Uh oh! Dean Esmay of A Voice for Men is outraged by the latest terrible calumny besmirching the good name of the Men’s Rights movement. That Big Lie? That Men’s Rights Activists are boycotting Mad Max: Fury Road.
As Esmay puts it, in his characteristically overheated prose, the very notion that there is such a boycott
is a completely fabricated story by a handful of elitists abusing their power in the media–and betraying their fellow journalists while doing it.
Using his powerful internet detective skills, Esmay has managed to track down “the source of the lie,” which, as he sees it, “appears to have originated from a discredited hate-blogger named David Futrelle … .”
I’ve left off the rest of his sentence, as it is straight-up libel. Well, so is the bit about me being a “discredited hate-blogger,” and the part about the “lie” originating with me. I will give him credit for managing to spell my name correctly.
I’ll cop to the fact that my post on a would-be boycott of Mad Max: Fury Road set off an avalanche of articles on the subject. The Mary Sue, I believe, was the first to pick up the story, and was quickly followed by a few others. And then other writers piggybacked off of them. For better or worse, that’s how it works in online journalism these days.
But if Esmay is looking for the source of the incorrect notion that self-described Men’s Rights activists were behind the “boycott,” well, he’s not going to find it in my post, which contained no mention of Men’s Right Activists at all.
Yep, I reported the 100% true fact that a Youtube bloviater named Aaron Clarey had written a post on Return of Kings urging men, in his words, to “not only REFUSE to see the movie, but spread the word to as many men as possible.” I described his readers on Return of Kings as misogynists, not MRAs, though clearly there is a massive overlap between those two groups.
The idea that this was specifically a Men’s Rights crusade was, to be sure, a bit of sloppiness on the part of the journalists writing about it, who are not quite as familiar as some of us are with all the different varieties of woman-hating shitheads there are in the “manosphere” — especially since their belief systems overlap considerably. As I noted in a previous post on this subject, writing about Esmay’s accusations against a writer for the Huffington Post,
It’s true that the HuffPo writer, in the original version of her piece, wrongly described the MRA-adjacent Return of Kings — which has urged a
boymancott of Mad Max Fury Road — as a Men’s Rights site proper. There are in fact some differences between ROK and AVFM. For example, while AVFM writers have declared women to be “obnoxious cunts,” who control men with their vaginas, ROK writers have suggested that women are actually depraved, disloyal sheep.
You can almost forgive journalists for getting a bit mixed up.
Meanwhile, it’s clear that some MRAs, including some associated with AVFM, have views on the movie that bear a striking similarity to those of Mr. Clarey and his comrades at ROK. It was an AVFM staffer, not Aaron Clarey, who posted this meme on AVFM’s Facebook page. (It’s since been removed, possibly because it contradicts the narrative that Esmay is now promoting.)
And if you want many other example of MRAs saying they won’t go to see the film because feminism, you’ll find more than a few in this thread on the Men’s Rights subreddit. Oh, and in this thread (archived here) on … the official AVFM Forum.
Yes, that’s right: there are MRAs talking about boycotting Mad Max: Fury Road on AVFM’s own official forum. One declares himself “a (former) Mad Max fan,” another writes “going to skip this one. Mad Max is now dead to me.” “I’m out,” adds a third.
But Esmay seems to think that there is some vast conspiracy afoot, writing that
we are really serious with this question: was anyone paid to put this fake story in the press? If so, who was paid and who did the paying?
Don’t be silly. No money changes hands. At least no human money. We do it under direct orders from our feline overlordsladies.
But as long as we’re asking questions I have one for Mr. Esmay: Are you ever going to do anything about the Holocaust denier and Hitler fan you’ve published many times on AVFM?
Apparently, to Dean Esmay at least, posting that Mad Max: Fury Road is being boycotted by MRAs, when most of the boycotters are in fact merely MRA-adjacent, is a greater crime against truth than denying the Holocaust.
@Flying Mouse:
I noticed that little “John Galt” too! I’m not a connossieur of MRM propaganda: have they been doing that all along? When did they start? What’s the story behind it?
I’m not surprised that the MRAs associate themselves with Objectivist terms. The two groups are basically analogues of one another, working by telling vulnerable members of privileged groups that they are in fact the underdogs.
@A.A. Wils:
Welcome! I’m new myself, so we can be new together. Have some scented fucking candles.
IMHO it’s a wilful ignorance born of intellectual dishonesty. I’m South African; I’ve met a lot of other South Africans who still think that black majority rule was a mistake and they do the same selective blindness. Once you get used to seeing it in people then suddenly you see it everywhere, and realise that it’s a standard pattern that humans adopt when they’re wrong but too invested in their position to be willing to step back and admit that they’re wrong.
Nietzsche is absurdly quotable. It’s a shame that the only man who actually knows what he meant (Dan Fincke) has gazed too long into the TL;DR and now the TL;DR gazed also into him.
@rugbyyogi:
Gunter Grasse said that the road to extremism begins when people are faced with the choice between a difficult reality or a comfortable ideology and choose the latter. As such, anyone whose idea of fun is photoshopping MRM propaganda* is probably not going to reject any ideas just because of some troublesome reality which contradicts it.
@Lea:
Nobody’s required to stay within any movement, and I quite understand and sympathise with the reason why you left. Personally I choose to remain because any organisation can only reform if good people remain within it, but I’m aware that it’s my white privilege and male privilege that lets me do this.
*I try to be a reasonable person, but on some matters I will not compromise. The word ‘meme’ should not be used to describe a propaganda picture. A meme is an idea considered as though it’s a biological entity. This is linguistic drift and it must cease. Next thing you know people will be telling me that “dice” is acceptable as the singular form.
@rugby
When I was a kid my parents were always taking us to castles and cathedrals. 😛
Whenever I hear MRAs complain that men have to work to support their female partners and kids (nobody forced you to marry, dude) and claim it has been a form of oppression for decades it just juxtaposes with womens lib history in my mind.
Mid-20th century women: “We want to be able to have the same jobs men have!”
Modern day manbabies: “Waaah, men had to WORK!”
@sunnysombrera:
I’ve read (I have no idea where; I read too much and these things stick in your head) that in the textile industry in the 19th century women were preferentially hired because they could be paid less. The 19th century textile industry was notorious for removing fingers or entire limbs on a regular basis. Not exactly nice work.
Clearly this was misandry on the part of those famous SJWs in the British industrial establishment.
But… but…. you know… institutionalised misandry… female privilege… the independent-career-woman industrial complex… female chauvinism… gynocentrism… gynologocentrism… x-chromosome supremacy… Crimes Against Hemanity… feminine separatism… Don Giovanni Shaming… Matriarchal Oppression… the woman’s lobby… the New Woman’s Order… intersectional oppression of men, white straight guys and upper-class government officials and arms CEO officials from the USA and UK… 😉
@EJ
Yup. For all their blathering about “the myth of the wage gap” I wonder if MRAs would try to argue there was no historical wage gap too? Because it was pretty fucking obvious.
@rugbyyogi
I went to the Slate Museum when I was in Wales last month and it was actually kind of interesting. They still had all the equipment from the 1800’s and even had someone demonstrating how to split slate. He told us about how the owners also exploited the hell out of the workers. Apparently, workers would be charged for breakages that happened after they made the slates. The owners knew that some of the slates would break in transit, so they deducted that from the workers wages. So, you could make 100 slates and only get paid for 75 (or fewer) of them.
The 50 foot water wheel was pretty impressive though.
I agree, but you might have a bit of a battle on your hands 🙂 The word ‘meme’ has suffered a bit of a downgrade recently – it used to mean an idea propagated through entities, then it meant “quiz on Livejournal that tells you what kind of biscuit or London Underground line you are”, now it means “picture with a caption slapped onto it made by people who are never funny or interesting”.
The same as ‘chivalry’ has been reduced to ‘holding doors open for people’ 🙂
Yeah, I looked at that “Prejudice Based on Sex…” “meme” and I think it’s children working in a mine.
I don’t think it can be a photo of Holocaust victims because no one’s wearing any kind of badge (and camp prisoners’ uniforms were striped).
Au contraire, given that it was originally coined by Richard Dawkins, I’d say it’s had a bit of an upgrade.
“They really seem to think that Leave it to Beaver represents every family throughout all of history until big bad feminism took over.”
What they don’t seem to get is that even before then Mrs. Cleaver had no problem with kicking Eddie Haskell out of her house.
Yo Esmay!
You even hunt mammoths, bro?
Also: http://www.returnofkings.com/63036/why-you-should-not-go-see-mad-max-feminist-road
It’s a 1910 photo of child breaker boys who worked in coal mines, part of a series of photos by Sociologist and photographer Lewis Hine to document and protest child labor practices.
http://www.lomography.com/magazine/255700-influential-photos-breaker-boys-by-lewis-hine-1910
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaker_boy
I have no idea how the photo fits the caption, but that’s par the course when it comes to AVfM memes.
@WWTH
As someone who has studied capitalism (I did a college minor in sustainability studies), that shit pisses me off too. Turns out the world doesn’t work on a perfectly rational basis! Cheap goods and profitable industries are often only so because the costs are pushed onto 3rd parties due to the market failure of externalities.
I think that these idiots just have some irrational devotion to capitalism, and thus are blind to any sort of criticism. They deny the existence of inherent problems with the system because otherwise, they can’t view capitalism as this ‘perfect rational’ system. Of course, they need some sort of explanation for the negative effects, and so they spin their rationalization hamster wheels and come up with whatever narrative best fits their needs (Misandry!). Pretty much the exact same logic as to why Gators are completely blind to any sort of criticism of video games and think there’s a massive ‘conspiracy’.
I described his readers on Return of Kings as misogynists, not MRAs, though clearly there is a massive overlap between those two groups.
You’re being too kind. There is massive overlap because it’s all the same grift with the same pool of potential marks. They brand based on personality and priority of hatreds to differentiate and capture their segment of the market, not because there is any real difference.
This is why Esmay is so angry. People confusing AVfM with RoK are fucking with Elam’s income by muddling the branding.
@EJ (the other one) – I did cringe when I wrote meme, I mean you’re right, it’s the use of a propaganda template. However, dice is ok for just the one – and “data” can be singular. 🙂
@brooked It’s ‘sexist’ because only boys were being exploited for their labour. Ignoring that plenty of girls were exploited for their labour, too – as Lewis Hine captured in his photography and observations.
Honest question — does the word “elitist” have any legitimate utility or meaning? Is there any appropriate context for it, or should I just discount anyone who uses it?
Moocow,
I think a lot of their love of capitalism has to do with the fact that most feminists are progressive and range from somewhat to extremely anti-capitalist in ideology. If they were actually concerned with issues many men face, such as unsafe working conditions or the prison industrial complex leading to the imprisonment of poor black men en masse, they would see socialist and/or left leaning feminists as allies. I’ve certainly met men who care about worker’s rights and injustices in the criminal justice system who are not MRA who see us as allies, not enemies. But as usual, MRAs care first and foremost about opposing anything feminists stand for.
I also think the pro-capitalist vision of the rational and bootstrapping man rising to fame and fortune through the power of his rugged individuality appeals to their false sense of superiority. Like right wingers of any stripe they’ve bought this fantasy hook, line, and sinker. They’re convinced they’d be happy millionaires if only big government, the pc police and the welfare cheats would stop standing in their way.
I ventured over there to ask if he could give an example of where he’d been quoted out of context, but he refused to come up with one (he went off about lying about Aaron Clarey, but I can’t see the lie). After a bit of back and forth, he banned me and advised me to “say goodbye to my career”, which sounds like a bit of a threat – I know I’d never get anything like that on this disreputable hate-site 😉
He really is absolutely raging his beard off.
If the MRM and AVFM don’t want to be associated with Roosh and ROK, why did they publish this: http://www.avoiceformen.com/sexual-politics/game/bang-the-definitive-interview-with-rooshv-part-one/
and this: http://www.avoiceformen.com/sexual-politics/game/bang-the-definitive-interview-with-rooshv-part-two/
and this: http://www.avoiceformen.com/sexual-politics/game/shootout-at-the-o-z-corral/
and this: http://www.avoiceformen.com/sexual-politics/game/the-rooshing-of-avfm/
?
@Falconer: You’re right. I jumped on the thought that they were using a picture from the Holocaust thinking that they *may* try to salvage some sort of public image, but I guess they a.) don’t care, b.) being misogynists, racists, ablists, homophobes, etc., it’s not really too far of a jump to being anti-semitic Nazi sympathizers as well. They can’t be just one form of nasty, they have to be every form of nasty. And of course, this leads us to c.) they’re public image is pretty much unsalvageable.
Ack…”their public image,” not “they’re public image.” I have one week off from my graduate studies and I’m a total grammatical mess.
@WWTH
Agreed! It’s astounding to me the lengths to which MRAs try to blame feminism. I grew up in France, so when I came to the US I was shocked to learn that “socialist” is apparently some sort of insult amongst certain groups. I’m definitely in support of worker unions and governmental restrictions to keep corporations in check because letting capitalism run unopposed causes all sorts of social and environmental problems. I was surprised that my political opinions, which were par for the course in France, were suddenly considered “far left” in the US.
So many of these morons will point to the 1950 and go “see? Now that is how life is supposed to be!”. Um yeeaaaah, during that time in the US, there was zero competition from other countries because their economies were in shambles after the second world war. Over time, other countries caught up to the US’s economy and suddenly “those evil ‘other people’ are taking our jobs”. Um, no, that’s just how capitalism works. Supply goes up, price falls. It’s the system you love so much at work; not so fun when you’re getting the short end of the stick, eh?
Exactly! The ‘rugged individuality’ is at the heart of this issue (REAL MAYUNS DON’T ASK FOR HELP). On one side, I love the idea of encouraging people to entrepreneur their own success, but it’s absolutely not a healthy way to run an entire society. And you’d be surprised how deep-seated this is in Amercian culture. Here’s a book I was assigned during college that describes how the philosophy of individuality has shaped the geographical landscape in America. It’s a bit on the cynical side, but I felt it had some very valuable insights
https://books.google.com/books/about/Geography_Of_Nowhere.html?id=pkmluwVdwx0C&hl=en
As George Carlin, they call it the American dream because you’d have to be asleep to believe it.
@Kate Minter: Perhaps they posted those because Roosh and ROK have been critical of AVFM in the past and vice versa? Perhaps they wanted their readers to understand why Roosh doesn’t identify as an MRA and why he is critical of MRAs in general?