Dean Esmay — Men’s Rights Activist, AIDS “skeptic,” big old white dude — has added another skill to his resume: Arbiter of Blackness.
If you haven’t been following the activities of Mr. Esmay of late, the A Voice for Men “chief operations officer” has been having a rather extended Twitter meltdown, posting endless puzzling yet impassioned Tweets to his own #SpankAFeminist hashtag, addressing an assortment of imaginary feminist enemies.
Some of the more puzzling have involved race, like his repeated charge that feminists are a bunch of white racists because, well, let’s let Esmay explain:
https://twitter.com/deanesmay/status/616223240642408448
(Archived here.)
In Esmay’s mind, apparently, the fact that feminists recognize that rapists and abusers come in all colors is … a racist attack on black men.
(Esmay also seems to think that black men own “their women,” a belief that has a more than a little in common with the fears of white racists — like one Dylann Roof — who worry endlessly about black men raping “our” — that is, white — women.)
But, one might wonder, if feminism is fundamentally racist, why do many black women embrace the movement, even with reservations?
Esmay has now provided what he evidently sees as the definitive answer to that question:
https://twitter.com/deanesmay/status/616222039578296320
(Archived here.)
You can tell how well-versed Esmay is in black history by the fact that he has misspelled the name of Aunt Jemima, the famous racist stereotype and pancake pitchwoman.
Esmay is even more contemptuous towards black feminist men.
https://twitter.com/deanesmay/status/616222290758373376
https://twitter.com/deanesmay/status/616222744363991040
https://twitter.com/deanesmay/status/616222987742654464
(Archived here, here and here.)
It’s certainly true, as no sensible feminist would deny, that white feminists, even those with the best of intentions, have said and done a lot of racist shit over the years. Pretty much all white people have. (That’s not an excuse, just a sad fact.)
I’m just not sure that Esmay is really the best person to determine who is and who isn’t an “Uncle Tom.”
In addition to being a patronizing white dude, Esmay is the “chief operating officer” of a website that has repeatedly published the work of a Holocaust denier; has enthusiastically promoted the videos of white “nationalist” RamZPaul; and has been waging a long if somewhat ludicrous battle against the Southern Poverty Law Center, an influential and effective opponent of far-right racists; indeed, Esmay has himself declared the SPLC a “a multimillion $$ fraud organization” and “America’s #1 Hate Group.”
In 2013, Esmay’s boss at AVFM, Paul Elam, after glomming onto bogus information first spread by 4chan trolls and white supremacists at Stormfront, helped to lead an abortive hate campaign against a young woman falsely accused of discriminating against white male applicants to Georgetown university
Dean Esmay: apologist for racists, arbiter of blackness?
EDIT: I removed a paragraph in which I got the Sad Puppies and Vox Day’s Rabid Puppies mixed up. In my defense, it’s very early in the morning.
I get this weird feeling reading Esmay calling people racist. Like when I was in elementary school and I called some other little kid a “moron” and he didn’t know what it meant so he just went around using it to refer to everything as a moron even when it made zero sense. Someone called him racist one time and even though he didn’t totally get it now Esmay is going to use this new vocabulary word to refer to everything he doesn’t like.
I hope this is the case. There’s an untapped well of comedy potential there.
Esmay, you keep using words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
Isn’t there a “version” (so to speak) of feminism called womanisim that’s focus more on POC issues? I’ve heard about it but never really came across too much info on it.
Anyway, Dean keeps being Dean. It’s always funny (and sad :() to see MRA’s and whatnot calling different human rights movements “hate groups” it’s pretty ridiculous, like most, if not all of what The Dastardly Dean says.
it’s actually racist to assume black women arent feminist – with or without white women – black feminists have existed as long as sexism too, from Sojourner Truth to Bell Hooks and beyond, some of the best minds in feminist thought. Plus, as racist as white feminists can be, it’s a simple fact that white feminidts
@KL
…….really?
Also, the comments on the article you linked to about that NZ law are ridiculous. Can’t say i’m very surprised, again. Internet atheists are more often then not very quick to judge.
Esmay, like many modern bigots, doesn’t actually know what racism is, only that being called a racist is bad. Therefore hetries to smear feminists as racist. He sees “that’s racist” as equivalent to “you’re a shithead.” See also Gamergate’s attempts to smear “SJWs” as racist, misogynist, homophobic etc based on the flimsiest evidence they can find.
Esmay is basically the MRA version of Andrew Schflay now, except to him feminism is the cause of everything bad in the world
Instead of liberals (according to Schflay), like the Westboro Baptist Church (according to Conservapedia)
Dean Esmay a racist and sexist? I am shocked, just shocked at the implication.
Not really, this man is so deep in his own little fantasy world. I’m sure he could he convince himself he’s the manliest and blackest, black man that ever lived, with a single tweet.
http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mco1rbq6961qz8x31o1_400.gif
Miss Andry posted the best Key and Peele gif for the situation…
…
http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md4n5qQgHK1qz8x31o1_500.gif
You also forgot to mention the comments at the only annual AVfM conference regarding a speaker commenting about his wife cheating on him and having some “cocoa penis puffs” and other assorted ethnicized dick jokes.
Shorter Dean: “Let me, a white man with no idea of what it’s like to be black or a woman, whitesplain and mansplain to you, black feminists/womanists, why you’re racist and sexist for being so!”
http://www.singleroots.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/johnny-depp.gif
“Makes me wonder if he’s somehow got Uncle Tom confused with Uncle Ben.”–Dani Alexis. That comment made my day. Reading about these guys can be so depressing because they can be dangerous. Sometimes you have to laugh at the idiocy of them though.
*Facepalm* One could write many books about all the Things D.E. doesn’t understand.
“Feminists are all racist, and when a black man is a feminist I HATE HIM EVEN MORE BECAUSE HE’S BLACK”
– A brain-dead jackass with no sense of irony
Seriously though, I’ve never seen feminists saying black men are all rapists, I’ve only seen anti-feminists say that.
And then store them in a building built especially to house those books. We could call it a “library”. Could not resist.
@spacelawn
I think there’s a significant overlap between Internet atheists and various far right ideological groups. After Elevatorgate (the #shitstorm over Rebecca Watson), Thunderf00t realized that he could make tons of money on ad revenue with anti-feminism videos. The sexual assault accusations against Michael Shermer (who was already known for womanizing and creepiness) made everything worse. Around that time, Thunderf00t started making videos about Anita Sarkeesian and, well, everyone knows how that went.
So apparently, if you criticize a thing, and there exist marginalized people who do that thing, you are automatically a bigot.
@historynerd
I agree with that first sentence but the rest? What are you talking about?!
Hi Deano, how’s trippin workin out for ya?
He’s pulling a slow Schwyzer, and I for one cannot wait for the mea culpa.
Okay, but has Dean been able to explain what Stop and Frisk is yet? Has he encouraged Paul Elam to change AVFM policies to support black men who’ve been killed or injured by police? Has he advocated for the breaking of ties with self-proclaimed “race realist” Roosh V?
So apparently, if you criticize a thing, and there exist marginalized people who do that thing, you are automatically a bigot.
Anal probing and extra-terrestrials?
Telling that in trying to lecture everyone about racism in feminism Esmay fails to use the one truly relevant term – intersectionality.
Liberal white feminists have been trying hard to understand and be inclusive of the differing challenges and issues facing women of colour. Something tells me Esmay couldn’t give two hoots about that. His only intention is to sow discord in a pathetic attempt to fracture the feminist movement. Let us know how that works out for you, Deano!