Over on A Voice for Men, our dear friend Paul Elam has come up with an interesting new way to celebrate Mother’s Day – with what is essentially the longest, least funny, and most rage-filled “Yo Mama” joke ever. (Indeed, it’s so rage-filled I should probably put a Trigger Warning right about here.)
Elam starts off by addressing the mothers of the world, suggesting he’s got a “a socially conscious twist” on the traditional Mother’s Day celebrations. Mothers, he argues, should gather together the flowers they’ve been given by their loved ones and:
Place a bunch of daffodils at a dumpster near you, perhaps one in which one of you, or one of your kind, has tossed an unwanted baby, leaving it there to slowly die alone in a pile of trash.
Perhaps you could lay a single rose at the base of a bridge that has been used by a mother to throw her baby into an icy river. Perhaps you can lay it there with hands that have beaten or shaken a baby to death.
You probably didn’t see that coming, did you? He goes on.
Now perhaps some of you could place large, colorful arrangements at the abortion centers where women go to have children cut out and laid to rest in those colorful and attractive biohazard containers that are all the rage in the clinics. …
Maybe you can lay virtual flowers at your computers to honor all the children that you and your sisters have pimped out to pedophiles, or perhaps the blossoms could be placed in your child’s room, which also doubles as your preferred place to abuse your own.
Oh, but you say you haven’t done any of these things, and that abortion isn’t actually the same as infanticide? No matter. Elam has an answer for that:
This is not a request for some mothers, or a percentage of them, but all of you. In fact, you don’t even have to be a mother. If you have a vagina, the blood of all those children, who are abused far more at the hands of women than men, has stained your skin and caked around the cuticles of your fingers.
If you are a mother, particularly one of the many abusers, or just one that has remained silent as your sisters have beaten, choked, stabbed, burned, drowned, abused, neglected, dumped, tortured and otherwise done the unspeakable to the most defenseless among us, then I hope to see those flowers in your murderous hands, paying homage to those that have been unfortunate enough to be placed in your path. …
In Daffodils for Dumpsters the gash gets you in, and you don’t really have a choice.
You see, Elam has decided that we live in an era of “collective guilt,” and that the evil (straw) feminists who go around blaming all men for the actions of a few – through such dastardly things like rape awareness seminars – deserve to find themselves collectively blamed as well.
Except that Elam’s post goes well beyond an ill-conceived and ill-intentioned attempt at “turnabout is fair play.” This isn’t a piece of Swiftian satire. He actually believes all this hateful nonsense, and says as much:
Now, do I really mean all this? Yes. It is not that women deserve to be collectively regarded as child abusers and killers. Most aren’t. Most are actually very good to their children and can even be trusted with the children of others. But that truth is not what is important here.
What is important is the children, or the principle, or whatever other bullshit we make up to convince ourselves it is not about demonizing women when that is exactly what we are doing.
I have to confess I have no idea what he’s trying to say in the second paragraph here. Did he mean to say “men” instead of “women?” If so, this is an interesting little slip.
He continues:
The fact is that mothers are more dangerous than fathers where it concerns children. They always have been. It is only a few percentage points in that direction, but of course in a White Ribbon way, it is more than enough to justify pointing a finger at your entire sex and feeling superior as we watch you atone for the unspeakable acts of a minority.
So, suck it up ladies. If you knew about White Ribbon and said nothing to object to it; if in general you have remained silent or actively participated as the image of the male half of the population has been reduced to that of a depraved threat, the step up and get your flowers. You deserve every last petal, stem and thorn.
I imagine Elam chuckling a bit as he typed that final word.
And a happy Mother’s Day to you, too!
Oh, and if you found yourself wondering about that “White Ribbon” thing, Elam is evidently (as best I can figure it) referring either to the women who, during World War I, handed out white ribbons to men who didn’t enlist in the army. Or he’s referring to this contemporary campaign to fight violence against women. But I don’t live inside Elam’s head, so I’m not sure what he meant, or why he seems to think that all women would know about either campaign, much less have any responsibility for them.
NOTE: Elam is also celebrating Mother’s Day by suggesting I had something to do with creating Reddit’s appalling “beatingwomen” subreddit as part of a nefarious plot to make the Men’s Rights movement look even worse than it manages to do on its own.
You may notice that Elam presents no actual evidence to back up his claims. There is no such evidence, because Elam’s accusations are utterly and completely untrue.
I have nothing whatsoever to do with r/beatingwomen. Nothing. I don’t know anything about who created it, or what their aim was beyond laughing at pictures and videos of violence against women. As I’ve said before, it’s a vile place. I think Reddit should shut it down.
well someone should point out that single mothers ARE already suspected or accused of child abuse or neglect. Usually its neglect. Single mothers are derided as being neglectful at the least sign of their children stepping out of line. We have “broods” of children we are unable to care for (thanks Ruby)AND all kinds of authorities are ready to sweep in at the smallest sign that you aren’t living a middle class lifestyle.
Kid got the same items for lunch three days running? There will be a worker at your door. Just because you packed the same lunch items three days in a row doesn’t mean you’ve given the one meal left to rot for three days. It means your limited in variety until you get your next pay. And of course they’ll inspect your homes cleanliness as well. I wish them luck on that, the worker insinuated that maybe she should come back the nextt day…lords no come right in. I keep my home spotless at all times just because I like it that way.
I’ve dealt with more single mother equals abuser bullshit from people not brave enough to come out and say it than I can shake a stick at. Really fun when your kids documented medical condition is being held up as a reason to call childrens aid, despite that very documentation stating the the condition happens for entirely organic reasons, and the best parents can hope for is to limit the childs discomfort until said child outgrows it!!
Here’s the thing. Even if Dave DID create the r/beatingwomen subreddit, there would still be lots of people contributing to the subreddit. Unless the mra’s think that we’re all sockpuppeting and posting vile shit about beating up ladies. Which actually, is entirely possible.
I believe it was white feathers that were handed out during WWI, but I’m hardly an expert on non-Amazon history.
Makes absolutely perfect sense that MRAs have mommy issues, though.
Well that and they’ve completely ignored why mothers day was started in the first place.
To sell greeting cards?
Man-hating Amazon dykes honor our mothers on our birthdays by setting aside their preferred cut from our celebratory hunt.
Unless we’re not on good terms with them, in which case there is no cultural compulsion to interact with them or offer them respect. Since we don’t have marriage, we do not have the nuclear family-centered concept of kinship and blood-ties that seems to form the very foundation of non-Amazon society.
Mothers Day was founded, if I remember correctly, as an anti-war, pro family holiday celebrating the re-knitting of families after the Civil War. It was a profoundly populist holiday before getting co-opted by the greeting card companies.
Mothers day has its roots in ancient Greece and Rome. In England, it was one of the few days a servant had a full day off to spend with family.
What Wikipedia says: The original purpose of Mother’s Day was to promote peace by means of honoring mothers who had lost or were at risk of losing their sons to war. Although many Mother’s Day celebrations world-wide have quite different origins and traditions, most have now been influenced by the modern American traditions, including churchgoing[citation needed], the distribution of carnations, and family dinners.[1]
The first attempts to establish a “Mother’s Day” in the U.S. were mostly marked by women’s peace groups.[2] A common early activity was the meeting of groups of mothers whose sons had fought or died on opposite sides of the American Civil War. There were several limited observances in the 1870s and the 1880s but none achieved resonance beyond the local level.[3]
In 1868 Ann Jarvis created a committee to establish a “Mother’s Friendship Day” whose purpose was “to reunite families that had been divided during the Civil War”, and she wanted to expand it into an annual memorial for mothers, but she died in 1905 before the celebration became popular.[3][4] Her daughter Anna Jarvis would continue her mother’s efforts.
In New York City, Julia Ward Howe led a “Mother’s Day” anti-war observance on June 2, 1872,[2][3][5] which was accompanied by a Mother’s Day Proclamation. The observance continued in Boston for about 10 years under Howe’s personal sponsorship, then died out.
So yeah. Women were protesting war and the death of boys and men.
I have really difficult feelings about mother’s day personally. My relationship with my own mother is so hard. She’s a very angry, bitter woman and is a genuine misandrist as compared to the fictional ones MRAs see around every corner. Seriously, every MRA needs to meet my mum before they start throwing the word misandry about. They don’t even know the meaning of the word. I of course vehemently disagree with her and call out every misandric statement she comes out with, which now means she no longer makes misandric statements around me.
I accept that a lot of MRAs probably have difficult relationships with their mothers – I’ve seen a lot of the mentions of such difficulties and it would make sense that if you were really far down the path of denying women are fellow human beings, having a major personal rift with the one major female figure in your life would help with that. The difference is between extrapolating that difficult relationship to everyone else’s mother, or realising how ridiculous that is.
I’m very close to my mother-in-law, and I have caught myself occasionally looking enviously at my husband or sister-in-law, simply because their mum is so amazing. She’s a lovely, kind, caring woman. My husband often complains that she fusses and worries too much, which to be fair she does. For example, when you visit, she’ll ask you if you want a bit of cake, a sandwich, a cup of tea, a glass of wine, a beer, a blanket if you’re cold… she’ll basically keep offering you stuff until you accept SOMETHING. even if you’re fine and genuinely don’t want anything. Mostly it’s endearing, but occasionally it can be annoying. But she means well and I much prefer that to the violent rages my own mother flies into, where you’re constantly walking on eggshells.
Basically, I can recognise there’s a difference between my own mother being a terrible person and that not being a normal thing and that most people have nice mums
Also, spare me the false MRA concern over abortion. They like abortion when it fucking suits them and they don’t want to be fathers. But as soon as it presents another convenient weapon to beat women over the head with? All of a sudden they’re whining about it!
Totally off topic but cracked me up
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ba132721d0/white-man-s-d-k-with-susan-sarandon
@Ponkz- As the great Simone De Beauvior once said, “The woman knows the male code is not hers, that man even expects she will not observe it since he pushes her to abortion, adultery, misdeeds, betrayal and lies he officially condemns.”
In other words, we have been putting up with this bullshit for WAY too long.
That’s weird, that reddit page has “made and run by manboobz” written across the top of it. And i’m sure the mods of Reddit will be ever so reasonable in helping out with that bit of libel. (Actionable? Why not?)
Screen shot. (trigger warning, btw, just the page alone is awful, let alone the links)
http://imgur.com/WEghL
My mother is the greatest woman I’ve ever met.
Paul Elam is a waste of oxygen.
I can’t help but feel like Elam’s screed, in addition to being hateful evil bullshit, also serves to minimize and wipe out real problems perpetuated on children, such as our culture’s dialogue around female on male statutory rape. It’s a huge problem, which feminists are working to solve, and his dismissing all women as uniformly awful just makes it harder to take a firm stance against female child abusers and pedophiles.
“You may notice that Elam presents no actual evidence to back up his claims. ”
It says right at the top “Made and Run by Manboobz” so ya, people would think it was you…
If it isn’t , do something about it.
@crella I don’t know how to break this to you. Are you sitting down? Okay, brace yourself, here goes: Not everything on the internetz is true. Wait, are you saying that the tree octopus isn’t real? If it isn’t , do something about it crella. If that website is still there tomorrow, I will have no choice but to conclude that Octopus paxarbolis is totally real.
crella, David’s been trying for ages now to get reddit to do something about Manboobz, as David himself is manboobz (little m) and being impersonated by Manboobz (big M) — if they won’t do anything about that, wtf makes you think they’ll do anything about this? Which is ignoring that if it says “by Manboobz” it’s the impersonator anyways >.<
Darksidecat — "poor people are sometimes considered neglectful just for being poor, black or native parents are more likely to be deemed neglectful for behaviors that go unpunished in white parents, particularly wealthy white parents, etc." — Native American parents have been deemed neglectful merely for following traditional ways of life, living in a teepee for example, otherwise I agree completely.
Lady Zombie — "I know this sounds awful but I sincerely hope Elam’s mother lived a long happy live before dying peacefully
is dead, or just doesn’t know about his alter ego.” — that should solve the morality issues of hoping she’s never going to know wtf he said. (Assuming my html works that is)crella, I didn;t know about that until a few minutes ago. It’s not true, and I have asked the reddit admins to force the r/beatingwomen mods to take it down. (The r/beatingwomen mods are the assholes who put it up in the first place, so I’m not going to ask them.)
You realize anyone in the world can claim to be someone else. That doesn’t mean it’s true.
I could claim to be Paul Elam.
I could put text at the top of man boobz that says “made and run by Paul Elam.”
I could claim to be you.
You’ll notice that the r/beatingwomen page also has a picture of Elam with the quote “best subreddit of the year” next to it. I don’t assume that’s true, and I’m assuming you don’t either. And I’m not going to blame Elam if he doesn’t get it taken down instantly.
Why? Because the mods of r/beatingwomen are lying, trolling assholes. Not suprising for a subreddit devoted to laughing at videos and pictures of women being violently assaulted.
Argenti Aertheri, actually, the person impersonating me now is manzboobz (with a z after man). Upper and lower case don’t matter on reddit.
Manzboobz isn’t actually posting as me; it’s clear he’s an MRA. So I’ve ignored him.
I did have a big issue with impersonators earlier, though.
There were several other accounts (probably all the same person) impersonating me that I spent a long time trying to get banned — and which I finally did, though it literally took months and possibly 2 dozen emails from me. The Reddit admins did it. The mods of r/mensrights refused repeated requests from me.
It would be really funny if you put text at the top of this page saying “made and run by Paul Elam.” Wrong, but funny. Maybe next April 1.
Hey Elam, to quote Angie from Skins (UK version): FUCK OFF!!
(If any of you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re missing out on the best TV show since sliced bread)
Whoops sorry David, this is what I get for trying to ignore reddit I guess! Good luck with your impersonator(s) though.
Why would David put “made by Manboobz” on “his” subreddit, then deny it here? That doesn’t even make sense.
-signed, Paul Elam
-not really. but you see how anyone can sign any name they want on the Internet? Yeah.
Leaving aside the stupidity of accusing someone who is brave enough to use their name of running a fals e flag operation (face plant!); the weird thing about the mothers day article is that is almost poetic in its hateful imagery.
Makes me wonder what this creep could produce if he wasn’t 80% hatred and 19.5% self pity?
whoops, I don’t really care, just want him and his ilk to stay away from my daughters, my friends, myself and basically any other member of the human race. Can’t think of many other people I would be happier to be smitten with agoraphobia!