So there’s a LIVE debate tonight between Matt Binder of the Majority Report with Sam Seder and a fellow you may have heard of by the name of Paul Elam. Since Elam evidently refused to debate on the Majority Report — for some reason he doesn’t like to debate people when he doesn’t control the venue — Matt Binder agreed to debate on A Voice for Men, with Dean Esmay as the, ahem, neutral moderator. It’s at 6 PM Eastern.
I expect some shenanigans.
Here’s the video that inspired Elam’s debate challenge:
Here’s Matt’s video accepting the challenge:
Check out Matt’s other videos on Men’s Rightsers and our dear friend Stefan Molyneux.
How did I manage to sit through all of that?!
Elam seriously had a prepared end statement. Can you imagine a lawyer having closing arguments that were made before knowing what the other party would say?
Let’s see…4 minutes a block, 4 blocks, 2 min closing…Elam had 18 min (more like 20 since he took his extra 30 seconds nearly every time and Esmay borked the timer once [to Esmay’s credit, he did give Binder more time to match that error])…of that he spent what, call it 6 min tops? speaking off the cuff. So at least 2/3rds of what he said was prepared statements. Binder seemed to only be referencing paper for quotes and numbers. So score one debate point for Binder. Actually, make it two, since he was actually replying to his opponent.
I’m not sure what the topic was supposed to be, so no points to anyone for staying on it. Subjective view of who seemed to care more about men’s issues and be more informed? Elam loses that one too. I’m particularly fond of how false rape accusations aren’t about rape but civil rights. I guess to Elam they wouldn’t be — that would imply that rape ever occurs — might as well be saying that protesting the sale of unicorn horns is about unicorns and not fraud, at least to Paul “I’d always vote to aquit in a rape case” Elam.
Random point to Pecunium, for being better off the cuff about damned near anything than Elam was about his pet topic.
So Binder: 3; Elam: 0 (-1 for not staying on topic when Binder asked him a question on his own time?); Pecunium: 1.
Congrats Pecunium, you did better in a debate you weren’t in than Elam did!
Howard — you watch it? At least watch the last 7 min or so. Binder gets loud, gives an impassioned closing statement. I give it about another 24 hours before they’re tauting how Elam kept his cool while being attacked and got Binder all riled up. Nevermind that he was quite loudly imploring them to address X Y and Z issues that men actually face and saying that AVfM doesn’t do shit, it’s feminists you see working on things.
——
Can someone teleport me some coffee? And as for Spot! That! Fallacy! I’d need Elam’s paper speeches and a red pen for that.
I just watched the whole thing. Binder tore Elam apart. Elam knows it. He tried to laugh it off, but the Stefan M/Elliot R quote just broke him. Elam was rattled afterwards. His prepared statements just looked absolutely pathetic beside the articulate, energised younger man.
Nobody, except the most deluded MRA, could have seen that as anything other than an embarrassing failure from Elam.
I watched all of it.
My god what a mess. I don’t know what Elam thought was going to happen. Binder prepped. Not as well as he could have; but he doesn’t have the years of practice with the Manosphere we do.
Binder came into it looking for something like a classical debate, and he was ready for that: he had notes, but not canned speeches (I used to do formal debate in college, one works from cues, and fills in the phrases as needed to respond to the opponents case, or arguments [if one is in favor of the resolution, one has a case, if one is against, it one has arguments; because the tone of the debate is set by the affirmative side.] one doesn’t have speeches scripted out).
Elam has no flexibility. It was much like Esmay on Fox. The point was to say the right things, and count on the other side not picking them up. It’s a functional tactic on a television morning show, because is no real format. So Esmay got away with it.
This wasn’t unstructured. Elam couldn’t get away with that unless Binder was a complete idiot, which he turned out not to be. Elam was back-footed with the Monlyneux quotation, which shows several things: Elam doesn’t vett his allies. If they say something he likes, they are on his side; and remain there so long as they don’t rock Elam’s boat.
Moreover Elam has zero sense of how the statements he, and his allies make, when taken out of the echo-chamber of the manosphere. That’s the “context” they get taken out of. So, stripped of the inanities about how men are oppressed, and women rule the world, and tease the slavering beasts which inhabit male bodies (see Elam, Paul: begging for it), and taken at their face value, The idea that “women need to be put in their place, and punished for their free will; which is one of Molyneux’s primary shibboleths, Elam knows it sounds bad.
The terrifying thing is, he doesn’t recognise it for his own rhetoric. He doesn’t recall that what Binder asked him about was something he’d heard Molyneux say last week. The self-awareness required to recall that isn’t in him. So when he hears something, outside the protective bubble which is AVfM, or r/Mensrights, which he is perfectly willing to agree with, he denies it.
He denies it even though he was trumpeting it last week. Which is why he can’t afford to get the larger stage he claims to want. He’s not ready for prime time. This was like the Battle of Britain, in which Germany could only lose (seriously, for all the drama of the air battles, so long as England had destroyers, there was no way Germany could invade. All Göring’s vainglorious campaign could do was wear out his pilots, destroy his materiel, and make England look both doughty, and indomitable. The moment they decided on coming forth to fight, they were doomed).
So AVfM can’t afford to have an open argument. They can barely afford to let the press into the dog and pony show which was their conference (and that wouldn’t have happened without the drama of the “threats”).
So, tactically, he gambled that Binder wouldn’t take him up on the offer. That he lost. He did have the sense to know he couldn’t afford to fight on anything other than home ground.
On balance… a draw. He lost on points, but didn’t suffer the crushing defeat which would have come with a moderator, and a real audience.
The Best Thing for feminism, is more hubris on the part of the Manosphere.
^This
magnesium:
Oh blockquote mammoth, I had evaded you for SO LONG.
I was pleasantly surprised. Matt did great 🙂
TW for transphobia:
Okay, this took me by surprise: I have this vague acquaintance who sometimes makes vaguely anti-feminist statements, like how he’s “sceptical” of feminism and prefers equalitism and stuff like that. Once he clarified that this is because he was so oppressed by feminists when he was young.
You’re thinking: Someone who’s been reading/watching too much MRA crap, right?
Well, today I just found out that he’s trans. It’s totally not secret, it’s just that it’s never come up in conversation… He just assumed that I had known this all along, he’s like “it’s on my Facebook profile that I’m trans”, and I’m like “I don’t usually read people’s Facebook profiles, so I just missed out on that piece of information”. Anyway, apparently he had been pretty involved with some feminist groups when he was young, that were unfortunately terribly TERF:y. When he came out as trans and began transitioning they were absolutely terrible and kept harassing him to the point where they actually put (literal) shit through his mailbox.
I guess the lesson to be learned here is that in a hundred or thousand men who claim to have been oppressed by feminists, one or two is telling the truth.
Dvärghundspossen, I’m sorry your friend went through that. What a terrible thing to do to someone.
I know! Such pointless cruelty that it’s just baffling.
Dvärghundspossen — if anyone says they were harassed by TERfs my answer is gonna be “yeah, that sounds like them, sorry they targeted you”. I’m other words, color me completely unsurprised. I mean, I spell it with a little f because fuck it if I’m pulling a No True Scotsman, but they aren’t feminists in my book, radical or otherwise.
Pecunium — “(I used to do formal debate in college, one works from cues, and fills in the phrases as needed to respond to the opponents case, or arguments [if one is in favor of the resolution, one has a case, if one is against, it one has arguments; because the tone of the debate is set by the affirmative side.] one doesn’t have speeches scripted out).”
I know right?! Even if you’re the affirmative side, you need some idea wtf your opponent is gonna raise as arguments so you can counter the points they actually raise, countering the points in your head doesn’t do anyone any good! F’ex, if you think all pro-lifers think hormonal BC is abortion, and are debating abortion with one who just said that if BC fails, Plan B is acceptable, but after that abortion should only be in cases of [things], you don’t then give a “ha, I’m right, you think the pill is murder!!” speech. It’s just fucking dumb. It’ll make your allies shake their heads at you, at best.
To call for a debate, set the terms, and not have a damned clue how to respond to what your opponent might say…the hubris would astound me if this weren’t within the manosphere.
PS the cat decided to wait until I switched to QI to lay down on my keyboard, including the space bar. She turned youtube into a broken record AFTER I was done with the “debate”! Silly kitty, why’d you go and pause/unpause/pause QI and not the shit that was Elam’s attempt at a debate?
Dvärghundspossen, that’s horrible. I’m sorry your friend had to live through that, and sorry that there are people out there who think treating someone like that is acceptable. 🙁
@Dvärghundspossen–I am sorry your friend had to experience such hate. TERFs confuse me to now end–how can you fight oppression with more oppression?–and I hate that your friend was subjected to something so vile. Sending sweet thoughts his (and your) way.
On the debate–
Can we even call this a debate? If this was a debate, I frequently debate with my dog (by which I mean I talk to him when he gets in a barking fit, suggest other things to do other than barking, and he responds by barking).
Seriously, I think Paul is spinning out of control. His ego got boosted by his Conference to End All Conferences (for whatever reason), and he is riding some bizzare high from it–it seems like he feels invincible.
He has called out CAFE, raged against the MSM, issued random challenges to various journalists, raged awkwardly on twitter and reddit, and now had this super strange non-debate with, let’s be honest, someone who is not that important to either the MRM or the feminist movement. Despite the fact that he has had his ass handed to him on each ocassion, he is still riding that ego high and can’t recognize that any of his actions have been wrong in the slightest.
So. I guess the conerence was good for that, at least? Any credibility the movement could have gained from it has been undone twice over by Paul’s ego trip in the aftermath.
Gah, so many typos! Sorry, y’all. I have dyslexia pretty hardcore, so it’s hard for me to catch misspellings (especially with words that have a lot of vowels), even when I re-read. Please forgive me!
what I love is that Elam had this whole thing planned out, his victory was crucial and you can tell this was supposed to be his moment to shine and trample Binder. Except he didn’t.
He chose the fight, he was on his own turf, he had very strong rhetoric planned out to the seconds. I mean, he was supposed to spend ever second of his allotted time humiliating and wasting his opponent reputation which was apparent by the ALREADY WRITTEN conclusion which was formulated to make an example out of Binder and expose him as an ideological hack. But he didn’t.
What did happen, was Elam getting wrecked along with his entire movement(Because Binder’s criticism was of the MRM as a whole) by someone who was armed with little more than some likely preparation and quotes. Elam was left trying his best to attack Binder head on but he couldn’t even address his own criticisms truthfully, or even at all. It was great. Binder wasn’t even fully prepared. It wasn’t a flawless victory but it didn’t need to be. Elam lost and lost hard. He had all of his chips in and did everything he could to win it but lost due to the simple fact that the MRM has no ground to stand on, nor does he.
Does anyone know at what point the Elliot Rodger quote debacle happens? I don’t have any desire to sit through the whole thing. I just want to see that entertaining humiliation.
@WWTH–
Right around 8:00, if I remember correctly?
Hahaha! All typos are forgiven after that! (They would be anyway.)
Today the AVFM denizens have convinced themselves that Elam wiped the floor with Matt. Whatever, dudes.
I don’t believe Dean hadn’t heard of stop and frisk. I think it was just a ploy to get out of addressing Matt’s accusation that AVFM had ignored the issue.
Off topic but have you all seen this amazing misandry gif?
http://media.tumblr.com/ed749a8637eaea0f05cfa38fc60bc0cf/tumblr_inline_mid93zOts71qz4rgp.gif
Well, that didn’t take long.
That is the best. Lions are notorious Misandrite. (That is supposed to be “m i s a n d r i s t s, but I will leave it because I think my phone is right in not thinking that is a real word.)
Also OT, but Salon has their conference article up and it is amazing:
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/11/mens_rights_groups_sad_reality_behind_the_doors_of_a_depressing_confab/
Well, either he’s disingenuously trying to sidestep real mens’ issues, or he has no clue what real mens’ issues are.
Both seem equally likely to me.
The thing I noticed with the Molyneux quotation is that Binder didn’t even try to hide it. It was telegraphed; but still Elam couldn’t do anything with it. Why? Because it’s a hateful line of argument which is not substantially different from that of Elliot Rodger.