If you’re a regular, or semi-regular, or even just an occasional reader of this blog, you need to stop reading this post right now and read Buzzfeed’s astonishing expose of A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam instead.
SPOILER ALERT: He’s an even bigger hypocrite than you think he is.
Here’s the link. Right here. Click on it now. Click. Now. Click.
If you need a bit more convincing: Buzzfeed’s long and meticulous examination of alleged “men’s human rights” activist Elam, written by Adam Serwer and Katie Baker, delves deep into Paul’s often sordid personal history, including his drug use, his numerous failed marriages, and the alternately depressing and infuriating story of the daughter he abandoned, who forgave and reunited with him as an adult, and who is now estranged from him again.
As Serwer and Baker make clear, the story of Elam’s life makes many of his most fervent claims about alleged female irresponsibility and the evils of the family court system seem a tad, well, ironic. As the two note, Elam.
preaches the gospel that men’s failures and disappointments are not due to personal shortcomings or lapsed responsibility, but rather institutionalized feminism and a family court system rigged against dutiful fathers, as well as a world gripped by “misandry,” or the hatred of men.
But his own story, to put it as gently as possible, does not exactly support this particular narrative. Serwer and Baker note that
interviews with Elam’s ex-wives and daughter and newly uncovered court records shed light on a man who, they told BuzzFeed News, has depended on and emotionally abused the women in his own life.
For example, although Elam compares the family court system’s treatment of fathers to Jim Crow, he abandoned his biological children not once but twice. Although Elam says that “fathers are forced to pay child support like it was mafia protection money,” he accused his first wife of lying about being raped so he could relinquish his parental rights and avoid paying child support.
His ex-wife [Susan] and his daughter said he has only been able to make A Voice for Men his full-time job because of the women who have supported him throughout his life. …
“He sits there taking all these people’s money and all he’s doing is sucking them dry,” said Susan. “That’s what he’s done all his life — to say it’s the woman’s fault, and not make men look at their own mistakes.”
Seriously, go read it. Here’s the link again.
We’ll talk more when you’re done.
When I checked out Buzzfeed this morning and saw this article illustrated with a pic of Elam as Rosie the Riveter, I cringed and assumed it would be a fluffy pro-MRA piece. But then I read the first paragraph. I’m sure I’m only one of many people who forwarded this link to David this morning!
Also, as with any article ever written about MRAs, the comments are already flooded with them. Only read if you have a really strong stomach.
The comments section is a mix, though, which is heartening–people are calling out Dean (especially on the “only 20 minutes” thing with “he refused to answer questions, of course it’s only twenty minutes”) and it’s great. I’m enjoying seeing the, erm, philosophy flounder outside of the safe walls of AVFM.
I do worry that it is all Facebook-linked with real names; the AVFM Hate Machine is scary, to say the very least, and I hope they don’t go after people who comment. That’s why I am not commenting there for sure.
Also, the inserts in the article with Paul’s not-comments had me literally LOL’ing this morning. Like this one:
“What is clear is that Elam has amassed tens of thousands of followers — and lined his pockets with their donations to the for-profit AVFM, which are estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. (When asked how this money is spent, Elam told BuzzFeed News that A Voice for Men’s finances were “none of your fucking business.”)”
The cost of running AVFM: apparently hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The cost of watching Paul flounder publicly when called out on this: priceless.
@spurricane:
So far, so good, though the last part is probably going to a place I’d rather not see.
Aaaand we’re there. Using Ayn Rand as any kind of measurement for moral behavior is a sure sign of utter lack of any ethical considerations. The very much class privileged Ayn Rand would of course object to progress and social awareness of issues that cause inequality, instead blaming the big bad gubmint for stealing from the hard-working corporations* of the world. People (at least people with some sense) don’t take her seriously because she created a whole philosophy out of basically behaving like a spoiled brat who doesn’t want to take other people into consideration, despite others doing at least an equal part of the heavy lifting. She was also a giant hypocrite and generally a terrible human being. That you compare yourself to her is very telling.
For what it’s worth, congratulations on understanding that not everything any woman does anywhere at any time is feminism. Have a fucking cookie.
Umm… No, we aren’t. Your premise is flawed**. We are very much affected by the people, the relationships and the value systems around us. This is why people who have grown up together in a common place in a society tend to share certain traits and beliefs, although their individual life experiences may vary and thus further shape them, which is why they are not fully alike despite having lived in a shared niche. Seriously, this is pre-Introduction to Behaving Like a Fucking Human Being in a Society Full of Other Fucking Human Beings 101-level stuff, here. Don’t make me fail you before the actual course has even started.
lolwut
Seriously, what kind of person can’t tell the difference between social phenomena and individual experiences? How willfully fucking deluded do you have to be to believe that patterns indicate nothing, and that social phenomena are just people doing random stuff that has nothing to do with anything that has happened in history? Do you just not believe in causality either, since it assumes that events happening prior may have something to do with events happening now?
I just can’t with some people.
*IIRC, Ayn Rand did actually object at least in one instance to the corporations of the day, saying that they, too, were owned by “moochers”. That’s right, Ayn Rand has said that the capitalists on top of modern-style corporate ladders have not earned their wealth any more than the so-called government tyrants have, since they work together to create an environment where a truly free market is impossible. Conveniently, this is not something discussed very often by well-off Randroids defending the status quo.
**I don’t understand how Ayn Rand-fans justify calling themselves materialists and anti-superstition when they believe in fully free agents, devoid of any effects from the world around them. Free will, such as it is understood, necessitates a non-material (supernatural, if you will) factor that overrides material factors such as biology and the development of the brain as an adaptive response to outside stimuli. How is someone believing in utterly free agency any different from someone believing in a soul?
——
Okay, that’s it for the derail. Count me in with the people wishing all the best to the women in Elam’s life, and that he and his fanboys stay the hell away from them.
Agreed!
I’m sure they are making MRAs everywhere look totally rational and not at all hateful and misogynist. 😉
Definitely, WatermelonSugar. I saw lots of comments from people who are appalled by his behavior and the way he has crassly made a hate campaign into a moneymaking machine for himself.
Now I actually kind of want to know what Woody has to say.
I’m also hoping for the safety of Bonnie and Susan. I really hope that Elam has SOME sense of compassion and doesn’t turn their info over to his followers, but I’m not betting on it.
When I was reading this, I was struck by how Bonnie talked about still believing in the basic idea of men’s rights, and I was wondering – is anyone in this forum familiar with any groups that ACTUALLY help with the actual issues of getting more men to graduate college, or male rape and domestic violence, etc? I know there are plenty of feminist groups that are working on the latter and everything, but I wanted to know if there are other actual activists paying attention to problems faced by men instead of passing it off as women refusing to pay subservience to men.
It’s amazing how much this man hates women when he’s depended on them for support his entire life.
Ninja’d much less verbosely but much more eloquently by Bina.
Janet Bloomfield is hanging around in the comments too. Someone said “aren’t you the one who make up fake quotes about Jessica Valenti?” and JB answers “I quoted her word for word.”
This woman is a compulsive liar to the death.
@Bina
William Buckley certainly wasn’t very nice to her. Idiotess? She started an entire philosophical school and has millions of readers and admirers the world over. Priveledged? She had to leave her country of birth because the people in charge were at the start of what became one of the bloodiest genocides in human history, all to rectify, yes that phrase, class priveledge. You on the other hand, have the noble distinction of telling people to fuck off on the internet.
sunnysombrera: Hey, that’s me 😀 I’ll go back and ask further.
I know we joke about MRAs being manbabies, but refusing to take your medicine? That’s literal baby behavior right there. Thirteen is old enough to know that even though medicine can be unpleasant, it will make you better and you should take it.
Wow. He’s even worse than I already thought he was.
Spurricane,
Your hero Any Rand admired a murderer, William
Edward Hickman for being a sociopath. He killed and dismembered a 12 year old. This is what happens when you see yourself as separate from society and have no empathy for others. That’s the world you want to live in? A world of sociopaths?
Damn autocorrect. Ayn. Not Any.
@WWTH
It’s not uncommon for MRAs to boil their misogyny down to something their mother did. “My mum was mean to me which is why I know that women are awful and I treat them like they should be treated!” Like that’s a valid excuse.
@ Anarchonist
What is society but the sum of the actions of seperate, sentient individuals? It’s nothing profound, but it always helps to take a step back remember this sometimes. Putting metaphysical free will against material hard determinism (or even indetermism)is a false dichotomy. It’s a product too of overzealous reductionism. You don’t describe a baseball game using the motions and forces of subatomic physics. Similarly you don’t describe free actions on the outcome of every individual neuron in the brain. Free will works in describing the macro world, even if the laws governing our brains are the same as the rest of the universe. It needn’t be dependent on some yet to be dicovered property of matter. That’s a very long and imprecise way of saying we all have a choice in what we do with ourselves, we aren’t slaves to the environment (in the sense of having no choice at all in reacting to our surroundings).
Hah JB has suddenly gone very quiet in the comments. Hard to contest with what was written on your very own website. (Good job finding that David K!)
Ooh, that was ALMOST subtle, but the classics are hard to disguise. The “such-and-such woman isn’t a feminist/says the patriarchy doesn’t exist, so feminism is invalid!” argument is one of my favorites.
I almost–almost–feel bad for Elam. Almost. Because I understand that guilt and trauma come out in really, really backward, terrible ways. I totally get that. I can even empathize with that. Guilt and trauma are nasty, terrible beasts.
Where the almost comes in is, instead of dealing with the guilt and trauma, Elam turned it in to a hundreds of thousands of dollars money making scam, capitalizing on the similar traumas and guilts of other human beings, and in turn uses his self-made machine to inflict trauma on others who disagree with him or, god forbid, question where the money goes.
I don’t find the story about the medicine funny, at least if Elam is telling the truth about it, which given his track record is a real question. As he describes it his mother hit him repeatedly with a wooden spoon, which, if true, is abusive.
I do hope that Susan and Bonnie (and the other ex-wife who talked to Buzzfeed off the record) will be ok. Elam is a vindictive shit with a little army of fanatical assholes.
@spurricane Let’s take your discussion of free will as an emergent property of subatomic particles and apply it to groups of people. You can’t describe the actions of a society simply as the sum of the individual actors. You have to study the interactions of individuals and their actions to understand the group. Simply summing up the individuals does not tell a complete story.