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.
Yes, as well as the physical abuse, piled on top was stuff like “how could you be so stupid to do that” and other sentences to that effect. So years later, I catch myself mentally telling myself I am stupid and dumb when I do something not up to perfection. At least I catch it now and can examine the thought as to why it’s cropped up and try to stop it coming up again.
Mental abuse, the gift that keeps giving.
Yes, it is. You can’t change your address and hope you’ll stop receiving it either.
As to spanking, we were spanked as children – but only for deliberate disobedience, never for accidents or mistakes. And my father, who did the spanking (no more than two or three not very hard swats on the butt), always made sure we understood what we had done to be punished. Then the incident was over, never to be mentioned again. I infinitely preferred that sort of punishment to my mother’s, which were deeply psychological, and lasted for at least a week. In fact more than once we begged to be spanked rather than be punished by my mother. Once my father hit me in anger. When a younger sister blamed me for something she had not done (I was supposed to make sure she was up and ready to go to an appointment, she woul not get up), he appologized to me and my mother punished her. (As I recall, I decided if she got dessert and how much dessert for 2 weeks.)
Interesting how Futrelle campared women to children. A child can be argued to not know better. A grown woman should know better. Women hit larger men based on anticipating that they will not hit back. A 115 pound man would not do the same because he knows that he does not have the privilege of knowing that society has taught the bigger man not to retaliate. If a 120 pound man is KOed after hitting a man twice his size, he would get little sympathy from anyone. Non-equality at it best.
And since it has been shown that women hit just as much as men, women being only 20% of arrests shows the double standard. I have a good friend who dated a violent woman he outweighed by 100 pounds. She left him so scratched up that he looked like a zebra. That’s the price he paid for his restraint. Not one feminist gave a damn.
Was Rayon McIntosh wrong?
In our system, we are forbidden from hitting each other. (Well, except if someone’s sparring with Mac, but that’s purely sport, he knows what he’s doing, and we don’t do it much.) This is a rule I don’t regret us ever instituting.
It did mean we had to get creative, back when Gigi was less stable and more violent than she is now. (Only towards other headmates; the only time she’s ever hit someone in real life was when some guy joked about rape making me impotent.) For a while, she was threatening Mac on a regular basis, and sure, she was ten, but she was also violent, unstable, and the most powerful person in the system. She could wipe the floor with him in an instant.
How the hell do you discipline a kid who’s that dangerous?
Put a bell collar on her. And make it so she can’t get it off.
She was FURIOUS about that, but it really ruined some of her creepy little girl shit, being prefaced with little jinglebell sounds every time she tried to sneak up on you. And once she lost some of that oomph, she calmed down a little.
Quelle surprise, an MRA has turned up to tell us about women hitting men.
Please provide the citation for this arsefact, which also needs to show that the outcomes of women hitting men are equivalent to the outcomes of men hitting women.
Ooh, and this MRA is confirming what I said earlier, that they think women already have carte blanch to hit men all the time. Is there anything worth responding to? Ooh, I know.
Nowhere in the op will you find “child” or “kid,” so I’d love to know how you thought David was comparing women to children. I mean, I know all the commenters here (even the trolls) are really David, who is really cats (or was it ferrets), but that’s beside the point.
It’s not okay for women to hit men.
That’s pretty simple to say, isn’t it? If that’s what Paul Elam meant to convey, he could have just said that. He instead chose to wrap up this idea in an elaborate revenge fantasy, which makes his message different.
His message actually seems to be “It’s okay for men to hit women (under some circumstances at least).” This implies that it would be okay for women to hit men under similar circumstances, but this doesn’t seem to be entertained by Elam’s narrative.
Then we have Gram showing up with this:
It seems that Gram also doesn’t entertain the notion that women might be hitting men who hit them first (which, genders reversed, is Elam’s scenario in which it’s fine for a man to hit a woman). In fact, Gram, the only studies that come up with this type of result do not differentiate between offensive and defensive violence: if a woman is getting the tar beaten out of her and attempts to hit or kick or scratch to defend herself, that is marked down as reciprocal violence and the woman is counted as being exactly as violent as the man who attacked her.
It’s very revealing, this. That instead of saying, simply, that it’s not okay for a woman to hit a man, nor a man to hit a woman, because it’s not okay for anyone to hit anyone else, these concepts are instead sublimated into justifications for violence. Similar, really, to the “if a 9-year-old attacked me, I would fight back!” statement. There’s not a substantive difference between that idea and Elam’s.
@A Wolverine
Very, very true. Which is how they end up nurturing someone like Elliot Rodger.
Gram, is it really that hard for us to explain that hitting is wrong? Regardless of gender?
It has been shown by Gram that women hit as much as been. This is a fact, because Gram has said so.
Aren’t we lucky that Gram has shown up to educate us poor benighted feminists?
Not even one? How many feminists did he discuss this with? How many non-feminists did give a damn?
Even if Elam really gave a damn, which is debatable, how is the advice discussed in the OP actually helpful to men?
And yes, I would say that Rayon McIntosh reacted with way disproportionate force.
The whole “Elliott Rodger was nothing to do with the MRM” statement *might* have some credibility if the MRM movement didn’t keep demonstrating how much it really really wants to physically hurt women.
Abuse of females = this is a feature of the MRM, not a bug.
“And my father, who did the spanking (no more than two or three not very hard swats on the butt), always made sure we understood what we had done to be punished. Then the incident was over, never to be mentioned again. I infinitely preferred that sort of punishment to my mother’s, which were deeply psychological, and lasted for at least a week.”
I have always thought that this sort of drawn-out emotional torture — which I have actually seen recommended occasionally in a parenting how-to book — was infinitely worse than spanking. I think children can relate to losing one’s temper as long as it doesn’t happen very often, but withdrawing emotionally for an extended period is beyond a child’s comprehension.
MRAs, bravely fighting for your right to:
Beat you wife or girlfriend because they should know their place
Maritally rape your wife
Take advantage of intoxicated women
Lock your wife into divorce-forbidden marriage so you can be a complete knob
Make women feel insecure in public spaces through catcalling
Financially abandon the children you played a part in in creating
Genitally mutilate baby girls…because that’s the obvious solution for circumcising boys right?
Keep discussion shut down on tired, violent, misogynistic plot-devices used ad nauseum in shitty video games
Threaten feeeemales who say things you don’t like with death and rape threats
“Imaginatively” interpret statistics and other kinds of evidence
Gram’s doing his part by being the resident troll today. Activism!
.
AAAAAH WHY DID I READ THAT RAYON MACINTOSH LINK AAAAH
*pours bleach into eyes*
I’m with Sparky on the Rayon McIntosh battery. The video from the cellphone clearly shows that other employees were present behind the counter and could have helped him. That he went straight for a metal bar instead of getting help from other employees – who were right near him – is telling.
@LBT don’t read the comments.
I’m not kidding about the female circumcision crack either, some dudebro actually made a poster about things that had to happen before men and women were equal – that was one of them.
http://www.donotlink.com/b3ai
I’m sorry, I should have had a trigger warning on that.
I need to remember to think before I post.
Kirbywarp,
Futrelle compared hitting a small woman back to hitting a child back. He did so in the first page comments section in response to redonkulas.
Ugh, the troll is still here? DON’T HIT PEOPLE, TROLL.
The point is not to hit people who are smaller and weaker than you, Gram. But let’s face it, you don’t actually care about that.