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.
Even if Susan was a heavy drinker or had a history of promiscuity, that doesn’t mean Elam wasn’t an irresponsible, narcissistic drunk. That his defense was not to demonstrate that he’s of good character, but to attack hers is telling. When every woman in his life, including the daughter who bent over backwards to give him every benefit, has nothing but negative things to say, the problem is likely him. Every woman can’t be a drunk lying slut who is out to destroy innocent Paulie’s life.
Fruitloopsie,
If only Christmas cheer could turn Paul around like it turned Grinch around! Somehow I doubt it.
@WWTH
Excellent point. He doesn’t say anything to defend himself, he basically falls back into his one-trick-pony shtick by saying it was the woman’s fault.
Not that I like Elam or have any sympathy for him, but isn’t this rather sordid?
Was it verbal diarrhea medicine?
David, thanks for flatly stating that the medicine anecdote was abusive. Those making light of that story is reprehensible. Elam’s behavior is contemptible. That doesn’t justify contemptible behavior.
If I was married to Paul Elam I’d skip the bottle and go straight for opiates.
1. Elam does this exact thing to people when he targets women or journalists who disagree with him, or work to expose him. Literally the exact same thing–digging into pasts–and he usually includes a call to doxx and harass as well.
2. Elam, in this article, shows himself to be the exact type of person he is claiming Not All Men are–dead-beat, rage-filled, paternity/child support dodging misogynists. He has built a career on painting the individuals he feels are disadvantaged as these sympathetic victims of the system. He appears to be a victor of this same system, and is not sympathetic at all.
So. I think it is quite fair.
@Salty If it was purely sordid details of a person’s life we don’t like, I’d agree. But in the larger context, this guy is constantly judging others, attacking others, and personally profiting from a movement for standards he flagrantly doesn’t hold himself to. You don’t get to castigate and abuse people with impunity while simultaneously stewing in this level of hypocrisy.
This is a gay pastor preaching hellfire and brimstone for homosexuals. Yes, the public has a right to know.
I don’t think Elam being hit is funny. I think him using being hit with a wooden spoon once upon a time as an excuse for his misogynist hate speech is.
You do not go from, “My mom hit me with a spoon” to “Those drunks whores deserve to be raped!”. He is trying to blame his hate on his mother, a woman he admits was married to a violent alcoholic. That’s fairly absurd. I also highly doubt that event ever took place.
And seriously, if this dude is an addiction therapist, I feel so, so, so bad for any clients he had. He clearly has zero understanding of or sympathy for addicts or alcoholics. Even if he is one himself, his lack of sympathy and understanding is astounding.
Yeah, prepared to write a really long teal deer to our new Objectivist friend, but I see kirbywarp got my main points already. Thanks, kirby.
This is also why I don’t generally engage Ayn Rand-fans. It’s just so painstakingly dull to explain the flawed reasoning. Why is it reductionist to dismiss the notion of free will as an absolute – that, by the by, necessarily leads to the question of why certain behaviors are exhibited mainly by members of a group occupying a certain social position, if our actions are not influenced by socialization – but it is not reductionism to argue that society is simply individuals doing random individual things, with no social dynamics whatsoever at play?
They also made a bunch of logical fallacies in their post to Bina, but I’m already half asleep so I can’t be bothered to point them out.
I was shocked to learn he has a daughter – for once I will say that she was better off for being abandoned by her dad, he would have wrecked any chance she had of having a good opinion of herself.
The only type of person who is more reprehensible than this utter shit are predatory paedophiles – he seriously ticks just about every other ‘what makes a person terrible’ box.
I agree, mocking his childhood abuse is not OK, but the kind of person Elam is does make you wonder if it is true. I suspect that he re-writes his history quite frequently.
“I think him using being hit with a wooden spoon once upon a time as an excuse for his misogynist hate speech is.”
A person abused as a child consciously credits that event with fomenting his present abusive ideology, and you find that amusing? I sure don’t.
WTF, Vox. You didn’t even do a cursory look at AVFM’s “activism”? If you’re serious about being the new bearer of digital journalism, learn how to do some basic god damned legwork. Seriously, double-checking those kinds of claims is 201-level stuff.
Which is honestly why this makes me so uncomfortable. Yes, Elam and his followers do things like this; Elam and his followers are fucking terrible people. Yes, turnabout is fair play, but playing fair with the likes of Elam only serves to bring you down to his level. It’s not going to make him or his followers any better, and it only serves to fuel their victim complex.
Which is ultimately why I think I view this article with more than a little bit of disgust. It does show insight into the man he was and how he got to where he is, but the price of understanding Elam in this way is having to become a little more like him in tactics and willingness to crawl in the muck to drag an opponent’s legs out from under them.
That’s something I just can’t agree with.
I’d like to apologise for making light of the tale of Elam not taking his medicine. Somehow I was tired enough to skim the part about him being repeatedly hit with a wooden spoon, and I only caught the part of him refusing to take the medicine. Reading it again, I would now agree that my joke was in very bad taste. Child abuse is not funny. I’m sorry.
Now, off to bed for real.
damn, seriously, some of the most messed up people go into the helping professions.
Yeah, the story about his mom and brothers beating him to get diarrhea meds in sounds genuinely abusive. May or may not have been an isolated incident, too: when a parent relies for too long on physical force to get kids to obey, it can really be a scene when the kid realizes s/he can actually overpower the parent. I guess that’s why that episode stuck in his mind. (I remember the first time I realized I could take my mom in a fight: we were arguing about some pants she bought me off the clearance rack that I just knew would get me ridiculed at school– total Mom Jeans! Meantime she was stressed to the breaking point about money, so a sullen teenaged girl throwing a fit about the “wrong” style of pants, when mom herself hadn’t bought any new clothes in years and had two other kids to deal with, too, touched off a HUGE verbal and physical confrontation that I suddenly I realized… I could win. Totally unnerving for both parties, I think. Game changer.)
Anyway, so either Elam was genuinely a difficult, troubled kid or the parents just didn’t have any other coping skills at all, so it sounds like after that, his Dad took over the physical punishment. But Elam still saw it as coming from Mom…
It’s very strange he has seemed to get precisely nowhere in terms of really getting any insight and dealing with that in the last half century, though.
it does not surprise me that he’s had a string of divorces and it only surprises me a little that he has estranged adult children. People already knew he was basically living off his girlfriend and AVFM checks, though, didn’t they?
I think “Bonnie” did the only really productive thing you can do with someone like that: walk away…
@Salty–
I don’t think it’s exactly the same. Typically, when Elam does a post on an individual, his formula is name-calling+this person said this one time+threats against the individual+a call for harassment. All of the ones I have read don’t go far beyond the idea of “this person hurt my feels and now I am gain to spew as much vile hate as I can at this person.” Any question of philosophy/ideology is basically “they are wrong because I said so.”
In this case, Elam has purposefully omitted a large part of his life that would be relevant to his readership/philosophy/ideology. Where Elam just goes after people he disagrees with/doesn’t like/whatever goes on inside his head, this piece discloses relevant information. He “advocates” for men being treated more fairly in divorce court/having parental rights/speaking freely about their feelings surrounding all of this…while refusing fair treatment in divorce court, refusing more parental rights, and actively refusing to talk about his relevant personal experience in the matter.
It’s got a little bit of a sensationalized style to it, I admit. But it’s not just mud-slinging. It’s calling out important inconsistency in his philosophy.
The only reason I don’t have a stronger aversion to this piece is that I believe there are differences between smear pieces and pieces that act as a sort of biography. I’ve seen smear pieces; the tone and style is of this is nothing like them. The sordid details are mentioned, yes, but they are not exactly focused on for anything besides painting a larger picture; that the “issues” Elam claims women have are very closely tied with his own personal life rather than any sort of analysis.
It’s the sort of piece you’d expect someone to write of a historical figure. Ayn Rand came up earlier in this thread, so compare this to pieces that detailed her personal life and how her experiences played into her ideology.
DRINK
ceebarks:
Yup. When I was thirteen I lashed out physically at my mother more than once (“difficult” does not even begin to describe me as a teenager) and I was absolutely capable of causing her real damage. I stopped growing at 5’0″. Considering Elam ended up 6’8″ and had two of his brothers restraining him, I read that paragraph as “family trying to contain teenager who is losing his shit over taking medication” as opposed to “abusive mother beating helpless child”. That said, no excuse for the wooden spoon. Even if your child is physically stronger than you and lashing out, as the adult in the situation, you should never hit back unless you’re in real danger.
I read that paragraph as “bizarre” as opposed to “amusing”, especially because Elam holds it up as his red pill moment. That’s what I was trying to get across in my initial comment, but apologies if I came across as making light of abuse
Bizarre is what I’m getting, too. Can anyone even guess why a 13-year-old would need to be forced to take their medicine?
I never lashed out physically, but there was a definite point where I shot up in height past my dad and realized that I could walk out of the room if he was yelling and he couldn’t do squat (besides follow me, anyway). Big worldview change comparing to when I was younger and smaller, even though I never expected physical force in the first place.
I didn’t really register the medicine story on reading the article. What struck me was the conclusion Paul Elam apparently drew from it, that his father, in siding with his mother, was actually subservient to her. I mean, what? Parents try to put up a united front for their kids all the time, how does agreeing with someone make that someone the boss?
yeah, pretty much agree with all that. Teens are difficult, really. They’re not toddlers that you can just pick up and say, ok, that’s enough of that, now! They’re not eager to please like a lot of elementary-school kids, and they’re still legally your responsibility, despite often being at least as big as you are and hating your guts for sometimes-not-very-logical-reasons. You can’t break up with them, you can’t physically redirect them, and they’re notoriously not amenable to reason.
I mean, I guess they could’ve just let young Paul’s diarrhea go untreated til he passed out from dehydration, natural consequences style? Could you call 911 and ask for someone to come with a restraining device? I’m asking, ’cause I don’t know. My oldest is 10, and sweet as pie. *sobs*