Catfight! Histrionic Men’s Rights gooberhead Paul Elam, apparently hungry for attention, has decided to pick a fight with phony feminist and GamerGate den mother Christina Hoff Sommers.
With traffic for A Voice for Men plummeting, and his YouTube videos receiving only a small fraction of the views racked up by the videos in Sommers’ “Factual Feminist” series, Elam must realize that his moment in the spotlight is passing.
And so he’s doing what he always does when he feels challenged: he’s acting like a dick.
In a video posted yesterday, Elam asks the musical question:
Is Christina Hoff Sommers an advocate for the rights of all human beings, including men, or is she just another crypto-misandric privilege-seeking gender parasite using a different twist on sexual politics to ensure that men’s issues and rights are ignored for the benefit of women.
I have to admit that my mind wandered far afield as I listened to the rest of Elam’s 12-minute monologue, but I’m pretty sure he picked door number two there.
Now, there are plenty of legitimate things to criticize Sommers for. Not only is she an antifeminist who calls herself a feminist; she’s also a craven and disingenuous opportunist who’s recently hitched herself to the roving harassment squad that calls itself GamerGate.
But Elam has decided to attack her for … being too feminist.
Yep. I turns out that Elam is one of the very few carbon-based life forms in this sector of the galaxy to actually believe that Sommers, who’s devoted most of her career to bashing feminists, actually is the feminist she pretends to be. Not the “equity” or “freedom feminist” she positions herself as, mind you, but a devious creature
who delivers the gynocentric message with more subtlety and finesse than her associates on Tumblr.
You can practically see the high-five Elam is giving himself in his own mind each time he spouts one of these bon mots.
So what’s Elam’s beef with Sommers based on?
Well, Sommers first started calling herself a feminist back in the 1970s, which Elam seems to think taints her forever with the Mark of Dworkin.
Her other crimes?
She affects a certain concern about women and children in poverty. No, Elam doesn’t point out that the American Enterprise Institute, the think-tank Sommers works for, helped to provide the intellectual cover for policies that have arguably made things worse for the poor; he’s just mad she doesn’t spend all her time talking about homeless men.
But her biggest crime, in Elam’s eyes, is her advocacy of “chivalry,” which to Elam is roughly equivalent in its odiouness to eating babies or not donating money to him.
In Elam’s mind, feminism is basically a modernized version of chivalry, a giant plot to convince men to treat women like angels and give them stuff. As Elam sees it, Sommers is acting as a kind of double agent, warning women that if they don’t curtail their man-hating ways a teensy bit, men “will stop acting like the pack animals we need them to be.”
I look forward to watching both sides in this catfight lose.
It’s like the reverse of Alien vs. Predator: “Whoever loses…we win.”
“Crypto-misandric.”
This is the “Two wrongs don’t make a right” of meaningless buzzwords.
I for one would like to see this fight settled in a dance-off.
I mean, at least they won’t be talking.
This is going to be delightful. Except for the sad part where Sommers doesn’t learn that cozying up to misogynists is a losing proposition no matter how chill a girl or based a mom you are.
OMG, I gotta get popcorn, don’t let the show go on ’till I got my poppitypopcorn!
http://45.media.tumblr.com/a0a3aa12223e9ab1924fea23489596ba/tumblr_nrjz0rIxmy1qks57ho1_250.gif
Huh, I thought they were allies.
David, I see your Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference there, you hoopy frood, you. ^_^ I take it that you know where your towel is.
As for the post itself, I’m guessing that anything less than full and complete parroting of his own talking points isn’t good enough for Elam. As an aside, I still can’t get over the fact that he’s last name spells “male” backwards…
@ Bbz
Well, so were Stalin and Hitler; and look how that turned out.
@Bbz: Paul Elam could never be allies with any of these… female… creatures. The very idea. *teasing*
Noooooooooooooooo! How could she be so eeeeeeeeeeeevil!! A crypto-misandrist all along, how could we all have missed this truthiness!!!
*snorks*
Bbz: the bitter truth one learns while spending time with dudebros as a “cool girl/woman” is that as long as you keep your trap shut, don’t complain about any level of misogyny (from a microtransaggression to major incident), don’t try to assert your own will, and pander to dudebro ego, you’re golden. But as soon as you make a tiniest mistake of doing any of the above and stop stroking their ego, all hell breaks loose.
Speaking from experience. Seriously.
Ooh. How will CHS respond? Will she say that the awful way we treat men in this culture has given Elam brainworms? Will she pretend to weep for him while insulting him? Will she use him (while not naming him) as an example of men who still need to grow up?
@ Skiriki – IOW, it’s not enough to be their mascot; you have to be a cheerleader?
Victorious Parasol: Cheerleader, mascot, den mom, bringer of milk and cookies, carrier of Mt. Dew and Doritos, sexytimes satisfier, always-drop-dead-gorgeous… basically, it is a full time job to pander douchebros to stay on their good side. And even then, it is not guaranteed.
Ugh, Skiriki. I’m glad you’re out of that.
Most manuals on Chivalry have like 2 pages on how to treat women, and hundreds on how to take care of your horse. Neither of these idiots is using the term right.
Victorious Parasol: Well, in my case, it was only the mildest form — silent agreement, silence while minor forms of misogynist things were happening (fortunately!), but I’ve observed douchebros ever since I figured out how the game was rigged (I mostly drifted out of that crowd, rather than flamed and left). Note that some of the stuff I mentioned is less physical, more proverbial, because of internet.
Fortunately, I also had actually good and great dude friends, so I had definitely a better picture of humanity than the sample of assholes. But at least I now know how assholes operate…
@ Lorcan
Chivalry is derived from the word for ‘horse’ so that’s probably fair enough.
@Alan (and company)
You’re going to enjoy this.
http://bettermyths.com/chivalry-isnt-dead-you-just-dont-know-what-the-fuck-it-is/
It will be so funny if she just ignores him.
Hey, look, another new Elam video!
https://youtu.be/_SWApWkEiIc
[When I played it, my girl cat jumped between me and my laptop to protect me from Horror Movie Kitty.]
Lindsayirene,
That is the most sense Elam ever made.
In other news, I found this little collection of misogyny: https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/46a63q/a_stinky_wet_footballsized_link_dump_of_some_wise/
Lea: You mean, pants-wettingly terrified of everything, and trying to assert dominance by screaming? I think that’s it, yeah.