Attention tiny ladies! Paul Elam wants you to know that if you attack him, he will totally punch you right back. And not in a satirical way, either. With his actual, non-satirical fists.
A Voice for Men’s maximum leader has long insisted that his notorious “Bash a Violent Bitch Month” post was nothing more than misunderstood “satire.” That is, when he argued that men who are abused by women would be totally justified if they “beat the living shit out of them. I don’t mean subdue them, or deliver an open handed pop on the face to get them to settle down. I mean literally to grab them by the hair and smack their face against the wall,” this was somehow a “Juvenalian” satire of some sort. There’s a famous quote from The Princess Bride that might be appropriate here.
Well, now Mr. Elam has announced to the world that every month is a potential “Bash a Violent Bitch Month” for him. Even if the “Violent Bitch” in question is less than half his size. In a post that he insists is super serious, he writes:
I want to offer a few words on this subject, and this time not in satire. I want to convey as honestly as possible, how I feel on the subject of violence between the sexes, from one man’s point of view.
I am 6’8” tall and 285 pounds. If a woman five feet tall and 110 pounds soaking wet hits me, I am going to hit her back.
Now, Elam does stop short of saying he would “beat the living shit” out of this hypothetical tiny woman, but, you know, in the heat of battle with someone less than half his size, he suggests that he might not be able to control his non-satirical fists:
I would do my best to return the violence proportionally, to just use enough force to stop the attack, but I can make no guarantees. Depending on the suddenness of the attack, the level of fear or threat I might feel, the impulse to self-defend in measured amounts is difficult, if not impossible to predict with any accuracy.
So, if there are any tiny ladies out there who might be considering jumping in a pool and then punching Paul Elam, I would suggest you not do that. Of course, I would suggest you not do that even if he weren’t going to hit back, because hitting people is generally a very bad thing.
Don’t worry, dudes – tiny or otherwise – Elam would totally punch you too!
It is the same reaction I would have to a man. No more and no less. The only way to prevent this and the consequences that may result is for people to keep their hands off me.
Presumably this would also apply to bears, giant squids, killer robots and anyone or anything else that tried to put its hands or paws or tentacles on him.
Now, if someone less than half my size were to attack me, and the situation weren’t life-threatening, I might, you know, back off and call the police instead. But apparently, this isn’t an option for men, because we’re all slaves, or something:
Most people who frequent this site know that men who call for help from police when being assaulted by female intimate partners are likely to be arrested for their troubles. … [T]here are prosecutors that will happily give the victim a criminal record and make them pay dearly for having been attacked.
This idea is completely insane on its face. Not only that, it is the closest thing we have today to the mentality of slave owners who could flog their slaves because they were property.
Never mind that women, who make up the vast majority of the victims of severe domestic violence, make up 20% of those arrested for DV. Never mind that even where there are mandatory arrest laws in effect, police still need probable or reasonable cause to show that domestic violence occurred – like physical evidence of injuries – before arresting a suspect. Never mind that even in states with “dual arrrest” policies, only about half of all domestic violence calls result in any arrests.
And never mind that if you use disproportionate force against someone less than half your size – as Elam suggests he very well might do – you deserve to go to jail, and for more than a night. “Beating the living shit” out of someone much smaller than you isn’t actually self-defense at all. It’s beating the living shit out of someone much smaller than you.
Now, Elam isn’t the only Men’s Rights Activist who seems to spend a lot of time imagining scenarios in which it would be ok for them to hit women. It’s a subject that comes up on the Men’s Rights subreddit all the time; the misogynistic douchebags who populate Reddit’s Videos subreddit are if anything even worse. And don’t ever do a Google image search for “equal rights equal lefts” unless you want to be really depressed.
The Men’s Rights movement: bravely fighting for the right of men to punch women half their size.
Kids need rules that are enforced consistently, they need predictable, reasonable consequences.
Kids need most of all for parents not to lash out in anger, whatever form that takes. The thing is, when you do any sort of corrective action, you have to be safe, sane, fair, and predictable.
Most parents who hit their kids as punishment are really just taking their frustration out on the child.
The parent or parents often do not realize how hard they hit, either.
@Mnemosyne
“Alpha” to them is a man exhibiting all three Dark Triad traits.
the entire scrotosphere seems to be crawling with sociopaths
This would be OT, except it’s cats, and it’s the confused cats, so it can’t be OT.
I just want to say this is the one I want on a T-shirt: http://confusedcatsagainstfeminism.tumblr.com/image/93981901768
I always want to compliment the kitty’s beauty in case whoever belongs to the cat reads this comment.
My husband and I have an ongoing joke where we will say to each other “alpha is so fucking beta” or “having sex with women is so fucking beta” etc. It’s used to basically laugh at all the silly, ridiculous ideals of the manosphere. They’re always trying to outdo one another and claim one thing is beta and another is alpha. Or omega. Whatever the fuck that means.
Being a professional soccer player is so beta. Should be playing rugby instead, so much more manly.
Being a professional pilot for an airline is so beta. Should be a test pilot instead, more dangerous hence more alpha.
andiexist: I think his plan for that already involved beating people up.
Oh my – how could I forget this classic?
I had not heard the term scrotosphere.
I’m not sure whether I like it or whether it’s simply too degrading to innocent nutsacks everywhere.
@David OK, got you. Sorry for misunderstanding your point about the danger smaller people pose. I agree with you about Elam; he’s not talking about self-defense.
@Cassandra and others;
I’m not talking about corporal punishment. I’m not saying it’s OK to hit a 9 year old because he spilled his milk, or pulled her sister’s pigtails, or even touched the hot stove. I’m saying its ok to defend yourself in the very rare event of a dedicated attack.
It isn’t reasonable to expect your words to always work. And it isn’t reasonable to expect someone to stand there and have the snot beat of them by a large child. Yes, proportional force against older children is reasonable. Does that clear things up?
Oh, and Cassandra, the idea that women are too weak to be a threat to or hurt men is patronizing, even if it is a very common trope. But I misunderstood David anyway.
@emily, yes I said giving drug addicts welfare benefits without also offering them treatment is counterproductive. I specifically said that they shouldn’t be cut off simply for using drugs.
I think you misunderstand quite a lot of things, beegee.
Beegee, I don’t remember everything from that thread, and I’m not even sure I commented in it, but I know you said some incredibly problematic things regarding welfare for addicts and the more you tried to clarify, the worse it got. The commentariat here don’t take exception to just anything or anyone. You get the side-eye from me.
beegee: If you can’t deflect a “dedicated” nine year old, what the fuck kind of adult are you?
So if they don’t take the treatment they get cut off? Given that the most effective rehabs are the ones the addict truly wants to undertake, I’m not sure why you think this is such a great plan.
In terms of things you do not understand, beegee, we could start with the reasons why people tell men not to hit women. Think of the many ways in which your understanding of the world would improve if you began by noting the fact that we do not, for example, say “do not hit the fellow students in your martial arts class who happen to be women while sparring with them”.
Oh hell, risk of two convoes going at once…:(
She had in mind to give me a shove. Martial arts training kicked in and I just stepped out of her path. She ran out to the yard and threw herself on the grass crying.
Appropriate use of force.
Absolutely. I’m not makimg some excuse to beat up children. The absolute MINIMUM amount of force should be used. Oh, and plenty of bigger 9 year olds are getting close to my size.
But beegee why are you so concerned about using physical force on children at all?
I’m 5ft2. It’s still not OK for me to hit kids. Which I don’t want to do anyway, because seriously, how are we even having this conversation in a social justice focused space?
I just… ???????? Like thanks for coming up with a metaphor that illustrates exactly what was wrong with Elam’s argument… but that was clearly not what you were trying to do.
My parents have for at least the entirety of my life been strong supporters of spanking. I am not. They stress not being angry while doing it but I still remember being scared as a kid, even if my dad probably never thought he was being menacing or anything. If you know what’s happening is a sign you’re about to get hurt at all it can be pretty scary. I absolutely don’t think it was ever necessary in raising me, I was always a fairly we’ll behaved kid and when I did get into trouble you can bet it was because my friends were roping me into their dumb shit. I think I could have used less spankings and more conversations about why what I did was wrong because I think as a kid that lack of awareness was probably a large source of what problematic behavior I did have. I feel bad for anybody who is a parent of an unruly kind of kid who just may not know what to do about it though. It should probably be noted that I lack the perspective that somebody may have if they were a parent, and that my relationship with my parents isn’t terrible despite them doing that when I was younger.
To me the statement that you might hit the kid back doesn’t suggest self defense it suggests come uppance. You hit me, I hit you back. Self defense would be restraining a kid who is trying to hit or kick.
It came across as being 100% about punishment and “teaching them a lesson” rather than self-defense to me, and I’m not buying the new “no but you see that 9 year old is really dangerous and could kick my petite ass” argument.
I know khamzin is on moderation and everybody already said a lot about zir’s posts*.
But there is one thing I feel like adding.
It’s about this:
Hi! Another not-a-native-English-speaker here!
I understand and sympathies with all troubles that come from trying to communicate in language that’s not your own. And I would never dream of trying to pick on somebody’s grasp of English grammar, punctuation, spelling and everything else.
That said?
You need to be interested in “good formats”.
See, your posts are almost incomprehensible to me. Not because of your English being bad, but because you are writing in textspeak.
From what I’ve seen textspeak can be hard to understand** even for native English speakers.
For people who aren’t native English speakers? It’s pure horror.
English is hard enough as it is. The last thing I need is to try and figure out textspeak posts.
If you are really interested in having conversations, then you need to try and respect those “oppressive” standards. Because if you don’t; chances are people either won’t understand you or won’t even try to guess what your textspeak mess is supposed to be.
*So I’m going to ignore the ridiculous “Everybody here hate new people! I’m entitled to conservation of my choosing! I should be free to be myself and do what I want! But if anybody else says anything I don’t like, then they are horribly ruse and shouldn’t just be themselves!” whining.
**Or irritating enough for them to not even try.
Paul Elam obviously has serious anger-control issues. I get the sense that he doesn’t get the devotion and worship from women that he thinks he deserves, and thinks he would get if the evil feminists had not perverted women. I think he feels that even a slap from a woman would be an unbearable insult to his manhood, which could only be restored by a violent response. Thus the fantasies (and I think they are mostly that) about marginally justified revenge against an uppity woman. The only good thing is that his verbal self-control is so poor that every time he opens his mouth he makes his lack of mental balance all too clear. He may be the Clown Prince of Dudetopia, but he isn’t going to make many new converts.
As to the gun-lovers, I always get the sense that they don’t feel like “real men” unless they have a gun — they scare themselves with fantasies of terrible things (that happen just enough to be plausible) which they could survive only with gunplay. Possession of a firearm (and other weapons, to a lesser extent) seems to give self-identified betas like Elliot Rodger a sense of power that they feel they lack unarmed. I’m not sure how well I understand this — I’m a pacifist, never fired a gun, never will. OK, I’m a big guy (6’2″, 260 lbs) — but I’ve never been in a situation where I thought it would have been helpful to have a gun. Every so often you hear about a situation where people have effectively defended themselves, their family, or someone else, but it’s rare, and it is much more common to hear of someone shooting themselves, a friend or family member, or some more or less innocent bystander. I’ve never quite been able to make sense of it.
My kitty is trying to tell me that I should go to bed so she can have her favorite mattress, so I guess I’ll have to obey.
On the formatting thing, yeah, my eyes just glaze over when I see a giant wall of text. There may be actual content there, but if so why make people work so hard to find it?
Bina, I think that a lot of people in Israel would really object to the comparison you just drew. I have family from Israel who could tell you stories that would shock you. Decades of terrorism is nothing to sneeze at, nor are barrages of rockets fired randomly into civilian areas. People talk about Israel bombing Gaza like they’re just having a fun time, specifically picking off civilian buildings to cause the most death possible. Do you have any idea how hard that chaps my ass? You do understand that Hamas sets up their weapons in these buildings on purpose, right? You do understand that the “human shields” thing isn’t just some Jewish lie, its actually what Hamas instructs people to do. So that they can either fire at Israel with impunity, or get hit back and run to the media about how Israel is targeting schools and hospitals. Israel notifies buildings before they’re bombed. They are not trying to get civilians killed. You people act like Israel is governed by a group of comic book villains. Hamas, on the other hand, is trying to do exactly that, and does convince people to sacrifice themselves as human shields, just as they convince people to sacrifice themselves as suicide bombers. The concept of “human shields” should make your skin crawl. The level of brainwashing Hamas has accomplished is terrifying. But frankly, you are lucky enough not to have to fight against an enemy who deliberately attacks from highly populated areas in order to kill as many of their own as possible. You. don’t have to make the kinds of decisions that would be necessary. Israel is not going to sit back and allow a terrorist group to attack them. No country in the world would be expected to do so, other than Israel, for some reason.
And before you go off and accuse me of not caring about the plight of the Palestinian people, save it. They are grave victims in this conflict and I hate that they’re suffering and dying, but they are being victimized by Hamas first and foremost, and by foreign governments who want to use them to wage a proxy war against Israel. You should consider that Hamas being dismantled would mean that all of the money and aid that Gaza receives from the Middle East could be used to build factories and hospitals, instead of tunnels into Israel and rockets to kill people with. Hamas is absolutely not going to make peace with Israel. It is never going to happen. If it was about land, it would’ve been over by now, because Israel has given back the vast majority of what it took in the multiple unprovoked wars it was dragged into. Hamas’ stated purpose is to push all of the Jews of Palestine into the sea. Until they are destroyed, the cycle of “cutting the grass” is never going to end.
Ugh, sorry for the rant everybody, but between Bina and Ally S bashing Israel, and literally no mention of any other side to the issue from anyone, I just couldn’t contain it. I’m just really confused why Israel, of all countries, is supposed to shrivel up and die when a terrorist army settles in next door.