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.
Can someone explain to me what a false rape sequence is? I watched the movie, but I still can’t figure out what that could refer to. Is a false rape sequence a guy with an electric guitar who is strapped to the front of a vehicle?
@Viscaria, well MRAs think every accusation of rape is “false rape”.
Ah yes, all the Good Men, killed off in the coalmines before they even hit puberty, by those same big industrial capitalists your name references, you shittin’ lump of coal slag. That’s where they’ve all gone.
And yes, they WERE chosen on the basis of sex-based prejudice…anti-female prejudice, that is, since coal miners were/are overwhelmingly male. (Girls? Only good for getting killed in textile mills and clothing sweatshops. Pshaw, that ain’t workin’.)
And MRAs, MRAdjacents, MRHAs…tomayto, tomahto, potayto, potahto. Hearing them quibble over nomenclature is as silly as listening to a racist saying there is all the difference in the world between a White Separatist and a White Supremacist. One thing they ALL agree on, is that their brand of person is superior. Which is pretty ironic, when one thinks about it.
@WWTH
I’m reading up on it now, this explains a lot! Especially about how important the right to go on strike is.
@mildymagnificient
Huh, funny how things tend to come together.
I was thinking the same thing myself. I guess they are just putting the word “false” in front of “rape” to send the message that even if a rape does happen, it’s always “false” when it happens to a woman.
I saw the movie, it was awesome, and no rape! Thank god.
I’m sure that’s the next thing they’ll complain about. They can’t be entertained without imaging the taste of female tears only gratuitous rape scenes can offer. That’s why they’re busy telling women to STFU about Game of Throne’s latest rape scene while simultaneously lauding it as legitimate free speech (as if feminist critique is not protected by the first amendment).
That’s why I dispense with the parsing and just call them male supremacists. They all agree that they are kingly and righteous and women are inferior and subordinate. Can’t get much more bigoted than that.
Is the “historic child rape apologia” accusation based on David’s 21-year-old Salò article?
Because there’s no child rape anywhere in that movie. For proof, just look at the fact that it’s distributed uncut in the UK – which would be legally impossible under the 1978 Protection of Children Act if it actually contained the material that MRAs are claiming it contains. And believe me, the British Board of Film Classification would have gone through this film almost frame by frame to make sure that there were no legal issues – with a film that high profile, they couldn’t cut corners.
Unlike some British obscenity legislation, the PCA doesn’t admit context or artistic merit as a legal defence – which means that no matter how distinguished the filmmaker, if material in the film is deemed to infringe the criminal law, out it comes.
I’ve written positively (if guardedly) about Salò and if anyone used that writing as the sole basis for calling me a child rape apologist, I’d sue for libel immediately. And since it would be a pretty open and shut case based on the evidence above, I’d almost certainly win, very possibly with aggravated damages as there are few more defamatory accusations within British culture right now than claiming sympathy with child porn. I daresay US culture is much the same.
Flying Mouse:
BTW, Heartiste, like Roosh, isn’t an MRA douchebag but a PUA dochebag.
I only pointed this out considering the topic of this thread, and Esmay’s feelings about these fine distinctions.
@Wetherby
I did a post while back where I looked up Salo’s ranking on all time greatest films lists. I pointed out that the most prestigious US home video company, Criterion Collection, has released a restored version of Salo that’s available on DVD, Blu Ray and on Netflix. Academics have written books about Salo and it’s taught in college film courses. Every US art museum with a cinema has shown or will show Salo in a Pier Paolo Pasolini retrospective, as will every good University or repertory cinema. For shits and giggles, I found a film schedule for a Houston art museum that was showing Salo in a Pasolini retrospective because Elam’s in Texas.
Then I realized the people who are attacking David are intellectually dishonest assholes who don’t care about the truth. I may have many flaws, but I’m not a liar and I actually strive for intellectual honesty, so I always have a little trouble remembering that some people are lying little shits.
“Is the “historic child rape apologia” accusation based on David’s 21-year-old Salò article?” Yup, and it still annoys me the shit out of me. Congrats to Dean Esmay and his fellow dipshits, you’ve found a way to live without any sense of shame.
@Wetherby
Salo is not rated in the US.
The US rating system is voluntary, and many independent distributors don’t bother submitting their films to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) if it’s only going to play independent art houses. You can sell home video releases unrated and there are unrated films on Netflix as well. It costs thousands of dollars to get a film rated, so sometimes it’s simply not worth it.
For instance, Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac vol 1 was distributed theatrically by Magnolia and played in over 50 theaters, is video distributed by Criterion Collection and on Netflix. It was never rated because it would have obviously gotten a NC-17, so they didn’t even bother.
My point was that in order to grant approval for distribution in the UK (which is compulsory for all non-documentary or non-music-based video releases), the BBFC had to be satisfied that the content didn’t break any laws.
Britain’s anti-child porn laws are so draconian that even possession is a criminal offence, so if there’d been anything even vaguely like that in the film, it would have had to be removed – the distributor wouldn’t have any say in the matter.
And since it clearly doesn’t breach British child porn legislation (a matter of verifiable fact, not speculation), I seriously doubt that it breaches the US equivalent.
rugbyyogi- in regards to the meme that sunnysombrera posted and the whole boys and men weren’t the only ones who historically word in dangerous jobs, another group that is ignored by the MRAs are the Match Girls. These girls (some as young as 4) and women made matches by dipping match sticks into white phosphorous. White phosphorous is very toxic and exposure leads to a fatal condition called Phossy Jaw. In addition to this, these woman and girls worked for as little 4 shillings a week and worked 12 hour days, were not allowed to sit down and were heavily fined for things like dropping a match, talking to each other, arriving late, sitting down and going to the toilet without permission. Sometimes they went home with out any pay at all. Also, beatings were not uncommon at the factories as well. It was basically slave labour. So yes, the notion and only men and boys have worked dangerous jobs is absolute crap.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/kevin-maguire-match-girls-strike-2048970
http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/work/england/london/article_1.shtml
http://britishindustrialrevolution.weebly.com/child-labor-match-girls.html
Related to this story was this rather entertaining Twitter exchange:
https://twitter.com/fidelbogen/status/600863753492627456
https://twitter.com/tbogg/status/600869963725864960
How could I have been so foolish?! Thank you, Arctic Ape.
And I extend my heartfelt apologies to both MRA’s and PUA’s. Your various bigotries are as unique and distinguishable as individual snowflakes, and I can’t believe I was careless enough to mix you up like that.
Well this was anticlimactic: finding out the horrific MRA threat is just one troll with a blog of 11,000 followers. This means the other 320 million of us are doing pretty good. Every news site is linking to the same guy and seem to be working pretty hard to make ‘meninists’ seem like a ‘threat’ to get your clicks.
I really look forward to the steam of trolls showing up demanding that the news media get all their tiny distinctions right while not apparently caring that a) David didn’t do the thing they’re wanking about and b) David isn’t the news media.
@katz – Unfortunately I just inadvertently lumped Heartiste in with the MRA’s in a comment above (didn’t call him that outright, but implied it. Careless mistake). The trolls will probably come rolling in with a hue and cry that David ban me immediately to prove his integrity.
David, feel free to delete any of my comments (including this one) if you think it will contribute to the storm and don’t want to deal with them. You’ve been getting enough grief from those jokers on twitter, you don’t need any more in your backyard.
There’s been a number of articles lately about how deliberate decisions by the U.S. federal government created the ghettos of today. By doing things like refusing to allow black people to buy houses in certain locations. Once that was made illegal, by getting people to add ‘restriction covenants’ to their house deeds preventing them from reselling their houses to blacks.
http://www.npr.org/2015/05/14/406699264/historian-says-dont-sanitize-how-our-government-created-the-ghettos
http://www.npr.org/2015/05/06/404441478/troubled-neighborhoods-reflect-segregations-legacy-researcher-says
George Romney (Mitt Romney’s father) actually tried to break down some of the deliberate segregation attempts when he was secretary of housing under Richard Nixon, by denying funds to cities like Baltimore that refused to desegregate. As a result, he got pulled from that position.
(Via https://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/ )
Honestly? I don’t care to differentiate one group of online misogynists from another – that’d be validating them in some way, to me. Maybe they have a different motivation behind their attitudes but they nonetheless express them so similarly that, yeah, I can’t blame journalists – who probably have a lot of shit to keep track of as is – for conflating them.
Maybe it’s due to being a Jew who, for a good portion of their childhood and teen years, was constantly accosted by Christian kids particularly obsessed with pushing whatever denomination they belonged to. What bothered me more is that they expected me to keep all the differences, no matter how minute, in mind. I know there’s a difference between Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, and Eastern Orthodox…but I just don’t care. I don’t care because I am not religious and, regardless of their differences, they’re still all technically Christians who worship and believe many of the same things.
This goes doubly for libertarians, each of whom define that label differently and hold their definition as the “true” one, as they seem to get mad when I call the Koch Bros. as well as their various think-tanks and paid shills. Someone defriended me on Facebook because I didn’t give into his demand that I call them “vulgar capitalists” instead, even when I made it clear to him who I was referring to as “libertarian” – he just disliked I was using the label at all. Yeah, sorry, but even Noam Chomsky – who once thought of himself as a “libertarian socialist” – renounced the label knowing how much corporatists had co-opted it, to manipulate those they know had little love of unchecked capitalism.
Oh, me too. I couldn’t care less about their teensy sectarian differences. They all subscribe to the same basic notions about gender and such, and there’s really not a dime’s worth of difference between them, save for what they care to call themselves. And really, no one but them ever cared.
I still can’t tell the difference between objectivists, libertarians, and anarcho-capitalists. I also do not care. Same shit, different asshole as far as I’m concerned.
I’d post the Judean Peoples’ Front bit, but I just can’t be arsed.
Falconer:
“What have the feminists ever done for men?”
So, I was just listening to Dean Esmay talking to a woman who wanted to attend the avfm conference last year, I could be wrong, but at around 22 minutes in on this video, he appears to say:
“know this though … we are a group of volunteers dedicated to a cause and that cause is Paul Elam”
Whut?? Am I hearing it wrong?
More than some guys will ever know…and a LOT more than these guys will ever dare admit.
The birth control pill is the first one that comes to my mind, since the idea was first proposed by feminists. Yes, men helped bring it to fruition, because they were the ones doing research into plant sterols as a source of artificial hormones (and that’s only because women were at the time being actively discouraged from scientific careers), but I doubt that they would have done so if they had not seen the clear benefits for both sexes.
Of course, these guys probably just see that as unmitigated misandry, because a woman who can control her own reproduction is a woman who can’t easily be controlled by a man.
Heh…wouldn’t surprise me a bit if that were exactly what he said. Because AVFM is all about Elam, and everyone else will get thrown under the bus if Paulie doesn’t think they’re doing enough for him, him, HIM.