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.
I think I’d take Measure for Measure just for the sheer surreal hilarity of it.
Also:
Dear Paul Elam
I hope you have to listen to the incessant nattering of the two people the next table over in Costa today. Because I think I just got dumber.
Seriously. One of them thought that unis wouldn’t take them because they post a lot of drunken party pictures on their Facebook.
Dude. Duuuuuuuuuude. Have they even met students? We’ve had people come into class obviously hungover and then written poetry about it!
Aworldanonymous, where in Canada are you? I don’t hear uni and college used that way in Montréal. Of course, we have CÉGEP, which confuses the.issue.
May Elam wake up and find A Voice for Men turned into a site dedicated to DIY artexing, puppy pictures, and Japanese recipes.
My first year living in a single room in trad dorms was pretty tough for me. I hadn’t yet received a diagnosis for depression, and the environment I was in was taylor-made to bring out a severe depressive episode. There was nobody to force me to go to class or leave my room, nobody to watch me start spiralling, I didn’t have many friends on the floor. I kept my shutters closed, because I was on the basement level and it was well-known that campus security had not yet been successful in catching the man who came to campus in the evenings and masturbated outside women’s dorms, so I didn’t really experience the scant hours of winter sunlight. Anyway, it got to a point where I was going to maybe one class a week, eating a about muffin a day, sleeping from 4 a.m. to 2 p.m., and usually managing a shower most days. 3 to 4 panic attacks a week, usually waking me up in the wee hours of the morning, constant crying (which produced chronic dehydration) and self-hatred and all that good depression stuff.
But! I learned a bunch of important things! Like so:
1) If your first year isn’t what you expected it to be, and you’re getting unhappy about it, it can be really awesome to tell someone. Man Boobz counts (IMHO) but there are probably people within the institution who want you to succeed and want to help you in any way they can. It might be a counsellor, it might be someone in the careers office, whatever. Someone wants to help. And family, maybe, if your family is supportive. I wish I had told my parents early on, before I became numb to any help.
2) Lots and lots of us stumble first year. Academically, socially… It’s very common. Doesn’t matter if you fall down, it matters how you pick yourself up (as my beautiful mom would say).
3) There are EIGHTY MILLION BILLION CLUBS, and most of them are hilariously obscure, and you can probably find something that will make you feel happy and meet like-minded people.
4) You can change paths. Taking too many classes? Drop one! Hate your major, loved that anthro class you took? Switch it up! Or maybe you’ll find that school just makes you so miserable you can’t stand it. It’s okay to do something else. (This one sounds pretty condescending but that’s only because I’m trying to convince myself at the same time I’m telling you.)
We .>
Thanks all for advice and cool lexical bits about college/uni. Your college kids are our uni students then, and our college kids are, roughly your frat boys and sorority sisters then, which I did kinda know but I thought that people in the US did sometimes say “uni”. European exchanges students perhaps. Hmm.
@Creative Writing Student
My high school prinicipal who didn’t really understand the internet (or public speaking, or running a high school, but that’s another story) pushed that line pretty heavily, and eventually got a lot of the older members of staff repeating it, though I’m not sure how much they believed it. Hopefully, they’re just really sheltered and get understandably nervous about losing their chance at tertiary education
Angle brackets, thou hast betrayed me again! That last bit was just about how you’re both well-liked here and I think we are all happy to support you.
This cat just bit me >:-| I am unimpressed, cat.
While in the US “college” in general terms just means higher ed, if you see an institution called a “college” that means that it doesn’t have graduate programs. So community colleges are up there, but so are liberal arts colleges, many of which are very well-regarded and highly selective. However, it also generally means that colleges that aren’t community colleges are smaller than institutions called universities.
(Disclaimer: I go to a liberal-arts college of only 1400 people and love it.)
WRT this, can I just ask everyone who’s at college/university: If there’s someone in your dorm, in your group of friends, or whatever who you just don’t see around AT ALL anymore, please go visit them! Bring them some cookies or invite them to something! Worst case you stand around their door awkwardly for a minute; best case, they really needed a visit from someone and you came just when they needed it!
@lowquacks
I would agree, except I’m in my home town atm. It’s one of the UK’s biggest party towns and regularly patronised by a variety of sozzled students. 😛
@ Bionicmommy thanks, it’s just a bit painful & awkward at the moment. It’s the timing that’s the worst bit.
I had a similar thing happen to me during my sophomore year. When I was a freshman, I had a room mate, so I was forced to have some minimal interaction with people, but then n my sophomore year I got a single room. I already had trouble making and keeping up friendships because of my social anxiety. So having a single room meant that I hardly had to interact with anyone else at all. Even knowing that avoidance is the worst way to deal with social anxiety, under the stress of my workload and my already poor impulse control I succumbed to the temptation to interact with people as little as possible. At the same time, I was taking classes with heavy reading loads, which I was struggling to keep up with because I had a slow reading speed, largely thanks to my ADHD. But when I started to fall behind or struggle in a class I’d become anxious whenever I’d think about that class, which made it even harder for me to concentrate on doing the work for the class, which meant that it took longer for me to do the work. And this left me feeling that I was a terrible person who was utterly incompetent, unlikable, and doomed to a life of loneliness and failure.
But even then, I didn’t have to worry about anyone coming to masturbate outside of the dorms in the evening. I felt awful at times, but that was just triggered by my anxiety and the situation I was in. I didn’t have clinical depression. So, yeah, I don’t think things were as bad for me as they were for you, but I can sympathize.
I suppose that there’s a bright side to all this. Things got better for both of us. We both managed to get on with our lives.
@ CWS You’re not in Newcastle are you?
@crazyladyblues
Both my home and uni town are in the former kingdom of Wessex. I don’t feel comfortable giving any more specific info out on the internet, sorry.
A thousand times this. And I don’t think it’s a matter of this-or-that happened so one person had it worse, I think we were both in similar situations with some differences, and both of us were having a pretty bad time, and hooray that we’ve made it to the other side.
So far today the partiers have been quiet, I’m going to start blasting opera, jazz, and classical at them whenever they’re being loud once I get my speakers from home.
@lowquacks
If you meant Stairways to Heaven, that was an Andrew Denton “Money or the Gun” thing rather than triple j. And the DaaS version is still awesome 🙂
True metal:
@doctornic
That it was! I think I was confused because I’m fairly sure the album of the performances came out on a JJJ label or something. I don’t listen to the radio or watch TV, so…
Absolutely OT, but it has a couple of cats:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/pictures-that-will-restore-your-faith-in-humanity
Remember, folks, you can already (kind of) do this. Clickie clickie!
Those are seriously trippy cat pictures.
It would be wrong to set up a redirect to the meowbify version of it. Wrong, but funny. Particularly when Paul Elam starts screaming about the evil feminists under a picture of a tubby cotton-wool-ball cat doing a strange dance. Best banner header ever.
( http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l67d3bMluY1qzekdio1_500.gif )
I was thinking something like this ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/03/british-spies-terrorist-bomb-cupcake-recipe_n_870882.html ), but I think that the bizarre kitties would be funnier.
Also, how does one integrate links into sentences? I seem to have mastered the dreaded blockquotes but I cannot do that. 🙁
@CWS, You do it like this.
I seem to have mastered the dreaded blockquotes
Don’t get complacent, that’s how they get you. 😛
Ugh! FC has the some of the guys going on about mandatory paternity testing again.
These guys don’t don’t seem to realize that a) the kids may be his but it doesn’t prove his wife isn’t stepping out, and b) if a partner of mine demanded such a thing, in essence calling me a whore, I’d dump his ass in a New York minute and then he’d be facing the dreaded divorce courts. I think there would be a few women who would do the same, and for those who chose to stay the relationship would be severly strained to say the least.