A man and an old lady get in an elevator

Another elevator joke for you all:

So Pierce Harlan of the False Rape Society blog gets into an elevator ….

Well, OK, not a joke. In his latest post, Harlan offers a reaction, of sorts, to the whole atheist elevator incident –- by relating an anecdote of a recent elevator experience of his own.

EDITED TO ADD: Harlan has now deleted the post in question. It can still be seen, at least for now, in Google’s cache of the original page, which you can find here. Grab screenshots! Back to the story:

Seems he was riding a hotel elevator with a sweet old lady. Neither one said anything to the other (Harlan apparently hates talking to sweet old ladies) but when he got off the elevator – well, let’s let him explain:

I glanced back at her and saw that … she was immobilized with fear. In fact, she was practically cowering in the corner. Her eyes couldn’t have been wider if I had whipped out my dick and lathered it up with Grey Poupon.  Hers was the face of utter, unbridled fear, and she was watching me like the scardest of scared deer. She said not a word but her demeanor practically pleaded, “Please don’t rape me, sir!”

Now, Harlan seems to have what you might call a taste for overstatement. He describes feminists as “screeching banshees” and “extremist loons allied with the sexual grievance industry.” I doubt he could describe a chicken-salad sandwich without resorting to angry hyperbole. (That was a little bit of overstatement on my part.) But let’s just assume that there is at least a kernel of truth here: this woman was creeped out by Harlan.

So what was Harlan’s response to this woman’s obvious discomfort?

 [N]o one has more empathy for his fellow human beings than I do. The first thought that came to my mind in response to the obvious fear on the face of this pathetic, sweet looking, older woman — who probably never hurt anyone in her entire life — was fuck you!

Obviously we are supposed to ask just what it was that drove Harlan – the self-described world’s most empathetic man – to say something so seemingly callous? Well, as is usually the case with those we write about here, it all comes back to man-hating ladies and their male allies, with their evil insistence on sexual assault education (sorry, “indoctrination”) and their callous demands to “’take back the night,’ although the night has always been theirs.”(I don’t quite know what that means, but it sure sounds selfish of these women to want a whole extra night just for themselves.)

Ours is, Harlan says, “a culture marked by crass, hysterical fear-mongering about male sexual predation and violence.” (Evidently some guys haven’t gotten the memo on this.)

But all this evil misandry seems to have left poor Mr. Harlan in an uncharitable mood towards, well, almost everyone — though he directs his worst opprobrium at sweet old ladies.

Fuck them all. The paranoia of the woman in the elevator is her problem, not mine. Ironically, the elevator, the hotel itself, the car she rode in and the roads she rode on to get to the hotel were all undoubtedly conceived, designed, and built by men — men she’d fear just as much as me if they were standing in that elevator with her. I felt no guilt or shame or bewilderment over the fact that she fears me because of my birth class. Let her fear me. I can’t change it, and I have too much to do to worry about it.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s good that some people fear us. Maybe we should exult in the power we wield by reason of their paranoia. One thing I know: I will never do anything to alleviate their paranoia. In fact, I’m just fine with it, thank you very much. If someday, my riding the elevator causes some old woman to have a heart attack, that, too, is not my problem.  Blame it on a culture that I don’t approve of. Blame on sweet looking, older women who give in to the paranoia.

Truly the world’s most empathetic man.