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So earlier today, A Voice for Men’s head honcho, the neither lovely nor talented Paul Elam, threatened “yellow journalists” who allegedly lie about his so-called Men’s Human Rights Movement with, well, something pretty dire-sounding. I just can’t tell you exactly what.
[UPDATE: An archived version of Elam’s deleted post has been found; see here for a post on what it contains.]
In an angry and ungrammatical tweet (archived here), Elam warned:
Elam spelled out what he had in mind in a “bulletin” on his site with the ominous title “The cost of libeling MHRAs is about to go up.”
But whatever was in this post was evidently so extreme (and possibly unethical) that even some of Elam’s followers were a bit concerned by it.
Elam thought better of the post himself, taking it down and issuing a rare apology. In the place where the post originally appeared, one now finds this:
What you are reading here now is not what was posted under this title earlier. What was here was a mistake on my part.
Afer several years of being attacked, quite unfairly, by media ideologues the most recent incident was published in my home town. After working all night, as I sometimes do, I was tired and obviously not at my best. I lost my cool and posted and tweeted something that was inconsistant with my own values, with the ethics we adhere to at this website and damaging to the efforts we undertake to serve men and boys.
Presumably the “incident … published in my home town” that Elam has in mind is a recent piece in the Houston Press that put Elam in tenth place on a list of “The 10 Most Embarrassing Houstonians.”
Elam responded to the piece a few days ago with a post of his own, declaring it a pack of lies and mocking the author for dressing up as Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Show. But apparently it was still eating at him. Maybe one of his neighbors said something to him about it.
Elam also seems to have been set off by a little Twitter battle with radio host Nicole Sandler, who at some point had GQ writer and Dartmouth professor Jeff Sharlet on her show. Elam has been gunning for Sharlet ever since he wrote an absolutely devastating account of AVFM’s first-and-probably-only conference last summer. Earlier today, Elam Tweeted:
https://twitter.com/AVoiceForMen/status/635418614275792896
(Here’s an archived version of the entire exchange.)
So what exactly did Elam threaten to do to those he thinks have “libelled” him?
The Tweets of some of his concerned followers may give us a few clues. Here’s one highly suggestive Twitter conversation (archived here). It starts with former AVFMer Dean Esmay, apparently an enthusiastic supporter of whatever it was Elam had proposed.
In another Tweet, TheMen’sFront compared Elam’s proposed strategy to Register-Her.com, AVFM’s notorious fake “offenders registry” that posted profiles of feminists alongside those of convicted murderers and pedophiles and suggested that they too deserved to be jailed.
If anyone has a screenshot or otherwise archived version of Elam’s original post, please send it along to me.
Even though he’s taken the offending post offline, it’s clear he was planning something sketchy enough to make even some of his followers worry. Given that Elam and his cultish followers already libel and harass AVFM’s assorted enemies with abandon, while claiming to be warriors of Truth, it seems clear to me that whatever he had in mind was fairly dire.
I don’t think Elam fully recognizes what a giant gift he has just given anyone who ever decides to sue him for libel.
@ Moocow
Ooh well done sir!
Is he annoyed that he only scraped in at tenth place in that list of embarrassing Houstonians? If he goes ahead with his plan, he could easily make it into the top five next year.
http://simpsonswiki.com/w/images/thumb/c/cd/Edna_Krabappel_Marcia_Wallace_tribute.jpg/180px-Edna_Krabappel_Marcia_Wallace_tribute.jpg
Oh man, nice joke, Paulie. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
His followers were absolutely right about how it would backfire. Even he was intimidated by his own threat. Hilarious.
@Moocow,
I also just had a little looksy at Paul’s rebuttal. Funny, in regard to his ersatz white ribbon campaign site he states:
‘Neither myself nor Erin Pizzey have taken a single penny from anyone in donations to the site. There is not even a donation button to be found there.’
Yet when you click on the link he provides, there’s a donate button, right there. Admittedly these donations are only being collected to form a ‘war chest’ against possible legal actions, but when did AVFM last take a case to court? That Honey Badger business seems to have fizzled out along with the fundraiser.
Though, I am also a bit puzzled at why Elam’s followers are taking exception to this plan when the MRAs and their close relatives the ‘gators have been slinging muck, harrassment, and libel at individual women in their sights for YEARS now. I suppose I’m just surprised that they’re smart enough to realize that going after large publications that have money and political clout is significantly more dangerous than screaming anonymous threats at individual women would be. And maybe they’re also leery about subjecting men to the level of harassment that they are totally fine with shoving onto women.
If Elam specified “everyone they know” as women they would be all for it.
I put up a new post about the deleted post, now that we’ve got the actual text of it.
snorkmaiden, which link are you talking about? I know that whiteribbon.org did originally have a donate button, but going there today I didn’t see one. Am I missing something?
I like how Elam assumes everyone has bitter exes with lots of embarrassing dirt on them. No, honey, that’s just you.
I’ve just read the Houston article that got Paul’s boxers in a bunch. I notice none of the other nine people on the list have turned up in the comments section accompanied by their flying monkeys, could it be that Paul is just a little bit insecure?
When Tila Tequila is more mature than you, you have a problem.
Well, dang. I was hoping to hear more from Clown Car Brigade country…
What if they’re just skulls?
@Flint: I think Paul still has some skeletons… Although a lot of this is in response to some of his skeletons coming out of the closet, I think.
Oh, Paulie… no one posts lies about you, or takes things out of context. We just easily quote you the many, many, maaaaaany times you forget to don what I affectionately refer to as your “human suit” and do the whole song and dance where you act sort-of-civil and like you actually give a shit about real men’s issues. You just make it so easy when you forget the facade so often and let your true ugliness show for all of the internet to see.
If I’m being honest, I wouldn’t mind having a collection of skeletons in my closet. There’s so much you can learn from bones, as well as tons of stuff you could do with them!
I’d like to maybe make some real bone Bone Charms from Dishonored someday with all the metal work and rings and the like. *sigh* That’d be cool…
Also, and I’m just wondering, isn’t Esmay calling people “Mandarins” racist as hell? Because I’m pretty sure that is.
Oh, and suing someone for libel or slander is actually very hard. Especially when you can’t prove they slandered or libeled you because they quoted you directly. :/
@Paradoxical Intention
Here you are! http://www.skullstore.ca/
Is Paul Elam a scientologist? The “fair game” thing practiced by Scientologists has been around since L Ron Hubbard and co.’s “Operation Snow White”…
LRH also targeted Asians (in general, sometimes specific) with his racism.
@David,
maybe Elam took it down, or the image he links to is old? If I can find it I’ll post it to the new thread.
@David,
he’s changed the link since last night, now when I click on it it takes me to the Wikipedia page. Last night it went to their white ribbon site, and there was a donate button requesting money for potential legal fees. Should have screen capped, sorry 🙁
Ah, Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, how I missed you.
The one thing that annoys me the most about how manosphere-types constantly go on about “lies and slander!!!” is how it means that impressionable people on the internet will look at stories involving them and go, “Oh, well maybe they’re just being taken out of context.”
And then you start seeing otherwise-mostly-well-meaning people begin conflating Tumblrites with all of feminism and the whole conversation goes to hell because of “but BOTH SIDES DO IT” nonsense.
So it’s actually about ethics?!?!?!?
When David Irving’s career and reputation ended up being destroyed by a libel action, a lot of people assumed that he must have been the defendant. Actually, he was the plaintiff, and this was an unexpected but immensely welcome by-product of him trying (and rather spectacularly failing) to silence Penguin Books.
Why I’ve been reminded of this story just now I can’t imagine.
*looks at the site*
http://replygif.net/i/765.gif
*looks at the price tags*
http://cdn4.teen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/suite-life-of-zack-and-cody-london-fainting.gif
Well…yes and no. Mandarins were the ruling class in pre-modern China. So he’s apparently accusing journos who cite him, Paulie, et al, verbatim of being members of a do-nothing ruling class that grew their nails long (to boast that they didn’t work with their hands), bound their women’s feet (to show that THEY didn’t work, either), and got carried in sedan-chairs by brawny servants everywhere they went. Which is ridiculous even on the surface of it, because journos DO work, long nails would only get caught in the keyboard, and bound feet are no good for applying shoe leather to track down a story. None of them travel by sedan-chair, either, although if they’re lucky, they might be able to afford a gently used sedan (of the four-wheeled kind).
But yeah. Deano could just as easily have said “lords”. It would have taken fewer keystrokes, too.
“Mandarins” was taken over to mean other things, though. For instance, you’ll find peole talking about the “Mandarins of the British Foreign Office” and things like that — the higher-ups who know everything and rule everything behind the scenes. To a large extent it’s a fancy way of saying “elitist”. In my dialect, at least, “Mandarin” doesn’t even suggest China unless you’re specifically talking about Chinese history, or the language, of course. “Lords” doesn’t have the same connotations of educated know-it-alls.
Not saying that Esmay isn’t being racist, but part of me would honestly be surprised if he actually knew the historical origin of the term.