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.
I was at a party once, where at least half of the people present were feminist lawyers. Some wonderful conversations (that I mostly listened to 🙂 ). Anyway, we got on to the definition of rape here in Australia, and the law books were right there on the shelf. Rape isn’t actually a legal term here, but aggravated sexual assault is defined as pretty much what most people here would want it to be.
I don’t agree that US states need to revisit their rape laws though – the federal govt needs to take it out of their hands.
The bonus value of Schadenfreude Pointing and Laughing at MRAs day!
Hi. I pretty much just lurk but I saw this video and thought of this thread.
http://youtu.be/YQSAe7Z27ks
I believe I have found the ultimate depiction of an MRA:
http://www.oglaf.com/afterglower/1/
You guys, I’ve figured out the problem: Paul Elam lives in TV-land, where all the cliche tropes about gender and (hetero) relationships that get trotted out for Valentine’s day episodes and romcoms are actually real. That’s why his ravings make no sense to the rest of us.
@freitag
LOL! They really are self-absorbed enough.
Found a Valentine for the MRAs.
http://blu.stb.s-msn.com/i/B6/2A6D5E836F22CB6D63D39FFD49C1_h316_w628_m5_cNZQVvuvc.jpg
@freitag – that link comes up as the Oglaf front page for me, but I know the cartoon you mean, and gods is it true, though he’s more what I’d think of as a PUA than an MRA. 😀
@neuroticbeagle – love that video! Delurk more often, please. 🙂
Kitteh — it’s a good one, here’s a direct lik to the image — http://www.oglaf.com/media/comic/afterglower.jpg
NSFW!
My Spouse and I exchanged fossil trilobites and a gun! (Spouse really, really wanted this particular gun for a while and it just came back in stock today, so that was Spouse’s present.)
I just love fossils in general, and trilobites are particularly cool.
I got flowers today. I was kind of like “what?” then “thanks”.
It’s only a matter of time before Mother’s Day is called a misandric holiday.
@mxe354
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if they declared Father’s Day misandric.
It’s only a matter of time before Mother’s Day is called a misandric holiday.
You’re too late!
http://manboobz.com/2012/05/13/happy-mothers-day-the-a-voice-for-men-way-note-much-worse-than-youd-think/
My husband and I had our first date on Valentine’s Day, got engaged on Valentine’s Day, and married on Valentine’s Day, so we’re super gross. Tonight we’re going to make bouillabaisse and open a bottle of wine, because we’ve got life figured out.
Argenti – ta, I knew that one from the name. (Me, sit around for hours cackling over Oglaf? Never.)
emilygoddess, I think you are absolutely right.
Fred over at slacktivist was writing about people who read a novel as though it were a newspaper and a newspaper as though it were a novel. He was writing about some evangelicals in leadership positions, but the same holds true for MRAs.
@Falconer: I’ve heard the clitoris=female penis=penis envy notion before. Frankly, I don’t have room in my pants for penis. I’ve got hips, they take up all the room.
@Falconer and Argenti: Hoops and Yoyo cards will take care of pretty much all your card-giving needs. We don’t give any other cards in my family.
http://www.hallmark.com/online/hoopsandyoyo/
@Nepenthe and Stepford: What is it with the creepy-crawlies?! Just because Dave put up a lamprey valentine and MRA’s like to compare women to critters that literally suck the life out of…oh.
Carry on, just don’t expect me to click on that link. My brother used to make me kill spiders and other bugs when we were kids, because I’m the elder sibling (being female was never a consideration for anything). I’ve had my fill of creepy crawlies, thank you.
@thebewildnerness: Oh wow, Grumpy cat and Grumpy Cumberbatch! My Valentine’s Day is complete!
@emilygoddess: Reading the drivel spouted by the MRA’s, it’s pretty clear that none of them have any experience, personal or observed, with a decent relationship between a man and a woman. Learning about relationships from tv is like learning about sex from porn: inaccurate, misleading, and sometimes dangerous. These guys are lost because they have a script, but no one else seems to know their part.
We know the part but we’re also aware of the fourth wall, and we know that our original writer is a talentless hack. Our medium awareness allows us to move outside the plot and into new and interesting territory.
MRAs are the medium-unaware minor antagonists. They don’t know we’re in metafiction so they just rant and rage with impotence, providing dark comic relief for the hypothetical reader in this metaphor.
Link?
@bostonian
I did that with my SO one year, many years ago. Two halves of a polished fossil trilobite.
Another year I gave a poster showing the history of life alongside major meteorite impacts. (It’s a bit dated…for a short while folks were thinking all major extinction events may have been impact related.)
The main point of course is to know your mate(s). Know what they like and show them that you thought about them when you thought about it (prezies, food, sex, etc.)
That is the one thing I do not get about these MRAs and PUAs, they do not appear to have known any real women, the ones they do meet they make the presumption that the image they have in their head is the woman they are meeting, they make no attempt to find out otherwise, and then they complain when the relationship tanks.
Also, what is the obsession with the “golddigger”? If you are wealthy and the person you are with is turned on by wealth, I do not see any victim here. Both parties agreed to the relationship. Ok, it may not be a relationship I would want, but I am not going to tell someone else that consenting adults have to conform to my expectations.
Here ya go: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2013/02/13/geocentrism-and-a-historical-adam/
I just assume that everyone knows his site. It contains the longest running book review evah! on the Left Behind series.
I don’t get that either, joanimal. They insist that all human relations are commercial transactions and then demonstrate absolute hatred and contempt for the women who agree with them.
There was a really interesting discussion on Captain Awkward about gold diggers where a literal gold digger gave her perspective.
I suspect though that these guys who complain about women being leeches are neither rich or dating proper gold diggers. More likely they’ve bought into the myth that all women want is expensive presents, and they think that a woman wanting *anything at all* confirms the myth for them.
Grr! Blockquote Goblin! We’re throwing down right here! Roll for initiative!!