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.
Hmm, maybe it might be a good idea to get some sort of side-eye GIF ready for the next incident.
That’s… pretty not OK right there.
contrapangloss, I really enjoyed learning about your nym – not silly, interesting! Also I sympathise, I have about three phrases in French if I think really, really hard, and none of them’s remotely useful.
Translation: Don’t make me hit you, bitch. I’m bigger and uglier!
This also sounds like just the kind of mealy-mouthed justification Israel uses when bombing Gaza. And then claiming the kids and hospital patients they killed were “human shields”, therefore fair game. Ugh, how that kind of talk makes my skin crawl.
It’s weird with languages, there are several where if people talk to me I can mostly understand them, but ask me to respond and I just stand there with my mind blank feeling awkward.
I miss the kitty I adopted. I was living out of town for a couple years and had to move back, and the place I was moving into had a couple allergic folks so I left her with my former roomie. He has issues with major depression, and he’s told me there were a few times he would have killed himself if it weren’t for her. She did the same for me for awhile there, so she kind of became a therapy kitty. For that, I’m glad I left her with him. I could have her in my current place, but he’s far from out of the woods, so I prefer being able to visit her and my living friend to uprooting her once again and plopping her smack in the middle of a bunch of stranger kitties and leaving him with no company.
I miss Tigg’rr too, he was a big sweet teddy bear of a kitty. He gave hugs and loved getting hugs. I cried for a week after he passed 🙁 We thought Old Man Pikachu would go before him, but that crotchety guy will probably outlast all of us. Adorable factoid: Pikachu (named by my boyfriend’s brother when he was a kid) has a Pikachu pillow that he sleeps on. He yells at us any time one of the other cats snags it.
The other thing is Pauly, why are you planning this shit? I have a vague plan for if I get cornered by someone who turns violent, yes but a) it is VERY vague, not planning out and justifying the violence I’m going to use at the expense of a plan to GET THE FUCK AWAY and b) it’s very unlikely to happen to me and even less likely to happen to you.
Seriously dude the only people you’re fooling are the abusers’ lobby.
Sorry, I keep randomly bursting into the conversation here. I’m plowing through The Stand by Stephen King again, so I’m jumping back and forth a bit.
Luzbelitx: Also, can I ask what your nick means?
As I read it
“Contra-” – the opposite of:
“Pangloss” – this (No, no more rick-rolling)
Essentially, he/she is saying he/she is a pessimistic bugger who doesn’t think the world is at all perfect.
ryeash, no worries!
The thing is, people don’t invest as much energy as Elam has in thinking about and talking about scenarios in which they’d bet someone up unless they actually want to beat that person/someone from that class of people up.
Bingo.
And on that note, the current woman in Paulie’s life, if she really exists, had best file that for future reference. Especially if she’s five-foot-none and 110 soaking wet. Because that is a “run for your life” if ever I saw one.
Nthing the “don’t hit kids” sentiment. My parents went through a period where they would slap me if I rolled my eyes, didn’t end a sentence with “sir” or “ma’am,” said “yeah” instead of “yes”, or said, did, or looked “disrespectful”. I can say, with a very high level of certainty, that this did not help me grow up a well-adjusted person, nor did it instill in my any level of respect for them whatsoever. It stopped when I got big and bold enough to grab my mom’s hand as she went for the slap to my face, held it there, and told her that if she did it again, I’d give her the same back. Do I now think that was the best possible response? Not really, but give me a break, I was 12 or 13.
Elam must be very sure he’s never going to end up in court, because any lawyer worth their paycheck would dig this stuff up and use it.
Even if you have a CCP, 70% of rape victims know their attacker, meaning their guard would be down enough that the gun would likely get taken off them.
Logically a handgun would likely be of little use to prevent the majority of rapes, then.
Right now I don’t think I’m in enough danger often enough to warrant carrying a firearm, but I might in the future if I end up with a more dangerous job.
One of the job options I’ve contemplated is armored truck work.
I think that it’s perfectly reasonable to be armed if you are carrying bags of cash to a truck full of money.
That was quite a teal deer Khamzin left. Holy crap. I guess Pallygirl and her meanness drove another one away from feminism 😀
Is Beegee also the one who gets offended when we talk bad about tea party Republicans? Or am I thinking of someone else. In any case I’m nthing the opinion that hitting 9 year olds isn’t okay.
Does anyone else wonder if Haribo Lector is Scorpio? The randomness seems to fit.
See I was concerned that he’d eventually drum up an argument that could conceivably refute my woeful feminist ways, and now I take solace in the fact that he’ll just beat me to death instead.
I bet he’s so charitable with the donations to AVFM.
wait
All that money from the suckers is good for the sense of invincibility, I guess.
I think his plan for that already involved beating people up.
It seems like a lot of what MRAs publish is nothing but baiting. They have no desire to actually change any laws or help anyone besides themselves, and they’re nothing but inflammatory. They seem dead set on getting the “evil feminists” to slip up so they can point and cry “See?? See how mean they are??” like a bully on a playground who finally gets hit back. They have no clearly defined endgame for all of this; right now, they’re not even a proper movement so how they even call themselves one is beyond me. When I think of “activism”, I think of pushing for legal change and support for those negatively affected by current systems. Elam himself has said that’s not what they’re going for.
So…what exactly ARE they going for? According to their noxious “Honey Badger Brigade”, they just want to piss people off. Okay, we’re pissed. Go away now.
Also, eugh. Nthing the don’t hit 9 year olds. Even spanking is still showing that you have to resort to violence to get your point across.
On a more positive note, yes, kittehs, it’s a super-comfy couch! We went and sat on it in the store last weekend to make sure it was the one we wanted, and it is definitely a big step up from our hand-me-down futon (which we laboriously moved to the spare room an hour ago)!
My parents never hit me and I like to think I turned out flawed, but basically okay.
For one thing, I am extremely reluctant to hit anyone else. So that’s good.
Holy shit trolls in this thread. O_o
@ryeshah, I am so sorry you’ve had to deal with that shit, and seriously, swear all you want here. Add to the hugs if wanted. Also butterflies.
Also adding to the “don’t hit children” chorus because what the fuck?
And…I thought mythago was a regular, as in the good kind, so…was that a different mythago?
Pretty creeped out by Haribold’s comment. Add a sarcasm tag or something. :/
I got spanked as a kid. It didn’t improve me in any way, except maybe one: Learning how to be a better sneak.
Yeah, don’t hit your kids, people. You will not get the results you are hoping to get.