that its people who appear on TV look TV-worthy. (That doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be in business wear, but their appearance should reflect the organization’s priorities, and I don’t know how an overly long tie could reflect something positive.)

But if you’re going to make that argument, you should actually make that argument, ie “If AVFM wants to appear professional, then their staff should dress professionally during media engagements;” random dress-related potshots do not accomplish much.

pallygirl
pallygirl
10 years ago

Thanks katz, your last paragraph expresses what I wasn’t articulating.

Anonymouslazycat
Anonymouslazycat
10 years ago

Yeah, the clothes-related comments were rubbing me the wrong way too. As others have pointed out, it’s pretty hypocritical and has doesn’t really have anything to do with his arguments or ideology. There’s more than enough to poke fun at in those categories, so pointing out his tie is, well…pointless.

marci
10 years ago

I agree, body shaming is not cool. I hope that isn’t how I have come across to anyone. Also I know I made a comment saying that Dean looked like a toddler/homeless. Sorry about that, I didn’t think about it that way (poverty shaming).

Honestly, it is just hard to resist the urge mainly because of the two points I made before. These guys want to be taken seriously and claim that they are for real, but they look totally unprofessional and not in a cool counter-culture way (which would be fine). Also they talk all kinds of crap about other people’s appearance, especially women, but can’t be bothered to hold themselves to the same standards.

But *sigh* you are right, it is probably best to just look past it and focus elsewhere. Damn it though, it is just so irritating when people are bigots and hypocrites at the same time!

thewatchingdog
thewatchingdog
10 years ago

@pallygirl I don’t think it’s “body shaming” to analyze how a person looks when they know going to be on TV and represent this organization to the world..I think there is information there..and if it’s done with a laugh at the hate group spokesman’s expense..well..
Maybe it’s because laughter is a release of tension..the tension of death threats..every attempt to humiliate and destroy your life online by stealing personal information..every camera shoved in the face of every woman who dare even to hold a sign..they’re smirk as they click their camera.. they know you know your picture will be used to terrorize and stalk you online by any way they can
Every young collage student punched in the face one dark night because she protested
and you want to say were “body shaming” because were laughing at his rumpled suit?

Are you thinking about what these men would do to you if they could get away with it?..your taking the high road on a minor point like this is some kind of academic exercise..that’s so unfair..when these people only use of decency I’ve ever seen if how they can use someone else’s decency to gain advantage over them.
How dare we be slightly less than perfect?..when our oppressors are gleefully monsters..I am going to walk away from the keyboard now.