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.
Bleh bleh bleh Elam. I have a toddler who’s about 110% in height on the boy’s scale – she’s very, very tall. We’ve had to teach her to be careful if hit because she’s quite accurate in a return smack and much stronger than other kids her age – in short, she can flatten someone. So she knows to push people away and get an adult.
She was able to learn this and she’s two and a half with the self-control of a person entirely motivated by a desire for dinosaur stickers. What’s his excuse?
Whoops, sorry I quoted all of mythago’s banned post, bad idea on my part.
@ siatabby: broken knees don’t fix well either.
@ kim: cannot run firefox at work, only chrome.
thinking this means no blockquotes at work.
( I guard a nice boring building. Will be checking rooms and caffeinating in a bit. Mmm coffee…)
Yeep! Rereading thread: Mythago with a gravatar, not a graveyard.
Thanks, autocorrect.
Speaking of real Mythago and not troll mythago, anyone seen xir recently?
@blahlistic:
It’s an html thing, not a browser thing.
Just use these:
<blockquote>
</blockquote>
I manage to get through my daily life without dreaming up any scenarios like verbally abusing a guy until he hits me, or how I can get a guy charged with DV by lightly hitting him so he pummels me back. My thoughts around violence typically occur when I’m alone at a transit stop, shielded from public roads, and I make myself very aware of whether other people around (am I at risk?) and I make myself stand up tall with shoulders back (don’t be an easy target). I don’t know of any feminists who have thoughts of doing violence against men.
MRAs seem to be comprised of equal parts projection and BS. I agree with whoever said that (one reason) they hate feminists because they think we fantasize the way they do.
MRAs: identifying as one shows you’re a vile person and makes me assess you as a threat to my wellbeing.
I had a boyfriend who told me after a physical fight he had wanted to call the cops on me but he was afraid he’d be arrested instead. I had been caught talking to another male (a friend I’d met at my college that I missed because we were on break and as a “cheating bisexual skank” I wasn’t supposed to have friends, especially not male friends) , and he began screaming obscenities at me so I pushed him. He knocked me to the ground, I smacked my head, and what happened afterward is largely blank. All I know is I eventually lost consciousness, which I struggled to maintain all the next day. Judging from the bloody knot on the back of my head and a vague memory of having it slammed into the wall as well as the floor , he’d given me a concussion. I was covered in bruises and had a limp that lasted a good week. Apparently I’d uppercutted him in the balls and left a couple scratches on his chest, both of which happened sometime after my head hit the floor. I’m 5’1″, he was 6’5″. He’d picked me up and thrown me at one point in our relationship. He also thought that his being my intimate partner entitled him to sex whether I wanted to or not. I didn’t realize I had a legitimate reproductive issue until after that relationship, because I was often bleeding and in pain. This is all I can think about any time I hear all this “cops always arrest the men” bullshit, among other MRM complaints.
Well, that and being literally laughed out of a courtroom when I tried to get an OP against my stepfather after he held me down by the throat and beat my face into a bloody pulp and my mother lying in the hospital with a concussion, fractured skull, deep laceration to the head, dislocated and shattered ankle, and a fucking bloody bitemark on one arm while the husband that did that to her was cleaning out their bank accounts and hiring a team of lawyers that got him a drinking buddy of theirs for a judge. The MRM can kiss my Irish ass with their “skewed DV courts” bullshit. Oh, they’re skewed all right, but certainly not in the way these puling little shitstains whine about. Don’t fucking talk to me about “the horrors of oppression” because you don’t feel like paying for your kid’s braces or some stupid shit. I’d like to give these assholes five minutes alone with my memories.
-note: pardon the excessive cursing, the subject matter gets me heated. I once had a veteran Marine apologize to me for his language after a group meeting in a suicide ward. I assured him I had my own gutter mouth, and he told me it just meant I had “grit”. I’ve always been kind of proud of that.
You can blockquote with chrome! I do!
Just type (blockquote)
(/blockquote)
Only, instead of (parenthesis) use the little pointy brackets that live on US keyboards above the comma and period. Point faces out, so the brackets look like they’re eating the word blockquote and /blockquote.
Ninja’d by Kirbywarp, who did a better job.
Kirbywarp, how do you keep wordpress from eating things in the pointy brackets?
*wide-eyed amazement*
khamzin:
You claim to have read this blog for a year, yet you’ve no notion of the norms here?
You want to know the rules, read the Comments Policy. It’s right up there at the top of the page.
Learn to blockquote. It’s not hard, and if you use Firefox you can get their add-on toolbar for text formatting, which saves mucking about.
Everyone else has already pointed out the rest of the stuff, but I’ll add: please don’t use text-speak. It’s irritating as hell and for me, all it achieves is to make me skip the comment entirely.
For someone who claims familiarity with the site, you’re showing remarkably trollish behaviour.
And no, as has been pointed out, you’re not entitled to a conversation, least of all if you come barging in spamming and then whine about the reactions you get.
Two pages of comments and I’m already at “shape up or ship out” stage of impatience.
@contrapangloss:
It’s actually kinda cool. Character codes! This is HTML’s way to display the special characters like the greater-than/less-than signs, and other special characters.
So < is < (less-than) and > is > (greater-than)
*crosses fingers that everything displayed correctly*
ryeash, I am so, so sorry that happened to you and your mother. Kitty hugs if you’d like them.
Don’t worry about swearing, we do plenty of that! It’s just slurs (gendered, homophobic and so on) we avoid.
Have a Welcome Package!
§¢¡£ñŒ!
Sweet! Thanks for the impromptu HTML lesson!
< THIS IS AWESOME >
If it works… 🙂
It worked!! ‘Nother day, ‘nother tiny bit of coding learned.
Thanks, Kirbywarp!
Seriously. What a mess.
@ryeash
I’m sorry that happened to you, you have every right to be pissed off, so curse away. MRAs portray domestic violence policies throughout the West as some as some form of feminist marshal law in a way that’s ridiculously cartoonish and completely divorced from reality. It’s aggravating when it’s some adolescent with little life experience does it, but it’s flat out offensive and even immoral when older guys like Elam shovel what they have to know is bullshit. They don’t care about victims, they want red meat for their pack of misogynistic lunkhead devotees.
Sorry to barge into the conversation here, but here’s something I’ve always wondered: what’s the MRA stance on transmen?
I don’t think it’s just about Elam and cronies fantasising about hitting women (or being ‘justifiable’ violent in general) but also about them being deep inside the honour culture of toxic masculinity. Their self worth and status is so tied up with not looking weak that they must reassure each other constantly that they wouldn’t let themselves be dominated by anyone else.
If Elam’s cash-cow readers sensed weakness and that he wasn’t living up to their toxic-masculinity ideals, the money might dry up.
Khamzin: i am not interested in good formats, i am however very interested in kindness — especially my own ^^.
I like walking and lying around naked with my junk hanging out. I do so in my bedroom with the door closed because it is comfortable.
I don’t do this in public because it is incredibly unsightly and annoys other people.
As does your formatting online.
Truth.
I’ve sent a moderation request for this one. “Entitled whiney troll” reeks from every pore.
@ryeash- Jeez…that’s awful! I’m so sorry. 🙁 All the comfort hugs in the world for you. Also, kitties. (You may substitute doggies/birdies/reptiles/bunnies etc. if kitties do not suit you.)
ryeash: I’m sorry, and no need to worry about cursing around here.
PiaToR: I don’t do this in public because it is incredibly unsightly and annoys other people. As does your formatting online.
Kittehserf: Truth
Hey – you don’t even *know* me!
I should have put a trigger warning on that for pallygirl, who will be screaming and attempting to bleach out her mental eyes at that image.
(blockquote) Check (/blockquote)
[blockquote] check [/blockquote]
…Pardon, seeing whether it likes pointies, parentheses or brackets…