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.
Beings you should not hit:
Women.
Men.
People.
Children.
Housepets.
Cacti.
Amoebae.
Guinea worms.
Sparky
http://jezebel.com/5509717/domestic-violence-are-women-as-abusive-as-men
On the “compariing women to children” thing, Redonkulous made a comment here saying categorically that if anyone punched him he would punch them right back. I asked him about specific scenarios to see if he really meant this. One of these scenarios was a small kid punching him.
Even if you could prove parity in domestic violence committed by men and women, so what? People here are telling you it’s wrong regardless.
Gram didn’t read the link he posted, apparently. Also, way to defend a murderer.
Especially not a cactus.
This…I am always suspicious of someone who completely leaves out their role in stories like this, as if they were just standing there and the Attack Fairy just happened to slug them. It’s a way of minimizing the abuse and trying to gain sympathy from other people while discrediting their victim. At best, it’s manipulative, and I find it absolutely disgusting.
Gram: learn to read and then fuck off. kthxbai.
Gram, I’ll see your Jezebel article and raise you a review of the research by an actual sociologist:
“Gender Symmetry”in Domestic Violence
Regarding the Rayon MacIntosh incident: I don’t know what his level of predisposition to violence was before he went into prison, but I’m sure prison didn’t help. Prisons can be extremely violent places, particularly ones with a lot of younger prisoners. If you are attacked in prison, you have to be willing to respond with deadly force or at least enough force to incapacitate your attacker, otherwise you’ll be seen as weak or an easy mark. This is true whether or not you are ever actually attacked. Then, when you get out of prison, the world has to hope that this conditioning will fade away before you end up in a situation where you might respond by prison standards.
A few months after I got out of prison I had a confrontation with an obnoxious, much smaller fellow worker who accused me of cutting off his wife as we were driving home from work the previous day. After some fairly strong insults (but no blows — we were on opposite sides of a 5′ high bin) he walked away, and I looked down and saw that I had picked up a pry bar without being aware of it. Another time I was sleeping and my wife, in a playful mood, pounced on me, and I threw her across the room before I was even awake. And I was in prison for being a pacifist.
Re Mr Grey’s view (wonder if he’s got that from 50 Shadezzzzz) on women and DV, I love how he says that if a woman even called the cops on him for ANY reason he’d end the relationship right there and throw her out the house. Um .. what if it’s her house? Are ya gonna chuck her out of her own home are ya? He seems to think only men own or have homes. The whole if she called the cops on me for ANY reason is just ridiculous. What if they were burgled. What if HE’D been assaulted by the intruder etc. DON’T phone the cops bitch!! His ‘disciplining’ women is also bloody frightening. Who the hell does he think he is? *shudders*
Gram is the third troll this week to present that four year old Jezebel article as a citation. I think he’s third, there may have been more. Hey fellas, short MSM articles that summarize scientific studies are notoriously unreliable and thanks to this new internet thing you can actually look up the original study and read it yourself. Of course we all know you wouldn’t put that kind of effort in researching the issues you claim to care about, it would totally cut into your message board trolling time.
The MRAs’ other favorite Jezebel article, the one that inspired Elam’s Bash a Bitch Month, also was from 2010, IIRC. I’m strangely comforted by the way all the MRA trolls are fixated on two old Jezebel articles, the year old footage of “Big Red” and the treacherously pulled fire alarm in Toronto, the Edmonton “Don’t Be That Guy” poster campaign, and Anita Sarkeesian’s 2012 Kickstarter campaign.
MRAs endlessly need to mention, discuss, “debate” and wail against these few insignificant events to the point where they have become manosphere totems. While ignorance isn’t rare per se, a movement made up of pissy pants man-children who as far as I can tell don’t read, study or discuss anything of significance or real scope, plus do no activism IRL, is going to remain the domain of internet cranks and reactionary doofuses. Dear MRAs, pease stay in your echo chamber, keep on being comically ineffectual and remain lazy as fuck. Thanks!
Cattygal – he thinks he’s the Man. That means he’s in charge, as God intended, and anything that disrupts or threatens to disrupt that is a Bad Thing.
I think a lot of these people actually believe that. It doesn’t seem to make them any happier, though.
Harking back a couple of pages to the wool-next-to-skin thing: I’d bet it’s a hangover from the idea that animal fibres should be worn next to the skin that Dr Jäger & co had going in the 19th century. Those curious woollen suits you see George Bernard Shaw wearing are that sort of thing. Horrible itchy things …
-Since I loiter on a couple of support sites, I can say that I have told men abused by their female partners, “No, she’s abusive, that’s really not ok, you deserve better, you really should get out.”
I mean, abusers groom their adult victims for abuse. They wear them down with psychological abuse before the actual battery begins, otherwise the battered party would just split, right? It works on people of all genders.
@ LBT
-My parents were…um, pretty severely abusive when I was a kid. As a consequence, I’m kind of a “we” too, though probably less completely divided. So it’s cool to read about what’s worked for you(all).
-I’m not reproducing, but if I had done, based on my experience, I would not allow myself to hit a child. It’s too easy to give into the temptation to smack a kid when you’re angry instead of cooling off and giving a well-thought out consequence for what the child did.
See, I used to think that MRA and Feminism was two different sides of the same coin, like, one advocated women, and one advocated men, and that while the MRA was filled with more fools then Feminism, it had its heart in the right place.
But then, I saw more and more stuff like this, and I started to slowly *Slowly* realize just how bad that mentality I had was. At first, I would try to pretend they used different words. “Its just their way of saying women hitting men is bad too.” And maybe that isn’t entirely incorrect.. but you know what? It doesnt matter. The MRA mindset, language and Entire way of approaching this potentally correct idea is so toxic and disgusting, that I find myself sickened. Why on *earth* would you frame this idea as “I get to hit you back if you hit me!” Instead of “Women hitting is wrong.”.
The truth is, of course, that they are using a somewhat legitimate idea, (That hitting is wrong, irregardless of gender.) and Twisting it into some kind of disgusting revenge fantasy. And even if it *Isn’t* a revenge fantasy, somehow, then they are *Still* approaching the idea with violence before reason, and are therefore *STILL* being horrible in their mindset.
I’m so glad I realized somewhere along the line that Feminism cares more about Men AND women then these fools.
marinaliteyears – it’s worse than them twisitng the idea that hitting is wrong. They don’t think men hitting women is wrong at all. These guys are abusers, rape apologists, the men who cheer murderers on, the ones who talk about Saint Marc Lepine and are disappointed that Elliot Roger didn’t kill more women.
Also, the very name Men’s Rights is a clue. Men are not denied any rights on the basis of being men. The “rights” these fuckers want is the right to own women as men used to.
I take it these men abused by women took their cases to the feminist high council where NOT ONE FEMINIST gave a single fuck. How else could they know the official feminist position on woman-perpetrated violence against men which all of us agree to upon signing the official application for our feminists licenses?
@Kittehserf
we may have to agree to disagree, on part of that.
I mean, I agree that many, If not most, MRA do indeed think that way, and that this twisted version of the idea is just a reflection of them looking for an excuse to hit a woman. But Im also sure there is plenty of variance, so some MRA probably think ” Its ok to hit back, regardless of gender.” and honestly think of it as such. Does that make the mindset better? No, because even if they are simply intending to apply violence as retaliation, they *Still* think to jump to violence first, and it is *still* a toxic meme, and they *still* agree with the first ‘excuse seeking’ MRA.
I make the distinction not to Lessen the horribleness of the idea, but because I do think its best to keep an accurate understanding of the Toxic ideas at hand. I guess its because I’m overly analytical, to a fault.
Also, while I do agree that the patriarchy favors men and gives them every innate advantage, (particularly if they are white.) I do think that men are “granted” many Toxic Self harming ideas in the patriarchy, As well as given some situations where they may have a harder time doing something stereotypically feminine. That being said, Its hard to research and confirm or deny that idea, since the MRA Distort and twist any such *possible* problems men may face for their gender, Which I should clarify, even if some men do suffer any for their gender, it is Much much much less then women, and only applied to selective men, Unlike how women face problems and have less rights on gender alone.
Anyway, if, and again this is a big if, Those self harming Ideas and those “maybe” situations where a man might face problems doing something feminine do present a real problem, (again a big if.) I would conceivably see a need for a “men’s rights” movement, If, and *Only* if, this hypothetical men’s rights movement was more about helping people and removing gender barrier in conjunction with feminism, not against it.
They’re all about their masculinity construct. Traditional male roles. Well, traditionally, men aren’t supposed to hit women. It’s considered dishonorable in some circles for a man to hit a “lady.”
Ignore the fact that traditional men actually *did* hit their partners often enough, they just hid it. Ignore also that men were kind of culturally expected to occasionally be violent, period.
So… what Elam’s doing there is working on the taboo that it’s dishonorable to hit a “lady,” and arguing that he would hit a woman… He’s also further arguing that he would not be sacrificing his masculinity among other men by doing so.
.
@Blahistic.
Yeah, I figured as such. Its pretty gross. I guess this ties into the fact that Elam and his cronies seem to think that feminism reinforces or desires such traditional male roles, even though thats an utterly incorrect Idea. (Quite the opposite. But MRA are not known for their spectacular reasoning skills. Ugh.)
It wouldn’t be a men’s rights movement, if it was about deconstructing patriarchy and acknowledging the existence of toxic masculinity and the harm patriarchy does men (which is nowhere near the level of harm it does women). That’s not about men’s rights, it’s more like men’s healing. The MRM is all about reinforcing toxic masculinity and whining about it at the same time.
That’s just the thing though.
If women aren’t bound by traditional roles, then neither are men.
That scares the hell out of them.
We’re attacking their *self-definition*.
Well, IMO…Do y’all think I’m wrong on this?
I am not clear on why Elam assumes that he would have an opportunity to hit back. If a person smaller than him knocked him down and escaped he would have no opportunity to respond. He seems to be assuming that a woman significantly smaller than him would hit him and stand there waiting to see what he would do. Unlikely fantasy scenario. He seems a rather silly man completely ignorant of life in the reality based community.