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.
Yes, feel honored! (And annoyed!) Of course, lots of other unpleasant things come from mild internet fame. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Also what would the penis-focused equivalent to tampons and pads be? I have nothing against men having an aisle in the store for their penis-based medical needs, I’m just not sure what those would be.
Condoms?
Which, no matter how many of them you get and how big you make the packages, probably cannot justify taking up as much space as women’s pads and tampons.
Next thing you know they’ll protest us having the privilege to have periods.
@swankivy
If they tend to work longer hours or less desirable jobs, then they do deserve more resources. It’s not entitlement, it’s about getting and keeping what you earn. If I pay taxes, I want them to proportionately benefit me. If I pay child support or alimony, I want that money to go towards the child’s or woman’s independence, not some drivel about “maintaining a premarital lifestyle.”
Everyone deserves to get more if they work more (or harder). Of course, the right to earn what some people then scream about deserving to keep is not equally offered to everyone, and I’ve heard a lot of nonsense about how women make less money than men do across the board because they are genetically/naturally predisposed to choose less lucrative employment. People love to make excuses for why things should be the way they are if they are the ones who benefit from things staying the way they are. And if they have an unfair advantage, they always perceive something as being taken away from them if the opportunities are actually made equal. There are always going to be examples of poorly handled negotiations in alimony and child support, both in favor of men and against men. There are always going to be abuses of the system. The core of what feminism fights is when those inequalities are actually there and are actually hurting people. It is not an excuse to rip money and resources away from men because they think women deserve more.
Hey FactFinder, how’s PreggoPunchout going?
hey FF!
I hear antz is looking for someone to program virtual girlfriends for him….
Perfect match!
ideologue:
Of course, housewives are on duty whenever they’re awake and mothers of small children are on call 24 hours a day. Know many men who work longer hours than that?
In keeping with Robert’s Rules of Order, I am making a motion to add swankivy.com to the Antidotes to Boobery list (if she is okay with that). Can I get a second?
Thanks for the shout-out, cloudiah. If it helps at all, quite a lot of my content involves exposing and critiquing Internet assholes.
I do an “Asshole of the Day” feature on my LiveJournal (no, it’s not daily–anymore):
http://swankivy.livejournal.com/tag/asshole%20of%20the%20day
And my site has a “Conversations with Assholes” section, with conversations categorized by Type of Asshole (as part of a larger Rants Page):
http://swankivy.com/writing/rants/index.html#assholes
I figure if they’re going to be assholes, they might as well serve as good learning tools (and amusement) rather than just existing to spew shit.
/self promo
@cloudiah
Zombie Solanas, is that you?!! *peers suspiciously*
IR/FF, get off your Aryan horse.
FF/PP/IR: If they tend to work longer hours or less desirable jobs, then they do deserve more resources.
Which is why child support payments ought to be higher? And the aid to families with dependent children (now called, TARN)?
And we ought to pay parents who stay home with kids the median income for the nation.
Glad to see you are a feminist; welcome aboard.
Dave: The community here has made up their minds re…. and don’t take too kindly to dissenters.
Unlike yourself, a paragon of persuadable you are, right? A good argument will persuade you, every time.
It’s just that feminists never have “good arguments, right?
@Pecunium:
Yes, that’s probably the weakest of the standard so called “derailing” arguments, but I wouldn’t even say this one is wrong.
Of course, it’s simple to understand that if you lose, it’s not necessarily a proof that the odds weren’t stacked in your favor. But it can be a hint that you indeed didn’t benefit from privilege (for example because you live in different circumstances ).
It’s even more problematic when certain totally valid arguments like “X should have the priority over Y” are excluded a priori. Or if you even invent terms like “benevolent sexism” and demand other people use them as you want it, otherwise they are “derailing”.
I’m derailing? By sticking to the idea/concept of privilege, and asking my interlocutor (in this case that would be you) work from a common definition?
This use of derailing seems a lot like the one you are using of privilege; a nonce phrase meant to avoid/change the subject… I’m sure there’s a word for that, it’s right on the tip of my tongue….
Got it. projection.
Of course, it’s simple to understand that if you lose, it’s not necessarily a proof that the odds weren’t stacked in your favor. But it can be a hint that you indeed didn’t benefit from privilege (for example because you live in different circumstances ).
Again with the idea that “privilege = the members of ‘x’ group have a guarantee of preferment. As explained, supra by several people, this isn’t true, and it’s not what the concept of privilege says.
I can see why you might want to deny this, and derail the conversation, but you are, as explained above, wrong in your understanding (and from the ways in which you have equivocated, you are more than willing to attempt to use the definition, in context, you seem merely to want to make yourself the arbiter of its correct usage; thus preferring your interpretations to the actual meaning).
But privilege isn’t an individual effect, it’s a group effect. Moreover, it’s invisible. There is no way to know if someone was the beneficiary of a person classing them as the default along the way to their failing to get the final plum. Getting as far as they did is the benefit of privilege. In the long run it means their life, in toto is easier than it would have been were they not a member of the privileged class.
But that takes aggregate data to prove. One person is neither proof, nor disproof. To pretend otherwise is to maintain; in the face of all evidence; and patient explanation, either a willful, or a mendacious, ignorance. Neither of those is without fault, though one is less likely to be without malice.
It’s even more problematic when certain totally valid arguments like “X should have the priority over Y” are excluded a priori.
Could you include some sequitors with that? I can’t find any relevance to the argument you seem to be making; but I’ll try to address it.
Who should have priority, and why, is one of the central problems of devising any sort of remedy for structural privilege. It’s privilege deniers who pretend that intentional inclusions of counter-privileging circumstance should be excluded a priori.
So, on the face of it, you are complaining that there is not enough being done to combat privilege. This, as you may imagine, makes me doubt the honesty of your arguments (well, that and your inability to recall the actual arguments you’ve made, even when they are located above your present comments in the same thread, but I digress)
Pecunium, perhaps the online Derailing for Dummies site would serve as a better education source for his arguments? It will certainly explain his concerns and why they aren’t our concerns. At the very least, it will prevent us from banging our heads spoonfeeding oppression 101. And if he reads it, we’ll know that he’s here in good faith, just not knowledgeable.
“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.””
I’m pretty sure my childhood friend who’s in the process of becoming a green beret could cure him of this belief. As my father said: “She’s beautiful, smart, and she can kill you with her little finger.” That last bit doesn’t come from day care.
PS: This site is awesome. It really makes me want to bludgeon myself to death with facepalms a lot less.
I know someone who says that if there is a woman soldier in a group of male soldiers and you are on the other side, trying to kill them, you should kill the woman first.
Because if she’s a woman and she’s there, she’s put up with more crap, overcome more obstacles, and had to go against her social programming to be there, so she really wants to be where she is and is probably excellent at her job. Which makes her probably the most dangerous.
The guy who told me this was a Green Beret.
Don’t let the MRAs here that, the net might spontanously combust. I’ve heard from several men that military women aren’t to be messed with, for much the same reasons. And that smaller women have absolutely zero problems with taking down much larger men in hand to hand combat. I’m sure it runs the gamut, but women who can’t face discrimination likely either don’t cut basic training or move to military jobs more woman friendly.
Oh dear, pillowinhell, as if I didn’t knew Derailing for Dummies or similar sites. I’m talking exactly about them.
Most explanations why something is classified as derailing (and therefore never allowed to be brought up) are problematic, or, for example, self-contradictory: “If you really want to excel as a Privileged Person® you need to learn to value data, statistics, research studies and empirical evidence above all things, but especially above Lived Experience©.” directly contradicts that the argument “I am a member of -privileged group- and it didn’t seem to me that I benefitted from that.” is seen as derailing, too.
Again, every lazy ass with half a brain (but the intention to be fair and reasonable) can find that out for hirself. We all know that, so why am I wasting my time? If anything would be decided by how many Internet arguments are won Linux wouldn’t run on only 1% of desktops.
Vindicare, computer OS analogies aren’t exactly on topic either >.<
But how are "please use statistics not your experience" and "please stop using your experience" not both saying "hey, maybe find some statistics that back up your experience?"?
I mean, I'm white (well, part Native American, but I look white, so I get white privilege) — wtf happens when I'm shopping isn't going to be representative of what happens to everyone while shopping, and if it wasn't a derail, I could probably track down studies showing that non-white people, men of color in particular, are way more likely to be stalkd by security to ensure they don’t shoplift // accused of shoplifting…that a couple of my cousins once got caught shoplifting is moot to whether a non-white person is more likely to be accused of shoplifting.
(oh and who’s said Linux has won the desktop wars? OSX and I have something to say there…)
Actually Vinicare, I’m wondering why you’re wasting MY time?