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It must be strange indeed to live inside the head of Paul Elam, founder of Men’s Rights garbage site A Voice for Men. What must it be like to be so filled with hatred of women — and flowers, and candy — that you find yourself writing a 1300-word denunciation of Valentine’s Day, not on the holiday itself, but six months early?

In a recent post with the lovely title “Time for a National Whore’s Day or something,” Elam warns us of the impending approach (some six months from now) of the dreaded holiday, which he describes as “another manufactured binge of male shame-spending on women who claim to love them.”

And he’s just getting started.

There are many aspects to The Big Day financially. Candy, flowers, jewelry, fine dining, champagne, romantic getaways and a lot of other things that mandate men to empty their wallets. That’s so the women in their lives can be reminded of their speshulness and maybe give a little poon in return. It is fair and accurate to say that offering up the poon is about the only expectation of women on this day of “romance.”

Apparently on some terrible Valentine’s day in the distant past Elam sprung for a half-dozen wilted roses and a deluxe Whitman’s Sampler and his, er, beloved refused to “offer up” the obligatory “poon.” And he’s been furious about it ever since.

Elam cites an unnamed survey claiming that

over half of women surveyed said they would end a relationship if they were not given something on Valentine’s Day – which is to say that 53% of the women surveyed are whores, and just like more garden variety whores, they will take a hike when they aren’t being paid.

This alleged statistic is the prime bit of “evidence” for Elam’s “argument” that women are a bunch of flower-obsessed “whores.”

So where did he get it? Elam cites a dubious site called “Statistics Brain,” which claims to have gotten it from a 2015 survey conducted for the “Retail Advertising and Marketing Associatio [sic].”

I tracked down the group’s 2015 survey, and the numbers on “Statistics Brain” don’t match the numbers in the original. Nor is there any mention of what percentage of women would leave their partners if they didn’t get V-Day presents.

Doing a bit of Googling, I found multiple references to this 53%, sometimes attributed to Statistics Brain, but without any hint as to where it actually originated. An article earlier this year in the New York Daily News claimed it came from a survey by WalletHub, but that “survey” turned out to be nothing more than an infographic, which didn’t give sources for any of its specific figures, attributing the bunch of them to a variety of sources including “news reports.”

So am I saying that Mr. Elam grabbed onto a questionable stat of uncertain provenance because it matched his misogyistic preconceptions, without bothering to check where it came from?

Survey says … yes!

Naturally, Elam returns to this dubious factoid later in his post.

What happens to roses after you shell out some hard-earned cash so you can give them to a woman who will kick you to the curb if you don’t cough up her petals? That’s right, they look and smell good for a very short period of time. Then they become useless discards, like the majority of relationships and at least 53% of surveyed vaginas.

Nice. And again:

If the woman who “loves” you hinges that love on whether you shower her with frivolous, wasteful presents; if she will leave you if she doesn’t get them, then just stick a C-note in her whorish little bra, show her the door, and find yourself another whore who is a lot more honest about how she does business.

And if the man who “loves” you writes 1300 word rants about Valentine’s Day … in AUGUST, run like the wind.

I’ve never actually been a big fan of Valentine’s Day myself, but the fact that it makes Elam this pig-biting mad makes me feel a bit warmer about it, I have to say.

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