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!
Might be late saying this, but jayemgriffin has posted a long time here, if not so often recently, and always in good faith. I couldn’t see zir comment as anything but a joke at MRAs’ expense.
@LBT Now I’m imagining an airline slogan: PENISES FLY FREE! With special pre-boarding privileges.
Q: How many MRAs does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to accuse feminists of deliberately sabotaging the old light bulb, and one to raise $25,000 for a new one.
“If it were someone I agreed with, I’d be bemoaning the folly of the choice, but I’d still be poking some fun at it.”
You mean like stripes with plaid? I’m sure I have some similar failures you can poke at, and would 🙂
Aka, it’s true, if either of us tied a tie like that, the other would poke at it.
People taking up space on trains: I’ll push that knee out of the way with my own, or jab it. What really bugs me is when someone’s touching my side (I usually have my arms folded) with their elbow or their bag. I hate that, it’s too intimate, and it’ll get an elbow-jab in response. Since I’m usually half-asleep or pretending to be, I can get away with it.
Buttercup Q. Skullpants, OMG can I steal that? I have the perfect place in mind for it. 😀
Obviously women don’t have assholes because girls don’t poop, silly.
What is it with people who walk down the sidewalk as a group of three or four, and expect me to walk into the side of a building, into a rubbish bin, or onto the road, or on the uncovered bit of footpath in the rain, because clearly they can’t let one person give me a bit of room?
Athywren: Now, I don’t have said equipment myself such that I can comment on it, but my husband is so uncomfortable without y-fronts that he absolutely will not even go so far as to sleep nude. He’s gotta have his tighty whities, or he can’t get to sleep. Different strokes, I guess!
I hate that! I just look them in they eye and keep walking towards them. The group caves and splits up every time.
I also hate rollerblading couples that hold hands and take up the whole bike path so there’s no room for bikes to pass and you have to shout at them to get them to split up and move over.
@ Palomar
Ohhh yeah I have my own story about that too. What MRAs seem to forget is that most custody issues don’t make it to court. My parents agreed that my mom should get custody. My father had to pay only $30 dollars a month in child support. You know, $30 dollars a month is more than enough to raise a kid. Such misandry…
I do that too. It’s easier when carrying a cane, I find: you’re taking up more space yourself.
It’s funny: I’d have thought using a cane would shove one further into the invisible category, but it’s had the opposite effect.
Maybe it’s the power of the kitty pics all over it. 😛
Q: How many MRAs does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None, they just complain that feminists should be doing it for them.
1) Asshole is an insult that applies to all sexes. And all species, because I witnessed a squirrel push another squirrel right out of a tree today, and I feel pretty confident that when I laughed and said “Asshole!” it didn’t matter what gender the bully squirrel was, it applied.
2) Prick is not a misandric insult, because, and repeat it with me, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MISANDRY.
3) I’d love to agree that Esmay and all of his pals’ stupidity only flies in the MRA echo-chamber, but that is not true, as the Washington Post’s rape-denialist bullshit penned by the ever charming pseudointellect of George Will proved so eloquently today– and that’s just one of many many moments that you realize, these MRA folks sure look stupid when they are all glommed together on their pathetic little websites, but spread out among the body politic they are what is colloquiolly known as “Mainstream”.
Animals being
jerksassholes!http://youtu.be/_vx1OVLX5Rc
Q: how many MRA’s does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: They don’t, but changing it while they’re out of the room is misandry.
Q: how many women does it take to change a lightbulb?
Q: what about the men?
@kittehserf
Thank you so much for posting that animals video. It’s my new favorite YouTube video!
@athywren
I do not have a penis myself but I agree with the comments about the way that men sit. Reminds me of this activity my professor had us do in sociology of womene in which there was only a handful of guys. Basically you had to hold a pencil between your knees, spreading them apart as far as pencil would go. Prof then asked was this comfortable for the women, yes, but it was not for the men. Thats because the spread of a woman’s hips make it more comfortable for her to sit with her legs slightly open and why sitting cross legged is actually more comfortable for men than women.
I dont remember who said it on this thread but I too just take up my space even if that meanss brushing up against some strange dude’s leg and/or pushing their encroaching body part out of my personal space. My bro is a full fledged adult and still does this to me, minimizes my personal space, tha chump.
Palomar
You are absolutely right it’s just that the mras want to control the women and children nothing more.
Zoon echon Logan
There is nothing wrong of being/acting like a woman/girl it’s AWESOME! I know that you can be strong and cool without being referred to as a man/boy.
On my other post I said that every mother is a woman and that I am really sorry. I never heard of trans, cis or other words that I just saw on this site. I have heard of hermaphordite did I spell that right? It’s someone who has both male and female gentalia. I just read about those words awhile ago and I hope that I will learn more about them (and all of you) so again I am very sorry.
@fruitloopsie
A trans person is someone who was assigned a different gender at birth. For instance, I’m a trans woman, which in my case means that I am someone who is female yet was assigned the male gender at birth. A cis person is simply someone who isn’t trans. We tend to say “cis” instead of “normal” because we don’t believe that it’s right to view cis people as normal and trans people as abnormal, freaks, etc. I am just as much of a woman as all of the cis women on this site.
Palomar, my pleasure! 😀
fruitloopsie, I learned pretty much everything I know (and I’m a noob on the subject) about trans matters here, too, so welcome to the club.
I think intersex is the term for people with non-binary genitalia; I don’t think hermaphrodite is used of humans these days. Something I read a while back is that intersex people aren’t at all uncommon, despite what popular culture might assume – there are fewer redheads than there are intersex people.
Prick as in prick your finger, dick is a name and a nickname for Richard, everyone has a asshole, bastard is an illegitimate child and cock is a male chicken. Is there anything I’m missing?
Intersex is a broad term used to describe atypical sex characteristics, although it is often used specifically for people with atypical chromosomes (like an XY woman or an XX man), atypical genitalia (that often is ambiguous in appearance), atypical reproductive system (e.g. women who lack ovaries), and so on. Its existence points to the instability of the sex binary, which is why sex is a socially constructed category.
@kittehs
Me and fade are both cis girls, but I asked her (she reads more stuff and is more informed than me usually) and she’s pretty sure you aren’t supposed to say ‘hermaphrodite’ to refer to people, too.
And @fruitloopsie
I’d try to google. Like, just some 101 stuff. (I”ll try to see if I have any good links some time in the future, but lots of mine are out of date, and I’d want to re-read them to make sure they actually are good links before posting.
You could say our physical sex/reproductive bits and pieces are on a spectrum, just like our minds, emotions, attractions and so on. We don’t fit into boxes after all.
Who’da thunk. /s