Paul Elam, head ranter at A Voice for Men, has a new video out called “You want privilege? You got it!” The thesis: if women really did have the so-called privileges that men have, they’d hate it and want men to take them all back. Because all of these so-called privileges are really giant burdens. Or, as Elam puts it, somewhat more melodramatically, these privileges have “begun to more resemble an anchor around your neck than the helm of a great ship that everyone tells you that you are captaining.”
Here’s the video.
Well, all right, that’s not really Paul Elam. But that little clip does capture pretty well the tone of his latest post, which is indeed about how male privilege is really a terrible burden.
I mean, this is his opener:
I swear by everything holy that the next time I hear some fembot caterwaul about “male privilege,” I am going to find something to break, turn it into shards, and drag the broken pieces across my chest just to distract me from the pain of their increasing stupidity. Just picture me like Martin Sheen, collapsed in a heap of bloody, tearful insanity on the floor of a cheap hotel in Saigon.
Heck, compared to that, Mr. McDuck’s reaction to the news about his “ice cream” was, if anything, rather restrained.
The rest of Elam’s post is, as is typical for him, a rather trite recitation of a number of standard Men’s Rights talking points about male “disposability” written in some of the most ridiculously overblown prose ever seen outside of an Ayn Rand novel.
Elam complains that he hasn’t seen much benefit from his privileges:
Mind you I still don’t know what that privilege is. One time when I was young and very poor I was late on my light bill. I showed the electric company my balls, but they cut my power off anyway. …
Yeah, as someone who’s also had his power cut off, I’m pretty sure they do that with everyone. I’m also pretty sure that no feminist has ever or will ever argue that male privilege means you won’t get your power cut off for nonpayment.
Here’s Elam addressing women as if they’ve traded place with men:
With your privilege comes the right to work on crab boats, drive trucks, work on electric lines, walk into burning buildings and sink into the bowels of the earth digging out coal and other things people find useful.
Apparently having greater occupational choices is scary and bad.
When a ship goes down, or any other life threatening disaster strikes, you have two choices. Be a real woman and die, or treat your life like it has value and have the world shit on you as a coward who refused to perish on cue. There is also the possibility of third option, either die from the disaster so that men can live, or have another woman blow a fucking hole in your face with a pistol because you tried to save yourself.
Yeah, I believe we may have addressed this earlier. Oh, but there’s more:
Like noticing the emperor has no clothes, it may hit you one day when you decide not to offer your seat to a man; when the stares at you from all around seem to come down people’s noses. …
You must learn not to say a word. Not to anyone else, not even to yourself. You must learn to see flames, coal dust, icy saltwater, death and sacrifice for the trappings of power that the world around you thinks them to be.
Says a dude typing out his manifestos on an expensive laptop he conned nagged his followers into buying for him.
And you must be willing to hang your head in shame over that power, even as the world chews you up, spits you out, and gets ready to take its turn with your daughter.
Elam’s rousing conclusion:
So, that is it, ladies. You want my privilege, it is yours. I will gladly hand it over to you this very minute. I am just waiting for you to meet the pre-requisites of disposibilty and an utter lack of self-value. I am waiting for you to woman up to the job, take off your fucking make up and be ready to bleed, blah blah blah look at me I’m mad!
I paraphrased a little at the end there. But, yes, the world champion at seeing male “disposability” everywhere did in fact misspell the word “disposability.” That was all him. And so, believe it or not, is the following:
I, like a Jew gone weary of being called a chosen one, am completely ready for anyone else, and in particular, you, to be chosen.
Personally, I have had about all the privilege I can stand.
Yep. He went there.
Also, I don’t know if you all knew this, but when women serve in the military these days it’s “like a day care camp for them.”
Also, not to pat myself on the back or anything, but my headline is much better than his. Maybe he should get me to write all the headlines on A Voice for Angry Duck Plutocrats Men.
Discuss.
Usually, when NWO shows up, I reprint the Book of Learnin’, just so people remember with whom they’re dealing. But today’s my birthday, and my birthday should be all about love. Therefore, for the rest of the day, I will respond only with Jonathan Richman lyrics.
If I were to walk to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
Well, first I’d go to the room where they keep the Cezanne
But if I had by my side a girlfriend
Then I could look through the paintings
I could look right through them
Because I’d have found something that I understand
I understand a girlfriend
That’s a girl friend
Said G-I-R-L-F-R-E-N
That’s a girlfriend, baby
That’s something that I understand
I walk through the Fenway, I have my heart in my hands
I understand a girlfriend
Though not a parent, Slavey imagines he knows all there is to know about parenting–more even than actual parents.
I will now expound on the finer points of milk machine repair, since, by slavey’s standards, I am eminently qualified to do so.
NWO
“How can something done in a persons spare time, which is far less then even a part time job be considered this monsterously hard and invaluable, time consuming job? The answer of course is, it’s not.”
Suppose all you have to do is throw away some tissues and rinse out your fleshlight.
gotta love how in NWO land(well misoginist land really) what women do is completely worthless…yep jobs that are dominated by women which usually include childcare or working with people are completely disgarded as worthless while male oriented jobs are all awesome and women don’t belong there! ITs why sometimes I feel really bad on going on the defensive about hey I know women engineers, doctors, truckers..which I DO and as far as I know they are all competant but most of my female friends and relatives are nurses or teachers or social workers, and I myself do tutoring and work at the college I graduaated from and well I DO do pretty much all the housework…BTW NWO Slave it takes much longer then 10 min to do laundry and Vacuming can take awhile as well as well as cleaning counters ect
Oh goodness. The magical universe inside NWO’s head gets more terrible every day. Today, we learn that children are “tossed out the door at the age of five,” and then they never come back home. (Or, at least, if they do come back, they apparently no longer require any form of parenting. Also, the five years before any given child turns five do not count as requiring parenting work, either, because…well…um…look! Behind you! A three-headed monkey!)
Polliwog-eyp! There was a post awhile back saying women would be replaced by advanced AI….apparently MRAs think parenting(well the parts women mostly do anyway) that they can be replaced by robots! I’ve even heard other MRAs say men are better at everything! Including what women do!!! yeah and they have the audacity to wonder why women want nothing to do with them
errr is so easy that they will rplaced
NWO: Of course most crimes are committed by men. Those with the least privilege, or options, have the least choices for survival
Are you arguing then that men have always been oppressed by women? Because men have always been the majority of criminals.
By your, “logic”, that means the natural state of things is for women to be in charge.
So why are you so opposed to the natural order of things?
Fembot: Soldiers know about stoploss when they sign the contract. And they are placed on reserve for eight years, I believe, not indefinitely.
The first, maybe they knew about it when they enlisted, maybe not. It’s not something which gets a lot of attention, and; prior to 2003/4 many people had not heard about it.
Even now, when it’s more well known, it’s quite possible for someone to enlist and not know about it. 18 year olds are not known for their worldly knowledge.
Fembot/pillowinhell: re credit.
So long as you aren’t massively in debt, they’ll take you. A poor credit score/a little more debt than normal can be a bar to a clearance; as it creates potential levers for Foreign Intelligence Services to gain some control over the servicemember.
ozy: Stop-loss was not a Bush II policy. It’s a legal mechanism, and it has limits (I was stop-lossed several times. It didn’t matter because I wasn’t trying to get out; but had I been, then I’d have been forced to stay). It’s been around since I don’t know when; to cover shortages in critical specialties.
It’s not been a big deal since the end of the draft (though I think it was used some in the early stages of Vietnam, when they hadn’t ramped up the draft, and needed to retain some people).
Bush I issued a blanket stop-loss to the Nat. Guard in the Gulf War.
pillowinhell: Still, stop loss is a vile way to get around recruitment issues.
It’s not just recruitment issues. My MOS was stoplossed a couple of times; sometimes it was more specfic, so that it wasn’t 97E, but specifically 97EAB (I was a (97ERU). Because training a 97EAB takes 28 months, for a new recruit, and 20 months for a requal of a generic 97E. One also has to take into account that there is a, roughly, 40 percent failure rate in the training of 97E soldiers.
So it’s not just a recruiting problem (though it’s a lot harder to recruit a qualified candidate for anything in Military Intelligence, so that for every 10 people who express an interest 7 are usually denied the chance).
“Perhaps you could rattle off a few of these male privileges.”
Certainly, if it will help.
“Are there quota’s for employment for men dictated by the State?”
None that I could find.
“How about men only scholarships?”
Yes, some quick googling turned up the following:
Phi Kappa Si Men of Excellence Scholarship, The Franklin Scholarship, Lax Scholarship Fund for Gay Men, Alpha Tau Omega Distinct Advantage Scholarship, Sigma Phi Epsilon Balanced Man Scholarship, The Mabel and Lawrence S. Cooke National Eagle Scout Association Scholarship, Hall/McElwain Merit Scholarships, Chuck Hall Star of Tomorrow Scholarship,
Men friendly spaces in the workplace?
Yes, my workplace has many men friendly spaces, in fact I have not worked anywhere that did not have a men friendly space.
Do men have any reproductive rights?
Yes, men have the right to engage in or not engage in reproductive acts with consenting adult partners.
Maybe business start up funding for men only?
While I could find many sources of business start up funding for men, I did not find any for men only.
An all mens lawyers association?
Again I found many lawyers associations for men, but none for only men. I did however find many law firms where all of the partners were men.
How about white privilege?
Okay
White quota’s?
I have not found any white quotas
White business opportunities?
The country is teeming with business opportunities for white people. My neighborhood can’t be so far out of the norm that all of the white business owners I see around me are an aberration.
White scholarships?
There are far too many scholarships that white people can receive to hope to list them. Here are a few:
HOPE Scholarship, Fulbright Scholarship, Coca-Cola Scholars Program, SMART Scholarship, Bright Futures Scholarship Program, Healthy Lifestyles Scholarship, Big Dig Scholarships
Teehee! I read that last one as “Big Dick Scholarships” and just about died laughing. Wouldn’t that be something? A scholarship for white males only, called a Big Dick Scholarship.
@pecunium
Thank you for clarifying. I am not an expert, I’m just married to one : D
WWB:“Citations” are vulnerable to spin; “facts”, simply speaking, are not.
You, I can see, don’t work in a field with a whole lot of facts.
Because facts, absent context, are pretty much useless.
So facts, simply speaking, are very vulnerable to spin.
Bostonian. Come on now. Duke. Strass-Kahn. Many, many, many that I know personally, though their names will mean nothing to you.
Really? He’s in France, enjoying his life. They are where? They graduated and no one remembers their names.
The accuser in the SK case also seems to be a false accusing scumbag.
Care to present the facts which prove this? Not that the spin made it impossible to support the charge to a level sufficient to convince a jury, the actual proof of the claim of fact you are making.
Antz: You little vulnerable and dependent dearies would wilt in an instant under the kind of “privilege” that men must endure.
So… you are a chemist, of some sort. Tough life that.
I’ve been a machinist, a ditch digger: in Phoenix, in the summer, worked pizza, done security, been homeless and spent 16 years in the Army; to include a combat tour.
I’ve lived the shit you say I can’t take for an instant.
You sit in a lab and pretend you are going to build an artificial womb so men and women can be separated completely.
Which of is it who is the wilting flower?
Woo, Jonathon Richman/Modern Lovers! Also happy birthday Shaenon, though I suspect I’m late.
…I have nothing more to add except that Fatman and Cliff are fantastic here (and most places!), and that I’ve not disappeared or anything.
I like how NWO’s evidence of female privilege is all the jobs women aren’t hired for.
Apparently the only thing worse than men being denied jobs is… men not being denied jobs?
Poor men just can’t win.
As long as I’ve known oil workers, I’ve known that females do those jobs, too. My ex husband’s step mom worked on the rigs, not in peripheral jobs in oil.
Currently I’m researching North Dakota because some family members of mine
might go up there. On every video I see, there are women posting, “are there opportunities for women?” and in many of the videos they talk about the women working up there.
There is a housing problem up there so they build camps to house workers, and one separate one was built for women. They’re there. I think it’s sad that they have to ask on the videos if they will be hired, but the guys making the videos answer sure! You have to pass the physical test, but the answer is yes.
The latest Ultimate Fighter episode is one I wanted to make a video of, but UFC is very copyright protective. Rhonda Roussey showed up in this episode to train the other male fighters on the show. It’s a shame UFC wants to segregate the sport, but oh well. I know that many will not appreciate that violent sport at all, and I understand that. It took me awhile to be able to watch it. I look into UFC for reasons I won’t get into here. But evaluating UFC outside of wishing people never hurt each other, and in terms of gender can be quite interesting. The Rhonda Roussey episode was fascinating, it’s this weeks, if you look for it.
Well, David, Antz took the bait. Happy now? And who was it who said, “If you’re going to make shit up, make up shit that corroborates your other bullshit assertions”? Whoever it was, I blame you for this jacked-up band camp story.
Well, clearly women should leave men alone unless they have super model airbrushed flawless appearances and your penis is feeling a need to give her an update on its change in status.
Otherwise, women should just fuck right off because they aren’t worth the risk of sperm jacking or false rape accusation, amiright?
Wow, that’s a pretty dumbass way to get resources. Median child support is, what, a few hundred dollars a month, and then you have to take care of the kids by yourself? I have to say that a high-powered traditionally male job is a MUCH better meal ticket.
@NWO: “Perhaps you could rattle off a few of these male privileges. Are there quota’s for employment for men dictated by the State?”
This just demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of what privilege is. Privilege isn’t “this quota is reserved for you.” It’s “this institutional and social preference is geared toward supporting you.” And if you have it, you’ve probably had it your entire life. It’s invisible to you when you already have it, and you think that’s just “normal” and “how the world is supposed to be” when people like you are the ones in power. Quotas (no need for the apostrophe to make it plural, btw) of the Affirmative Action type are also of course not perfect (partly because they cause whining from people who believe THEIR jobs and whatnot are being taken and given to people who do not deserve them). But they serve two purposes: 1. countering the disadvantages that an underprivileged group has experienced throughout life, and 2. making members of the majority see and get used to a member of a minority in that role, making it easier for everyone to have an equal shot in the future.
If you think that “privilege” is about you getting special offers, yes, our definition of privilege does differ. Because in the case of male privilege, it is not something that has to be spelled out and offered to you and packaged with a “for men” sign. Because it already was “for” you, as everything is as a default “for” you unless it is earmarked for someone else, and you were raised in a society that expected you to receive it – a society that was organized to privilege you – a society that made it normal for you to think it was owed to you. What a gross misunderstanding you have of what we’re even talking about here.
Your privilege is still invisible to you. You haven’t even gotten to the point where you can listen to other people who are having an experience that is not yours and understand that they are not accusing you of oppressing them deliberately. I’m white and I like to think I haven’t taken any deliberate steps toward keeping black people poorer in my country or blocking their success in education. I do, however, recognize that most of my black friends came from families with a lower socioeconomic status and therefore have to try harder, work more, and overcome expectations against them just to get where I started from, not even to mention equaling me. It’s not “because they’re black”; it’s “because black people are in this situation, raised in it, trained to expect it, and get treated like they’re violating understood boundaries if they fight it or overcome it.” I see it! Because people who had that experience showed me and told me about it, and I acknowledged that across the board they had to try harder to get things I was simply given. You’d rather just insist that there is no such thing as male privilege – by pointing out that sometimes women do get things! The first step to equality is understanding another person’s experience and agreeing to stop contributing to the systems that oppress them. Feminists aren’t against men. But we will be against anyone who continues to behave as though any concessions to women are stolen from men–the rightful owner.
As usual, “people NWO has personally met” = “everyone”. HIS ANECDATA IS JUST BETTER, OKAY.
Personally, I suspect that he has met many, many women who were electricians, engineers, truck drivers, etc., but because none of them were attractive eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds, he failed to notice. Good old MRA goggles.
@Kyn: Personally, I suspect that he has met many, many women who were electricians, engineers, truck drivers, etc., but because none of them were attractive eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds, he failed to notice.
Total agreement here!
@Kyn: “Personally, I suspect that he has met many, many women who were electricians, engineers, truck drivers, etc.”
That’s the problem: if you meet people outside the context of their jobs – which, to be fair, is how we meet MOST people – we don’t know what they do for a living unless they tell us. Just because you don’t know a woman is working in a male-dominated field doesn’t mean you haven’t met a woman who does that. It’s the same as how people assume the guy who is out of the closet at work represents how “gay people act,” when the guys who are not out of the closet are being assumed heterosexual. Women who are not actually driving trucks etc. are being assumed to NOT be able/willing to do these things. Same as people are straight until proven gay in a lot of people’s minds.