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.
For someone who does seem to realize they’re not on Twitter and don’t have a character limit, I rather wonder why khamzin won’t use real words (“u”, “ur”, “c”, “2”, “rly”).
(Points up)
If we’re doing this, I’m out. Mods, I’d strongly suggest that you figure out a way to make sure that this comments section doesn’t turn into supporters of Israeli government policy versus people who are not OK with governments bombing civilians.
Holy shit, are you serious? You think that I’m OK with bombing civilians? That is what you took out of that? You’re not going to fucking acknowledge that Hamas forcing the war into civilian areas is the reason this is happening? No, it’s just you versus the evil Israeli empire and its “supporters.” You know what, fine, let’s make that a rule. Nobody mentions the Israel-Palestinian conflict. I’d be glad to give up my right to defend Israel’s right to exist unmolested if people here agree to stop comparing the Jewish state to a bunch of domestic abusers.
I was beaten as a child by my mother (dad was in the military and away a lot up to when I was 8 years old, but he never laid a finger on me, ever, even after he got out). I got tall quick, and my mum is short, but was always smaller than her in other ways. She whipped me with cane, thrashed me with shoes, beat me with a wooden spoon, and also used no implements. She did this even after I apologized for what I had done wrong and had promised to never do it again. When I was 5, at my birthday party I said the word “bloody” because some of the other kids were using it, she dragged me to the bathroom and I got the soap in the mouth trick. I was always top/close to top in my classes at school, and being a military brat one of those really well behaved kids you see completely bored at parties for adults where the kids have for some reason been dragged along – you got that a lot as a military brat.
It taught me to lie. I once lied about breaking the milk bottles on the driveway and blamed my brother. I had tried to carry too many at once, they had slipped and broken, so it was a true accident. I knew I would be thrashed for this. It also made me sneaky. It never made me respect her or care about her, because I knew other kids weren’t punished this way.
When I was 23 and had my breakdown, I told her what she had done to me was considered child abuse. You’ll love this: she fucking cried, not because she was upset over what she had done to me, but because I was mean to her for saying it.
I still remember the red welts the cane left on my bare legs from that beating. I remember the way the cane cut into my legs because that type of implement bends into the flesh on impact.
I have no contact with my mother now because after she stopped the physical abuse, she continued with the psychological abuse that had always been there. My mother has never loved or wanted me, the physical abuse was just one way she showed that.
Stop abuse against others, particularly children.
Tesformes. this has absolutely nothing to do with the stated purposes of this blog, and I am not having this debate here. If you insist on trying to open up that debate here, I’m going to withdraw.
You could have inferred that from my first comment and not tried to force my engagement on this issue, btw. No good will come of trying to have this particular conversation in this particular space, and I’m not doing it.
@WWTH:
XD
@dustedeste:
Yay!
@blahlistic, congratulations, you have been eaten by the blockquote monster! You have passed the secret initiation test of a true Mammotheer.
@Catherine von Uberwald: ::standing ovation::
@GrumpyOldMan:
I should think so! I am shocked that any alternative could cross your mind. ::clutches pearls::
@cassandra
Yeah, I’m with that. If people want a politics thread, I’d suggest asking David to create one, but that’s gonna go downhill even faster than religious conversations do.
How did this thread turn into a Israeli/ Palestinian thing? I’m confused.
@pallygirl- All the internet hugs and kitties. I’m sorry. 🙁 I’m glad you cut her out of your life.
@ Kittehs
Agreed. If people want to debate this let’s make a thread for it, and then the only people who have to engage are people who want to. If everyone agrees to that then I would be fine with all comments on this subject being moved to that thread, if that’s something that mods can do. If we allow that debate to happen in the general threads then it’s going to make the situation that happened before with everyone screaming at each other and tons of people leaving look like a fun family picnic.
I’m also going to put in a vote for keeping the international politics out of this one. I’m also going to put in a vote for tea and bedtime, but that’s beside the point.
Back on topic, even if a kid is as big or bigger than their parents, the parents are still the parents and they still have power and authority that the kid does not. Which is just one of the many reasons why hitting your children is not OK. If someone’s 9 year old is walking around physically attacking adults then that’s a problem, but it’s not a problem that will be solved by hitting the kid, and my question would be what is going on in that household that’s led to the kid thinking that’s an acceptable way to behave.
I was actually so put off by the poster saying they would throw down with a nine year old that I didn’t respond because I didn’t want to debate her on that point.
It did remind me of an odd experience I had while in college when some kids were harassing me and one slapped me on the back of the head. I was college so this was when dinosaurs walked the earth, Dinosaur Jr that is! (That’s an early 1990s reference kids, ask you parents.)
Anyway, I don’t even remember what was said except that told them to piss off because I was in my British affectation phase and I was listening to a lot of Happy Mondays. One of the kids said “What, you’re pissed off?” and then awkwardly slapped in the back of the head.
This was in the South Side of Chicago, they were black and I was white, so there may have been a racial element for them, but if there was it was totally benign. They were around ten years old I guess because they were all shorter than me and still had a pre-adolescent slightness. It was the afternoon and they were school kids with their book bags, with the slight shyness of little kids, except for the mouthy slapper, and they weren’t remotely threatening. The kid who slapped me acted out of childish impulse, it was pretty awkward and a light slap, and while he didn’t apologize, he had a “not sure why I did that” expression on his face afterwards.
We all looked at each other for a moment, collectively dumbfounded, they walked away in opposite directions. They were four of them and they were getting near to five feet tall so they could have kicked my ass. But they were still kids and it had the feel of a half-hearted school yard minor incident.
beegee said she had a nine year old daughter, meaning she interacts with little kids all they time, I don’t get how she could say “If the child was an older child, say 9 or 10, I probably would hit back”. There are violent children but if the kid who hit me was clearly aggressive I would have run away, with self-defense being a last resort. While it was an older child, it still a child who slapped me and hitting a child is really beyond the pale for me.
Cassandra, I’m dropping it here. I didn’t bring up Israel first, it’s been mentioned several times in different threads for no reason at all, and I think I had a right to say something too. Bina’s comparison was absolutely inappropriate, and she needed to be called out.
And frankly, your comment was shitty as well. Israel is not OK with bombing civilians, and neither am I. I know people from there, and they’re normal human beings with empathy and compassion, not snarling demons out for innocent blood.
Whatever, dropping it here, certainly not mentioning anything related to my heritage to you people.
No idea if that’s possible to do, though I imagine David can if WP allows it, but yeah, I’m totally down with not here about international politics. Bag gummints on social issues by all means (don’t get me started on Oz’s situation) but for the rest of it, let’s just not.
The writing site I used to use had a politics thread for a while. Acrimonious doesn’t begin to describe it. It got shut down eventually when it’d reached the point nobody wanted to post there anymore.
Okay, I really don’t want to get into a debate about the conflict but I can’t let this slide. Criticizing the Israeli government’s actions does not make one anti-Semitic. I have seen people in other spaces say terrible anti-Semitic things while criticizing Israel’s actions but the regulars here don’t do that. Please just, don’t.
Can we drop this now, please?
Completely off topic, I really like this jumper. Would like opinions from males on this:
http://www.interweavestore.com/catalog/product/gallery/image/68378/id/118669/
As a survivor of not one but two wars (both while I was still a child) and as somebody who’s still suffering from PTSD from it: please, either drop it or give big trigger warnings so I can avoid it.
Calling me “shitty” isn’t actually dropping it, but whatever. Mods, good luck.
Kittehs,
Yep, I’m done. I just had to say that one thing.
Pallygirl,
I always forget that jumper means something else outside the US. Here it means this http://shelookbook.com/jumper-dress-give-unique-impressions.html/jumper-dress-give-unique-impressions
The American version of a jumper confused me so much when I first encountered the word. I thought people were suggesting that I go out in public wearing just what the Brits would call a jumper plus tights, and wondered why one of my mother’s friends would think this was a good idea.
@WWTH in two of the photos I would call that a pinafore. You would use the term sweater instead?
I love the word “pinafore”. It’s one of those charmingly old-fashioned words for clothes, like pedal-pushers.
That jumper is stunning! ::makes goggly eyes, can’t imagine how to knit it, knows all too well Mr K will probably not be interested even though he’d look gorgeous in it aagh::
It’s funny, I know the term pinafore dress but could never really picture one. For me pinafore means a fancy apron, like Alice in Wonderland’s, or this type of wrap.
In the US, a sweater is what someone in the UK would call a jumper.
I only know this because of copious amounts of doctor who. We had a lot of the old tapes, and then the new series came out…