Happy Valentine’s Day Boycott Day! Every year on Valentine’s Day, MRAs around the world unite in a sacred ritual: the annual Valentine’s Day Blaming of the Ladies parade.
For, you see, Valentine’s Day is little more than a plot by the ladies to extract fancy chocolate and diamonds and other pricey romantic goods from the world’s men. That’s why, for the past I’m-not-going-to-look-up-the-number of years, the lady hating radio personality Marc Rudov has been trying to get other men to boycott the holiday to show the ladies of the world what’s what.
And plenty of manosphere dudes, from MRAs to MGTOWers, are happy to join in. I’ve highlighted some of their silliness in previous Valentine’s Day posts here, here and here. But, though I mentioned it, I never really did full justice to the denunciation of V-day that a certain Paul Elam posted on A Voice for Men a couple of years back.
Let’s take a look, shall we?
Elam starts off with a brief statement of his overall thesis:
Valentines Day is to be avoided for what it is; a socially coerced day of hyper-entitlement for a generation of princess leeches.
See card above. (Pretty good, huh? I ACTUALLY FOUND A VALENTINE’S DAY CARD FEATURING A LADY LEECH!!)
[I]f you think loving someone means your wallet comes out while her purse remains closed then you will delighted to know that A Voice for Men will be selling monogrammed knee pads in the near future. All we need is the circumference of your knees and what sort of flooring is in your bedroom. We expect an endorsement from Joe Biden.
Actually, I just checked the A Voice for Men store, and the promised knee-pads are nowhere to be found. Though the John The Other mugs, sporting “JtO’s signature chainsaw,” look lovely! (And what better symbol of AVFM’s steadfast stance against violence than a lumberjacking tool also famous for its use in cinematic massacres!)
It’s not long before Elam turns his attention to that infamous slogan of a certain jeweler which MRAs seem to think originated as a feminist bumper sticker: “Every Kiss Begins With Kay.”
It would be better to say that every blowjob begins with Kay. After all, those full, moist lips they are promising you on the ad can go in quite a few places, and likely will if the tennis bracelet has enough carats.
That’s right fellas: Forget the old “Whitman’s Sampler” box of chocolates and wilted roses bought at the grocery store on the way home from work because you forgot it was Valentine’s Day. These days. each and every woman in America expects a diamond-encrusted tennis bracelet picked out by a dude who has no idea what sort of jewelry she likes. (Reward: One blowjob, the only one you will get all year.)
But underneath all this is something actually a little darker. Not all men are getting blowjobs and other forms of sex for the presents on Valentines Day so much as they are getting a reprieve from constant nagging and criticism, if they happen to get the right present. Nobody wants to talk about it, but Valentines Day, for far too many men, is actually Lighten Up and Don’t be such an Insufferable Bitch Day, but only if you get the present right.
Ah, the Blaming of the Ladies parade is in full swing! Next up, the Entitled Bitches Who Are Sort of Like Winos float, sponsored by A Voice for Men.
It is not just a matter of entitlement, but one of self esteem. And as most readers of this site already know, anyone who depends someone else making a trip to Zales or FTD in order to feel good about themselves has serious fucking issues. Feeding that on Valentines Day is like handle a bottle of Jack Daniels to your local sot.
He is only going to come back looking for more, and he won’t quit till his liver gives out.
All this talk of winos gets Elam thinking about the good old days, when he worked with substance abusers, and evidently spent much of his time trying to get them to blame women for all of their problems.
I used to counsel groups of men. It was a tough job getting them to be honest about women because of fears that putting reality on the table would drive women away. But with time almost all of them came to admit their constant frustrations with the pressures to to keep pleasing their women, especially where it concerns materialism. …
Almost without exception the men who were the most frustrated with financial pressures were also men who had entered those relationships wallet first, making sure Princess felt like a princess every minute of the day.
In other words, they went fishing with stink bait and caught bottom dwellers. And then they ended up silently stewing over it.
They got exactly what they paid for and nothing less.
What a wonderful counselor you must have been, Paul. So much empathy. So much insight. So much caring.
So, gentlemen, if you want your kisses to begin with Kay, please allow me to suggest a prostitute, or at least a woman that admits that is what she is. They may not actually kiss you, but I am thinking their skills in the fellatio department are considerably more developed. And when they are done they will go away!
How cool is that?
For Elam, every kiss begins with rage.
Not a box cutter?
Pretty sure if JtO has signature anything, it’s a box cutter.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never gotten a tennis bracelet, and don’t know any woman who did, either.
Yo, the implied exchange of goods for sex is THE EXACT REASON I fucking hate those Kay commercials!! That is not feminism, assholes.
As for Valentine’s Day, meh. I never cared about it, being a crazy hippie feminist. The labor exploitation involved in the flower and diamond industries is atrocious — I want no part of it.
Sorry, I’m trying to limit my use of ableist language. Strike the word “crazy” from my previous post.
I was going to spend all day complaining about VD as corporate holiday per excellence, but if the MRA hates it then I suddenly have a new found love for the holiday.
Ah yes, Valentine’s Day. Never been a fan myself, but yeesh.
That guy was a group counselor?!?! That is absolutely awful.
LOL! Seriously, what a twisted worldview they have. Women are responsible for EVERYTHING, even shit that is so obviously steeped in old school patriarchy.
When I explain to someone that MRAs think that we live in a feminist matriarchy who rule through the government and the courts, laughter is the response I get 100% of the time. They live in Bizarro World.
This morning, my coworker tweeted:
“If you don’t celebrate the ‘fake’ holiday about champagne, jewelry, sex , and compassion, and you like the one about genocide? Check yoself.”
… and I sorta think she has a point.
I don’t support the diamond industry, and cut flowers are sorta morbid. And yes, I think one should honor one’s loved ones at any time. There are ways in which Valentimes is promoted in problematic ways.
But … that’s true of any holiday whose celebration is widespread enough for it to encompass marketing efforts. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a day where you take a step further back and acknowledge that the bonds that tie people together are nice, and we should be happy about them.
I’d rather celebrate the day in my way than complain about the way other people celebrate it.
Leeches are hermaphrodites. As clitellates (stop snickering you in the back), they reproduce by implanting sperm and eggs into each other’s slime cocoons.
What I’m saying is, I don’t think chocolates or roses are involved.
/obligatory parasitology
They really can’t tell the difference between old-school sexism and feminism, can they? Every time they see a cultural artifact they don’t like they just assume that feminism caused it.
No dispute from me — the “real meaning” of Thanksgiving, and Christmas for that matter, have messed up histories.
Worst. Counselor. EVER. If my choices were drug counseling with PaulE or keep using, I think I’d keep using. I wonder what his relapse rate was.
I’m buying Mr. HK the vacuum cleaner he wants today. What level of misandry is that?
This attitude always frustrates me. It is crystal clear from the outset of such arrangements that the exchange of money for sexytimes is the status quo in that particular relationship. There is no confusion for either party. The man is paying the woman for her time and intimacy. That’s not how I personally like my relationships to go, but that type of social arrangement obviously exists. And yet, culturally we only blame the women for them, and the men who go through life buying women like they buy any other object are viewed as innocent victims of golddiggers.
I know this is in the OP, but it really sounds like he kept trying and trying to get the men he counseled to blame women and, eventually, he succeeded. Also, it seems like the men he counseled probably had legitimate issues with the expectations that patriarchy and society puts on men that Elam tried to get them to blame on women. After all, the materialism isn’t “women’s materialism,” it is just “materialism.”
He makes it sound like there is something innately wrong with wanting to please your partner. I suppose, for MRAs, if your partner is female, then there is something wrong with caring. Women, of course, can never do enough for their partners.
I never get stuff on Valentine’s. I don’t even know what a tennis bracelet is O.o
Thinking Valentine’s Day is a bunch of crap is the closest MRAs and I have ever–and will ever–come to agree on anything, even if our motivations for doing so are completely different. For example: I’m concerned about the consumption of resources, the exploitation of the diamond/flower/chocolate industries, and the awful pressure that some people feel as a result of the holiday….and they just really, really hate women. But like Blackbloc says, now that I know that V-Day pisses them off so much, I’ll enjoy it just that much more. Thanks, MRAs!
(Hi all, I pipe up once in a blue moon but always enjoy reading your clever and funny comments.)
I got heart-shaped doughnuts from Dunkin’ Donuts and we are thinking about renting Beasts of the Southern Wild from Comcast tonight. So, it is sort of special, but we always just try to do a token something. Valentine’s Day is more an excuse than a reason for us, though.
I always assumed that it was just a common piece of jewelry favored by wealthy individuals who tend to belong to country clubs and play tennis. But apparently they’re called tennis bracelets because Chris Evert broke hers while playing at the 1987 US Open and stopped the game in order to find it. And after that, the “inline” or “eternity” bracelet started being known as the tennis bracelet.
I learned something new every day.
@blitzgal: I was trying to look tennis bracelets up on Wikipedia. They have a photo of a tennis bracelet, and call it a tennis bracelet, but they don’t even talk about inline bracelets in their list of bracelet types.
You know, if you snap an MRA’s gel bracelet, they have to GTOW already? Trufax!
I just noticed a rogue wandering apostrophe made its way into my previous post. We should find an exterminator for those things. 🙂
Gotta get those rogue apostrophes where they nest, or they come right back.
I’m with Inurashii; ain’t nuthin’ wrong with taking an opportunity to do something nice for your SO. And if you have problems with the flower/chocolate/diamond industries, well, a) you could always do something else, and b) the problem, especially wrt chocolate, is hardly limited to that day in particular.
Doad sent me this.
I got a tennis bracelet (zirconia) once. From my DAD. Since big, chunky jewelry is what I prefer, I never wore it.
I’ve always liked the Japanese custom of making homemade chocolate for Valentines. Every year I remember too late to do it. I might do a dry run this Spring, so I know how long I need in advance, and then my friends and coworkers get CHOCOLATE!!