The Men's Rights Movement's ugliest divorce is getting uglier by the day. And funnier.

It seems like only yesterday that a Voice for Men’s Paul Elam and John “The Other” Hembling were the bestest of friends, laughing and joking together as they plotted to take over the world. Now, after an ugly falling out, the two are the worstest of enemies, and this whole MGTOW thing is making their ugly divorce even uglier.

You know that little war that Elam has going on with the MGTOWers, or more accurately, the MGTOWFAFPE (Men Going Their Own Way Far Away From Paul Elam)? Mr. Hembling and his girlfriend/comrade Diana Davison have allied themselves with Elam’s many enemies in the MGTOW world, and, well, Elam doesn’t seem to like this very much.

I present to you three recent skirmishes in their little war.

Dean Esmay, Breast Man

This first skirmish isn’t between Elam and Hembling themselves, but between each man’s most faithful lieutenant. On Elam’s side, AVFM’s “operations director” Dean Esmay; on Hembling’s side, the not-so-charming Ms. Davison, his partner in COCK. (No really, that’s the name of their organization.)

Esmay, angry at MGTOWers for mocking Elam’s new book on MGTOW, decides to lash out at Davison, whom he feels is seducing the MGTOW masses to the anti-Elam side using the power of her, erm, titties.

No, really. Here’s Esmay:

Davison’s video response (from which I got the above screenshot) is remarkably restrained, considering.

ANALYSIS: A major misstep from Esmay. Davison is a thoroughly terrible person; she’s the woman-hating woman who once wrote that “[w]omen are facing a very real and grave problem in our culture: They are obnoxious cunts.” And Esmay, through the power of his own obnoxious assholery, has managed to turn her, at least momentarily, into a sympathetic character.

Advantage, Team COCK.

John Hembling, Borrower

A writer on A Voice for Men reveals that Hembling plagiarized giant chunks of an Alternet article in a blog post of his that was later published on AVFM.

There’s really no question about it: a number of passages are similar, and one giant chunk is copied nearly word-for-word. Oops.

Hembling’s response? A video in which he breezily dismisses the charges, admitting only that he “borrowed” a couple of sentences, as if this is a thing that all writers sometimes do. Elam mocks Hembling’s glib response in a video of his own – perhaps the only time I’ve ever witnessed Elam on the right side of any argument.

Of course, the bigger question is why Elam ever thought that Hembling, a perpetual liar, could be trusted in the first place. Maybe because he doesn’t give a shit about the truth? Just a guess.

Advantage, Team Paul

The Battle of Dean Esmay’s Tooth

In what seems to be a transparent attempt to draw attention away from the whole plagiarism thing, Hembling makes a video about Dean Esmay and his missing tooth.

Esmay, you see, is missing a tooth. While Esmay sees this as somehow the fault of feminism – at least that’s what he seemed to suggest during his rather surreal appearance on a Detroit news show last summer – Hembling wonders aloud why Elam, who takes in many tens of thousands of dollars a year in donations to AVFM, can’t shell out a few bucks for some dental work for Esmay, the hardest working AVFMer of them all.

Advantage, neither. Hembling has a point, but bringing up the tooth thing is a bit of a low blow.

Stay tuned, because this war is likely to get uglier still.

It’s kind of delicious.