[EDIT: The 20/20 story has been postponed] So the Men’s Rightsers are already up in arms about the upcoming 20/20 story on the Manosphere — which, to remind everyone, is showing today, that is, Friday, October 18 at 10 PM EST on ABC. So far I’ve run across angry posts about it on A Voice for Men (naturally), the Men’s Rights subreddit, Rex Patriarch, Stares at the World and Captain Capitalism. Heck, the good Captain even made a rambling 30-minute video on the subject; skip forward ten minutes to hear his misogynistic tirade against the two women who wrote the brief teaser piece now up on the ABC website, complete with “funny” voices. He even calls them “twats.”
But so far the most interesting response comes from W. F. Price of The Spearhead, who uses the occasion to launch an attack on … Paul Elam. Yep. It’s a Manosphere He-Man-Cat-Fight.
Price notes that he too had been contacted some time back by ABC, but that he’d dragged his feet about getting back to them, “[p]artly because I was busy with family at the time … and partly because I don’t trust TV reporters.” But Elam, as we know, responded a bit differently. As Price puts it:
Paul, on the other hand, apparently thought that he’d get a fair shake. In addition to flying out to New York for an interview (I hope he didn’t pay for the airfare), he even invited the TV people into his home. Naturally, it didn’t go so well. How could he have thought it would?
Mee-ow!
Well, it seems he thought throwing the “man-o-sphere” under the bus was the ticket to respectability.
Ah, and now we get to why Price is pissed. Elam, as longtime readers of this blog are well aware, is a bit of a control freak. He wants A Voice for Men not only to be the center of the Man-o-verse; he wants it to be the Man-o-verse. So he rebranded his version of the Men’s Rights movement as the Men’s Human Rights Movement, or MHRM, and wants to pretend that it’s the only game in town. And he’s made a point of trying to disassociate himself from the “manosphere” as well, by which he seems to have meant the right-leaning, often game-centric portion of the more broadly defined manosphere.
It’s a bit silly, since A Voice for Men is deeply entangled in the manosphere. Elam shares most of his ideology with his fellow manospherians. Most of his audience comes from the manosphere. His site wouldn’t exist without it.
And, as Price reminds us, Elam helped to build up the audience for his budding blog by writing posts for The Spearhead, which is very much a part of the manosphere.
I’ll admit that I’m kind of angry about this, but sometimes you have to sit back and look at the situation objectively. I’ve known from the beginning that Paul wanted to do his own thing. I supported it for a while, giving him a platform on The Spearhead when his site was fairly obscure. …
Mee-ow!
I disagreed with a lot of the thrust of AVfM, but I kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t happy about some of the insults he flung around and some of the targets he chose, but still I kept my peace. When he went after Jack Donovan – an interesting and intelligent guy who is, objectively speaking, a better writer than Paul – on my own site, I was pretty pissed off, but practiced discretion anyway.
Mee-ow!
Granted, it isn’t hard to be a better writer than Elam, but that’s not something he hears very often from anyone on his side of the barricades.
Some guys started to call bullshit a while ago. Rob Fedders, never one to shy away from speaking his mind, ripped into Paul on a few occasions. Bernard Chapin chimed in with some critique starting last year.
For more on Elam’s contretemps with Chapin, see here.
Despite seeing some potential problems developing, and fully realizing that Paul intended to be the pre-eminent leader in the MRM (I was actually a bit relieved by this — I’ve never been comfortable with the “MRA” label), I figured we could all just “go our own way,” but Paul’s reaction to the predictable beating he’s taken at the hands of ABC has left me skeptical.
Uh oh! Is Price going to directly challenge the Man Who Would Be Men’s Human Rights King?
If he can’t even understand that he’s not going to be handled with kid gloves by the mainstream media, and then attempts to throw the blame for that on the manosphere that he clearly benefited from and, more importantly, deliberately used to his advantage, the guy’s got limited utility.
I don’t often agree with W.F. Price about anything, but he’s making a lot of sense here. By which I mean: MEEE-OW!
So, Paul, if you end up looking like a chump on 20-20, don’t think you can make it all better by blaming the rest of us. That’s known as “shitty leadership.” I’d also throw in the terms “ingratitude” and “poor judgment.”
For God’s sake, you thought you’d mosey on into New York and be treated as an “equal” by these people?
Have you learned nothing?
This is the stupidity of the “MHRM” in a nutshell.
The gauntlet has been thrown down. By which I mean:
MROWR, FFFFFFTTTTTTT.
Yeah, yeah, Price was “too busy” to go on TV. This sounds like the sourest of grapes.
If Elam looks like anything other than a hateful, deluded, nasty old chump on 202/20, I’ll be surprised.
Is it going to be livestreamed? I can’t watch it.
I do have popcorn if anyone wants some!
Now if only I had cable television.
This is even better entertainment than the eternal Maoists vs Trots debates we get on the Left. (Or Marxists vs Anarchists.)
Every post about MRM in-fighting is a treat. With any luck, they’ll completely dismantle their own “movement” and we can just point and laugh.
Just. So. Petty!
I love everything about this.
*Eschews popcorn, gets bag of Sour Patch Kids.*
This is so awesome. Getting my popcorn ready for tonight!!
That Captain Capitalism video was pretty, well, LOUD first thing in the morning. Why is it these guys sound even dumber when they record themselves? Pretty rich deriding the youth and “meaningless” academic qualifications of the ABC show’s female producers when he himself works as a third shift security guard! Talk about your sour grapes! I noticed the comments section was filling up with excited MRAs, including SSM herself, all working themselves into frenzies in anticipation (dread?) of tonight’s airing.
@Alice,
It looks like it will be live streamed depending on your area. Check this link?
http://watchabc.go.com/2020/166626
This site is more ridiculous than True Forced Lonliness TFL.
Most of us who are pro men rights want equality. That means if a woman has sex with a boy, she gets the same prison time as a man who had sex with a girl.
Only proven biological parents should be obligated to pay child support. The “what’s best for the child” crap is not a legitimate argument. Paternity fraud needs to be prosecuted just like any other case of fraud.
People who lie about rape and file false police reports should be prosecuted.
Why is the SPLC, this site, and other feminist sites against fairness and equality, although they claim to fight against those who want to end fairness and equality?
Maybe he was watching Air Force One?
Thanks for the link, LaStrega. I’ve got my popcorn and bon bons at the ready. I’m officially out of men’s tears, so I’ll fill my golden goblet encrusted with precious gems (paid for by the government, of course) with some wine.
La Strega – thanks for the link. 🙂
*prepares popcorn*
Not going to watch, sounds too depressing. But am looking forward to the real-time commentary here.
Matt Forney posted today how he too turned down his chance to go on TV, cuz he knew it would be a hatchet job. (I think more likely it was due to self-consciousness about his less-than-MRA-ideal masculine presentation and because he is not very telegenic.) He predicts that ABC will “fall on its face” with the program, citing as evidencef that the article website is already full of pro-MRA comments. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that the vast majority of people have no idea that there is even such a thing called a “manosphere.”
oh hey, the Recent Comments thingy is back.
BWAHAHAHA.
If anyone falls on their face, it won’t be ABC. There’s no editor that can make Elam look like a reasonable human being.
Maybe if we used selective wording… ?
Given the media’s propensity to obstinately bleat “b-but, both sides are… just as bad?” even in the face of horrible douchemongers, I’m not convinced there won’t be at least some trying to paint some of their positions as being somewhat reasonable.
Most likely though, MRAs will be painted as a “crazy”, irrelevant fringe, totally eliding the fact that a lot of their fringe beliefs stem from only slightly less abhorrent mainstream sexism.
HOLY SHIT, have you guys recently visited the ABC article about tonight’s segment? The comments have been SWARMED by MRA dumbshits. They’re bleating all the same talking points that we’ve all heard a million times (the draft, women didn’t “earn” the vote because they don’t fight in war, circumcision, etc).
Well, I told two of my co-workers about tonight’s segment because I send them things from here every so often and they both think the MRM is completely ridiculous. The husband of one co-worker is fascinated by them — he’s both amused and appalled that they even exist, so he’s really excited to see tonight’s show.
Anyway, my second co-worker has fallen down the rabbithole in that comment thread and she is beyond shocked at the crap they’re spewing. She’s been reading the comments for her entire lunch hour. It’s both entertaining to watch her reaction and incredibly sad to be the one who has exposed her to that disgusting level of hatred and bigotry.
I keep telling her, “I don’t read their shit directly from them anymore — I go to Manboobz so we can make fun of it instead, it helps my mental health.”
Also, she knows I am a feminist, and she flatly says she is NOT a feminist (she’s also a conservative and I’m a flaming liberal), and SHE thinks these people are appalling monsters.
Wow, those comments. They are making themselves look real good. Not like irrational man-children at all.
Reading those comments and all the upvotes they get makes me feel like there’s a lot more people who hold those beliefs than they probably really are. Or at least I hope there’s not as many of them as it makes it seem like they are.
Sometimes I seem like I’m screwing up my own perspective when I come and read this blog every day, giving myself the impression that these manosphere attitudes are more prevalent than they really are.