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.
Salty:
Yeah, the more I think about it, I actually completely agree with this. I think Elam is a reprehensible human being, but a hit piece is a hit piece is a hit piece, even when the tone is less lurid than usual. There’s also nothing even remotely surprising in the article (Elam has shitty personal relationships with women? Colour me surprised!) or much that’s a matter of public interest, apart from possibly the child support stuff. If he wanted to keep his drug problems and his abusive family firmly in the past, well, that’s his right. And I agree that this isn’t going to accomplish anything, except elevate him to martyr status among his already fanatical fanbase.
And honestly, Elam does a far better job of revealing his own hypocrisy and the hate at the core of his “movement” every time he opens his mouth. The most damning parts of this article are when he is quoted directly.
I worked with a lot of troubled kids, and yes, you can get assistance from the government and classes to help deal with them physically, mentally, and emotionally. You have to jump through a few hoops but most MHMR are eager to help.
Dangerous, depending on your color. I saw a story not long ago about a black mother who called 911 for just that reason, and upon arrival the police shot him dead, which seems to be how police in the U.S. are trained to deal with young black males.
Thanks, isidore, that is genuinely a good thing to know.
yeah, I saw that story, too, seraph. 🙁 🙁
Seems like that sort of thing might be exactly the sort of thing that a Men’s Rights Movement would want to deal with.
Ok, that’s a fair point for most of the article. Still doesn’t explain things such as “crying like a baby”, which quite frankly come across as shaming.
Re: hitting with spoons is abuse; Elam never mentioned bruises, which is usually the yardstick for abuse. It was *very* common to be hit with spoons until recently. It may not be an effective form of discipline, but it’s not abuse, unless just about everyone over a certain age has been physically abused as children. Regardless, the joke is about Elam’s lack of perspective and not that he got hit with a spoon.
Car accidents aren’t funny, but if Elam penned hateful rants about how all women are poor drivers because he got in a minor accident with one back when he was 16, his stunning lack of perspective would be mocked. Doesn’t mean people are mocking car accident victims.
@kirbywarp – Elam doesn’t seem to understand the concept of “agreement” as a thing that happens between equals…or even the concept of “equals”, for that matter. He seems to believe that there are two settings in human relationships, and two only: dominance and submission.
Who knows? If he learned that from his parents, his interpretation of the situation may even have been correct.
“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.”
We don’t have all the details of the story. We don’t even have his exact words. There could be a detail that made him feel that way. What if he called out to his dad for help? What if his dad promised he didn’t have to take the medicine? We don’t know. Interpreting a childhood experience through an adult’s recounting and a journalist’s sparse reporting leaves us with nothing but speculation. Decades later, he still feels betrayed. We’ll never know why, but I’m not going to judge an abused child.
On the other hand, we know all too well how Elam’s interpretation and extrapolation of that event is damaging people in the present. He’s turning that abuse into fuel for his own abuse.
It doesn’t, obviously. This may be a narrative he’s cooked up more recently. I seem to remember him describing his parents in pretty respectful terms just a couple years back. Dad was career military, Mom was a homemaker who went back to school for a master’s degree once the kids were out of the house. He said that growing up he’d thought of them as being kind of bland and conformist but later in life he’d realized they’d had a good relationship that capitalized on both of their strengths… the kind of relationships that feminazi princesses today think they’re too good for. blah blah blah etc
Re: “Crying like a baby”
I really didn’t read that part as shaming. Seriously, crying when you’re reunited with someone who means a lot to you is normal, and touching, and wonderful. Happy tears are not shameful, and I don’t think the article meant to make it shameful.
It really served more to juxtapose the happiness and emotional high that both parties apparently felt at reuniting with the pain and disappointment that followed.
Oh, I nearly forgot — if anyone didn’t click through to read the Buzzfeed article, they talk about John Hembling and his organization, Community Organized Compassion and Kindness.
No, they don’t give the acronym. Yes, I am sure they realized the acronym is COCK.
No, I don’t know how they expect to be taken seriously when they call their philanthropic organization COCK.
How is saying someone cried upon seeing their estranged child insulting?
I’d snot and sob all the way to the meeting.
I don’t see this as a “hit peice” at all.
@seraph4377 and Delphi Ote:
Ok, yeah, you both are right, we don’t have all the details. If the dynamic was such that his mother was the boss, he still should have realized that his experience wasn’t everyone’s at some point, though.
@Mrex:
Personally I took that bit as a humanizing detail. I’ve heard the phrase “crying like a baby” very often in the context of reuniting family members, so it didn’t strike me as odd. If anything (to me), it’s humanizing when describing a man because of the stereotype that strong fatherly men don’t cry.
Definitely could see it being taken another way given the subject. I just didn’t interpret it as an insult myself.
oh, here it is, from his bio on AVFM: http://www.avoiceformen.com/paul-elam/
yeah, no mention of his dad being subservient in this version of his Red Pill Creation Myth. In this passage, he makes it sound like mom had been seen by him as the more “subservient” of the two. In this version of the story, Feminazi Therapist Co-Worker seems to be to blame.
(Of course directly after blaming FTC-W, he wraps the tale up up by saying he’s offering people “a way out of the morass, not someone to blame.” Classic him.)
idk, no one tells the story of their life the exact same way twice, and no family is really simple enough to summarize in 500 words, but overall he seems like a pretty unreliable narrator
99.9 % of the time, if someone said they were abused, I believe them. But consider the source. He and other MRAs claim that a nagging wife is an abuser and use that to justify retaliatory punches. It’s entirely possible that he was throwing an age inappropriate tantrum and she lost her temper and hit him. Which would still be wrong, but abuse? Idk.
When I was a teenager my mom and I fought a lot. One time when I was being particularly snotty she threw a bottle of lotion at me and it hit my leg. It was wrong of her to do that but I would never characterize her as abusive. It was a one time thing. It’s also not something I am traumatized about.
Maybe my skepticism is mean and wrong, but I’m reluctant to deem an imperfect mother abusive on the say so of a known liar and misogynist.
Also, people were making fun of him for refusing to take medicine like a toddler. Nobody was mocking him for being hit.
Dave Futrelle, you’re WRONGITY WRONG WRONG.
Paul Elam is just as awful as I thought he was.
(You’re right about everything else though.)
OK, might not be the right place to mention it, but I finally used the words Eating Disorder on my Facebook account. As someone recently said, it is freeing to be able to talk about issues on here without judgement, and that helped me type that on my Facebook account.
I was ninja’d by discussion of his bio depicting his mother as June Cleaver. That definitely bolsters my case.
@gilshalos–
That is brave and I am proud of you. That’s all.
This article is not in any way, shape, or form “like” the tactics Elam uses.
It is normal and acceptable for journalists to do background pieces on individuals who are in the public spotlight, and it’s entirely fair to research somebody who courts publicity and claims to be a spokesperson-for-men.
If anything, I thought the writers bent over backward to be fair to Elam.
I think it would have been sweet to say that he cried when he met his daughter, but I’ve only heard the term “crying like a baby” being used to insult someone for an over-reaction. Maybe it’s just me, but it just struck me as an odd choice of words to use for someone being reunited with his daughter.
Mrex:
That is a terrible yardstick.
“Don’t make me get the wooden spoon!” was a common and acceptable thing to say to your children when I was growing up in the 90s. Whenever my mother actually made good on the threat (which was rare), it was usually a light whap designed to shock me out of my temper tantrum rather than cause any actual pain. I certainly didn’t consider it abuse, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t get to define their experiences that way. Not all wooden spoonings are created equal.
Gilshalos, way to be brave! You’re an awesome person, and I wish you the best of luck.
There are, sadly, plenty of abused children in the world. They don’t all grow up to create a platform from which to deny reality and denigrate half the human race. They don’t all grow up to be con-men who take the money of none-too-bright disaffected followers in the name of making things better, and use it to line their own pockets. They don’t all grow up to be narcissistic scumbags who prey on stupider narcissistic scumbags (plus some men who are hurting and perplexed and turn to them in good faith for help they only pretend to offer.)