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.
That was my thoughts exactly. My daughter is 9, and kids that age do not just go around attacking people, especially grown ups. If there is a child who does that, I would be very concerned about that child and what they are exposed to at home.
Teeth are not for biting? That must make eating a rather interesting experience…
I don’t recall specifically spanking my daughter, but when I was younger, alone and emotionally broken I think it’s possible I did it out of rage, although never in the way my parents did.
I do remember slapping her hands when she was 1 or 2 years old and wanted to reach for things that could hurt her (like scissors or knives). But I soon realized I both didn’t like it and didn’t think it was the best way to teach her, so I looked for alternate ways (like gently grabbing her hand and saying “NO”)
I also remember once I was at my parent’s home with her and she was throwing a tantrum about not wanting to get in the bath… I lost my patience, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her all the way to the garden, then told her to stay there till she stopped crying.
I still remember because I hated doing it but there weren’t any more resources in me at that time. And also, my mother went outside just moments later to comfort her and lovingly lead her into the bath.
As a footnote, it always breaks my heart to see children crying, even if I know it’s a tantrum and even if I don’t know the child at all. I just feel like comforting them and letting them know everything is okay… I’m sure it has everything to do with what I would’ve love to be done to me as a child.
So I don’t support using violence with children, I don’t even support the instances in which I used it myself.
One of my sisters, who is also my daughter’s godmother, is a Montessori educator, and I’ve learned plenty of non-violent strategies form her.
Someone earlier mentioned getting spanked or hit for asking “why?” questions that annoyed their mother. I was totally the “why?” kid who wanted explanations for everything, including why I should do/not do specific things, but the thing is, when my mother gave me those explanations, I actually listened. Like “why can’t I touch that?”, “because it’s too hot and it will hurt”.
I think that most kids probably would listen if adults were willing to offer the explanations that they’re asking for. I’ve since tried this tactic on several kids and it’s worked pretty well.
My baby boy cheeked me the other day, literally. I laid him down on the changing table and removed his diaper. He decided it was time to turn over on the changing table, so he did, and tucked his knees up under his belly.
I turned back to him with a new diaper in my hand, only to see him stick his butt up in the air and waggle it at me, with a humongous grin on his face, daring me to diaper him. So I gave him a playful little smack with no force behind it and put the diaper on him.
And my baby girl has decided bath time lasts about 30 seconds. I can barely suds her down and wash her hair before she’s standing up and saying “Out! Out!”
It’s my fault, because when she asks for out I get her out and towel her down and let her run around the house like a true Daughter of Eve (read: bare-assed nekkid) until her brother is done with his bath (which is an arbitrary time limit set and enforced by me and gauged by how much he’s trying to drink the bath water). During this time she streaks her mother, absolutely cackling with laughter.
But anyway, this is relevant because whenever I put her down on her feet after towelling her dry, I give her a wee smack on the bottom as she starts off.
I haven’t found myself in a situation that warrants an actual spank on their bottoms. My boy is learning “No,” though, because he likes to pinch and scratch, and bang his head on people.
Oh, also, we only knew one family who were very much into corporal punishment when I was a kid. Their son was the most awful child I have ever met. He once bit me on the arm hard enough to break the skin. For which he did indeed get a hard smack from his father, and then a cuddle and lots of “it’s not your fault, she shouldn’t have told on you” from his mother (mixed messages for the win), but the thing that I noticed is that neither parent tried to explain why he shouldn’t do things like that to him, neither then nor at any other time that I observed. It was either “it’s OK honey, whatever you do is fine” or violence.
I’m pretty sure the awfulness of the kid was 100% the fault of the parents. Their daughter wasn’t a biter, but she was pretty unpleasant too, and when I met them again 15 years later they were both well on their way to being awful adults.
RE: katz
Oh, X-men First Class. The movie where all the female and POC characters end up evil, dead, or mind-wiped without their consent. *facepalm*
RE: David
CONFIDENTIAL TO W**DY: You are failing the troll challenge I gave to you very badly.
I am shocked, SHOCKED that Woody is incapable of succeeding at your basic challenge.
@LBT:
That’s not important! We have to find out how Professor X feels about it all! Nothing must stand in the way of manpain! Nothing! /sarcasm
Full disclosure: I stopped watching X-Men movies after X3, but I’ve seen enough on Tumblr that I think I got the gist of the movie.
“Are you a fellow Stephanie Miller Show fan perchance? That’s the only place I’ve heard the term.”
Not sure how to blockquote, but I picked it up from Rachael Maddow.
I learned as an adult that apparently everyone at our church knew that our family situation was… inappropriate, I guess, and that other parents used us as a scare tactic, a la “You shouldn’t complain about your punishment, at least you’re not one of the [redacted] kids!” As bitter as I am about how my parents treated me and my siblings, I can understand that it was largely a case of my dad trying to find a milder form of discipline than his parents used (if he argued with his brothers, they’d be sent to the basement to literally fight it out with boxing gloves, and I think his dad used a belt on them as well) and my mom trying to figure it out on the fly (she was one of 16 kids who were mostly “parented” by each other). What I cannot understand is how no one in the church ever did anything about it — as far as I know, no one even thought to tell my parents that their child-rearing methods were hella suspect.
At this point, I’m at a place where I can talk civilly to my parents about a set number of subjects, and I kind of feel like I’m pretending to be friends with them. I don’t know that I’ll ever get past feeling like I need to protect myself around them, but I did find that somewhat commodifying myself worked, if not wonders, than at least pretty well. Once they figured out that I was perfectly capable of ignoring their calls and just never coming home again if I didn’t feel like it, they mostly managed to treat me like a human being. And now that I live in a different country, they’re pretty obsequious for the most part.
I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid so I could go to the moon or to Mars to get away from them, but it turns out Canada seems to be far enough 😀
Also I got the green background back just because I feel so lost without my green blotch. 🙁
RE: Falconer
That’s not important! We have to find out how Professor X feels about it all! Nothing must stand in the way of manpain! Nothing! /sarcasm
I really could not have given less of a shit about Xavier OR Magneto. Xavier was a creep, Magneto decided that THE NAZIS WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG, and I honestly would be happier never to see fucking homoerotic subtext between two pretty white men again. EVER.
I should have added that I never spanked after the kids were old enough to fully understand an explanation of why what they had done was a bad idea. And I would say that if a 9-year-old actually attacked a parent severely enough to be threatening, that might indicate a serious problem and that some sort of counseling might be a good idea.
The endorsement of abuse of women by men continues on another manospheric blog, Just4Guys: http://www.donotlink.com/b37d
Here is a sample comment:
“Mr. Grey says:
August 8, 2014 at 1:43 am
Its unfortunate that men are afraid to discipline their wives as they would discipline children who hit. My now ex wife swung at me only twice in our marriage. The first time she was out in a restraining hold and put on the ground. She was unharmed, but that lesson lasted for 6 years until she tried swinging at me again. The second time she was gripped up and put hard against the wall. I warned her that that would be the last time. I left the house for 4 days. She never called the cops nor would she and she never swung at me again. She is 5-8 and I stand 5-7. Shes no little girl and she knows how to fight. I taught her well.
Women need to be held accountable for their unprovoked violent actions. Slapping them stings them but is not harmful. Too bad that is frowned up on now. It is only then can things change. I believe change starts at home. If a woman even threatened to call the cops on me for ANY reason I would end the relationship right there to include kicking her out of the house on the spot. These should be part of the rules discussion every man has with his new wife. Oh wait, men don’t do that anymore do they?”
We can see how marriage, the manospherian style, is such an enticing proposition for women everywhere. Yeah, too bad the law frowns upon it. Ugh.
Dumb question I know, but why is it that only wives need correction? Do these men feel that if, say, they don’t take out the trash promptly, that their wives should physically correct them?
YoullNeverGuess,
the menz need no correction because the menz are perfect and they rule. The Bible and the ‘sphere say so.
Whenever I hear about “correcting” or “disciplining” a wife, I think of The Shining.
Oh, my…
For the record, if I ever do anything that deserves calling the cops, I would totally want my partner to freaking call the cops. That dudes comment of “she knows better than to call the cops on me” is all sorts of shudder inducing.
@Flying Mouse now you’re in my head! It is indeed slow going. I used to flinch every time someone got mad at me, expecting some kind of enraged reaction, but I’ve gotten worlds better with it. Therapy’s certainly helping. I had to cut out some blood family, but I’ve replaced them with what I call my “family golem”. Pretty much a mishmash of friends and friends’ family members who care about me and who are decent human beings. I was raised conservative Christian, and I’ve replaced that with left-leaning humanist. Also being homeless, abused, and overcoming a substance abuse issue has given me a deep empathy for the downtrodden. I try to be the support I needed.
And I may not be at heart a violent person, but woe to anyone who hits a kid in front of me. My best friend’s husband is a firm believer in corporal punishment, and though I love them both to death, I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to get involved if I felt like her son was being abused. She shushed him last time I was over because he said something about “spanking Stan when he’s old enough”. The look I gave him had him tripping over his words. My mother taught me that look. It makes you feel about half an inch tall. Practiced that one in the mirror when I was getting bullied in middle school. Pretty useful.
of-topic, but pertinent to the Male Tears convo earlier this week, there’s a piece on Slate about the irony of misandry and male tears…
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/08/08/ironic_misandry_why_feminists_joke_about_drinking_male_tears_and_banning.html
I see sentiments like the OP so much across the internet, and it always baffles me. “HA, now I get to hit you back. WHAT NOW? EQUALITY.”
Um… I don’t go around hitting people? And I’m pretty sure men were hitting women long before feminism was even a thing? And I’m also pretty sure you don’t have any idea what “self-defense” means?
Of course, then they threaten to not open doors for me anymore because I killed chivalry.
If we’re back on the Male Tears topic, I found the super seekrit photo that Jessica Valenti took on vacation that inspired JBs epic tantrum.
http://33.media.tumblr.com/4e442bfdcff3ae47b6e8a0b495379a56/tumblr_mpooi8BxXm1s2e55oo1_500.jpg
I mean, obviously it wasn’t just about the tshirt, right? Because that would be silly.
(In case this is only obvious to me, that is an ocean of male tears that DeathValenti is surfing on.)
He makes it sound as if that’s just something women commonly do and the people around them just have to deal with, like cats scratching up the furniture. That’s not something that happens in healthy relationships and unhealthy relationships do not get healthier by one of the people in it managing to consistently overpower the other when they have physical fights. You do not people being hit that they can train an abusive person not to hit by hitting them and hoping that does not escalate the violence. That’s horrible advice. It’s cruel and it’s stupid. Is this how they claim to help men in abusive relationships? They just tell them to stay with someone who hits them and to hit her too? Really?
He then whines that slapping women is “unpopular”. No shit. Slapping anyone is unpopular, as it should be.
correction: *You do not TELL people being hit*