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.
” one of the very few carbon-based life forms in this sector of the galaxy ”
“taints her forever with the Mark of Dworkin.”
“I look forward to watching both sides in this catfight lose.”
@DavidFutrelle, this post made me giggle and guffaw at least 3 times. Either I’m having a weird day, or you’re on FIRE today 🙂 Thanks for the laughs 🙂
If there’s anyone who is privilege seeking gender parasite it’s Paul Elam. What a creep!
Trouble in paradise, eh?
It means only one thing: popcorn for everyone!
I have an OT question of a perhaps delicate nature for the esteemed mammotheers:
Does anyone know if it is true that the infamous troll of Lindy West, whom she confronted and wrote about, is Matt Forney?
I’m not sure if this is some privileged confidential knowledge that no one is supposed to talk about (and maybe I’m breaking a protocol by asking), or perhaps it is untrue altogether — but I’d appreciate your answers. Tx.
Sadly that isn’t true…
You can include such “luminaries” as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker to that list… 🙁
This’ll boost her feminist credentials among anti-feminist morons who want to appear moderate. I literally just had some shitheel try and hold up CHS as the model feminist because of her little sit-in with Milo.
I had to explain that when the opinions on feminism range from “lesbianic hate-fest” (Milo’s words) to “maybe you shouldn’t use lesbian in that context” (Ms. Sommer’s), maybe they’re not all that interested in gender equality.
@ Mary contrary
That was a great article, but it doesn’t answer the key question of whether one should hold open a door for horses. (I’m guessing you should because of that whole ‘no opposable thumb’ aspect)
i THINK he’s referencing the Buckley-Vidal era where calling someone a “crypto-fascist” was all the rage…but then again I might be overestimating his rational powers 😉
Seconded. Being the “cool girl” friend in my early 20s was a mistake. Turns out, “You’re not like other women, you’re cool!” is actually code for, “You’re not like those dumb bitches that get mad when we call them cunts and make jokes about raping them!”
Except I did get mad, I just didn’t say it because i didn’t want my friends to reject me. Oh well. Early 20s, insecurity, ya know. Not worth it, friends.
Paulie is actually quite egalitarian in this particular respect. Sooner or later he always gets into a catfight with ALL his friends, regardless of gender.
Damn it, I’m all out of popcorn.
@Malachi I love the guy who came into that thread and kept accusing people of supporting genocide. The guy arguing against him should have stopped jumping through his hoops and just say that he actually supports genocide. Fo the lulz.
Two Spanish sayings come to my mind:
“Cría cuervos y te sacarán los ojos” (raise crows and they will pluck your eyes out.)
“No avives giles que después se te hacen contra” (don’t brighten fools because they turn against you later.)
I love that article, it was actually in the back of my head when I posted 😀
@Makroth:
The reasons trolls do that is because they’re trying to provoke people into saying precisely that, so that they can then screenshot it and be all “SEE! FEMINISTS SUPPORT GENOCIDE!!1!”
@ IP
Charlie Brooker once made the argument that Nick Griffin (one of our home grown fascists) was actually much more into equality than he was because Griffin hated everybody equally.
@Kreator
I think that is unfair to crows! Granted, if you are dead, they will gladly eat your eyes- but if you aren’t, they just want you to give them shiny things and food.
On topic: Waiting for the day when Elam finally runs out of people to pick fights with- that happens really fast when you intentionally pick fights with just about everybody.
Oh, well, I guess he’ll just go back to those good old straw feminists, because you can always make more of them to fight.
I can’t say I’m surprised. I just hope she doesn’t become a harassment target. No matter how much I dislike her, she doesn’t deserve that.
This gives her her very first actual feminist cred. She’s been mauled by the net’s premier misognist. I hope real feminists don’t start to think better of her.
Very witty and savvy article, David!
Christina Hoff Sommers is more of a feminist than any of the piss-dribbling morons that radically support the cause these days, and that MRA dipsh*t has been shouted down and is universally despised by other MRAs for being a cringe-propagating cuck.
Also, this entire article was a biased sack of yellow journalism that isn’t worth the space online. But what do you expect from crappy writing like this? It reads like a high-schoolers attempt at political dialogue.
One of the commenters thought when I saw that yesterday that Karen Straughan will be next on the purge list, but my bet is Judgybitch followed by Suzy McCarley.
Off now to buy 2016 supply of popcorn. Actually, my current go-to for munching is Snyder’s honey mustard n onion pretzels.
Question is, will Hoff Summer deign to respond? Or will she just sick her flying monkeys to do battle with his flying monkeys?
Is this maybe a plot to use Elam’s toxic reputation to give CHS some legitimacy?
Or am I just a cynic?
CHS should eat the cake she made. If you put yourself on the side of harassers, it’s just a matter of time until they start to harass you as well (soon as you say something the douchebros don’t agree with).
I feel ZERO sympathy for CHS.
I also love it when the serpent starts to eat it’s own tail.
I’m interested to see which way the harassment brigade will jump. On the one hand, they love Sommers and very few people still give Elam the dignity he’d like. On the other hand, Sommers is a woman and that means her “acceptable” card can be withdrawn in an instant.
http://memecrunch.com/meme/3WOJL/that-s-pretty-metal/image.png
Same here. No one deserves deserves such campaigns against them.