Save the Dude Planet! Or, Paul Elam Yells at the Ladies for Buying Lady Crap

Paul Elam, head misogynist at A Voice for Men, is mad at the ladies again, his wrath provoked this time by an overheard conversation in a local coffeeshop between two women talking about recycling, and how the world would be a greener place if women were in charge.

Elam seems to take deep personal offense at any suggestion that men aren’t the absolute best at every single fucking thing, so he quickly scurried off to his computer to bash out a 1500-word screed that began with him insulting the women as bobbleheaded “latte lappers who were more likely than not completely clueless about how a single thing on the planet with a moving part works,” moved into high gear with some not altogether wrong (if rather trite and woman-blamey) critiques of the diamond and fur industries, and wound up with a stern warning that WOMEN ARE DESTROY9ING THE EARTH WITH ALL THEIR SPENDY SPENDING!!1!!!

So let’s just skip ahead to that part, shall we?

Take it away, Paul:

The thing that drives the bulk of pollution, wars, white collar criminality, cruelty to animals, human slavery and the like is consumerism. Consumerism, especially the market of unnecessary, embarrassingly vain and useless goods, is a woman’s world. It is primarily the consumption of fashion, via cosmetics, plastic surgery, excessive clothing, jewelry and other vanity items. Women drive a world of pain and damage to the planet. And men, to their shame, do the heavy lifting to get it done.

Ah, damn you ladies! God damn you all to hell!

The so-called Planet of the Apes was Earth all along!

Oh, wait. Sorry. SPOILER ALERT.

But Paul, don’t men buy a lot of expensive useless crap, too?

I mean, I just did about a minute of Googling and found a goddamn fishing rod that’ll set you back $4600.

I cannot think of a single item consumed by men en masse, with high social acceptance, that does not also have utilitarian value. e.g. leather items come from food source animals.

Oh, I see. You can use a $4600 fishing rod to catch $4600 fish. My bad.

Essentially it is not that much different from Native Americans using buffalo hide as well as the meat.

Yeah, he really did just say that.

And many of the things men do consume that might appear on the surface to be excessive are things that women size up and measure them  by in the process of sexual selection.

Ah, and these men are utterly helpless before these greedy, earth-destroying women and their evil feminine allure.

Most money is still earned by men.

This is true. In part because of that whole wage gap thing you MRAs don’t believe in.

Most money is actually spent by and on women, mostly on consequence-ridden products whose only use is to bolster their egos. That is about as green as a fucking oil spill.

The sex driving the world’s ridiculous over consumption, and therefore decimation of everything, is not men. In fact, women’s level of over consumption is so outrageous that they cannot even maintain it with their own resources. It takes both sexes to feed the excessive appetite of the one.

Ah, but that’s not quite true. Or really true at all. For one thing, while women may spend more than men, that’s in part because women still tend to do more of the shopping for things like, you know, groceries. They’re not spending all this money on themselves.

And women may not really be spending as much as you think. It’s often said that women are responsible for about 80% of consumer spending. But if you ever start trying to track down the source of that oft-quoted statistic, as I did while writing this post, you’ll discover that … there really doesn’t seem to be one. It’s one of these things that’s assumed to be true simply because it’s repeated so often – especially by people claiming to know how to market to women. The Wall Street Journal’s Carl Bialik looked into this 80% claim last year and found that

In addition to having murky origins, the number appears to be wrong. Several recent surveys suggest that men have nearly equal say on spending, and that when men and women live together, both participate in spending decisions. In a survey conducted last year of nearly 4,000 Americans 16 and older by Futures Co., a London consulting firm, just 37% of women said they have primary responsibility for shopping decisions in their household, while 85% said they have primary or shared responsibility. The respective figures for men were similar: 31% and 84%.

Let’s return from the land of reality to plunge again into the tempestuous torrent of Paul Elam’s testosterone tantrum. (See! I can write as crappily as Paul Elam if I really try!)

If we wanted to save the environment, be less cruel to animals, have less wars, less slavery and less forced labor of children then the best first step we can take is to start raising girls to get over their vanity and their entitlement. We would also do well to teach our boys to assist in the process.

Elam followed up this soul-stirring call to SAVE TEH PLANET with a post castigating male truck drivers for being too nice to lady truck drivers. No, really.

If you’re interested in learning more about saving our green planet, and even if you’re not, I suggest you take a look at the trailer for the excellent if unclassifiable Korean film called, naturally, Save the Green Planet.