I thought about not writing this post
But that would excuse this nonsense.
If you had told your tale a bit differently, you’d have had my sympathy. But the crazy crept in and you said:
Men Are Scum Until Proven Otherwise
You are almost as vile and despicable as this Mathew Allen White you speak of. And the only reason I say almost is because your hateful words at least have the benefit of not causing physical harm. Misandry is as deplorable as misogyny.
Via AC, who says:
On a different occasion, I might quarrel with this assertion — but not today.
Sorry, but suffering a tragedy does not bestow infallibility on the victim. I hate that it happened to her daughter and I have no tolerance for abusive people. But it’s no excuse for crazy. And it’s no excuse for generalization. What if it was a black man? Do we then assert that Blacks Are Scum Until Proven Otherwise? No, because that’s racist and unacceptable.
And Sarcastro notes in comments:
Judging from the pics, it looks like left-handers could also be called utter scum until proven otherwise.
Update: Crazy lady responds:
Never mind that my choice of words was lifted verbatim from the mouth of my daughter’s father — a man who has been issuing the warning: men are scum until proven otherwise — since the day the first boy came near one of his daughters.
Perhaps you should have disclosed that in the original post? Or, more likely, you’re making shit up. And:
The problem is not my choice of words. The problem is that a woman said them.
I don’t care who said it. It’s a vile and despicable thing to say, but that’s what I’ve come to expect from egalia.
I’m not a defender of manhood. Just critical of hysterical, raving lunatics. My sympathies to your daughter for both the abuse she’s suffered and the perverted, disgusting life lessons you subject her to.
Update 2: Aunt B weighs in. A couple of points I disagree with but otherwise, right on.
September 8th, 2006 at 1:08 am
She seems to have a lot of defenders, but I bet none of them would defend someone who had been cheated on by a woman declaring “All women are whores until proven otherwise.”
September 8th, 2006 at 7:50 am
Right. Because the stats on women cheating on men are as high as the stats of men committing violence against women. Helluva logic you’re employing here.
Not to mention, “men are scum until proven otherwise” is a direct quote from the badly beaten daughter’s FATHER. Are you going to now charge him with misandry?
September 8th, 2006 at 8:07 am
Irrelevant to what I or Phelps said, as it only takes one incident to turn someone to generalization. So, don’t talk to me about logic. I don’t have stats on domestic violence but I’d say more spouses cheat on their spouses than beat them.
Irrelevant. And I see no indication that the father wrote that in the post. So, you’re either privy to info I don’t have. Or a liar.
September 8th, 2006 at 9:38 am
Uncle, you’re the man. I worship the ground you walk on. I also love George Bush and Republicans are great.
Ed note: Ok, he didn’t actually say that. Comment deleted. Troll somewhere else. This is where the grown-ups talk.
September 8th, 2006 at 9:51 am
No, honey, it’s your choice of words.
September 8th, 2006 at 10:41 am
I can’t even begin to imagine the hurt and anger Egalia and her daughter are going through right now. The naked fact is that DV is a major problem, not just in this state, but nation-wide. What this man did to her daughter is a crime.
I find it sad that you choose to marginalizing her anger, by focusing on her choice of words, rather than trying to help.
September 8th, 2006 at 10:48 am
CE, I don’t care about her anger. I am, however, pointing out her choice of words is hurtful and counterproductive. And potentially dangerous.
And what this guy did is a crime. He’s a petty criminal and abusive. But spewing hateful, generalizing rhetoric is not helping anyone.
And, sorry, but I don’t help the hateful.
I find it sad that you choose to marginalize my criticism, by focusing on what what you think I don’t do, rather than trying to help.
September 8th, 2006 at 11:02 am
I’ve got to go with Uncle on this. Going by her logic, despite that I’ve never hit a woman, never cheated on a woman, and would never do either, I’m guilty until proven innocent. That’s not very fair to me and the dozen or so guys I’m friends with who are the same way. Men who hit women make up a small percentage of men.
If a woman wanted me to “prove” I wasn’t scum, or her father was bitchy like that, I’d just walk away and find someone that was, you know, sane.
September 8th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
“I don’t have stats on domestic violence but I’d say more spouses cheat on their spouses than beat them.”
Well, phew! Thanks for not troubling with pesky facts! You’d say it? That’s gotta be proof enough.
September 8th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Err, crazy lady 2, you said:
So, let’s have it.
September 8th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
But hey, i’ll play your game:
Link
So, we’ll call it a third? And:
So, we’ll take the high end estimate of 3m in a population of 300M. So, 1%?
So, 33ish% is greater than 1%.
Link
September 8th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
I don’t agree with the posts and challenged the logic in the comment section.
But perhaps one can take something from them–not as an assertion of objective fact, which clearly it isn’t–but as a thought women should have in the back of their minds, as a defense mechanism.
Even if only a small fraction of men are prone to violence, it’s not a bad idea for females to be very careful in who they trust. Some skepticism is warranted.
September 8th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Ed note: Comment deleted, tard limit exceeded.
If you wish to add to the discussion, please do. Childish insults will be deleted. You will be banned if you do it again.
September 8th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
Funny, but you’ve already changed your logical fallacy to compare black people to abusers who prey on our daughters, so I’m not going to bother with your cherry-picking of the citations you provided.
PS: genuine expressions of sympathy don’t have qualifiers. Why bother acting like you care what happened to her daughter? You clearly don’t. And to say to Egalia, “You are almost as vile and despicable as this Mathew Allen White you speak of”–way to not prove otherwise.
September 8th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
Because you have nothing. Take your toys and go home. Fine. And please, oh wise one, tell me all about my logical fallacy. I mean, it’s a good thing to compare men to abusers, right?
I’ve qualified nothing.
September 8th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
If men are scum, usually it’s a woman that made them that way…
September 8th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
George, that is equally ludicrous, though I’m sure that’s your point.
September 8th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Ah, hell, I was going to make several long comments, but I thought I’d better not.
It would be interesting, however, to see how all of this turns out in a year or so. If the mother and her daughter really want to make sure something like this never happens again, then the mother should buy her daughter a gun and have her learn how to use it.
Because protective orders are just paper, and the cops can’t — and won’t — protect you.
September 8th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
Captain Holly,
It’s wrong to say that protective orders are just papers. They can have some impact. Like pissing some abusers off even more… Obviously, I don’t have to say I’m with you on the guns and the fact that the cops won’t do any good.
I’m keeping my own comments on the hating men thing to myself for the moment. But once I’m home from work and dinner plans, we’ll see if I can keep my mouth shut. My inner feminist is itching to be let loose.
September 8th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
I am more ambivalent about the solution “get her a gun and teach her to use it.” I have found it is more difficult to kill someone than most people realize or think about; I suspect many will have the firearm used on them.
I suppose that would be their fault then?
September 8th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
See, that wasn’t hard. A reasoned response without all the atrios hyberbole. But:
If by that, you mean some then yes. If you mean the majority, you’d be wrong.
September 9th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
Well, gosh. I don’t happen to think that all men are scum, but I sure as hell think that you are now. Is it fun to kick people while they are down? Give you an extra special little thrill?
September 9th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
Perhaps you should’ve thought harder before writing, much less posting this.
I was inclined to think the same thing when my then-15 y/o step-daughter was almost raped a couple of years ago… and I’m a man.
Unless you’ve had a teenaged daughter, or a daughter any age, physically abused by a man and you’ve still walked away with a shit-eating grin on your face, confident of the goodwill of all those with a Y chromosome, then go to the kitchen, turn on your STFU maker and make yourself a hot cup of it.
You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about. Egalia said that to help put herself and her daughter in survival mode. She doesn’t actually believe that and has just written me to say that she and her daughter are getting through this because of the kind words and support of other men.
How dare you say that she’s as despicable as the misogynistic prick who’d battered her little girl? You know what that makes you, you avuncular asshole? That makes you a very small scale Ann Coulter, someone who’d making a good living profiting off blaming the victim.
September 9th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
Veronica,
Zzzzzzzzzz.
Jurassic,
egalia has a long history of saying stupid, hysterical and hateful shit. If she was an otherwise sensible person writing that, I’d have kept my mouth shut. It’s par for the course.
I do have a daughter. If she were ever abused like that, there would be no bad-mouthing men on the internet. I’d just kill the fucker instead of generalizing people.
September 9th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
[…] It’s not important for me to think that generalizing, stereotyping and spewing hatred at roughly half the population based on the actions of one piece of shit is wrong. It’s more important that I understand your widdle feewings: Because, unless your daughter / mother / sister / etc has had the crap knocked out of them by some Neanderthal, you don’t get it. […]
September 10th, 2006 at 1:28 am
Oh, for Christ’s sake. Egalia may have said stupid and obnoxious shit on other occasions, and she may have employed a little sub-optimal rhetoric here, but nothing she has said, or even could say on a friggin’ blog can be morally comparable to beating up one’s girlfriend. And seeing as the girlfriend in question also happens to be Egalia’s daughter, this would be an excellent time to cut Egalia some slack even if she had said anything horribly wrong, which she didn’t. For anyone with a daughter to say “men are scum until proven otherwise” is no different than for a firearms safety inspector to warn you that all guns are loaded until you’ve personally determined otherwise. Neither statement is literally true – most men aren’t really scum, and most guns aren’t really loaded – but both are sensible precautions.
September 10th, 2006 at 9:00 am
Yeah, my comment was over the top but I was just so darn angry that someone would stereotype my people. See, doesn’t work for me either.
It’s quite different in that a firerm is a tool that requires learning to use. And one of those rules is ‘all guns are always loaded’. It’s also an inanimate object.
September 10th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
That’s because you didn’t have a good reason to be angry in the first place. She does.
Irrelevant. Some men are tools, too, and require learning to use. Others lie on the couch all day watching the game, making them damned close to inanimate objects. What matters is that both guns and men involve risk. For guns, the risk is that they may be loaded. For men, it’s that they are scum. In most cases, the gun isn’t loaded and the man isn’t scum, but that doesn’t make it any less foolhardy to horse around with a gun that’s probably not loaded (but might be, who knows?) or allow your daughter to date a guy that probably isn’t scum (but might be, who knows?). The only difference is that if a gun is loaded, you can unload it, while if a man is scum you can’t unscum him.
September 10th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
What Xrlq said. You have no reason to be pissed off or use shuch hyperbole yourself. I would imagine that women are not really safe around you.
September 10th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
Speaking of hyperbole . .
September 11th, 2006 at 7:57 am
You have chosen a very odd way to characterize this post.
Rather than discuss the hatred of women that is allowed and actually celebrated in some quarters, you pick on the emotional response of a woman whose child was brutally beaten.
Talk about enabling.
September 11th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
Gee, SayUncle. A kid gets beaten up by a guy and you get all self-righteous on her mother because she has the temerity to get upset and say things that injure your self-esteem.
Pardon me if I’m not sympathetic. In fact, your reaction to her justifiable anger and some of the comments here seems more than a bit defensive. Do you have women issues? Because kicking someone when they’re down is the act of a bully.
Just asking.
September 11th, 2006 at 9:57 pm
Hah. And clearly betraying a partner’s trust by having sex with another person is morally equivalent to violating a partner’s bodily integrity by beating the shit out of them? Do people seriously think this? I mean, sure cheating is a bad thing but not REMOTELY on a level with physically abusing them! Holy shit, man!
September 11th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Weak-Start Soberblogign
Yesturday I was drunk as a judge, but today I’m as soaber as Mell Gibson. I still think Mahmood Ackmadinnyjod is a kool dude, and that Stephen Speelburg is responsable for all the wars in the wolrd. Wimmin kops put shugar on their boobies. Kat…
September 14th, 2006 at 12:20 am
It’s a shame anytime someone gets beaten up by someone . . . ANYONE. However, calling all men scum until proven otherwise is hardly an answer.
One question. Did anyone close to the daughter see this coming? I mean, was this guy the salt of the earth and just snapped one day, or was he questionable from the get-go? Or, lol, was he “in a band”? Has he ever hit her before?
Another question, and this may sound odd, but is she violent with him? I don’t mean pounding on him with a baseball bat, but did she “smack” him now and again?
Cripes, I’m on wife #2, and I’ve YET to get violent with a woman. I know plenty of men who haven’t. Then again, most of the guys I know who HAVE struck women usually have to fight them off at the bars, too. It’s stupid, but most abusive men I’ve been around usually have a woman at home their abusing and a woman on the side who the abuse now and again, too. Weird. Never figured that out.
No one really WANTS to be beaten up, but sometimes people like to dabble with the possibility. I’m NOT saying that’s what happened here, but I’ve seen it quite often.
September 21st, 2006 at 8:18 am
[…] I haven’t been myself for a couple of weeks. You may have noticed. I went from irrationally harsh (I think the point stands, but I was a dick about it) to all linky, no thinky on the blog. And the reason why is quitting smoking. I tried. I tried again. I stopped blogging about it because I didn’t want to feel pressured to blog about it. Quitting became too much and I was often faced with a dilemma. I could either: […]
April 2nd, 2007 at 4:05 am
[…] are utter scum until proven otherwise” portion of the post. Kleinheider mentioned it. Say Uncle mentioned it. And the commenters at Nashville is Talking mentioned […]