Never let it be said that the Men’s Rights movement does nothing to help men. Earlier this week, A Voice for Men’s CEO Paul Elam announced the launch of a new service for men. That service is that Elam, a noted former psychology major in college, will listen to you talk shit about women for an hour over Skype for $90.
Elam’s fans are excited to have a new talking point.
So what exactly does Elam’s new service, dubbed “An Ear for Men,” offer the discerning man who wants to pay someone who is not a licenced mental health professional $90 to listen to them for an hour on Skype? In his post announcing the service on AVFM, Elam explains that
Ostensibly the services provided will focus on life issues faced by men.
Ostensibly? “Ostensibly” is an adverb meaning “apparently or purportedly, but perhaps not actually.” Is this actually a phone sex service pretending to be a “consulting” business?
Services to be provided range from high-conflict relationships and divorce to substance abuse and other issues that disproportionately affect men.
Wait, Elam is saying that he will provide “high-conflict relationships and divorce to substance abuse?”
In the past, as that infamous Buzzfeed profile made clear, the often-divorced Elam has provided “high-conflict relationships and divorce” to women for free. Now men can get some of that Elam magic for themselves.
On the Ear for Men website, Elam spells out in a little more detail what his “services” will consist of. Of “Anxiety” he writes
Anxiety is one of the most common “mental health” problems worldwide. …
There are medications that can help reduce the symptoms of anxiety, some of which are either ineffective or addictive or both. …
The causes of anxiety disorders are not known. There are, however, many good reasons to believe that it is a problem rooted in brain chemistry, which is why I put “mental health” in scare quotes. …
As medical science develops a better understanding of anxiety we may see the day when it is treated much more effectively or even cured in most people. In the meantime there is no cure. There are, however, ways to cope with anxiety which help most people overcome the worst of its effects.
For more on that, you can read through the articles and links on this site dealing with anxiety.
There aren’t any articles or links provided.
If direct personal service to address this problem is what you desire, feel free to schedule an appointment with Paul.
“Direct personal service?” Now it sounds like he’s running an escort service.
On the pages devoted to most of Elam’s other “services,” from Anger Management to High Conflict Relationships, he offers … nothing. The pages are blank.
In a preface of sorts to his page on Self Respect, which he posted on May 28th, Elam explains that
This site is under construction. We are still populating it with content and working on the scheduling system. Thank you for bearing with us until the site is complete and services are available. We are hoping for official launch within three weeks of today’s date.
Wait, what? I guess you’ll have to cough up $90 to ask Elam how it is he has managed to launch this new site without actually launching it yet.
He starts off his discussion of “self respect” by writing:
Notice I did not title this with the tried and true psychobabble of “self-esteem.”
The URL for the page is anearformen.com/services/self-esteem, which suggests that he did in fact title his post “self-esteem” before thinking better of it. (WordPress — the blogging software that Elam uses for the site — gives blog posts URLs based on the title you give them; if you change the title later, the original URL remains unless you take steps to change it.)
It should be easy enough to schedule an hour with Elam in which to discuss these matters or any other questions you might have; as far as I can tell from looking through his appointments calendar, he doesn’t seem to have booked any appointments yet. Unless some poor soul has been scheduling appointments every day at 8:30 PM.
Inspired by Elam’s example here, I have decided to open my own “consulting” business, Three Ears for Men and Women and Maybe Cats.
Elam provides only a single ear for men, at the exorbitant price of $90 per ear, per hour. I provide THREE ears, at the low, low price of only $50 per ear-hour.
Here are the three ears.
And here’s how it works: Whenever you feel you have something to get off your chest, come to this web page, scroll down to the ears here, and talk to them for an hour. Then send me $150 on Paypal.
Never let it be said that I do nothing to help men. I mean, I’m a men, or at least a man, and I could use $150.
H/T: Margaret Pless, aka @idlediletante
http://www.amazon.com/Say-Goodbye-Crazy-Restore-Sanity-ebook/dp/B00TLIFCQ4
If you want to get a sense of the kind of advice you might get from Paul Elam playing the role of a therapist, check out his latest e-book. Cowritten with Dr. T, “say goodbye to crazy” is a self-help book about how to hate your ex-wife.
What I liked best was how they repeatedly refer to all ex-wives as “Crazy”, with a capital C, as if that’s like a person’s name.
Oh, and FWIW, Elam was evidently a substance abuse counselor of some sort for some time; he quit or was tossed out of the profession, I don’t know the details, at least a decade ago. I don’t know what sort of educational/training/certification was required for his job or what he had. The bureau of labor statistics says that for drug counselors “educational requirements range from a high school diploma and certification to a master’s degree.”
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/community-and-social-service/substance-abuse-and-behavioral-disorder-counselors.htm#tab-4
Marinerachel: Elam did addiction counseling during the 90’s. By ’99 he quit to become a truck driver.
Thanks you two.
I refer to my last boyfriend as Stupid. Literally, that’s the name I’ve given him.
M was right: this gets more and more cultlike with each passing day.
Its interesting to me that this could potentially be a legitimate service to men if it were not being handled by someone wildly unqualified and going directly to his pocket. I don’t think anyone would honestly argue that MRAs don’t need some therapy
Bahahahahaha!
As for the first sentence, that’s clearly BS. Just because some of the causes are unknown doesn’t mean all of them are. A basic Google search for “anxiety disorders” tells me that much.
And he mentions brain chemistry in the very next sentence! But the involvement of brain chemistry isn’t “known”? It’s only “believed”? Hm, yeah, it’s not like neurologists have studied the chemistry of the brain or anything. They just believe things.
…Wait a minute. Is he saying that “a problem rooted in brain chemistry” DOESN’T have anything to do with mental health? How would that work?
@ epitome of incomprehensibility:
If I could guess his meaning, I think he’s saying that if you have a mental illness like Schizophrenia or Bipolar disorder you need to visit a real psychiatrist and he has nothing against it. But if you have PTSD or a heroin addiction you should just “Man-up” and pay Paul Elam $90 an hour for the privilege of hearing him call you a wuss.
So, he has no legal protection for confidentiality of his patients, no? IANAL, but it seems funny to me that a wife in a divorce could use discovery to get Paul Elam’s notes to see what the husband said.
I think I’d rather discuss my problems with Dr Tiny Kitty. I’d get more coherent answers.
Hi there. Been lurking for a while. Hope everyone is well. Anyway Does Paul Elam actually believe all the nonsense he spews or is it just a con to extract money from men who have been suckered in? Also ‘There are medications that can help reduce the symptoms of anxiety, some of which are either ineffective or addictive or both. …’ So Paul what is it? Can they reduce the symptoms of anxiety, or are they ineffective?
That’s a pretty good point opium. It’s the same reason it’s a bad idea to do Scientology auditing. There’s zero confidentiality, and no protection from abuses like blackmail.
@mrkfoster – And such a privilege! Why would anyone turn that down?
Ohoho like Paul Elam is gonna take notes.
I’ve noticed this before in an old AVFM article on BPD. Elam seems to be some sort of dualist about the mind/body question. He draws a line between “brain” problems and “mental” problems. This leads to absurdities, such as apparently believing that your thought patterns do not affect your brain chemistry, or that problems without “physical” causes aren’t real. Sorry, Paul, your mind is your brain (or, minimally, your mind supervenes on your brain.)
Also, “Anear Formen” sounds like a fantasy novel protagonist.
Ostensibly sounds like what we psychiatrists* call a “Freudian slip”
http://www.thedomesticatedbachelor.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/cat-freud-300×225.jpg
*According to Paulie people with bachelor’s in psychology are qualified to act as psychiatrists now. So.
Pandapool,
A Stomach For Men – A charity that teaches men how to subsist on totes alpha dry chicken.
Aha hahahaa ! I like your comic writing David!
I had a friend who had advertised as a counselor for many years. She had no credentials but was a wise person and got along all right until the state licensing board sent her a cease-and-desist and forced her to stop. It was a hard blow for her. But there’s a reason people who hold themselves out as qualified to counsel people with emotional problems have to be licensed. Maybe in Texas where Elam is it’s legal though? Anyway my friend began calling herself a psychic and got right back into it that way.
@WWTH
A Liver for Men – A charity/halfway house that helps men get over alcoholism.
A Chance for Men – A shelter for men and boys who have been abused.
A Coat for Men – A shelter that helps clothe the homeless.
Some Teeth for Men – A charity that helps youths and men get regular dentist check-ups.
A Finger for Men – A free mobile clinic for prostate check ups, prostate disease and cancer screenings.
A Taste for Men – A man-eating feminist cookbook. (Did I grammar right, epitome?)
$400+ for a ticket to a bare bones conference, now $90 an hour for bloviating misogyny and terrible advice? Is Paul’s GF tightening the purse strings or something?
If he gets few customers, will he blame his failure on feminism? (As if I need to ask).
I’m quite speechless, really. I see a fantastic counsellor for £15 an hour and she gives practical advice on dealing with problems, AND she helps with all the emotional stuff too. (But then we’re both feeemales, so…) $90 an hour is just…I mean come on now.
Elam is just soooooo burned out from last year’s conference he has no energy to do anything except start up a side scam and organize an invitation-only retreat*. Methinks he’s hard up for cash since this year’s overpriced conference didn’t fly.
*At an undisclosed location because we feminists are such a big threat!
I’m trying not to think about the potential damage he could do meddling in other people’s lives, given his extreme hatred of women and anger management problems.
As usual, everything Paulie does is worse, but far more expensive.
It’s like paying ten bucks for imitation cheese (which tastes like wax and death), when there’s some good, all-natural provolone for three.
I’d rather take the provo.
@mike
Indeed.
It seems to me that this is really common. People who have some kind of mental illness sometimes say that their problem is real because it has to do with brain chemistry, and for that reason it can’t be solved by anything but actual medicines.
I get why people fall into this way of talking… As I’ve said before, I have a mental illness myself (some schizophrenia-like symptoms and also, in periods, abnormal moods – don’t have a specific label, but if I had it would probably be something like schizo-affective), but it tends to get regarded as a “real” problem. People with depression, on the other hand, are told so much shit, like they should just start taking regular walks or meditation or pull themselves up by their bootstraps and things are gonna get better. Talking about how your depression is something physical in the brain, as opposed to merely being about flimsy mental stuff, is a sort of defense towards that shit. And, I mean, I agree that the kind of advice people hand out to depressives are mostly bullshit, and that a lot of people need medication, but the reason is not that depression is a physical thing and so are the medicines, whereas lifestyle changes or therapy or whatnot are too immaterial and non-physical to be able to affect the physical brain.