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.
Harlan goes on to talk briefly about the Rebecca Watson elevator incident. Needless to say, he adds nothing interesting to the discussion.
MRAL, I’ve noticed that you tend to avoid the threads where NWOslave is holding court. Does he make you uncomfortable?
He ought to, because in 25 years, YOU WILL BE HIM.
NOOOOOO!!!! XO /horror
BTW, Doctress, you have a cameo in my latest Ami card fanfic.
Look, I’m just giving the names of the most prominent feminists. Valenti, Marcotte, Schwyzer, Michael Flood… there’s the “old guard” like Wolf etc., and some of the NOW crew, but I’m thinking more the newer faces of the myvement, the “third wave”.
You guys might be feminists but you aren’t prominent.
Really?
Fun fact, elevators have been around since about three hundred years BCE and appeared independently in multiple cultures, so claiming a single inventor, let alone knowledge that the inventor was a man, is silly. Women have also invented more than one part of the automobile http://www.ehow.com/info_8264329_automotive-inventions-women.html Women have also traditionally ran their fair share of boarding houses and inns, so the assumption that men invented hotels is also silly (not to mention the fact that pretty much every culture ever that is bigger than a single tribe has some sort of hotel system). People like Harlan start out with the idea that men are the only ones who ever did anything, ever, and hence give them credit for everything, even shit that occurs in all sorts of cultures with no known inventors.
“The old woman wouldn’t have shamed me. She has a right to be afraid, and I have an equally legitimate right to not give a shit. I don’t mind her.” That is actually a much healthier idea than the one Harlan is expressing. Really, we do not know what this woman was afraid of (theft, rape, enclosed spaces), but the guy in this scenario did not do anything (his body language may have been hostile, because his mental state was hostile, but we don’t know that for certain either). So, he did nothing to her, she did nothing to him (said nothing, filed no complaints, did not try to touch him, etc.). Issue over. This is different from the incident with Rebecca Watson because the elevator guy there actually took action towards her. Watson told EG not to hit on her, which was an affirmitive action, not mere presence in an elevator. Except, no one, absolutely no one, has told Harlan that he can’t ride the elevator. All anyone has said is that his seething hostility and paranoia are somewhat over the top. Understanding why your presence may cause discomfort in a certain place and having some empathy is not that much of an imposition. For example, before I started cutting my own hair, I went to an all black salon/barber shop, because its services were less gendered and I knew there was a guy there who knew how to deal with short non-African hair. As a pasty, freakishly pale blond in a very black space, I was aware that my presence caused some discomfort, so I made an extra effort to be friendly and considerate to elliviate that feeling that I was intruding in their space. What some people on this thread are suggesting is the corallary to that-if a man knows he is in a space where his presense might feel threatening (because women are taught to be wary on threat of violence), he can make a small effort if he wants people to feel more comfortable. He does not have to, but it is a good idea if he wants people to be more comfortable around him in those spaces.
And the Third Wave predates those people by quite a bit.
Small, enclosed space, full of strangers, could break down and get stuck (and what if the emergency button doesn’t work???) or, worse, plummet to the ground and kill us all as we are trapped inside a falling metal death-trap…
If you’re really scared of elevators, maybe I can put your mind to rest, a little bit.
regarding the emergency communication button: they are required to be tested monthly, and are monitored 24/7. you don’t even have to talk, if you push the button, the monitoring company is alerted and will dispatch technicians.
regarding elevators plummeting; after years and years of engineering and overlapping safety features, this never actually happens. the cabs have at least two braking systems; one is typically a caliper type arrangement, held by the hoist cable; if for any reason, the hoist cable would stop supporting the cab, the calipers snap out, braking the car against the guide rails. And yes, the brakes are fully capable of stopping the cab.
Another system is gravity based, if the elevator might start falling faster than a preset speed, it will activate a totally separate braking system.
Also, the cables holding up the elevator? there are typically 4-8 cables, and they are designed so that any ONE of them is capable of supporting the cab by itself Each of them is separately attached, so there is no single point of failure. Again, elevators are inspected monthly, so undue wear is caught long before a failure is imminent.
And of course, many of the elevators you see in buildings up to four stories are driven by a hydraulic piston. If the systems fail, and the hydraulic pump is completely removed, the diameter of the hydraulic piston and the viscosity of the fluid is such that the elevator will slowly lower to the lowest landing. And it has the same interlocked brakes as the other ones, so if some inconceivable accident happens, the brakes click in.
Elevators are one of the safest modern mechanisms around. In order to have a stunning failure, basically the building needs to be significantly destroyed, in which case being in the elevator is not your most significant problem. I recognize, however, that this kind of fear can be irrational, and maybe this does little to ease your concerns. It irritates me to constantly see movies and TV showing elevators plummeting, though, when it happens so rarely.
This page indicates that in the US, there are about 27 elevator fatalities annually, and about half of these occur during installation or maintenance, not routine use. In a country with 900,000 elevators, that’s pretty damn safe.
Just recently, a man fell to his death here in Milwaukee; but what happened is that the elevator got stuck between floors, and he impatiently pried the doors open and tried to hop down to the lower floor; missed his footing and fell down the shaft. So although it qualifies as an elevator accident, it was not a failure of the elevator that killed him, if you see what I mean.
MRAL: You have the right to behave however you want. Women have the right to respond however they want. When you choose to act without regard for them, you are tacitly accepting whatever response they might give you–spitting on you, treating you like shit on their shoe, etc.
If you want a certain response, then you’ll have to act a certain way. That’s simple cause and effect.
Also, stop putting extraneous ‘y’s in everything. It’s so tacky.
Ylyvatyr.
I trust David can go back to my epic comment there and correct all the ynstances of “elevator” with the proper spellyngs.
I’m very sorry, but I just had to do this.
No, katz, women should treat MRAL the way he wants to be treated, no matter how he treats them. If they don’t, that’s misandry.
wow, those guys panic easily, don’t they?
It’s possible that the older woman wasn’t afraid at all. Maybe she was shaking — but the shaking was related to age. Maybe she looked at him with wide eyes — but the wide eyes were because she’s got bad vision.
when did prominent come into it? o_O and who decides who’s prominent? o_O If I’ve never heard of Shwyzer and he’s never influenced me, or any site I’ve visited, or any feminist I know, or any of the feminist organizations I work w/ on my job…. is that important in your pointing to ppl as meaning “feminists”? o_O or not?
But the important part is when you say “feminists believe” you mean.. specifically 4 ppl? o_O Cuz at least that clarifies what you mean…
Yes, and maybe her anxiety had nothing to do him or the elevator at all.
Maybe she has severe OCD, and her worry about whether or not she turned off her stove is giving her vivid images of her house burning down and all of her family dying in agony.
We have no idea what was actually going on in her mind.
If I’ve never heard of Shwyzer
His name might actually be Schwazer, or Schwozer or something. You never know with MRAL.
oppressed men
Huh. So David is unable to comprehend that sexism can be against men as well? Because men can’t be oppressed, they’re always the oppressors. Never mind the fact that more men are in prison or men make up a majority of the homeless.
MRAL
I take it the L stands for “losers,” despite the fact that men who reject feminism make more money (which does not fit in with the “loser” shaming label)? Well, you shouldn’t get your panties in a knot when we call you impoverished cunts then (the feminists do not exactly get a prime shot at non-feminist men, and hence a lower family income. Also, feminist women who frequently threaten frivolous legal action may earn more, but are handouts really a way to subsist?). Sometimes there’s a non-conspiratorial reason (no, men do not meet in patriarchy clubs and the majority of western society does not admire rapists, honey) that certain people are poor, before you go on about how the “patriarchy” makes honorary women poor. A lot of poor people are really stupid, lazy, and inefficient bums who deserve to be poor.
I hope you can learn from this rare and much-needed criticism even if it is a kink in that string of handouts from the government and men alike, so let down your fragile feminist ego shields even if your feelings get hurt, learn a little, and have a nice day.
I dun think I spelled it right there neways : But MRAL knows who I mean xD
May I just say, Harlan probably wouldn’t have said anything at all if that old lady had been hot.
I’m wondering how old this elderly woman was. From an mra standpoint she could have been anywhere from 40-95.
IF she was actually a senior and had a panicked look in her eyes I would not be thinking I made her feel a particular way my first thought would be perhaps there is a episode of dementia going on, my second thought would be how I could help her.
If she was 40-60 or so I wouldn’t give a thought to a look that went in my direction. As has been said MANY times before elevators are places much like a subway where people are in close contact with each other but almost always maintain a very clear distance.
I completely ignore what others are doing in elevators. There is no reason to believe this woman’s “eye state” had anything to do with him, and even if it did there is less reason to believe she feared he’d raped her. PERHAPS when you hate women you might project that? Was she clinging to her purse?
We own an apartment in a high-rise building. After running into the same people on the elevator for six months or so one of us said hello and a touch of small talk. Nothing more. Meeting in the lobby is much more likely to fuel an introduction. Basic elevator etiquette.
Speedlines
VERY funny. My older brother used to torment me with jumping in the elevator to see if he could stop it.
Harlan wrote, “Just because I am not a self-loathing male and a far leftist, free-lancing loon doesn’t mean I transfer the blame for rape to the victim.”
Freelancing? What do you have against people that are self-employed?