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
Three human ears? I’ve got eight cat ears in my own home that I can talk at! Silky ears with magnificent floof growing out of them!
Yeah, I thought of crisis pregnancy centers too. CA is starting to crack down on those and have made it illegal for parents to force their kids into pray the gay away type “therapies.” Hopefully the rest of the country follows suit.
Well, those two things have America’s extremely warped ideas about “Religious freedom” on their side, while Elam doesn’t. The law only doesn’t apply if the life-ruining assholes in question wraps themselves in Republican Jesus.
*Wrap themselves. Remember to coffee before posting, me.
Ironic? Laughable? Inane? I could go on…
I don’t generally comment here, but I wanted to bring this to attention: a blog post wherein the “philosophy of rape” people advocate raping girls (“harlots”) as young as 9.
From the comments:
The last one is Paul himself explaining how even Dr. TP won’t be involved because of the An Ear for Men’s website “men only” rule. Yes, a website set up by Elam to hoodwink his fans out of 90 bucks for hour of his useless advice is truly a rare male space for healing.
Shut up Woody.
The men only male space rule led to this amazing exchange from the comments.*
Wow, lots of things went wrong blockquote wise.
The men only male space rule led to this amazing exchange.*
“Men who’ve spent years studying the male psychology without ideological bias”. hahahahahahahahahahahahaha ::gasping for breath::
*”Gay and transgender men are as welcome as any other man… The objective here is to come together as a community of men, regardless of sexual orientation, religion, lack of religion, color, national origin or any other reason people in this culture typically use to draw lines between each other.
The one exception to this may be feminists. Feminism is by its nature toxic to men (and women). It is hard for me to reconcile a feminist presence here with the need for men escape dysfunctional ideas about their nature.”
mrkfoster
Wasn’t there a thing not too long ago from them about making sure any mental health professional they saw knowing all about gynocentricism? This saves them from all the legwork of going to office after office, and withstanding all that laughter… They already know Paul is familiar the evils of women and our gynocentric society! And they don’t even have to worry about making sure he’s licensed. They already know he isn’t. I think that’s worth all the extra money.
Gynocentrism.
Hey! Remember when psychology was all about teh menz, led by teh menz, and for the benefit of teh menz? When all feeeeemales in analysis were taught that their mental problems were all down to the fact that they had no penis, that they felt castrated, and that everything they said and did was penis envy, looking to regain said lost penis? And that the best way to do it was have lots and lots of babies, all strapping boys, like their father, Gaston?
Yeah. Gynocentrism. It’s what the whole branch was based on, eh?
@Tessa
So, he builds up a loyal fan base, tells them not to go to any therapist that doesn’t know about “gynocentrism”, then just a few days later, offers his services as a “consultant” for $40-70 more an hour than a therapist would.
I guess that’s one way to deal with these guys’ money problems.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/well-there-you-have-it.gif
The charlatan finding new ways to scam. No surprise there.
All I’m saying is that whoever called shenanigans is banned from there now.
Actually 90$ is cheap here in Canada.
My psychologist before the move to the farm cost VAC 120$ an hour. Mind you she was pure gold, easily worth three times that. But even if I paid out of pocket, with my private coverage I’d be out about 20$.
You can bet neither VAC nor my private insurance are going to cover seeing this snake oil salesman.
Wow, $90 was exactly what my therapist charged, if I remember correctly. On the plus side, she actually helped me. On the minus side, I had no guarantee that she took the epidemic of false rape accusations and crazy ex-girlfriends seriously. She even treated known feminists.
Am I the only one who kind of wants to pony up the benjamins and find out what amazing insights into psychology, self-respect, and the epidemic of crazy ex-wives Elam has to offer? I mean, I can’t personally benefit from his expertise because I’m a girl, but I could put my one-year-old on the line. Or my parakeet. They’re both dudes.
I don’t know about the rest of the country, but in california there’s several different levels of legitimate “licensed” counseling- marriage and family therapists, one for social work, one for children. If he used to work with addicts and abusers he could very well have something along those lines for one state or another.
How this would work on the internet, and across jurisdictions with different regulations- now that’s a more interesting, and more difficult, question.
But did she know about gynocentrism?
If someone wants to pay for it, I will gladly book an appointment with Elam. I can even tell him some stories about my troubled relationship with my ex-girlfriend and see what happens, though I’d prefer to spend most of the time seeing how he recommends managing my current anxiety and financial troubles.
I know that the JFS (Jewish Family Services) center provided counseling for twenty dollars an hour if you couldn’t afford to pay more.
The issue with confidentiality might be less Paul wanting to blackmail, and more a lack of legal protections for people who subpoena his notes. Again though, IANAL.
Pretty damn sure counseling people with substance abuse problems or mental illness without a license is really fucking illegal. You can be a “coach” without a license but those are for healthy people. He’s telling men he can help them with substance abuse and mental health problems and dysfunctional relationships.
http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/practicing-clinical-psychology-without-a-license.htm
Who would pay for phone sex with Paul Elam? Other than Esmay, who has probably already been paying for years before this new service.
Yeah. He probably needs to be reported to the state board for whatever state he’s in. Consulting psychologists are a thing but are usually licenced unless the are like working in an industrial-occupational role. The fact that he’s claiming to be able to help men with substance abuse, mental health, and family dysfunction AND he’s charging for these services???? He’s very likely breaking the law. What state does he live in? Send the links to their state licencing board and let them sort it out.
He could probably avoid legal consequences if he weren’t charging for his “services” because that implies the person is knowledgeable, skilled, and licensed. But I doubt his “ear for men” would be listening if there were no money changing hands.