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Paul Elam of A Voice for Men: In His Own Words
[UPDATE: THE 20/20 STORY HAS BEEN POSTPONED ONCE AGAIN.] The long-awaited 20/20 story on the Manosphere is scheduled to run tonight — that is Friday, October 18 — at 10 PM EST on ABC. (I’ll open a thread for live chatting during the show.) The story will include interviews with Paul Elam of A Voice for Men, who is rather well-known already to readers of this website, to put it mildly.
But for any of you who have arrived here after seeing the 20/20 piece, I would like to provide an introduction of sorts to Mr. Elam, who is probably, for better or worse, the most influential figure in the Men’s Rights movement (or, as he prefers to call it, the Men’s Human Rights Movement).
Elam is also a fierce misogynist with a penchant for angry, violent rhetoric full of only-slightly veiled threats. But don’t take my word for it. Perhaps the best way to get to know Mr. Elam is through his own words.
So here are some of Elam’s thoughts on a variety of issues, taken from postings on his website A Voice for Men. I have linked each quote back to its source on A Voice for Men.
A 12-Step program to help A Voice for Men cure its addiction to hate
I’m pretty sure these guys thought they were some sort of human rights movement too.
Asha James – otherwise known as TyphonBlue – has taken issue with something I wrote about A Voice for Men, the hate site she has chosen to affiliate herself with. In my post detailing the hundreds of horrendous and disgusting threats and abusive comments one Canadian feminist has received after she appeared in a YouTube video that was heavily promoted on A Voice for Men and other Men’s Rights sites, I wrote that AVFM had only distanced itself in a “superficial way from some of the harassment it has played a central role in unleashing.”
With courthouse violence on the rise, Men’s Rights activists continue to lionize the author of a terrorist manifesto urging men to burn down courthouses
Poster at a memorial event for Tom Ball, an MRA who advocated burning down courthouses and police stations.
EDIT 6/15/13: Tom Ball’s manifesto is no longer posted on A Voice for Men, though it isn’t clear if this is a website glitch or a change in policy on AVFM’s part; no announcement about taking it down has been made.
EDITED TO ADD: In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, it seems even more important to reinterate that influential Men’s Rights website A Voice for Men continues to host, in its “activism” section no less, a terrorist manifesto literally calling for the firebombing of courthouses and police stations. Until and unless that manifesto is removed, and A Voice for Men apologizes for hosting it, I will be linking to this post every time I mention A Voice for Men.
There has been another courthouse shooting. On Monday morning, the father of a man due in court for a child support hearing pulled out a semiautomatic handgun and shot his son’s ex wife and a friend of hers as they entered the lobby of the New Castle County Courthouse in Wilmington Delaware. After an exchange of gunfire with police that left two officers wounded, 68-year old Thomas Matusiewicz took his own life. The two women Matusiewcz shot were pronounced dead on arrival at a local hospital.
