A Voice for Men’s embattled Grand Wizard Paul Elam and his followers have responded to Buzzfeed’s devastating profile of him in some predictable ways, and in a few less predictable ones.
If you’re read the Buzzfeed piece – and if you haven’t, you really, really should – you know that it devoted a lot of time to the sad and sordid history of Elam’s three marriages and the even more sad and sordid story of the daughter he abandoned.
In a long and rambling post on Buzzfeed’s piece, Elam – all too predictably – goes after “Susan,” his first wife and the only one of his three ex-wives who was willing to talk on the record, trying his best to destroy her credibility by portraying her, essentially, as a lying slut.
Elam miraculously, and probably with considerable effort, managed to avoid the s-word – a favorite of writers on his site. But his attempts to slut-shame her are as transparent as glass.
Over the course of his post, he describes her as “very enthusiastic about sex,” “indeed very enthusiastic about sex,” and “a promiscuous wife.” He alleges that during their brief marriage “her sexual enthusiasm wasn’t limited to me,” and repeats the accusation that he leveled at her at the time – that she lied about being raped in order to cover up her own infidelity. He declares her to be a “habitual liar,” someone who “cheated and lied constantly.”
Elam also suggests that Buzzfeed paid his ex-wife and daughter to talk trash about him; and he makes several other serious allegations against his ex-wife that I won’t repeat. (EDIT: Buzzfeed’s Editorial Standards and Ethics policy forbids paying sources.]
A decade ago, you may recall from Buzzfeed’s piece, Elam reunited with the daughter he had abandoned as a baby, only to drive her away several years later after, she claims, spanking one of his grandsons for opening the refrigerator.
In his post, while referring to her as his daughter, he resurrects an old accusation, writing that “I need to point out that it has not been established that I actually have a daughter.”
Buzzfeed quotes what it says is an email Elam sent to his daughter in 2005, in which he apologized to her and to his brother. “I owe both of you a tremendous debt,” he wrote. “I just said some unflattering things involving [his ex-wife], but the more important truth here is that I failed both of you.”
In his post, though, Elam declares that “I did not, as alleged, tell Bonnie [his daughter] that I was sorry that I had failed her. I told her that I was sorry such misfortune had been her lot.”
If the email quoted by Buzzfeed is authentic, this is a blatant lie.
While the attacks on his ex (and his halfway renunciation of his daughter) are sadly predictable, Elam also resorts to a desperate if inventive diversionary tactic, suggesting that the art used to illustrate Buzzfeed’s post is somehow … anti-Semitic, reminiscent of Nazi propaganda. Uh, no. I’m pretty sure that one or both of the authors of the Buzzfeed article, Adam Serwer and Katie Baker, would have said something if this were even remotely the case; they’re both Jewish.
Judge for yourself. Here’s the picture AVFM used to illustrate Elam’s post:
In the comments to his post on AVFM, meanwhile, Elam’s supporters circle the wagons and lash out at pretty much anyone they can think of who’s ever said less-than-flattering things about their dear leader. They are considerably less careful with their language than Elam.
In the post’s “Featured Comment,” with close to 70 upvotes at the moment, AVFM contributor “Andybob” lashes out at Elam’s enemies:
A disgruntled ex from decades ago and a brainwashed daughter that probably isn’t his who were doubtlessly given some kind of monetary incentive to say that Paul Elam won’t be getting their votes for Man of the Year any time soon. After months of sleepless nights planning his cunning revenge, the best Serwer could come up with was to drag out this pair of bitter malcontents who were probably chomping on the bit to take a swipe a man who chose not to serve them in the ways to which they obviously feel entitled.
Suzie McCarley, AVFM’s “Assistant Managing Editor,” says of the Buzzfeed article that “it will be quoted by skanks and bitches of both sexes for years to come.” She snidely writes of Serwer that “I hope the blow job his ho Katie B. owes him in exchange for his credibility, is worth it.”
Several others cleverly refer to Serwer as “Sewer.”
Very few of the commenters deal with any of Buzzfeed’s specific allegations. Instead, they resort to evasive euphemism.
AVFM’s social media director, who writes under the name Janet Bloomfield, laments what she calls “the hysterical ad hominem attacks on a man who turns out to be ….SHOCK…. human.” “I’m shocked! Who would think that an ex-wife might have shit to talk about her ex? Amazeballz!” AVFM contributor Jason Gregory writes sarcastically. “Overlord Elam is a human man?” jokes someone called ComradePrescott. “I can’t serve any master that isn’t a reptilian monster!!!!”
Others offer excuses, making clear that they would probably forgive Elam for anything short of mass murder:
In a separate post, AVFM’s Sage Gerard offers an even less coherent “rebuttal” to Buzzfeed’s post, filled with vague accusations against Buzzfeed and weirdly evasive defenses of Elam that if anything make him look worse.
Gerard declares that Buzzfeed’s
“evidence” is opinion carefully framed to manipulate, not persuade. This is David Futrelle’s style of toxic propoganda: Distort context until the target and all supporters appear inhuman.
It’s hard to tell what on earth Gerard even means by any of this, and of course he provides no examples.
He then goes on to offer this oddly backhanded defense of Elam’s terrible behavior:
In terms of his difficult decisions during his youth, Paul had to live with choices that only prove that he is human. Today, Paul faithfully operates within the boundaries of the law as an advocate.
Even more strangely, Gerard praises Elam for … not pocketing money from fundraisers intended for others.
Another money fact that keeps slipping by unreported is that Paul has allowed others to feed off his main revenue stream. Paul hosts fundraisers on this site where AVfM gains no money. I offered Paul a percentage in Zen Men’s last fundraiser, and he refused the money. He also gave Dean Esmay money for private dental work in public view. …
Between Dean and Zen Men, AVfM gave up access to over $10,000, which means Paul gave up more than AVfM itself raised in its last fundraiser. …
Greedy people out to exploit the masses don’t give away money.
Actually, lots of them do. Are you kidding?
If these are the best defenses that Elam and his allies can muster, he’s going to have a hard time rebounding from Buzzfeed’s report.
I’m not. What I am scoffing at is that idea that corporal punishment is inherently, in every form and every circumstance, abusive and damaging. That I am emotionally damaged (and presumably too stupid or damaged to know it…)
I am not claiming that this is what anyone here is saying, but I’ve heard this argument more than once elsewhere and continue to find it unconvincing. When people say “I was spanked and turned out fine” I think that is what they mean.
I’d never argue it can’t be part of an abusive environment. Clearly, it can. But so can a lot of things.
There’s no way to phrase this and not sound like a concern troll, but I’ve been here long enough that I hope people can believe I’m sincere.
I don’t think it’s fair to condemn the MRAs for Elam’s past. Or to blow it up as a big enough deal to seem like it’s a reason we’re condemning them. One person, no matter how important, doesn’t make a movement.
I do think it’s fair to condemn MRAs for the things they argue quite consistently.
My English teacher once told us that he’d had a schoolmaster who would make a boy stand at the end of the blackboard, bowed so that his face was level with the shelf that catches the chalk-dust. The boy would be made to open his eyes and mouth as wide as possible and the master would blow the chalk dust into his face. (I think this was the 1960s, England).
I think that any place where corporal punishment is the norm, there will be sadists taking full advantage of that culture.
Anyway, to relate this thread to my own childhood (1990s, England)…
I was probably only spanked twice as a kid, by my mum, with an open hand on my buttocks and on one occasion, the back of my legs. I don’t think I’ve been damaged by it, but I think it’s a weak form of parenting.
It’s weak to use physical aggression against a child. It’s weak to send a message of “Do as I say, or else”, rather than “This is what I expect of you, and why”. I’m not saying I hadn’t done anything worthy of correction, or punishment when I was spanked, but my mum only ever hit me when she had already lost her temper. And I think it’s really wrong to lash out in anger. It breaks the trust that the child has in the parent and creates fear.
I was mostly a good kid, and intelligent enough. The only times I’d been punished as a child had been either unfairly (I was once put in time-out by staff at an after-school club for yelling at a bully to leave me alone while the bully went unpunished) or too severely (spanked when a simple talking-to and a time-out would have sufficed; or the whole school once had to sit in silence throughout assembly instead of hearing a story because 3 of us had been chattering after the bell rang for the end of lunch). So mostly my attitude towards punishment has always been one of resentment and defiance.
It’s not just about what is used as a punishment – it’s also about how it’s delivered, and it’s not often that I’ve seen an adult punish a child constructively. TLDR; Respects is earn.
We definitely live in a society that seems to have very little room for children to be children in it. I think we are all rushed too much and since poop rolls downhill, kids and the elderly get the worst of it. (I have strong opinions about nursing homes and elder care.) Kids are almost always kept on lock down and their behavior directed or controlled by adults. Adults often don’t give children choices because it is inconvenient. We keep them under lock and key for the same reason we do women: We accept that the world is not safe for them. We change their participation and remove their freedom because bad men might do bad things to them. Stranger Danger has changed the way kids play. School shootings (mostly perpetrated by angry white dudes) are making schools more and more like prisons and the link between our schools and our prisons is well known. There is an armed guard at the high school. That bothers me. Alot.
The patriarchy is all about control through the threat of violence.
I am kind of a hippie, but I think you teach kids to be considerate by being patient with them (and yourself). I think you teach them to respect your boundaries more easily when you respect theirs. You teach them to take time out when they are grouchy by taking them when you are grouchy. I know people who do those things and sometimes spank. They also use things like writing as a punishment. I think that makes kids hate writing, but that’s just me. Intent isn’t magic, but I think they are good parents.
I wish I could say I learned to be patient and positive that from my mom, but I didn’t. I learned it from big stray dogs who didn’t trust people. When you get in front and call, they follow. When you get behind and push, they bite* (because that scares the beejesus out of them). I learned to be consistent from them to. Routines will save you so much time and keep your brains from turning to pudding.
Or maybe that’s just my personal opinion too. I just know that there are so many things I’d rather do than get nasty with a kid. Here are some books I like. They aren’t perfect, but I like parts of them.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Talk-Kids-Will-Listen/dp/1451663889
http://www.amazon.com/The-Teenage-Liberation-Handbook-Education/dp/096295917
This makes me cry:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Box-Toni-Morrison/dp/0786812915
I also like to watch this once a year:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/touchofgreatness/teacher.html
*That said, I have smacked a dog on the nose a few times. I don’t consider that animal abuse. I don’t mind if other people do.
Boring, pointless, painful personal story re: corporal punishment, scroll to skip:
I remember a particular spanking from my early childhood. I had just had a pretty bad argument with my parents – over what, I cannot remember, probably some stupid kid stuff I wasn’t allowed to do – and stormed into my room. I slammed the door shut behind me, only to hear a cry of pain behind me as my little brother, a toddler back then, had tried to follow me and stuck his fingers between the slamming door and the frame. He didn’t get seriously injured, but all the same, my parents seemed to interpret it as having been done deliberately.
I tried to explain that it had been an accident, that I hadn’t realised that my brother had been right behind me, but it was useless. I can’t remember if the spanking itself hurt that bad, actually. What I do remember is how unfair it felt. I’m not sure if I would be a different person today had it not been for that specific incident, but I think it shaped some of my beliefs about the world.
Since nothing was ever explained to me, I took away the lesson that I should never communicate my negative emotions to the outside world in any visible manner, and should instead bottle it all up inside me, just like my mom had the habit of doing. That is something that has caused me a lot of grief over the years. To this day, I cannot say what the real lesson was supposed to be. That I should be more careful is the best I’ve come up with, though if that was it, it was something I figured out by myself maybe 20 years after the fact, so lesson averted, I suppose. It is entirely possible that there was no lesson, and I wasted countless sleepless nights wondering what my crime had been.
I resent it when people talk about spanking as if it was something beneficial in itself. Corporal punishment or not, I think communicating to the kid exactly what they did wrong is the key. Too often I hear clueless people say that children know what they’re doing, and that spanking discourages them from doing the bad things, when many times I doubt the kid really understands that they’re doing something wrong in the first place. I certainly was a stupid kid, but I wasn’t mean. Why would I purposely hurt my brother, who had done nothing to me and hadn’t been involved in the fight between me and my parents in any way?
I wonder if Elam tried to explain to his grandchild why opening the refrigerator was a big no-no?
@ceebarks
OK, thank you for the clarification. I completely agree with what you said in this quote, but in my defence this is very different from what you said in the previous comment. Thanks for clearing up the confusion.
Um, scratch that. I do not completely agree with everything in that quote, but I don’t disagree strongly enough to keep poking at it.
“They did it on purpose”
Yep. Children do not have an inherent since of flawless morality. They are literally new. They don’t even have a very good grasp of reality and how the material world works. They aren’t always angels with dirty faces. They’re people figuring themselves out and feeling things like jealousy, greed, anger etc. for the first time. Two year olds look like cherubs, but they can be jerks. My kids have occasionally made me feel like we were playing a game where their goal was to get themselves maimed or killed and mine was to keep them unharmed. I’m so glad we are past that age.
I wish more people came to terms with that before they had kids. The idea that you will produce a child and then “nature” will guide you in your parenting is a myth. I know I found that to be a harsh reality both times I was a new mom. (They came over a decade apart. I think I forgot how quick the little ones are. Two of mine were climbers.)
Re: spanking. I was spanked as a child, though only on the clothed butt and never with an object. I was shocked to hear some of my classmates tell me they were spanked on the bare bottom. It stopped when I was older, about 10 I think, when just my mom saying “Do you want a slap?” was enough to stop me from making a scene. Then that stopped too once I got better at impulse control. And I admit, in this discussion I probably would have been one of those “I turned out fine” people, because I don’t believe (or want to believe) this means my parents abused me. They were otherwise very supportive and loving.
Re: Elam. Predictable. Just so effing predictable. Is there a single word for “disgusted but not surprised?”
Anarchonist – this is exactly why I think explaining what the kid did wrong should be done first and foremost, before (and in most situations instead of) any other kind of punishment.
Most kids, if they know they did something to upset someone, will want to make amends, and might even decide that they deserve a spanking. But punishment is worse than useless if it’s not understood why it’s being meted out.
I hope if I ever have children, I’ll always discipline them fairly.
Not gonna weigh in on the spanking/child abuse debate, but I gotta say, I find it kind of laughable when people complain about the modern unpopularity of corporal punishment because “kids these days getting soft”. Why would anyone want people to be as “hardened” as previous generations? In the ‘good old days’ two strangers killing each other over a lady was considered a ‘gentlemanly’ way to resolve conflicts and mass rapes of the ‘enemy’s’ women during wars fought entirely for greed were not only normal but perfectly honorable (as Cracked’s Luke McKinney put it: ‘hitting differently colored men until they died, and women slightly less.)’ I’d say it’s a damned good thing if we’re ‘getting soft’.
I’ll admit the charges against us Millennials about narcissism and such hold water, but then again…http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/2/6/college-freshmen-drink-less-and-worry-more.html
@dhag85
Might want to check out Fantasy Life. There’s no farming but it’s definitely got some similarities with Rune Factory. It’s also possible to complete the game completely nonviolently*.
*As in, violence against living things. There are a couple of situations where it’s necessary to smash a rock.
Oy, sorry if that was kind OT. I just find it funny when people grumble about teachers not being able to spank kids because ‘kids back in the day were more responsible’, when studies show it might actually be the opposite.
suffrajitsu,
YES! Those same people are the people who will tell you that kids should endure bullying because it makes them tough.
What the hell? How is that even supposed to work?
suffrajitsu,
They sound like this to me:
@maistrechat
Thanks! This game has definitely been on my radar before, but I’m happy you reminded me. I’m still not done with the games from Christmas 2013 so it’s gonna have to wait for a bit 🙂
@Lea
@Anarchronist
I totally understand what you guys are saying and can really relate to you, Anarchronist. Though my parents rarely spanked and their discipline was mostly verbal, they tended to over react to small things that I did, things that I did mostly because I was just a young child. Many many of said things led to chastisement and they have since admitted that they were trying way too hard to shape me into a “perfect child”, which was at my expense. I now struggle with stubbornly low self esteem/self confidence and a difficulty in being deep down positive. They would be visibly annoyed with me for doing things like tripping when running (small kids do it all the time because poor motor skills), losing things (five year olds tend to put things down and forget where they are), dropping things or, like you Anarch, coming to them with a problem. Children can pick up on people’s tone of voice and their moods like experts, just because they don’t communicate like an adult doesn’t mean they don’t see that you’re displeased with them. THEY UNDERSTAND SO MUCH. I was a smart kid and gained an idea of what was right and wrong, fair and unfair, pretty early on, so when they would criticise for something that was just a mistake one part of me absorbed it and took another hit to my confidence, another part felt shocked and upset that they were doing it over something small.
I have a distinct memory of my dad blowing his lid at me when I was about three: I wandered into the bathroom where he was fixing the towel rail, picked up a glass bottle of something and dropped it. It didn’t break so I thought everything was okay but he spun round and yelled at me with such rage it helped to embed in me that even the slightest mistake from me can likely lead to the people I’ve slighted coming down on me like a ton of bricks. It’s a fear and paranoia I still carry today – that one slip up will lead to terrible consequences. I am getting better at it but it’s still a burden.
My dad also had this hang up believing that “there’s no such thing as accidents, only deliberate carelessness” which was a big reason why he would huff at little Sunny for doing kid things like tripping over or dropping stuff. My mother argued with him every time he said that and I’m glad she did, because if I’d fully absorbed his attitude then on top of everything else I would have grown up thinking that every tiny error I made was not a result of me being human but me being a deeply, naturally and irreversibly flawed individual. Even though she tended to over criticise as well she wasn’t as bad as my father, who like I said seemed to be grumpy with me and my brother all the time.
(Nowadays he’s a very sweet, patient, positive and loving man for the record.)
Unless they mean “might cause them to turn around and become bullies themselves”, it makes no sense at all. I endured bullying, and all it made me is angry and resentful that the bullies were allowed to get away with the vast majority of it.
well, that’s just age-inappropriate. Little kids have underdeveloped motor skills– not much to be done about that except put away the breakables and/or accept some breakage and loss as part of the business cost of raising a family. It is still annoying, but if you are aware of it, it’s less aggravating than if you expect perfection and let yourself get worked up about anything less.
I haven’t always been thrilled with every aspect of my childhood, but my folks were just ordinary, flawed, complicated human beings doing, for the most part, the best they could on the limited resources at their disposal. Having kids of my own put them in a kinder light, as it tends to do. (“Damn, this shit is HARD!)
Sure, my mom wasn’t Mary Poppins, and my dad wasn’t Atticus Finch, but again, expecting perfection out of mortals is a good way to go through life disappointed. What they DID do was hang in there, day after day after mindnumbing, exasperating day. 😉
My mom tried to apologize for some of it awhile ago but I wouldn’t hear it. We had a tough run at times, but we all made it. And I was a pain in the ass sometimes, too. (I know, who’d ever believe it now?! 😉 )
@ceebarks My parents and I have talked about what happened, they’ve admitted wrongdoing but I also accept that, as they said, they were dealing with heavy issues of their own at that time and simply weren’t well equipped for dealing with two small children (I have a younger brother). My dad, I think, accepts that he WAS being age inappropriate when he criticised us for the kid things, but he hasn’t quite renounced that hang up of his.
“Obviously, I’m not spanking my son. I’m going to give him the same boring lectures my dad did.”
I have four children, all grown, and I spanked once — my oldest son, when he was about five, for getting into a forbidden area too close to the river we lived next to. My theory was that spanking should be restricted to situations where a child is at risk of serious harm but too young to have the risk adequately explained. Otherwise I used lectures which became notorious as probably more painful than a spanking. I used to get “You don’t need to lecture me, Dad, I won’t do it again.” I have to say that my children only very rarely did anything worthy of serious corrective measures — I’ve always said that they spoiled me rotten.
From the teen years, I have one story to illustrate how easy I had it. When my older daughter (who was not sexually active at the time) found out that one of her friends had become sexually active, she went out and bought a package of condoms and gave them to her, telling her “Make him use these.”
I think the rejection of corporal punishment began after World War II with the permissive style of child-rearing promoted by Dr. Benjamin Spock in his book “Baby and Child Care,” which was the bible of post-war parenting. Unfortunately, to some extent it has been a matter of social/educational level with the result that many well-educated parents who have adopted the no-spanking model look down at the less-well-educated parents who live in cultural regions — such as Lea describes — where corporal punishment is more or less baked into the notions of proper child-rearing. And the tendency to avoid corporal punishment has become steadily stronger, particularly — again — among well-educated people, making another issue where there are strongly conflicting social views. On one side many people will label even very mild forms of corporal punishment as child abuse, and on the other side people will claim that permissiveness, including failure to apply corporal punishment, is ruining society. Dr. Spock was blamed by many on the right for the resistance to the Vietnam War — in fact he was put on trial for counseling young men to refuse the draft.
I once skimmed through a book on parenting that was fanatically anti-spanking but advocated techniques (specifically that the parent should become emotionally distant for a period that would seem like forever to a small child) that I thought would be much more painful and emotionally (though not physically) damaging than a few whacks on the bottom. I think it all comes down to whether the children feel loved — they will survive and forgive parental mistakes if they are loved.
Paul Elam, as I see it, would like to have a child who attractively accesorizes his life but he has no capacity to love.
I think Paul Elam has got the capacity to love…himself.
Actually, I think he hates himself. He reeks of self-loathing and the desire to pull everyone else down into the sewer with him.
He may not notice on a concious level as long as he has enough people to hate on though.