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.
@kitteh
Aw, that’s wonderful that she likes the food. 🙂
Love the sweater! He looks so good in them.
“Slacks” confused me the first time I hear it too, mostly because it was the 70s and they weren’t particularly slack at the time.
Thanks, all! I was very pleasantly surprised when himself said he likes that jumper. I never can second-guess him. 😛
Jumper and sweater are both old terms; sweater’s been around since at least the 1400s, according to Merriam-Webster. Jumper is first recorded in 1611, but referring to jumping; its use for clothes started in the 1800s. They all meant pull-on garments, and I’d take a bet that they meant knitted wear or underwear, given the fashions in those centuries weren’t exactly slip on over your head stuff.
Slacks was always used for women’s wear when I was a kid: men wore trousers, women wore slacks. Pants meant underwear; underpants seemed tautologous. I think the term slacks comes from them being informal wear.
My kitty gets most upset if I *dare* to deceive her by getting out the cutting board and knife to cut up anything other than chicken. She gets very indignant if she whines for scraps and I hold out a handful of onion to her – “What the hell is this? Where’s the chicken, human?”
::shakes head sadly:: It’s crool how humans deceive poor little cats.
My cats are disappointed when a lolly packet sounds like a cat treat packet. I find myself surrounded by cats whose expectations are about to be destroyed.
It’s like that with a packet of Cheese Shapes. No, Mads, I am not opening your food packet.
Elam really likes to fantasize about hitting women. Honestly, how often does he have to worry that a petite woman is going to hit him? Is that really a thing he has to worry about happening? Unless he’s in an abusive relationship (I truly hope he is not and that he would reach out for help and leave his abuser so that he can be free from abuse) or sparing at the gym, women don’t tend to just walk up and hit people. So, why does he spend so much time fixated on fantasies of hitting women in self defense? Is he actually afraid of being attacked by a small woman or does he just get off on the thought of beating a small woman?
I’m betting on the second one.
Then there is the bit where he lies about police unfairly arresting innocent men for domestic violence and compares that lie to slavery. What a mess of disingenuous mental wankery.
My parents were believers in corporal punishment. My Dad’s approach was “more in sorrow than in anger”, which made for more guilt about the fact my behaviour had “forced” him to hit me, than for any regret about the behaviour itself.
My Mum’s was pure rage: she slapped, spanked, hit me with a rolling pin, threw a breadknife at me, hit me with a plate at least oce and once grabbed me by the throat and banged my head against a wall (I have no memory of this, but my brother does, and I remember the comments on my bloodshot eyes afterwards).
This went on into our teens – my Dad was dead by then – and included inciting my brothers to hit me or hit each other when she considered that we deserved it.
Before long, we were hitting her back. And there had always been a high degree of hitting amongst my siblings – largely of course the eldest brother hitting the smaller and younger members of the family, The last time he threatened to punch one of us (to my knowledge) was when we were in our thirties.
So – yeah, don’t hit kids. It teaches them all the wrong things.
A three-year old once punched me in the abdomen. It was a really hard punch, with all her weight behind it. Nobody hit her back. Her dad grabbed her hands and held them, and when i got my breath back and could speak again, we explained that this was a really, really bad idea.
In Britain, “pants” exclusively means underwear, which of course leads to numerous comedy misunderstandings. Although not quite as many as those revolving around the word “fanny”, which is much ruder in British English. (It refers to the same general area of the body, but the front bit.)
Getting back on topic, my nine-year-old daughter does karate, and she occasionally demonstrates her techniques on me (with permission). But even though she occasionally properly hurts me, I would obviously never hit her back – that would be wrong for all sorts of reasons.
Anyone who’s ever worked at an M&S in central London tells those stories.
Ah, good old Marks and Sparks! That was our first stop on our first trip to London. The weather was much hotter than might have been expected for September. 🙂
I still like their knickers better than any that I can find here.
One of the best pairs of tights I ever had came from them. Heather purple, ribbed, warm, and SOFT. Smooth winter stockings, unheard of in this part of the world. (Who the fuck thinks wool tights are a good idea? Someone who’s never worn them, I bet.)
Not to be too TMI here, but as someone who finds wool itchy even on my arms? I’d really prefer not to have it too close to my ladybits.
Now whoever invented fleece-lined tights that aren’t bulky, that person was a genius.
I think that Paul Elam (in his head) is trying to make the case that there is a huge bias against men in law enforcement, meaning that, if there is a domestic violence case, the man will always be considered at fault, whether he is or not. So, he argues, we should at least be blamed for something we did, and that’s where his “I’m striking back” comes from.
There are so many things wrong with this line of so-called reasoning that I don’t know where to start.
1. It’s false that there is an overall bias against men in domestic violence cases. It may have happened, of course, that some men were unfairly charged, and so have many women. But the number of domestic violence cases that go unpunished is humongous.
2. striking back in order do make the claim true sounds very much like an abusive parent hitting her child (who’s crying in a tantrum) and saying “I’ll give you something to cry about!”. It means that you can’t wait to strike. You just can’t wait to find an excuse to cause physical pain.
3. If you strike back, chances are you WILL end up in jail, you will add to statistics, and you will make the “bias” against men even stronger.
If it was true that there is this bias, why not fight against that? Why not try to make the case that many men are unjustly accused, and raise awareness on this point? Why use that to “beat the shit out of somebody”?!? It makes no sense whichever way you look at it.
Having said all this, I think it’s human to strike back if somebody really hurts you, even if they’re smaller. Not that it has anything to do with what Elam is saying, but it is human, and we should always try to fight against that urge, some of us more than others. And the fact that this is human, and a lot of people relate to it, is what makes Elam’s writing potentially effective, because so many people will feel a twinge of “damn, that’s true”, when reading it, and if they’re not analytical enough, they may not understand that he’s only trying to justify his urge to strike, they may stop at that twinge, and conclude that he has a point.
cassandrakitty,
Yikes! Me too. No wool for me either.
re the knitted object: I’m too small for something that busy to work on me, but it’s quite the accomplishment. One of my students (who later took up competitive ballroom dancing in her 80’s) had knitted herself dozens of garments like that back in the 1960’s with (as far as one can tell from the picture) similar detailing, and they lasted her for decades.
I was in the Girls Brigade about 20 years ago (some xtian thing, though I mostly remember months of weaving) and the uniform included a heavy itchy pinafore. Every single item was itchy and horrible including the red wool knee length socks and weird hat. I’ve tried to find pics on the internet but the uniform seems much less restrictive now. Gah, I don’t understand forcing adults to wear uncomfortable clothing let alone kids. Oh and an itchy thick wool jumper, just to complete the English Uncomfortableness Chart.
I used to think they did it on purpose, put kids who’re at the twitchy restless stage anyway in itchy clothing and then forced them to try to sit still, just to fuck with us.
This is it
just looking at it makes me itchy, maybe that horrible turtle neck is whats given me a lifetime aversion to anything being near my neck.
(Pic is Lorraine Pascale)
It’s like punishment in advance. Maybe people would be able to concentrate better if they weren’t trying to claw their own skin off?
Ugh, real wool turtlenecks. When I discovered the babysoft stuff from French Connection it was like a revelation – finally I can wear turtlenecks without trying to scratch my own skin right off!
My parents belonged to the school of physical punishment as well. It was usually a response to anger more than a reasoned educational strategy, but they were ok with it. They had 7 children including myself, so they didn’t have a lot of emotional resources for parenting all of us with patience and understanding (so actually none of us really got it).
They never did me or my siblings any lasting physical harm, but I do remember vividly the pain and humiliation. They would also take as “normal” if we repeated that treatment among ourselves, or at best both parts got instructed: “You, don’t hit. You, don’t whine!”.
The last time my father hit me I was about 14 (and in one of my peak suicidal moments), I don’t remember what we were arguing about but we were yelling and he followed me to my room. I didn’t feel brave, but I did feel cornered and trapped, so I faced him and said: “So you’re gonna do this? You’re 1,80 mts tall and weight 90 kg*, that’s twice myself”.
He looked enraged but he controlled himself and left. And never tried it again.
Despite many things that went really, really wrong in my parent’s home, they were loving parents and actually got a bit better at it over the years. They just had this Italian Catholic idea of a huge family with lots of kids and it absolutely did not turn out how they expected (I mean, they should have, what were they expecting, I wonder!?
I mean, they are fully responsible for their choices and decisions, but I do understand most of them were the only way they learned how life was supposed to be.
Now that we’ve grown up, and left home, and I am a mother myself, I was able to slowly rebuild my relationship with my parents and I do notice they become more and more respectful of others with time. They are good people, only sometimes severely misled.
I think they also reflected a lot about their own behavior by contrasting it to the relationship I have with my daughter, and my mother has confessed to me she would have liked to treat us more like I treat my child.
* sorry about the measure units.