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.
@WWTH
Just had a quick Google of that Buchanan chap. Notice from his website hes associating himself with the AVFM and MGTOW lot (I know it’s inappropriate but I am soooooo patting myself on the back right now for learning all the terminology).
Funnily enough though, despite his page being the most read and influential one in the universe (might be paraphrasing a bit there, but not much) I’ve never heard of him
@ sunnysombrera
It appears he’s one of our own, so I’m afraid we wouldn’t be able to deport him. Maybe we can get him his own TV show in the States though; that’s how we got shut of Piers Morgan
“…identity politics…sexual identity politics…”
Hey Price? Those words don’t mean what you think they mean. And yeah, no shit sherlock, not being involved with kids is harder than being involved with kids — they’re messay snot covered tantrums… in an adorable little package that decent people love even if they haven’t a damned clue what that sticky stuff is.
Kids, they be sticky. They will pee on you. And puke. And probably poop too. They require dealing with jerks, and doctor visits, and an infinite amount of messes. But at the end of the day? That sticky messy kid is adorable. Exhausting, and frequently annoying, but adorable.
Alan: Oh no, don’t try to pawn Mike Buchanan off on us! We already have enough reality-challenged reactionary types in the USA already!
Perhaps you could convince him to move to some deserted island somewhere? You could even make a show out of it, the new Survivor>/em> or something. We could send Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter to keep him company.
Best description of children EVER
@ WWTH
@ Sparky
Cheers for the link WWTH. Must confess I was a little disappointed. I was hoping he might at least bring a little Brit perspective into his stuff but he’s just regurgitating the bog standard MRA crap. Even down to the snideiness. The thread did have a raccoon eating some grapes though; so on balance I enjoyed it.
The thing is though, that despite his claims to be part of a major movement I’d never heard of him until now. Admittedly I’ve only been following gender politics for a short time, but I do have a bit of an interest in politics generally and he’s not crossed my radar.
MRAs really don’t think men should have to do any work, do they?
Newsflash: children are a shit-ton of work. Just because culture says that women do the lion’s share, especially when the parents are together, doesn’t mean you get to foist it all off on your wife. Especially if you aren’t together any more.
And then complain that you are alienated from your children.
“I wanted to be a decent parent, but it turns out, it’s really goddamned expensive and inconvenient!”
Really, though, it probably is easier to juggle the work/parent thing when one has a subordinate who follows you from place to place, cares for the kids whenever you need, and basically adapts her life around yours in order to preserve the family peace. I mean, that does sound pretty nice, now that I think about it.
Anything short of that isn’t actually misandry, though.
Oh for fucks sake what planet is this man living on.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11395576/Men-are-now-objectified-more-than-women.html
He demonstrably shows that he doesn’t know what sexual objectification is. And to try and prove that the male version is “everywhere” he examples 50 Shades, Magic Mike, David Gundy and David Beckham underwear ads. That’s it. That’s all he’s got. And 50 Shades barely fucking counts.
His argument that “we men are also objectified in porn but you don’t hear us complaining!” is just…I need a desk to bang my head on.
But why should I be surprised. The Telegraph is the newspaper embodiment of an old white man shouting at his television. (The Daily Fail is an old white man shouting at everyone who passes his house, especially if they’re immigrants).
*weeps into her lace hanky* We will surely miss your insights, such as ‘parents who bugger off and have nothing to do with raising their kids have it much easier than parents who parent, if you consider it from an uncaring selfish standpoint harumph harumph blaggary bloo Atlas Shrugged them kiddos right outta his hair WOOT’.
@Alan Robertshaw Mike Buchanan used to stain the comment threads over at Ally Fogg’s blog as well, if you’re interested… though I haven’t been there in awhile, the comment threads could get pretty ugh. He thinks of himself… very highly. And often.
Nooooooo HTML gremlin WHYYYYY
“Mike Buchanan used to stain the comment threads over at Ally Fogg’s blog as well, if you’re interested”
Will there be raccoons eating grapes? If not might give it a miss.
Think I get what he’s about. I originally viewed the MRA types as a bit of a joke. On initially hearing about Gamergate for instance, I thought it might be just some variation on “Girls can’t understand the importance of the Kirk/Picard debate; and they give you cooties”.
But there’s just too much hate there for it to be amusing.
Yes, dedicated parents do indeed put more effort into kids. And I know from experience that the amount of work that goes into caring for small children is a significantly more onerous burden in terms of time and effort than a typical job (it always struck me as disingenuous when guys would say childcare is not real work — this could only come from someone who has never done it). However, you’d think that this being the case, courts would encourage men to take on more of that responsibility, and offer them some relief for doing so. But in fact it’s the opposite. Fathers are discouraged not only by the natural difficulties imposed on them by parenthood, but by added artificial ones imposed by courts.
Not nearly as many as I did in the beginning, but as time went on she did have to make some concessions, although the balance remains in her favor (in Washington state custodial parents have an enormous advantage). As for dealing with me being unpleasant, sure, some, but mostly she used other people to deal with me, such as her parents, her lawyer and her paramour, when I was most upset.
I don’t think Paul sought his daughter out. As is typically the case, she found him because children often feel a need to know their origin. And I honestly don’t think Paul asked for anything, but I don’t know the specifics. It isn’t that he was using her so much as that he felt justified in cutting her out of his life. His support for “paper abortions” makes sense in light of this story. Personally, I couldn’t do that, but that’s because I grew up without really knowing my father for the first fourteen or so years of my life, and that was always a source of shame and sadness that I felt lowered my status among my peers. Actually, I was right about that. It does have that effect, despite incessant denials from the usual selfish suspects, and it’s an entirely natural phenomenon.
Why do people here assume I or other guys who oppose feminism think having tons of girlfriends is awesome? Maybe it’s projection — I don’t know. All I can say is that I was very popular with women in “that way” as a youth and it brought me nothing but trouble. Today I look back on it with a lot of regret and shame. Is it better to love or to get laid? What if you got laid, but what you were really looking for was love? Nowadays, I try not to remember all the faces, because at my age it’s depressing to think of what I lost by simply getting off. I certainly would rather my kids don’t waste their youth that way.
No, the relative with a sob story isn’t Paul. Paul’s the guy who is humble in humble circumstances, and prideful when he has the upper hand. He’s a typical American radical individualist and fits right into his profoundly selfish generation — and that includes the women.
Because you said this:
And this:
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).
Paul Elam is humble?
Humble?
What?
He’s about as humble as Kanye West.
Are you fucking kidding me? You’re saying this about a man who has blamed women or feminism for his woes EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. He calls for the doxxing and harassing of women who even slightly cross him by criticising the movement or simply looking like they did. He silently deletes posts that contain blatant lies as soon as he is rumbled. His response to the BuzzFeed article – which talked not just about his past but his financial activities and even some of his past actions – was to say “my ex wife was a lying drug user who cheated on me”. That’s it. He didn’t even address anything else.
Sorry, correction: he did address a couple of other points but very briefly and basically dismissed them as an attempt to slander him.
Maybe in your corner of the world… certainly wasn’t any sort of mark of shame in mine when I was younger. Certainly wasn’t uncommon either. Still isn’t. I’d say it’s not at all a natural phenomenon, but rather a product of the social mores/values etc that surrounded you at the time. Why assume the entire world experiences the same thing you did/felt? “I experiences this, therefore it is how things are” is, at best, inaccurate.
I am tempted to ask you how you go from there to fingering feminism as the core problem (and also to ask what natural difficulties are imposed on men by parenthood), but I suspect your answer would make my head hurt. If you do answer, would you be so kind as to accompany your response with a cute cat pic?* I fear it’s the only way I’ll cope.
* I will also accept a baby orangutan pic. That goes for all of you.
WWTH, that isn’t fair. Kanye is actually talented and successful.
Also, he usually has a point. Beyonce is the queen, after all.
Paul Elam doesn’t care about black people! (Or women.)
*Awkward cut to Mike Myers.*
@weirwoodtreehugger & sunnysombrera
You guys are missing my point. He’s humble when it serves his interests, and prideful when he can be. This is what I, personally, find distasteful about him (on top of that rejecting the kids thing), since it contravenes my sense of virtue, but I understand that you have other issues with him.
Pretty sure “Sexual identity politics” pertains to LGBT+ rights, not feminism.
Yeah, the whole hating women thing kinda sticks in our craw.
@sunnysombrera: I know Gamergate is old news but this was just too good not to mention: http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2v2kv6/gamergate_tries_to_prove_women_are_less/
No, it doesn’t give him more leverage in the future. A father who maintains a healthy relationship with his family through a divorce has a far better position for… whatever it is you’re talking about gaining leverage for. Being an asshole and blowing your kids off burns bridges and makes it so that the only possible reason they would want to rekindle some form of relationship for you is if their desire to know you is stronger than their repulsion at you for what you did.
“Use it as a ploy to lower and even eliminate child support.” Child support laws don’t have a legal exception for assholes, as far as I know. IANAL, but I’m pretty sure. No, what you’re talking about here is being so abrasive and difficult to deal with that the woman decides to settle simply out of frustration. Again, completely burning bridges.
As for “all his time to himself,” sure. But don’t you also believe fathers seek to rekindle relationships with their kids because they would feel unfulfilled otherwise? And anyway, that time is going to sour if you got it by being a huge asshole to everyone you care/cared about. If you have any shred of decency in you, anyways.
Being an asshole is only the best option if you fixate solely on time and monetary costs and ignore practically everything else that makes relationships important.