Apparently Paul Elam, head boy at A Voice for Men, felt that his last 1500-word opus on the evils of female consumer spending wasn’t verbose enough. So he’s put up another 1500-word rant on the subject that adds nothing to his already pretty substance-free argument — except for a lengthy preface in which he pats himself on the back for being SO BRAVE enough to confront the ladies with the uncomfortable TRUTH that they are destroying the world with all their lipstick and fancy shoes and hats made from men’s balls and whatever else it is that those silly world-destroying gals are always buying.
Gosh, no one’s ever said anything bad or even so much as joked about materialistic women before. Congratulations, brave Paul, for blazing this trail of truth! (At least Anita Loos had the good taste to be utterly hilarious in her satire.)
And gosh, it’s not like men have ever been known to spend loads of money on useless shit. Nope. Never.
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Oh, and speaking of useless crap (and this is a bit of an awkward segue here): MAN BOOBZ T-SHIRTS ARE 40% OFF TODAY! Yes, again!
To take advantage of this NEW ONE DAY SALE, go to the Man Boobz store on Zazzle and enter the code 12DAILYDEAL3
Remember, fellas, if you buy a shirt, it’s a necessary and utilitarian purchase, something to wear while you are hunting the mammoth, or fishing with your $4600 fishing rod, or typing out world-saving rants about how awful ladies are.
Ladies, if you buy a shirt, it’s nothing more than world-destroying vanity. Women should wear rags.
But hey: what better to make rags from than a nice Man Boobz t-shirt? Now in four delicious, world-destroying flavors: Mammoth, Cartoon Mammoth, Cupcake, and Cock Carousel! Loads of other Man Boobz swag on sale too, at 15% off.
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EDITED TO ADD: Check out the comments for Elam’s post to see a brave commenter named Amanda politely but relentlessly tearing Elam’s article to shreds. Among other things, she links to a Slate article that suggests, based on several European studies and some admittedly “quick-and-dirty spreadsheet calculations” by a Carnegie-Mellon researcher, that men and women in developed nations have roughly similar “carbon footprints,” with men a slightly less “green” than women.
The responses to her comments, like Elam’s post itself, rely heavily on ass-data and lots of essentially meaningless thetorical huffing and puffing. Like this bit of blather from Tawil:
You don’t honestly think that men in political power are going to make decisions detrimentally affecting the wanton consumerist desires of the women voters who put those same men in power, do you? If yes you clearly don’t understand who has the power. One move by a politician that detracts from narcissistic licence for females gets him voted out – by women. Same holds true for corporation CEOs – any move that would stifle women’s shopping behaviour or her budget would see the company go bust. (and BTW CEOs and politicians make up about one billionth of the total population of men… the rest of the men are laboring in back-breaking, soul-destroying occupations to make your life more comfortable princess).
Amanda quickly rebuts this and everything else thrown at her, reducing the regulars to blustery nonsense and toothless misogynistic insults — like this from Skeptic:
You’ve obviously never heard of pollution by proxy have you? Probably too busy shopping I guess.
Skeptic is also suspicious of any and all research from the evil gynocracy known as … Sweden, “probably the most misandric culture on the entire planet.”
Eventually Elam wades in and offers a response that he clearly sees as appropriately patronizing; he even uses the word “cupcake,” a clear sign of MRA hubris.
Your comment alone is polluting. It is feminism’s toxic waste that has already contaminated much of the planet’s intellectual purity. So while I will answer you, I do so with the qualification that along the lines of environmentally sound thought, it is like talking to a BP rep about good saltwater fishing.
As to why women cause more pollution I will have to tax your ideological mind with simple math.
Men earn about 80% of income worldwide. Women spend about 80% of income worldwide, a disproportionate amount of it on themselves. …
More blah blah blah, and then he winds up with this:
It is real simple, cupcake. Those who consume, pollute. Those who consume excessively pollute more.
Rinse and repeat till you figure out who consumes more, and who consumes more frivolous goods and services in the vanity economy.
BTW, producing Swedish research around here is like breaking wind and calling it perfume. More pollution.
You will note that Elam relies on that 80% figure we discussed in my post on his previous women-are-destroying-the-world rant. You know, the 80% figure that is repeatedly endlessly in media accounts, invariably unsourced. Because it is not actually based on any real research, as the Wall Street Journal recently discovered? When asked for the source of this, he finds … yet another media mention of the figure, without a source given for it.
Paul Elam, master of ass data, is completely unaware that he has lost the argument, and acts as if he’s won some grand victory.
Actually, that’s pretty much how he acts every day.
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Time for that gif again. You know the one. But the T-shirt sale is real. And I’m not being sarcastic about Elam being completely and utterly owned by Amanda.
Wow, Shadow, I didn’t know you spoke Butt.
@cloudiah
*waves* I can’t remember if I congratulated you on your Masters, but in case I didn’t CONGRATS!!!
@CassandraSays
I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to last through Screedfest 2012 😛
@hellkell
Things are going pretty well. Gran was ill for a while so I was living in the hospital for a coupla months til she passed. I’m minding my nephew for a few weeks and the lil dude is running me ragged, so I’ve usually been too wiped to visit by the time I get home. How’s things in TX?
@katz
Well, I’ve never been one to toot my own horn 😛
@claire
There’s actually research evidence of this. Everyone thinks they are not being swayed by advertising and that they’re smarter than that, but most people are affected by advertising in their purchasing decisions to some extent (bearing in mind they include things like “signs showing sale prices” as advertising, not just ads on tv, etc.) There’s a reason why billions of dollars get spent on advertising still, even though there’s rarely a direct, provable cause-and-effect relationship between advertising and sales.
*takes off former professor hat*
But Shadow, we’re helping him to refine his arguments. Don’t you want to perform this valuable service for him?
I’m sorry to hear about your Gran.
Things in TX are OK. Dealing with some dental issues and work bs, but things could be worse. Gonna put the lights up on the house this weekend and continue our quest for edible Asian food in this town.
On an unrelated note, where do you find those videos? Some of those rooms have some amazing interior design.
I vibrate with glee when I see Steele pop up.
Steele is definitely the funniest of our current trolls. He’s Meller’s less homicidal replacement.
Wow, such shitty writing. After reading it, I wondered who farted:
“Indeed and for the record, I must ponder the possibility that Elam is countering the festering, digusting, vile, evil misandry in society – I applaud his work. Simply – I applaud it. This ideology of hate drives people apart – ruining our interpersonal relationships, our love, which is all we have in this cold world. This dogma that Elam fights is poisonous, and must and should be countered, by any means necessary.”
Then I pictured some twit sitting at his keyboard, psyching himself up to invoke unattainable dignity and intellect. “Gonna sound like Winston Churchill mixed with Morpheus from The Matrix! Yes I am! Gonna show them all….”
Err, you’re not there yet, fella.
@hellkell
If it makes you feel any better, my quest for Texas level BBQ in TO hasn’t ended either :p
@CassandraSays
He left before I could get out my detective outfit to try and find his arguments.
Looking over, I see a chunk of vacuous, contentless mocking from the vile-misandrist-hate-feminists. I’d ask what you do for the world, hatefems? Aside from pushing misandry on a hateblog, I mean? What do you do? Contemptible shits.
Oh, so you do proof your comments.
I want to know where these people are. I’ve heard so much about them.
We do stuff for the world. Just not really here, for the most part. We come here to mock, because that’s what this website is for. It’s (still) in the fucking title.
He’s well on his way to just posting a string of buzzwords all run together with nothing in between them.
I do the science and I also spend significant time maintaining the world’s largest non-search engine, non-Facebook website.* What do you do, Steele?
*My most important task, though, is feeding and petting Her Royal Fuzziness, obviously.
AVFM’s official slogan is “Fuck Their Shit Up” but somehow we’re the hateblog. That’s rich
Was that suppose to hurt, steele? You’re not trying hard enough.
Hey everyone, lets playing a drinking game. Everytime steele uses the world “vile,” we take a shot! Who’s in?
Well Steele, I spent my day ensuring that a couple of men who were homeless were able to move in to my building.
I’ve spent other days helping men who were suffering a bad case of depression by checking in on them, making sure they had what they needed if they weren’t up to leaving the house, pitching out abusive ex girlfriends who had come back to harrass them, fixing things that had broken in their apartments, connecting them to resources like the rent bank so they wouldn’t be evicted…the list goes on.
Um, so what have YOU done lately Steele?
I’m in! Totally calling B and D delivery.
**hiccup** I already started.
And good for you, pillowinhell…about your good deeds, I mean.
Its just normal being a decent person thing, or a good neighbor thing and sometimes (when tossing people off the property) a part of the job.
No thanks. Given that Steele quite literally says “vile” in virtually every comment he makes (sometimes three or four times in a single paragraph!), that sounds far too likely to land us somewhere between “worst hangover ever” and “death by alcohol poisoning.” I’m up for taking a sip of something fruity with an umbrella in it for every “vile,” though. :-p
Well, when not reading threads here or looking up cute kitty videos online, I do work that involves taking one other person into a dimly lit room. They get naked, and then I beat them up. And they pay me for this service.
I’m a massage therapist, what did you think I was talking about 😉
@Shadow, I’m so sorry about your Gran. I’m sure you were a comfort to her.
Mocking horrible garbage spewed by MRAs, because the only other option is despair, seems like a fairly useful endeavor to me. Certainly more productive than endlessly attempting to make oneself feel superior to others by constantly posting comments on a site you purport to disdain. Watching paint dry would contribute more to the world than that.