So this is an … interesting reaction to that Buzzfeed piece about Paul Elam. And by “interesting” I mean “WTF?”
Over on The Spearhead — remember The Spearhead, home to some of the crankiest misogynists on the Internet? — our old friend WF Price offers a rather unique analysis of Elam’s life story.
Price admits right off the bat that Elam is indeed as much of an “asshole” as the Buzzfeed article makes him out to be, snarkily commenting that this fact “isn’t exactly news to anyone who has dealt with him personally, or read his articles.” And then he goes on to blame Elam’s assholery on feminism.
Wat.
Well, as Price sees it, Elam hasn’t exactly suffered for being an asshole. The fact that he basically got away with abandoning his daughter proves
that telling your wife and kids to screw off when your marriage goes bad is a better strategy if you’re concerned about yourself than trying to be a niceguy. What could be a more damning indictment of feminism than that?
Um, do you really want an answer to that?
Meanwhile, Price argues, the fact that Elam has had three failed marriages shows that ladies just love assholes. No, really. According to Price, Elam’s life story
proves that being an asshole doesn’t torpedo one’s prospects with women. Quite the opposite, in fact: Paul’s many walks down the aisle are testament to the fact that there’s something about the guy that contemporary women find appealing. Elam’s a major hit with women to this day.
Checkmate, feminism!
Price then works me into the equation, for some reason.
And I don’t write this out of envy; on the contrary, I think his popularity with women has probably been his biggest problem in life (Futrelle wouldn’t understand).
Price concludes with this, er, zinger:
So if feminists were to say to me that Paul Elam proves that MRAs are terrible people, I’d respond by saying “he’s the product of your philosophy, not mine.”
It will take someone more versed in formal logic to explain exactly what logical fallacies Price is committing here, or if he’s somehow come up with a new logical fallacy all his own.
“What? They’re saying my hero Paul Elam just blames everything wrong in his life on women? How can I defend him?… I’ve got it! I’ll just blame women for it somehow, just need to make up how and then post it!”
These people clearly start with the answer “women/feminists are to blame” and work backwards from that.
You took the words right out of my mouth, Kootiepatra.
Sure, abandoning his family saved Elam some money. But it’s obvious from listening to or reading his words that he is not a happy person. Maybe if he had decided to become a better person and be a loving husband and father, he’d be a happier person.
Selfish and cruel people are always looking out for their own interests but caring and kind people are the ones who seem to be happier.
I mean, I’m depression prone and insecure and I’m still happier than Elam because I have a few people I can count on who can count on me back.
Would anyone of us here trade places with him? I doubt it. The phrase “money can’t buy happiness” has become cliche for a reason. Because it’s true.
@ceebarks,I believe Price’s ideal scenario is that there be no divorce. Paul’s ex-wife would have continued taking care of the kids and rubbing his manly feet upon request. Paul would have continued to do whatever the heck he wanted to do, but he would do it while married, which is Price’s definition of a good father.
New England has been burdened with too much snow. This is the fault of feminists because they teach women to be hypergamous. Men have to go out and earn a bunch of money and buy stuff for women. The manufacture of the products and the gas required to ship them cause pollution. Pollution causes global warming. Global warming causes extreme weather. Therefore feminists caused people in Boston to have to do extra shoveling. Therefore women are bad.
But joke’s on them because the alpha males they like won’t shovel the walk just so feminazis can safely walk in their Louboutin stilettos. Feminists are trapped indoors now because all the men are going their own way.
Wow! Anyone can play this game!
Viscaria,
Price is also saying that people who have only been married to one person are less popular than someone who has been married to three people. Does that mean that people with 4 marriages are more appealing than people who have only been married 3 times? Do people who live longer take a penalty because of the unfair advantage they have to outlive a spouse? How exactly does Price put this equation together? What are the rules? Why does it have to be multiple marriages? Why not all ltrs? Do the marriages have to happen consecutively or can they happen all at once? Are polygamous cults in the southwestern states proof that creepy old dirt farmers are “popular” with teenage sister wives? Is that feminism’s fault too?
So many questions… 0.o
“New England has been burdened with too much snow. This is the fault of feminists”
I thought freak weather conditions were caused by gay marriage. I’m no climatologist mind.
It’s like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, only you replace Kevin Bacon with “EVIL FEMINISTS”.
@ceebarks:
“plus, what would WTFP have thought was a fair outcome for Elam in the divorce?”
Why, for Elam to skip off back to bachelorhood, never having to pay a penny for his daughter in child support, and to waltz back into her life and be welcomed with open arms when he needed the ego boost of playing Daddy and Grandpa.
You know, reading about Elam’s family history makes me think that there’s probably a need/want out there for some kind of support network for men who walked away from their kids for whatever reason (young, scared, drinking/drugging, didn’t care, whatever) and regret it years later. Something to help them process their feelings and accept responsibility for the estrangement without framing it as “B*tch took my kids/the court system’s agin me”, and to help them face the possibility of rejection if they do reach out to their kids. If MRAs weren’t so busy spamming college websites with false rape reports and buying David fake twitter supporters, that’s something they could be doing.
yikes, man. If so, he’s a bigger idiot than I’d have thought. Enabling an addict is not a good move… sometimes there’s truly nothing you can do but let them go, which is what Susan (wisely) did.
His marriage didn’t just “go bad” for mysterious reasons, and the same things that made it a bad idea to stay married to him also made it a bad idea to continue having him involved in the family. At some level, Elam even seems to have understood this at the time he wrote his bio, as he states that drug and alcohol abuse very often hurts families. Though suddenly I’m struck by the fact that he seemed to think addiction was such a “family issue”:
So I hope he wasn’t trying to blame the families and put the responsibility for recovery on the sober spouses, ’cause I can see him doing exactly that. “Is it really your fault you drink so much? Maybe the way your wife treats you is what really forces you into this pattern. Let’s bring her in and make it very clear that you need more footsy rubs and less washing the dishes, ok?”
So, a kitten LARPing that one frustrating level in Super Mario Sunshine makes more sense than Price’s argument?
Yeah, pretty much.
It ultimately just boils down to “Feminists stacked the courts against men, so Elam choosing abandonment rather than ‘martyrdom’ is feminism’s fault, and women like bad boys more than nice guys which caused Elam to have access to three women to have failed marriages with.”
All you can really do is say “nope, sorry, you’re wrong. At every level and every step, you are wrong.” Failed relationships have existed as long as relationships, and how exactly can you say women are attracted to a “bad boy” when one of Elam’s wives swore she wanted nothing to do with him ever again?
Elam’s situation is the product of Elam and his personality. His marriages and the positive aspects of his relationships result from his ability to hid his assholish nature for short periods of time.
I’d go with either argumentum ad merda taurorum or argumentum ad quis futuere. Also known as “Look what you made me do!”
Considering Elam’s history of abuse, that’s…a really unfortunate choice of words.
Well, of course Elam being a selfish asshole is feminism’s fault. Everything is feminsim’s fault. War, poverty, unemployment, violence, sad boners, environmental destruction, climate change, me tripping this morning over the stack of books I keep by my bed; all feminsim’s fault. Damn you feminism!
MRAs:
Paul Elam is a jerk and women married him. Clearly proof that women love evil men, thus feminism is evil because allowed their own agency women will only get hurt/give sexes to their wrong men.
Paul Elam’s ex was a jerk and Paul Elam married her. Clearly proof that men are ensnared and put upon by evil, lying women and that is why they should be allowed to control women.
http://www.moviesoundscentral.com/wavs/raising_arizona/Arizona7.wav
Poo. No link.
@Cyberwulf:
That would be a great service, but MRAs would be the absolute worst people to do it. They’re way too into reinforcing the “B*tch took my kids/the court system’s against me” to even begin to dream of hoping of countering it. They’d probably be congratulating the dudes for getting out without being shackled by child support (if that’s what happened) while echoing outrage that they aren’t able to just show up in their kids’ life again and be completely accepted.
@kirbywarp Exactly, the point at which Elam became a bad boy (ie allowed the “nice” facade to fall away) is the point at which Susan decided enough was enough. All it means is that he’s able to conceal his asshole nature long enough to lure women into being with him.
It’s like arguing that mice are attracted to the trap, not the cheese.
To be honest, I had forgotten that The Spearhead existed. They used to be one of the main focuses on this blog. Oddly, Price is drawing an “old vs young” line in the linked post, saying Elam’s type of message doesn’t resonate with the younger crowd. I wonder when that dynamic cropped up.
If this dumbass was a Tea Partier, he’d be blaming everything on Obama instead.
Which is it to be young feller?
http://media.cinemasquid.com/blu-ray/titles/raising-arizona/18957/screenshot-med-33.jpg
He even got that, but has (at least temporarily) fucked it back up. lol
@kirbywarp maybe AVFM got a lot bigger than The Spearhead and that Price resents it a little? It makes sense he’d try to carve out a nichier niche in the niche.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants:
That’s a good way to put it.
They think of the world as if all men were either rich celebrities/business executives, cubicle or blue-collar workers, or biker dudes, with flat personalities to match. They’re worldview isn’t sophisticated enough to handle the idea that a man could be a three-dimensional character that is able to put on a mask in public.
Well, as far as I can tell, the logic is that he´s measuring the man by his own metrics and finds him agreeable. Not admirable, mind you, because bedding three women with minimal emotional investment on his part is a rather low number for a PUA, as far as I can gather.
The bit about claiming that Feminism made Elam harks back to that comment how it destroyed the “traditional family”, we know how they imagine that one to have been, and links into earlier comments about how men wouldn’t be abandoning their families if only wifes were still husband’s subservient slaves for all intent and purpose.
“Feminists are trapped indoors now because all the men are going their own way.”
This feminist is perfectly happy not having to go out in that shit! Less happy that something something the radiators will be working again shortly — aka the heat will be back on once the ancient system acknowledges that it got fixed (more a minor snafu than a problem, but brr is it chilly!)
That’s no surprise, is it?
According to MRA / TRP crowd, everything that’s wrong in the world, and in their lives specifically, can and should be blamed on women in general and feminists in particular — every single thing.
So of course Elam’s dysfunction is women’s fault — if anything, the Buzzfeed article has made it crystal clear that women are still plotting to destroy him. /s
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