Having an opinion on the Internet is brutal, but nothing sparks more vitriolic controversy than the Feminism vs. Men’s Rights onslaught. We asked Dean Esmay, AVoiceForMen.com’s operations manager, for a glimpse into the battlefield.
Having an opinion on the Internet is brutal, but nothing sparks more vitriolic controversy than the Feminism vs. Men’s Rights onslaught. We asked Dean Esmay, AVoiceForMen.com’s operations manager, for a glimpse into the battlefield.
What is AVoiceForMen.com and what does it seek to accomplish?
We are a counter-cultural site devoted to a very unapologetic and brash challenge of the status quo on gender issues. We are strongly against feminism. Only it has to be understood when we say that, we’re talking about opposing ideological feminism — the stuff that comes out of academic theory, the stuff that makes its way into government policy and so on.
So it’s not anti-female, it’s anti-feminist?
That’s correct. We don’t have any opposition at all to the idea of equality and equal rights between the sexes; in fact we fully support the passage of the equal rights amendment. Because we’re anti-feminists we are wrongly pigeon-holed as right-wingers. Point in fact: We represent a diversity of viewpoints from conservative to liberal.
But you’ve got quite a few female contributors and supporters?
Yeah, some of our most popular writers are female, some of our most popular videographers are female. I do a show twice a month with Erin Pizzey, who founded the battered women’s movement in the ‘70s. Some of our most staunch and loyal supporters are women.
How fast is a movement like this growing: hundreds a year? Thousands?
In general we’ve seen steady growth, exponential growth. We think there’s a reason for that. Yes, we’re good at what we do, but also there’s been a pressing need for this for a long time. We’ve done something that was bottled up in people for a real long time, and we opened the bottle.
What are the normal demographics of people coming in and supporting?
We have an interesting dichotomy that we’ve never quite been able to understand, which seems to be split. For an Internet site, we actually have a higher average female readership than most sites do. We have a big chunk of 18-25, then we have another huge chunk of 35-50. I don’t know what happens to guys between that age. We have better gender symmetry than any feminist website we’ve ever analyzed.
Your position is extremely polarizing. What are some of the negative responses you’ve gotten?
Nasty emails are so common they just bounce off now. We get: ‘Right Wing Nut,’ bzzzt, ‘Rape Apologist,’ bzzzt, ‘Wife Beater,’ bzzzt, ‘Just sexually inadequate and a loser,’ bzzzt, ‘You’re just bitter because your wife screwed you over,’ bzzzt. My wife supports what I do and so does my ex-wife, so just shut the fuck up! (laughs). But we get actual death threats. We had a big conference in Detroit in June and the hotel we were having it at sent us a registered letter saying that they had gotten multiple threats to vandalize the property and to attack not just attendees, but hotel staff. One of our security people got a note dropped under his door saying, “I hope you secure the conference better than you secure your family,” which gave us a bit of a freak out.
How do you handle that type of negativity?
We’re not afraid to get confrontational and even rude. We’re not afraid to offend people. I don’t care if you’re offended. We’ll actually put in print, “Fuck you.” We actually talk that way and we don’t back down from that. But we’re strictly non-violent, and when somebody is polite with us and shows they want to have a conversation, we’ll have a polite conversation. But we’re loud. We don’t care if we offend you, we really don’t.
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