In the fast-paced, perpetually busy world of today, we don’t all have time to read every post on A Voice for Men. So here is an edited version of Paul Elam’s latest post, on Rebecca Watson of Skepchick. And whores. And how he personally doesn’t spend all his time claiming to be a victim, even though he totally is one, in case you forgot since the last time he reminded you of that.
Here’s Paul:
Whores … typical whore … Main Street walking, garden variety anybody’s whore … honest whore. … corporate whore … corporate whores … whorish sexual symmetry … stupid whore … stupid whore … whore … lying whore … whore … lying whore … whore … lying whore … corporate whore … a lying whore can also be a corporate whore … whoring for the cause … whore … PZ Myers … stupid, lying whore … not just a lying whore who also happens to be a stupid whore … a different subspecies of whore altogether … stupid, lying whore … whore that rigorously abandons intellect, rationale, evidence, decency and compassion, and also fosters much deserved hostility toward themselves … stupid, lying whore … stupid, lying whore … .
Paul Elam, meet Tom Martin.
Speaking of stupid, lying whores, let’s discuss Rebecca Watson’s latest article … about how she and other women who trash and demonize men regularly are helpless victims, getting nasty emails and tweets from some people who don’t like it. … Once [sic] such comment came from an individual who penned, “Hope Dawkins will bestially rape you…in the elevator to hell.” …
I have a keeper file of death threats, but I never wrote an article about them. I have been hounded recently by half the media hacks in Canada … it does not even compare to John the Other facing a gang of 20-30 assholes on the street, some wielding box cutters … 2 plus 2 equals stupid, lying, whining whore. What John and other MRAs are starting to encounter every day, and the future of what is to come, makes getting bestially raped by Richard Dawkins sound kinda funny. We just don’t get the luxury of playing the damsel in distress, nor do we want it.
There are maybe 1200 more words to his post, but I think you probably get the gist of it.
Watson’s post, by contrast, is worth reading in full.
Now that is going TOO far!
Paul Elam, I hope you bang your funnybone on a door frame.
Paul Elam, may the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits (ancient Lebanese curse).
Paul Elam, I hope you realize you’re out of one small but crucial ingredient the next time you make dinner.
@aworld, I’ve only ever lived communally for a week at a time (except for family), so my experience may be useless to you, but here it is anyway. What I liked was that there were people around when I felt lonely (I could go hang out in the lounge or dining room), and I could retreat to my room when I was peopled out.
There were lots of different groups of people, so if I got bored or stressed out by one group, I could “circulate” on to another group. And then go back to my room.
I liked that, because I knew there were other people in the building, I didn’t wake up alarmed at every noise (when I’m in a house alone overnight, every sound is the murderers breaking in). I didn’t like that inconsiderate floormates would thunder past my door and wake me up in the middle of the night.
It’s a HUGE change, and way out of your comfort zone. Give it a little time, and pay attention to the good parts so they don’t get over-shadowed by your stressors.
Paul Elam, I hope you mistakenly add vanilla-flavoured yogurt (instead of plain) at the very last step of making a savoury dish that took 3 hours to cook.
Continuing a vanilla where it shouldn’t be theme, Paul Elam, I hope the next time you order a dirty martini the bartender grabs the vanilla vodka by mistake and you take a big swig before realizing it’s wrong.
Yeah, John [name redacted –DF] and the box-cutters…it seems John was putting up posters around Vancouver and some men intervened and took them down with box-cutters. John called the cops to protect his right to put up woman-hating material…they were not amused…that’s about it. No one threatened John’s august person.
As for Elam, I’ve wondered when someone would link this up with classic narcissistic abusers. They attack their intimate others like vicious poodles, then they make little circles and lie down crying that everybody’s against them. The special thing about Elam is that he sublimates onto complete strangers. Nothing is weirder than to write something and suddenly be introduced to Elam by having one’s ass kicked out of the blue…it’s a fascinating experience once you realize he doesn’t go past wordage as his weapons and isn’t going to kill you in spite of his veiled threats. He’s a windbag.
I hope that when you order a martini you get one made with gin when what you wanted was a vodka martini, and you hate gin.
Unimaginative: I’ve totally done that! It’s almost as bad as salt and sugar!
Paul Elam, I hope you confuse cayenne and paprika in a recipe that calls for a tablespoon of the latter.
Paul Elam, I hope that one day you achieve some slight degree of self awareness, and then reexamine all your writings.
…or is that too cruel?
…See, I’d still eat the dish with a tablespoon of cayenne, so I don’t think that’s mean enough.
Heh, that’s not actually “opposite” so much as “the same, but slightly more detailed.” I never ended up being close friends with any of my freshman dormmates (although most of them were perfectly nice people whom I at least got along with fine, even if the extent of our interaction was mostly just playing Mario Kart in the common room sometimes), and I, too, had the violent drunk guy in my dorm who tried to break into people’s rooms in between screaming at the top of his lungs at 3 AM on Tuesday nights. Hence why I stayed out late doing more fun things elsewhere. Freshman dorms are kind of crap, but they’re generally worth it by virtue of being on-campus and therefore close to people more awesome than 3 AM Belligerent Drunk Guy, and as a step on the way to sophomore, junior, and senior dorms, where you can escape 3 AM Belligerent Drunk Guy for good. 🙂
(Also, sometimes Belligerent Drunk Guy is so belligerent and so drunk that he ends up getting himself kicked out of your dorm, and you only have to put up with him for a bit over a semester!)
OK, Sir Bodsworth’s suggestion is genuinely cruel without being in any way violent. Zie wins the thread.
Darlene, I redacted John’s last name there because, even though he himself has identified himself by his own name online, he likes to pretend that anyone else who uses the name is somehow “doxxing” him. I’d like to not give him any more excuses to pull that sort of crap, so I’m not allowing it on the blog/forum.
Too bad Elam isn’t aware enough to realize he meets his own definition of lying whore.
So, by attacked with boxcutters he means that his posters were taken down? The boxcutters were not in any way aimed at his actual body?
I mean, I’m a writer, I get how attached a person can get to something that they’ve written/created, but to confuse “someone pulled my poster that I lovingly crafted off the wall” with physical assault is a bit silly.
Also, Darlene, welcome!
Thanks, David. Your work is appreciated.
@aworldanonymous
My freshman roommate attempted suicide twice. (She recovered and I think/hope finally got the help she needed after the second time.)
However, I found “my people” (campus theater group). Three of my closest female friends are from that group, even though it’s been almost 15 years and we live in totally different parts of the country.
It gets better!
Paul Elam, I hope you get your least favorite commercial jingle stuck in your head.
Paul Elam, I hope the next time you’re at the beach a dog who’s been drinking saltwater runs up to you and urps on your shoes.
@Leely- Jeez, that sucks. I hope your roomie did find the help they needed.
Point is aworldanonymous, what you are going through is completely normal, and your college career will not be ruined by a bad freshman living sitch.
@Katz, me too. Palak paneer, as part of a fairly labour-intensive Indian feast. I tossed in the vanilla, stirred it in, thought, “What’s that smell? Oh, FUCK!” I served it anyway, because hello, 3 hours of cooking, and I thought that because the sauce was kind of sweetish anyway with the cinnamon and nutmeg, it would be okay. It wasn’t. Bleh.
My freshman year there wasn’t enough room in the dorms, and I was one of the unlucky ones that had to find other housing. I ended up in sharing a room in a rooming house with an extremely conservative young woman from El Salvador, who supported civilian massacres, the assassination of Archbishop Romero, etc. (This was the late 1980s.) Our room was right next to the bathroom, the walls were paper thin, and one of the other roomers was bulimic. Also, someone was a terrible food thief. Good times, good times.
Anywhoo, aworldanonymous, things probably WILL get better if you gave it time. I still managed to have a pretty good time that year exploring Berkeley — anything to get out of the room so that I didn’t have to listen to my roomie talk about how all the Salvadoran lefties got what was coming to them.