Apparently jealous of all the media attention being paid to the Montreal misadventures of PUA shitweasel Roosh Valizadeh, the recipient of an unwanted beer bath at the hands of an angry feminist this past Saturday night, MRA shitweasel Paul Elam has announced to the world that if any lady feminists try that with him, he’ll punch their lights out.
Hell, he adds, he might even kill them. And he thinks he would be completely justified in doing so.
Elam, the founder and, ahem, CEO of A Voice for Men, describes himself as “nonviolent” and his site as “doggedly antiviolence.” But he wants to warn all drink-holding feminists who might now or in the future be in his vicinity not to “mistake my nonviolence for pacifism.”
“Being an advocate for nonviolent change does not mandate anyone to be a punching bag,” Elam writes.
And while self-defense needs to be proportional to the threat, he argues, it’s safe for MRAs and PUAs and “anyone [else] who dissents honestly from feminism” to assume that if a feminist tosses a drink at you, they are literally trying to kill you.
After Roosh got beer tossed on him this past weekend, you see, one feminist on Twitter noted that alcohol is flammable, and suggested in a jokey hashtag that people encountering him “throw smokes” at him.
This is, of course, a deeply shitty thing to say. Roosh may or may not have deserved the beer-soaking; if some of the things he’s described doing to women in his various books are true, he probably deserves to be in jail.
But, no, he doesn’t deserve to be lit on fire. And you would be hard-pressed to find any feminists (including, I’m pretty sure, that Tweeter) who actually think he deserves a fiery death at the hand of a vigilante mob.
As far as Elam has decided, though, that one shitty tweet suggests that any feminist with a drink in her or his hand is a potential murderer. If a feminist tosses a drink at you, he argues, you can reasonably assume this is an act of attempted murder.
Given the current climate it becomes rationally questionable whether a feminist throwing a flammable liquid on me intends to ignite it. My personal option at this point would be to assume they would. Thus I would make my response proportional to someone trying to incinerate me. That means they would have to go down and at the very least be completely incapacitated, by any means necessary.
Personally, I think it would be a really bad idea to wait till you see them strike a match. It is now reasonable [to] assume that this is what they are going to do.
Emphasis mine, in this and in the quotes that follow.
Elam has apparently confused “reasonable” with “completely and utterly unreasonable what the fuck are you talking about you piece of shit?”
And it gets worse:
The question for me is whether I will risk being immolated in order to not be arrested. I won’t. And while each person has to make their own decision I don’t suggest anyone roll the dice on these insane ideologues. …
In the end I am betting this time of crisis will not be long lived. The feminist narrative is increasingly being recognized for the joke that it is. The time will soon come when very few people will even admit to being a feminist, much less take the risk of assaulting people in its name.
Till that happens, though, I think feminists of all kinds should be aware that belonging to a nonviolent movement does not mean you are a pacifist.
Trust me, Paul. No feminist will ever mistake you for a pacifist.
As an MHRA I am willing to die for my beliefs. I only think it prudent to caution that I am equally willing to kill to protect myself.
What the fuck is wrong with you, you fucking piece of shit?
Doesn’t alcohol also burn at a fairly low temperature? I have a vague memory of my high school chemistry teacher pouring some alcohol on his arm and lighting it and not even turning his skin red…
No, Paul, one feminist making one offhanded remark on the internet, no matter how awful, does not give you license to treat all feminists as would-be murderers.
On the other hand, getting creeped on by a specific person who has actually bragged about raping women is a pretty doggone good licence to treat him as a would-be rapist.
And I could buy that a commitment to nonviolence may actually still allow for self defense (e.g., “that person is actively pummeling me, so I get to do what I need to in order to get away”). But it most certainly does not allow for preemptive escalation (“that person dumped a drink on me, so I get to inflict severe physical harm on them”).
Beer won’t catch fire, it has too much water in it.
@whoknows – love the feminist beer – if only I could have that image without the giant asshole looking on from the right.
@leum – I’ve known people to douse their fingers in some liquor, light them aflame, and try to do the shot before the fire goes out. I suppose the danger is that if your clothing gets saturated and aflame the fabric might catch…but I’ve seen people put lighter fluid on their jeans and set that aflame without even a singed thread. So maybe not…
Hmmm…. what kind of people do I hang out with?
Anything less than 100 proof won’t burn: that’s the definition of the “proof” system, in fact. 100 proof is 57% alcohol by volume IIRC. Most beer is less than 5% alcohol by volume, meaning that it won’t burn. Really, unless you’re drinking distilled spirits, nothing you drink will be flammable.
Ethanol evaporates more easily than water, too, so by splashing it around you lower the alcohol content even further and make it even less flammable. In principle this can lead to the buildup of flammable fumes, but unless you’re reenacting That Scene From Zoolander with vodka instead of petrol, and are doing it somewhere with no ventilation, it’ll be fine.
As a digression, do we know what “Jennifer” the Beer Girl’s name was? She needs to become a sainted figure in our lore, almost on the level of Katie Herself.
Sambucca is commonly lit on fire prior to drinking and cases of people getting burned pretty badly from sambuca are fairly common.
However, the beverage thrown in Roosh’s face was
1: not sambuca
and
2: (crucially) not on fire
Now, in some countries, throwing a beer in somebody’s face would legally be assault, I don’t know if it is in Canada and I don’t really care. Even where it does qualify as assault, life-threatening violence is still not a proportionate self-defence. And if somebody is unconscious as a result of violence, that is by definition life-threatening.
But yes, you could hurt somebody very badly by throwing a flaming sambuca in their face. You could also harm them very badly by hitting them with a board with a nail in it which is equally irrelevant since neither of those things were what happened here.
I had a fun seasonal gig over last Christmas where it was my job to dip sugarloafs in rum and light them on fire. My hands were burnt as was my face just from working in the hut.
A beer in the face would have been a treat!
I don’t advocate chucking beer in people’s faces needlessly but it’s not physically harmful. It’s assault but it’s not dangerous.
all this mental masturbation about beating up women truly is raising the life quality for men. great job elam nobel peace prize coming for you soon.
I just want to know what kind of beer Roosh was drinking that was a high enough % to actually be flammable.
Boost:
Look, it’s hard work keeping up with new technology!
Brave and inspiring words, Paulie! Have you considered the example of Jan Palach, who died for his beliefs? After all, the best way to avoid being set on fire by feminists is to set yourself on fire first.
A less extreme approach would be to pre-emptively throw beer over yourself whenever you’re in the presence of a feminist who you suspect of having fire in mind (which, let’s face it, could be any of them). Once word gets around that Paul Elam is difficult to light, the danger will pass. That will really fuck their shit up!
@ History Nerd
For NAL you got that pretty sport on. That reverse burden thing (Section 101 as we say in blighty can get complicated), there’s a ‘legal’ burden and an ‘evidential’ burden. In one you just have to raise the issue, in the other you have to produce evidence. Generally, if you have to produce evidence it only has to be ‘on the balance of probabilities’ i.e. more likely than not, not the ‘beyond reasonable doubt test.
@ Fnoicby
Yes. There’s also the fact that, whilst you can defend yourself against an attack you started, it makes proving self defence harder.
@ Kat and Lightcastle
Ah, Canada is so reasonable. In the UK, and some US states a paranoid belief about plaid shirts would allow you to run honest belief!
@ Olice O’Sudden
Hmm, you’re suspiciously well informed on that subject. Would you also be a good person to get advice on brewing radiator hooch? 😉
So wait…using Elam’s argument, since judgybitch attempted to crowd-fund a cross-bow to shoot feminista, can we, totally rationally and logically, assume all anti-feminists are willing to kill feminists and defend ourselves accordingly too?
He didn’t say beer, he said flammable liquid.
@rugbyyogi Have we met? I used to have a party trick of sticking two fingers into a Flaming Sambuca and then lighting a cigarette from my flaming digits. I’m all grown up now and would never do it again but I never suffered any injury.
I also used to light a whole book of matches in one go and put them out in my mouth.
rv – we are taking the piss because it was beer that was thrown, and not even at Elam! He is creating a hypothetical that bears no relation to the situation he has presumably been inspired by to make this threat.
If there were ANY chance that he had a REASONABLE fear of feminists – or anyone – throwing flammable liquids in his face in order to immolate him then he MIGHT have a point. But he doesn’t. As usual.
Funny how Schrodinger’s rapist is misandry despite the fact that women are raped by men every day but it’s okay for Paulie to Schrodinger’s immolating feminist us. Even though we just use Schrodinger’s rapist as an excuse (not that we even need one ) to not engage with strange men if we sense red flag and Paulie is looking for an excuse to use violence, not avoid.
Why, it’s almost like the MRM is not about human rights, but about anger that women mostly don’t want to be treated like sentient blow up dolls!
Rv,
The liquid that sparked this little violent fantasy was the beer that was thrown on Rhoosh. No feminist threw gasoline on a manospherian. Nobody even joked about doing so as far as I know. It’s pretty reasonable to assume the “flammable liquid ” Elam was fretting about is beer.
He’s prepared to die for his beliefs but not prepared to do any actual activism for men’s rights? Activist…
http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/34759_large_You_Keep_Using_That_Word_Meme_FP_Wide.png
Huh. When I make Bananas Foster, I have to flame the rum I pour on top…it’s hard to get it to light, and I can hold my hand right over the teeny blue flames and not get burned. The flames don’t last long, either. You couldn’t make Bananas Foster with beer; no way could you get it to light.
@Ellesar
You don’t get it.
Paul NEEDS to fee victimized.
He NEEDS to pretend that he’s powerless.
Without the imaginary oppression then the manosphere would disappear.
Well, I guess one solution to make sure he doesn’t fear being immolated would be to throw a non-alcoholic drink at him. Like a clearly-marked previously-unopened can of soda. Sticky and annoying, but not life-threatening.
Of course, the whole thing feels like empty bluster. ‘Oh yeah, I would totally beat up those feminists! They wouldn’t dare throw a drink at me, and they’re all jokes anyway, but if they would, I would so beat them up! Hoo! Look at me!’
Ugh.