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.
To me it looked like some godawful thing you’d find in a 7-11 – a “lad mag” (hurl).
Wait, really? WTF? That’s literally the opposite of Magneto’s proper backstory. He’s a Holocaust survivor, FFS!
Well, if we just ended male circumcision instead, how would women be punished?
No, I think this is actually where a lot of the backlash comes from. Masculinity in this culture seems to be defined mainly by not being feminine. If women’s roles expand to include things that used to be the domain of men, men only have two choices: draw back from the things that have now been tainted with femininity, thus narrowing their own acceptable range, or rewrite their own roles as well, and risk censure from other men for being “feminine”. Or you can complain about the fact that anything’s changed at all and fight to reestablish the old boundaries, which is what anti-feminism is about.
Far out. As a homelessness worker since the 90s, I’ve seen my fair share of substance users. And whilst I’d agree that many of them will use benefits to buy whatever substance it is that they need, it’s my experience that they have complex support structures in place to manage surviving from pay day to pay day. In this way, users can access food, general needs as well as their addictions. It’s not a perfect system but it’s a common one. Remove benefits from this and people are more likely to resort to crime than some epiphany over drug use because serious addiction is psychological and social, not just physical.
Of course they fucking are! Their constitutional rights are being violated (in the US at least), and they’re being treated like suspected criminals AND being held to a higher standard just because they’re poor. Nothing fair about any of that.
OK, but I’m pretty sure the local crack dealers don’t take EBT cards, which is how the “cash” benefits are disbursed.
That was my bad. Someone (Cassandra?) remembered Beegee saying something iffy before, so I filled in the details. As someone who was relying on public assistance while getting help for my drinking problem, that shit touched a nerve.
Speaking of which, that whole drug testing thing? Doesn’t even catch alcoholics. We’re just as likely as any other addict to buy booze instead of toilet paper, but we fly under the radar because our drug of choice is legal and widely available. So drug testing isn’t even an effective way to weed out addicts.
<3 <3 <3
Really helps you find and/or keep a job, too. It’s not like maintaining a certain socially-acceptable level of cleanliness is required for one to to the things that may eventually get them off welfare.
Don’t forget shame! Addiction, like fatness and poverty and homelessness, can be cured simply by making the people doing it feel bad about it!
Boston’s been tryign it and yeah, it’s been way more effective. I mean, when you need an address and phone to apply for jobs (plus a place to shower and nice clothes), a child could see that being homeless presents a huge barrier to getting employment, which you need to get housing and food and such. And yeah, it turns out that having a safe place to sleep and something to do during the day works wonders for addictions, school performance, and stress-based mental illnesses. It’s like fucking magic! But in the US, we’ve made homelessness into a moral issue, so doing anything to help them would be politically unpopular. You’d have to frame it as a monetary issue, and even then you might have to pretend it’s going to punish the homeless somehow for it to fly in some parts of this country.
That’s the average in the US, too. Twelve years of war and a dearth of support for ex-soldiers has not helped matters any – veterans with untreated PTSD are increasingly finding themselves on the streets.
As someone with depression and SAD, I <3 your classmates who said this. Some of the hardest times for me were my first couple of years of college, before they renovated my dorm building, when you really felt like you were products in a warehouse. Dark walls, chipped furniture, shitty lights – and I lived in one of the "nice" dorms.
And people are telling you that you’re wrong. How much research have you actually done on this topic?
I’ve always thought that political offices should pay minimum wage. The idealist in me thinks it’d narrow the field to actual public servants rather than people seeking money and power, although I know that’s unlikely. But at the very least, it’s keep the minimum wage high!
Technically the ceremonial use of peyote by Natives is legal, but law enforcement doesn’t have a history of being Native-friendly. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the use of Peyote is being used to deny benefits to Natives.
What about rich kids who use drugs? Can we cut them off from their parents’ money?
What a shitty thing to say to someone. So you being multi and married to a system member = Andy’s (admitted) delusions? Would they even be comparing you two if you weren’t both trans dudes? Jesus, dude, I’m sorry.
The weird moment for me was watching The Producers (the more recent film version) and realizing I recognized that singing Nazi…
Why Welfare recipients? Why not everyone?
There is just no way to make that statement make sense. It isn’t unfair to them, but let’s just do it to them because they’re poor and poor people need to be monitored more than other people because…
So, yeah…
I’ve been steadfastly ignoring Beegee since I’m sure Beegee is just going to annoy me more, and I don’t trust myself to not get really, really annoyed and use more cutting language than I’m comfortable with.
I can say this: Safe housing for the homeless is a good thing. Food benefits for the homeless is a good thing. Even homeless addicts deserve these things.
From personal experience with a soup kitchen, I can tell you that there might be some adults among the homeless who don’t play nice and graffiti the walls of the children’s bathroom with curse words written in poop, who yell nasty things loudly at the neighbors, and who steal all the pens.
Yes, housing the rude folks (till they sober up and get control or longer term if they’re just sober arses to begin with) away from the nicer folks and kids is something to consider.
But to say across the board that “You’ve snorted/shot/drunk in the last week, so you don’t deserve food or shelter and should go crawl under the bushes to sleep” is not cool. Even the rudest, ugliest, smelliest, heaviest of the addicted folks should be able to eat and sleep, safely.
Okay? Backing away slowly before my growling gets me in trouble…
Note, some people are nice on drugs. Lots of people are nice on drugs. They shouldn’t’t have to sleep with the rude folks.
Did not mean to imply that.
That’s another thing, isn’t it – forcing people into homelessness by cutting off benefits is sooner or later going to pass a death sentence on someone, if not from exposure then from violence.
I have a canned response for this whenever I see the whiny reactionaries in my country complaining about our anti-poverty programs.
If poor people have it so easy, why don’t you try being poor?
RE: blahlistic
BTW… letting people go homeless actually ends up costing more money than just giving them some freaking housing.
NO! You don’t say! Someone fetch me my fainting couch!
…Reading an article about people in Macallen buying prepared junk with their SNAP cards, though.
Horseshit. Some places have a program where some disabled/elderly people who can’t cook can have prepared food covered by food stamps, but it’s highly limited. Rich people love to crow about that though.
RE: Hyatt and Kittehserf
Andy Blake is a special, SPECIAL person. (You probably already found that.) And Hyatt, I’m multiple, which is why I took on his horseshit, but of course, believing outlandish things means that of COURSE I’m like him. *eyeroll* I admit, it honked me off.
RE: wewereemergencies
I mean you haven’t even started one cult!
Obviously I’m not trying hard enough. *snort*
RE: cassandrakitty
We’re supposed to empathize with Boobs Comic Guy.
I would be so much happier if non-porn comics stopped treated female characters like blow-up dolls.
RE: emilygoddess
Wait, really? WTF?
Yup. Magneto kills the Nazi who kills his parents, then decides the DUDE WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG, steals his helmet, and starts trying to kill the mundies. Because that totally makes sense.
Would they even be comparing you two if you weren’t both trans dudes?
I dunno if anon knew I was trans or cared. It was basically just a “lulz you’re crazy” phrased in concern-troll speak. (What really steams me up is that I still worry enough that they’re right to start analyzing everything I do.)
Wouldn’t that just restrict political office to people who are already wealthy and don’t need much of a salary? I should think that would make legislative bodies even less responsive to the needs of the 99% than they are now.
You mean the best solution to homelessness is providing homes? I’m thunderstruck!
Seriously, why isn’t it more obvious to people that curing the need for a home first makes more sense than trying to cure a homeless person’s joblessness, drug addiction or mental illness first? It’s hard enough to find a job when you have a home and an internet connection. How do people expect someone living on the street to do it?
Also, by making the customer a woman it looks like he’s saying that female fans are “fake geek girls” who just want to look at pretty pictures and are too shallow and stupid to appreciate Boobs Comic Guy’s Very Important Boob Humor Comic.
To clarify, I’m not saying fan art is shallow. It just looks like that’s what Boobs Comic Guy thinks of it.
RE: WWTH
<em.Seriously, why isn’t it more obvious to people that curing the need for a home first makes more sense than trying to cure a homeless person’s joblessness, drug addiction or mental illness first?
Oh man, I HATE that! I actually wrote a post about that because it was so maddening trying to bootstrap my brain while homeless, poor, and frightened. I called it the Leaky Boat Game, because it was like trying to row a boat to Australia, only the boat had an enormous hole in it that could only be fixed when I got to Australia.
You know, I’ve done a good number of comics cons in my day. And I know that frustration of trying to sell a niche product in the presence of people with a lot of more money and production value than you. (Seriously, my big advance was using a giant Gay Pride flag Sneak salvaged from the garbage as a tablecloth.)
But you know what? People come to comic cons for various reasons. I recognize that a lot of people do not come to buy my mental health comics. If they do, that’s awesome, but I’m essentially trying to sell oranges at an apples festival.
Similarly, just because you are at a con does not oblige anyone to buy your work. Sad, but true. It might personally comfort you to think your Boobs comic is so much deeper and cooler than Green Lantern, but you have to accept that a lot more people are going to come for Green Lantern than Boobs. Just like a lot more people are going to go to an anime convention who love Naruto than… hell, I dunno, Princess Jellyfish or something.
If I wanted to sell fanart, I’d make fanart. If I wanted to sell superhero comics, I’d make superhero comics. Frustrating as it is, there’s no point in blaming congoers for not dropping in astonishment at your feet. Creators, get over yourself!
@WWTH
Members of Parliament in Canada receive an average salary of $163,700 a year. After six years in office they receive a pension at age 55. Cut the salary in half and it’s still a pretty decent living.
RE: Auntie Alias
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
I live on less than $10,000 a year! Seriously, SIXTEEN YEARS of keeping me alive costs less than a fucking year’s salary for these guys? Seriously? And yet I’M the one who’s bankrupting America and needs to get drug-tested and pushed through hoops to get housing?
WHAT DO THEY EVEN DO WITH ALL THAT MONEY? Wipe their asses with gold toilet paper?
And even when I was working, my highest income was $12,000 a year!
FFFFFFF
In Wellington, there’s been an issue with the majority of night shelters not accepting people who are under the influence of anything. This has led to the outcome of empty beds staying empty and people sleeping on the street instead. 🙁
Life is really fucking miserable for some people. Do I begrudge them using drugs to get some escape from that – no. For many people having a really sucky life is what drove them to drugs, it wasn’t an outcome from using.
And a lot of the issue comes from the fucking war on drugs that the US has made all our countries follow. Not only does this mean that people can’t be helped to manage their habit (i.e. harm minimisation), but people go to jail for possession charges and then that criminal sentence stuffs them up for future jobs – oh, unless they’re white and rich and get discharged without conviction because a conviction would be prejudicial against those people.
I wouldn’t mind paying MPs etc $165K per year if they would make policy on the basis of evidence and not bloody ideology. I don’t think this type of “demonise the opposite party” type of democracy is any good – regardless of its ideological background, the government should be implementing what works. Too bad if that doesn’t gel with the right-wing “war on”s stuff.
grrr /sigh
RE: pallygirl
This has led to the outcome of empty beds staying empty and people sleeping on the street instead. 🙁
God, that’s depressing. But I feel like it nicely sums up how people treat the poor: you can have basic necessities of life… but ONLY if you behave!
Relevant here I think, particularly Merton’s modification: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/26587/anomie
@LBT
And MPs get to claim housing, travel, and meal expenses on top of that.
Maybe there have been studies on how many addicts have underlying mental illnesses and are self-medicating but I’m betting it’s a significant proportion. Decent mental health care is another thing that governments are slow to address and the cost of ignoring it is billions of dollars every year.
Even though we have universal health care in Canada, it only covers psychiatrists where I live and it’s nearly impossible to find one for long-term treatment because there are too few of them. Psychologists aren’t covered so the only option available to people in poverty is free community services with long waiting lists. It sucks.
RE: Auntie Alias
And MPs get to claim housing, travel, and meal expenses on top of that.
You’re kidding! Where does all that money GO? It can’t be healthcare; that’s a US thing! I don’t get it! Axing half of their salary would keep eight people like me afloat and safe and off the street!
@LBT
Fancy houses and cars? I can’t imagine how you live on so little money.
RE: Auntie Alias
*shrugs* We had money once. When we were kids; we actually come from a family with money. Just… well, we had to leave, and then we got disabled and… well, it’s been like this for basically all our adult life, so I don’t really know anything else, as an adult, anyway.
But I do all right! I’ve got enough food, and sure, everything’s kinda old and creaky, but I go our stuff back when we were kids and we had money, so it’s held up really good. It also helps that we’re always the Johnny-come-lately to apartments, so we always join up with existing households, so our roommates usually are the ones with stuff like dishes and TVs and stuff. Sure, I’m not rich, but I’ve got what I need and people who love me and useful things to do, and that’s what’s important!