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.
—
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.
—
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.
—
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.
Steele, really?
Out of the people who’ve replied to your demand that we tell you what we do for the world, a far higher than average number do extremely important work for the most vulnerable in society, including the most vulnerable. Most do or have done some kind of volunteer work in their time or plan to spend their futures doing something which they believe will benefit other people.
Like me, as I said, I want to go into politics when I’m older, which many people will automatically label as me being grasping and power hungry but I see as a way to help my country and make life better for the people in it. I could earn far more if i decided to go into Law or work in the City but I don’t want to do those things, I want to use my skills, talents and the great education I’ve been lucky enough to have in order to serve my country.
Occupation wise it’s a pretty broad spread but no-one appears to be working in a field that is hugely over-paid or one that is potentially damaging and destructive.
So in summary, you are talking out of your arse if you think we are all “selfish, grasping hateparasites”. And much as you would like it to be, that is not a word and adds nothing as a construction. If you are going to construct words out of two existing ones you should hyphenate them. That’s a fine old tradition going back to Nordic and Anglo-Saxon poetry, think Beowulf.
@hellkell, I just like seeing what kind of cool things manboobzers do — to hell with Steelepole!
According to Steele, helping men is misandry and hate?!
Steele put down that seething crackpipe of self delusion and confirmation bias. A woman saying she does not need to justify her existence is NOT an effront to manliness.
Sorry, I was trying to point out that there’s nothing wrong with being selfish. I work to make money so that I can live and I don’t have much extra time (all of which will be taken up soon because I’ll be stage-managing a play at the local community theater) and I applaud all of y’all that have the ability to do more, whether it’s your career or your avocation. But for those of us where that’s not currently an option, it doesn’t mean we’re bad people or anything.
One of my co-workers at my retail job is having herself splashed all over the local papers right now because her ex-husband is finally being brought up for charges for molesting young boys. Unsurprisingly, they are blaming her for reporting her experiences and eventually dropping the charges because she’s all sorts of broke and no one would believe her. When I asked her, but *your* kids, are they okay? She said that her daughter was fine, but she’s sure he was molesting her son, who supports his daddy all the way. I never thought I’d run into a textbook case in real life, but here it is. And she’s getting blamed for backing off from her ex-husband who was stalking her until about six months ago. Coincidentally, right about when outside charges were filed.
And yes, her ex was a Boy Scout troop leader.
I wanna know the story of this Venus de Meow painting.
@Amanda, We all do what we can. I’m lucky to have a job that pays well enough that my weekends can be used for volunteering rather than a 2nd job.
That is terrible about your coworker. I hope her son gets therapy.
Gee, I wonder what Ella would be thinking if she saw Steeles response to us answering his question on what we do to help people and improve the world?
I’m sure it would be to see that Steeles response was totally logical, well reasoned and intelligent.
Well, Steele just proved that it doesn’t matter what we say we do for the world. Fuck you, Steele.
Steele’s got a future as a Saturday morning cartoon villain.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mc68k7f1Ha1rjsi13o5_1280.jpg
For the most part I’ve been underwhelmed by Steele’s trolling. Nothing against the guy, he’s just unimaginative. Where are the super-dogs, the schemes to divide the United States in twain, the masquerading as Montgomery Clift? Where, I ask?
However, “hatefems are nothing but selfish, grasping hateparasites” did give me a happy little smile. There may be hope for you yet, friend.
Next time someone accuses David of cherry-picking, I say we point them to this thread.
Why oh why am I always late to the Steele posts? *sigh*
Steele, I teach. Is that good enough for you?
And I am a man, so deal with the presence of men on Man Boobz. It’s just that there are men who don’t hate women, so I guess that would be kind of hard for you to accept. Still, it is true.
Sheesh. Why can’t I ever be online when Steele makes an appearance? It would be fun to interact with him live.
So I’d prefer if we didn’t all go telling Steele about our jobs; it’s just feeding into the narrative that your worth as a person relies on you doing something uber-important with your life.
Hey Steele, do you think we don’t notice how every vocal anti-misogyny space on the webbernet is invariably labeled man-hating by your ilk? Do you think we don’t notice how you never give any evidence to back that charge up? Do you think we don’t notice how clumsy, churlish, or downright dishonest you are when interpreting the evidence we all have available to us?
And what the fuck did that “indeed” even mean? I am still confused.
And we have the vile libelous Anti-Anti-Manboobz acting “above it all” as it were, despite the fact that he or she has devoted countless hours to setting up a site to counter my SPLC-esque watchdog site; who contributed to the threatening atmosphere which forced me to abandon the project. Disgusting. Vile amoral misandrist.
It occurred to me that Steele might not believe this without further proof, so I took this picture just for him. You’ll have to take it on trust that the kids are autistic – but I can assure you that they are, which is why they visibly need one-to-one support.
And, unsurprisingly, given the condition’s notorious gender bias, they’re also overwhelmingly male.
It seems I have been put on moderation; I would expect nothing less from the intellectually dishonest, anti-anti-misandrist, atmosphere that pervades this asinine blog. Fine. I will not be “neutered”, as it were: I would rather remove myself totally than suffer moderation.
Hey, I just bought two new bags, just to piss PaulE off. (Actually it was because I needed a bag, and there was a BOGO sale but still…)
Wetherby, I see what you did there. XD
Should we tell Steele that it’s not him exactly that’s in moderation?
In Lego, no less.
Oooh, a flounce. Let’s see how this goes, shall we?
clairedammit – eh, let’s see if he can figure it out himself.
There’s nothing he could say that wouldn’t require liberal application of the V word, apparently.