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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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Ally S
10 years ago

Speaking of trans issues:

Athywren, I’m probably terribly mistaken, but are you male and/or non-binary? Or neither of those? You said something about it a while ago but I forgot. Sorry about that. X_X

pecunium
10 years ago

I sit with my legs crossed a lot of the time. Amazingly testicle don’t get smashed. It’s as if the were in a little sack, and could move around.

Argenti Aertheri
10 years ago

I would think that if your balls allowed you to walk in a normal manner, then your legs can also be reasonably close together when sitting. That seems like basic logic really.

kittehserf
10 years ago

@Kitteh
See, what you’re forgetting is that those pictures were taken in the days when we thought that testicles were flat – we’ve since discovered, by the use of trigonometry and verification through circumnavigation, that they’re more a kind of oblate spheroid.

I am SO glad I’d finished drinking my soup when I read that! XD

Athywren
Athywren
10 years ago

@Ally
I’m non-binary. I’m not sure exactly which term best describes me, but I generally go with femme agender… I don’t identify with either binary gender, but I don’t identify with female less than I don’t identify with male… if that makes sense? And don’t worry about it, I’ll just put it down in my book of grudges. 😛
(I don’t mind what pronouns you use for me, btw – ze/he/she all work fine for me. I think I prefer ze, but don’t worry too much about it.)

kittehserf
10 years ago

Did I mention how good it is to see you back on site, Athywren?

Viscaria
Viscaria
10 years ago

I get a bit annoyed too when I hear “but it’s uncomfortable to have my knees within a foot of one another,” because I’m pretty much never comfortable on transit. I round my shoulders to make them smaller, I pull my elbows out in front of me to get them out of the way… these are not comfortable things.

Ally S
10 years ago

@Athywren

Oh, it totally makes sense. I know plenty of femme agender folks, many of whom are also trans women.

Athywren
Athywren
10 years ago

Thanks, Kitteh, you did, several people did actually… I think my head grew two sizes from the rewelcome. 🙂
And it’s good to be back and threatening your screen with beverage spray again. 😛

kittehserf
10 years ago

Viscaria, I hear you. There’s very little leg room in our trains, no luggage space, and I end up with my backpack shoved behind my legs, and unable to stretch in any direction, which means my bust-cartilage-knee can be in pain by the end of the trip. The seats themselves are far from comfortable and are made for people taller than me.

But noooo, none of this compares with the pain of anything touching teh menz’ nads, even their own legs!

kittehserf
10 years ago

And it’s good to be back and threatening your screen with beverage spray again. 😛

Join the crowd, evil person! 😀

Athywren
Athywren
10 years ago

@Ally
Good… honestly, sometimes I worry that I’m just being pretentious. I’m hoping that feeling fades away in time.
I don’t think I’m trans. (Though, apparently some people say anyone who isn’t cis is trans?) I think, if there was some kind of technology that could create a new body and transfer your consciousness, I might go for that, but I think I’d feel just as weird in a female body as I do in this one. As far as the real, current day world goes… I’m over 6′ up and 2′ across and fairly man-faced… I don’t think I’d pass, even if I felt the need to change, and I think I’m vain enough that that would upset me more than the current gender weirdness sometimes does.
I hope none of that sounds insensitive or trivialising? I apologise if it does.

And apparently it’s 5.30am, so I’m going to pass out for an hour or two.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

First time the female host asks him a question, his response is in no way a response to what she actually asked. That doesn’t play well with uninvolved viewers.

The shifting around thing looks like a combination of arrogance and indignation. He’s trying to look impressive (and failing miserably).

hrovitnir
hrovitnir
10 years ago

Ha, yes the ridiculous excuses on that men taking up room site. ORLY.

Some of those pics probably weren’t that bad, if there is room I sit with my legs wide (and I has no balls), but if it’s not about me it’s not about me? And most of them are freaking amazingly egregious.

What I find funny is while sitting with legs spread is more comfortable to me, I’m sure that’s partially because I made a conscious choice in that regard when I was about 12. Someone actually said that it was not done for girls/something boys do, so being me I set about making sure to sit like that, sit on seats backwards with my legs almost uncomfortably wide etc, because I tended to attempt to be masculine whenever presented with a strong feminine/masculine behaviour dichotomy. Don’t fucking tell me it’s not socialised, fools.

P.S. I do also have really inflexible/achy hips that are not happy when forced to sit “properly”, so there is that too. I can still make room on the undersized seats that make up public transport.

hrovitnir
hrovitnir
10 years ago

Oh, and more succinctly, what Viscaria said! Public transport is not comfortable for anyone, so even if the “what about the balls” thing was true (nope), you still have to suck it up.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

Basically he looks like an angry, indignant little rooster that arrived at the studio already in a huff and not remotely interested in engaging the hosts in conversation. Who picks someone like that as their spokesperson?

hrovitnir
hrovitnir
10 years ago

And just to triple-post (ARH), hi Athywren!

If it makes you feel any better, I feel very much the same as you in the trans-masculine direction. Magical man body? Maybe, probably. As it currently stands, as a muscular but fairly feminine and pretty short person? Probably not. Tis uncomfortable sometimes, and it’s much safer being FAAB in this regard. :/

Michelle C Young
10 years ago

@tealilly

Women are the over-the-top consumers, huh?

I must be. Earlier today, I spent over $150 on soap. But I spent money I had earned myself, and I’m sharing that soap with my family. So, does that make it OK?

Of course not. I’m still a woman.

BritterSweet
10 years ago

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?

A fag is a cigarette.

Michelle C Young
10 years ago

@kittehserf – regarding canes.

I think it depends on the type of cane.

If you’re using one of those canes with the four feet, that are *supposed* to help you with your balance (I have found them to be useless in that regard, because I keep tipping it onto two legs, and wobbling), then you’re going to look frail.

However, if you have a single-tip cane, with a metal tip in it, good for digging into rocky paths, such as a real mountain walking stick, you’ll look tougher, because that thing can really double as an effective weapon. NOT very useful on marble floors, though, so it became more a liability in certain buildings, because it would slip.

At least, that was my experience. I really WAS frail when I was using the wobbly four-footed can that was leant to me after surgery. However, when I was using my walking stick, I was always fully aware that the main reason I was carrying it was so that I would be armed, if someone were to try to assault me. Thus, I carried myself with more confidence, and possibly even a bit of swagger.

I have no experience with other types of canes, so I can’t really say about them.

My ideal cane would be a real walking stick, and a rubber tip that I can add, when I’m inside a building with marble floors. Also, I prefer a straight stick, with a knob or something on top, to grip in my hand, rather than a curved-handled cane. But that’s just my own personal preference.

Buttercup Q. Skullpants

Auntie Alias – by all means, feel free! 😀

Those poor men, forced by giant nads to waddle everywhere and never allow their knees to touch. So, are women similarly entitled to claim lebensraum for their boobs? Can we take up both armrests, amd splay our arms into other people’s personal space?

Q: How many MRAs does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Two. One to scream obscenities, break the bulb, and fling poo at the socket, and the other to claim it was “satire”.

Argenti Aertheri
10 years ago

Athywren — that feeling of just being pretentious wanes. You reach a point of “fuck it, I’m not happy identifying as a woman or as a man, and I don’t have to, and this is good”. No way in hell I could pass either, so I go for androgynous. Seeing how my own mother confused someone of the “other” biological sex for me, I’d say it might be working!

G’night, sleep well!

kittehserf
10 years ago

Who picks someone like that as their spokesperson?

Someone who’s got a choice between him and Pauly. Spittle on the chairs is even worse than floor-length ties.

Michelle C Young
10 years ago

@fruitloopsie – Welcome! Did you get your welcome package?

This community is a great resource for learning all sorts of things, and if you are willing to listen, and to apologize when you make a mistake, the people here will be willing to teach you anything you need to know about it.

I know I’m still learning, and although I read other blogs and forums, and such, I have learned more from the people here than from any other place.

Michelle C Young
10 years ago

@Brittersweet – I am reminded of a song I learned when I was in elementary school. One line is “While you’ve a lucifer to light your fag, smile, boys, that’s the style!”

I think it was a song from World War II. It was the first time I had ever heard the word fag, so when I did later hear some kid calling another kid a “fag,” I asked, “Why is he calling Johnny a cigarette? That makes no sense!”

Also, a faggot is a log (meant for burning, not for building), and a person can be fagged, when they are over-tired. Also, knocked-up can simply mean fatigued. Queer can mean odd, strange, or even ill. Niggardly means stingy, and it has absolutely no connection with blacks.

Yet all of these words can, and do, trigger pain in some people, regardless of the intended meaning.

With language, context is important. Old meanings are valid, but new meanings tend to crowd them out, and your audience is going to read/hear the meaning with which they are most familiar.

Something I learned from this site – While the word may have a very valid meaning that is not at all meant to be offensive, some people may very well (with good reason!) take offense at the usage of certain words. If you don’t want to offend them, use a synonym. Yes, it can be a bit of a pain to police your own language, and willingly give up perfectly proper words, but it is just *kindness* to avoid hurting other people’s feelings, if you know that those words will be triggering for them.

If you don’t know that certain words are triggering, then take it as a lesson, when the people who are hurt point it out to you.

My list grows, and now and then I slip, but I’m getting better, with practice.

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