A Voice for Men falsely accuses a male feminist blogger of being a “confessed rapist,” because “karma is a BITCH.”
A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam: Serial False Accuser
When is a false rape accusation not a false rape accusation? When it’s leveled against a feminist man.
That, in any case, is the logic behind an appalling post on A Voice for Men attempting to smear a male feminist blogger named Jason Thibeault, who posts on FreeThoughtBlogs as Lousy Canuck, by proclaiming him a rapist.
The post is a typical bit of AVFM “satire” — that is, sophistry — arguing that “by his own feminist standards” Thibeault is a rapist … because he was once accused of rape by a girlfriend, as he wrote about in a recent post. And since feminists believe that ALL accusations of rape are true, AVFM’s Birric Forcella argues, Thibeault is thus a “confessed rapist.”
Obviously, this argument is ludicrous on its face. Feminists don’t believe that all accusations of rape are automatically true. And Thibeault, for his part, says that he was falsely accused.
This doesn’t stop AVFM from giving their piece the frankly libelous headline: “FreeThoughtBlogs’ Jason Thibeault, confessed rapist.”
AVFM may defend its post as “satire” — they have a rather expansive definition of the word — but that headline is pure libel. It’s false — and would be so even if the accusations of rape were true, as Thibeault (who’s responded to the AVFM post here) maintains his innocence.
And AVFM’s intent is clearly malicious. In the first comment to the piece, AVFM founder and publisher Paul Elam declares frankly, and revealingly, “Karma is a BITCH.”
Thibeault’s real crime, in AVFM’s eyes, is that he has publicly supported women who have come forward in recent weeks to accuse prominent skeptic writer Michael Shermer of rape and sexual assault.
And so they have responded by making what is an unequivocally false accusation against him in a headline on their site.
Of course, this isn’t the first time A Voice for Men has falsely accused someone of something based on bad evidence or no evidence at all.
In April of this year, Elam (along with a number of other MRAs and an assortment of White Supremacists as well) worked himself into an uproar over a blog post from an alleged feminist allegedly working in a college admission office who claimed she was routinely trashing applications from white males.
Though even the most rudimentary amount of fact-checking would have revealed that the woman they blamed for the blog had nothing to do with it, she had her contact information posted online by MRAs and others, leaving her open to harassment and widespread vilification. Elam contributed to the hubbub by posting a vituperative post identifying the wrong woman by name — and only after being called on his mistake by numerous other MRAs did his finally retract the post.
You can read about the whole appalling affair here.
Elam has also made false accusations against little old me. In yet another case of libel-by-headline, he accused Jessica Valenti and me of being “child abusers” … because we’re feminists. (Seriously, that was the entire basis of his accusation.)
And at one point, either lying outright or misled by a troll, he put forth the absurd conspiracy theory that I was somehow responsible for an appalling Reddit forum known as the Beatingwomen subreddit.
In his post on the subject, he claimed to have “intel” from two separate sources that “confirm[ed]” my involvement in the subreddit — he provided none of this evidence — and promised that “further word” on the subject would be forthcoming.
Of course, this evidence never materialized — because it was fraudulent and/or imaginary. Elam dropped the subject. I had and have no connection to the subreddit.
And not long ago, AVFM’s Dean Esmay very publicly accused its former Canadian News Director Kristina Mendez (AKA TheWoolyBumblebee) of (maybe, possibly) running off with the money she collected for a center devoted to the memory of Earl Silverman, a Canadian MRA who committed suicide partially out of frustration over the difficulties he had in funding the DV shelter for men he ran out of his home. The folks at AVFM have admitted quite plainly that they have no evidence of wrongdoing here.
Apparently, AVFM’s strategy is to prove that false accusations are common by making as many of them as they possibly can.
EDIT: Added the bit about Valenti and me.
Posted on August 30, 2013, in a voice for men, antifeminism, atheism, atheism minus, false accusations, hypocrisy, irony alert, misogyny, MRA, paul elam, rape, rape culture, reddit, sexual assault and tagged a voice for men, antifeminism, atheism, false accusations, ftb, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, rape, skepticism. Bookmark the permalink. 452 Comments.
Okay, Manboobz is loading up.
Something about A Voice — DAAAAAH WTF
Oh, it’s just Paul Elam run through Shop a lot.
Jesus, it took five years off my life.
@Falconer: Knowing who it was took off the shock for you? I’m STILL horrified.
Ahh the good ol’ flat-out-lie-in-the-headline-and-call-it-satire, matched with the classic not-understanding-what-satire-is-even-in-the-slightest. These guys sure know how to double down on journalistic integrity.
Seriously though, I wish I could keep being surprised by shit like this. But I really can’t. It’s like pissing into an ocean of piss.
Actually, through Paint.net, which has a good ink sketch filter. He was actually creepier before I ran it through that filter. This is just a little artier.
PaulE probably has the largest karmic debt of anyone I know of. He might wanna dial it back several notches.
I hope someone sues the ever-loving shit outta him one day.
… Horrified by what?
Was there something wrong with the post?
Just let me check EEAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHH
Frankly, I’m surprised he had time to sit for a photograph. I guess Air Force One wasn’t on.
@hellkell
Can you imagine the frontpage posts? That would be an amazing meltdown to watch.
I hope someone sends this to 20/20, and they interview Thibeault. Do we know when that thing’s going to air? At least for me, 20/20 is on at 10 pm on Fridays.
While AVFM is a pile of turds, and so is that article, in fact, by the standards of logic of FreeThoughtBlogs (which is not the same as the standards of logic of Feminists), Jason is in fact a rapist.
Since early August, when PZ Myers posted that Michael Shermer was a rapist, there have been many articles by FreeThoughtBloggers (and their commenters) AND expressly including Jason that yes, in fact, the 6% false rape rate is so low, that yes, we should presume that Shermer is guilty.
And the logic worsens because in that time frame, BOTH PZ and Jason have posted that they were the victims of false accusations, which would seem to be, out of a random collection of male bloggers, to be a very rare event. (6/100 * 6/100) = 36/10000 = 0.36% that both were falsely accused.
Given the FTB logic expressed over the past three weeks, again, not feminist logic or anyone else’s real world logic, given the FTB logic, it is almost certain that Jason is lying when he says he was not a rapist.
AVFM is a pile of shit, the article is terribly written as usual, but the core of the argument, that by Jason’s own logic over the past three weeks, he is a rapist, well that holds.
Further, you can find Jason in the past three weeks explaining how important and vital and legal it was for PZ to publish his anonymously sourced, unverified charge that Michael Shermer is a rapist, and yet now we see Jason complaining that some asshole at AVFM is charging Jason to be a rapist in a piece that even you David, agree is bad satire.
That looks like Philip K. Dick on a reeeaaallly bad day. But even Dick at his loopiest made more sense.
p.s. Apparently the Slymepit dudes (a Venn diagram would show almost complete overlap with MRAs, in that nearly all Slymepitters are MRAs but not all MRAs are atheists) also were circulating a false rape accusation against Avicenna on FTB. Luckily he could prove he was on another continent during the time they claimed it happened.
I tried to read that post, but it made no fucking sense. Dude had an axe to grind, apparently. Maybe I need to update my MRA bullshit to English dictionary.
hometeampaper: that would be the meltiest meltdown ever.
cloudiah: is making false rape accusations the MRM’s new human rights strategy? Do they seriously think they’ll win people over with this evil shit?
Avicenna was a pain in the ass when he commented here, but no one deserves that.
fwiw cloudiah, that’s not true.
First, the guy that avicenna accused of falsely accusing avicenna is not a registered member of the slymepit and has never posted there.
Second, tracing through the various posts, what happened was a game of Telephone where in fact, in another english sentence gone awry, but this time written by Avicenna himself, he initially weeks back, in a moment of sarcasm wrote he had been accused of rape, and then over a period of a couple of weeks on the net, that became in someone’s mind an actual accusation of rape, and then repeated by the guy that avicenna thinks accused him of rape.
Sadly, there are not enough smileys in the universe to make some forms of humor understandable by all nitwits, and I suspect that avicenna, like many of us, don’t use smileys because we grossly assume our readers will figure out the jokes.
Am I missing something here? What’s Slymepitt, and what does it have to do with anything? Who the hell is Avicenna?
@cloudiah
Yup. I’ve often wondered why AVfM and the Slymepit don’t just consolidate. The ‘pitter atheists will gladly accept the non-atheists at AVfM for the greater good of hating on feminists, FtB, and the Skepchicks. Hell, Thunderf00t would gladly make promotional videos for that nasty little enterprise.
Assholes. The lot of them.
So, once again, we see that there is no bottom of any barrel MRAs, or slymepitters will not happily dig beyond.
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but Slymepit is what happened after Elevatorgate–a bunch of misogynistic asshole atheists who splintered from FtB.
@LBT – the Slymepit was sprang from Abbie Smith’s science blog, ERV. When “elevatorgate” happened and the vitriol on Smith’s blog got problematic for her, the pitters migrated the thread elsewhere.
It’s full of atheist MRAs, Libertarians, and other assorted jerks who rallied over their hatred of Rebecca Watson, then the rest of the Skeptchicks, PZ Myers, and FtBs.
^that was for LBT.
Wow. It’s like this whole social scene that I’m not a part of and know nothing about.
Finally, a photo that does Elam justice!
BTW, and I have seen this before – the reason for putting up this title is utterly malicious. It is picked up by search engines and becomes a prominent post whenever this man’s potential employers, mortgage providers, or girlfriends check his name out. The rest of the post is mostly an exercise in appropriating the pain of women, and irrelevant to the main purpose, to destroy this man’s reputation and livelihood. There is also the example being made, that any man sympathetic to a woman making a raoe claim will be socially destroyed.
And for what? Because Thibault wouldn’t toe the MRA party line on Schermer. And to get avfm, which hasn’t had a drama lately, drying up donations, into another one. What can Thibault do? Avfm would love a lawsuit. Negative attention is all they will ever get and they would especially love to piggyback on a person who really does have some standing. Since Elam is judgment-proof himself and so depressed he doesn’t care if he lives or dies, a lawsuit would be problematic.
But it will take one to get a court order to take down the site, and some determined individuals to follow Elam around for a while on the net to do the same thing with his follow-ups. That hate site seems to exist solely to destroy people and reflects its owner. [problematic sentence removed by DF]
@LBT – and for that, you can be ecstatic. No really.
Wow. Lie much, “Blinded by Science”? All you have to do is not think in binary, and understand that situations are nuanced and, you know, SITUATIONAL, and you’ll recognize that I argued that the multiply substantiated parts of the story about Shermer do in fact merit warning people to be on their guard around him because he evidently has a multiply-confirmed history of plying women with booze and playing fast-and-loose with consent.
The fact of the matter is, the “whisper net” coming from multiple trusted sources is indeed enough to warn women about, even where it’s not enough to throw a dude in jail.
And not one whit of the allegation is libellous, as compared to the blatant lies both you and AVfM are telling about what I actually posted. You know damn well my story is different. If you’ve read it, anyway.
Given the alacrity with which you rushed to defend Richard Sanderson and the Slymepit, I’d suspect you’re just another one of those atheists in the antifeminist camp trying to muddy the waters here on a pro-feminist site. Sure, I don’t have good evidence of this, but it seems fairly obvious where you’re getting your information.
Anyway. Thanks for covering this, David, I appreciate it.
Point of order: FtB came into existence September 2011. The slime pit predates it, as others have said being formed in the comment thread of a blog at Scienceblogs, ERV.
Actually Jason, since by your logic I am forced to presume you a rapist, I admit I find your presence here at a feminist safe space rather unsettling.
“please leave. The mere presence of beings like yourselves is intensely painful to us.”
One final thought Jason, just to help you out, note in David’s post that even David recognizes the AVFM piece was satire. Terrible satire yes, but satire.
I’m not a regular FTB person so I hope some of you are, lest I get more details wrong.
By my logic? Please point to anything I wrote that even HINTS that as soon as someone is accused, they are definitely guilty.
One of my fears is that the MRA identity becomes mainstream. I am thankful that they discredit themselves so wholly.
Blinded by Science, are you seriously telling Jason to leave the comments here? You can say that, of course, but it means absolutely nothing. You’re not speaking for me, for one.
Blinded by Science, at least pretend to be arguing in good faith, okay? If you can’t do that, go away.
@serrana, actually I was quoting from Star Trek’s Errand of Mercy.
You can do your own research into Jason’s posts at his blog, but they are quite insane and contradictory. Even here you can see him justifying why it’s okay for PZ to use anonymous sources and unverified claims to call Shermer a rapist, but that it is horrible for a terrible piece of obvious satire to name Jason a rapist.
@cloudiah, I am indeed going away (lunch over, back to work.)
p.s. The idea that this is a “feminist safe space” is itself laughable.
I’m not entirely sure on this one, but I think that math is not quite right. It’s correct for the odds of “these two people” both being falsely accused, but presumably there are a shit ton more commenters over there? Which would make the odds of two of them being falsely accused fairly high (you familiar with shared birthdays? You and I probably don’t share a birthday, but we both probably [actually, almost certainly] share a birthday with someone who read manboobz [I got 1,640 survey results])
The hard part for the 20/20 editors will be choosing what to put into their small time slot. They’d have to make a six hour mini series to address all the ways AVfM is terrible. I don’t know when the special will air, but I’ll be checking the abc website frequently to find out, so I can watch it.
And it sounds like the slymepit is aptly named, that’s for sure, if they are the atheist version of AVfM.
Also, what are the odds of male feminist bloggers being falsely accused of rape over their lifetimes? PZ and Jason aren’t a randomly chosen pair. (I know nothing about statistics, though.)
Blinded by Science, you came in here looking like you were gonna argue in good faith, but your reply to Jason sorta clarifies that misconception.
Blinded by Science is a returning troll with a history of bad-faith, deliberately disruptive posting, so bye bye.
Why do you have to use his logic? Don’t you have any of your own?
Blinded by Science: who the fuck are you, exactly? Some random unknown a-hole. Your presence is making my ass itch, so please do flounce. Forever.
Thanks, David.
…popcorn?
PZ’s false rape accusation was made in retaliation for the Shermer thing. Someone found an account of someone online naming-and-shaming a man named Bruce, and replaced every instance with Paul and posting it as a comment on his blog. A slimer throwing up chaff.
Avicenna’s was entirely substance-free — just another slimer throwing up chaff. That apparently almost got him suspended from his medical license and his visa was in jeopardy as a result.
Mine is the closest they have to an actual case, where I was accused publicly but absolutely no legal proceedings resulted. I shared it in 2009 for my own catharsis, and someone dredged it up a few weeks ago as a club to use to destroy my credibility because they didn’t like that I’m a feminist, nor that I believe the allegations against Shermer because of the web of trust behind them.
And so I get attacked. And this is the closest to traction they can get.
With hundreds of thousands of assaults/rape allegations, 6% is a lot of people. Some of them are going to have stories like mine. That doesn’t universalize the experience. It just proves some people know nothing about statistics.
Aw, no popcorn. Though what a surprise, some ass who just waltzes in claiming another new commenter can’t post without any links of proof isn’t welcome here. COLOR ME SHOCKED.
@Blinded-by-science-and-then-logic-flew-out-of-the-window: The 6% of false rape accusations are in cases where the accuser goes to the police to log a complaint. In Jason’s case, as in Shermer’s case, nobody went to the police, so all bets are off.
I always hate the “by your logic…” line of argument because it’s another obnoxious, slippery way to avoid stating what you actually think, or even whether you think their logic is good nor not.
I’m new and thought maybe @BlindedByScience had a point, but almost the first thing I saw on this blog was a warning that this is not a “safe space.” Pro tip, snottiness detracts from attempts to be A Voice of Reason In the Wilderness.
AVfM has such a nasty, mean spirited feel to it. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. And I’ve read stuff by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.
Well, I was kinda hoping for a popcorn fight, but seeing as I really didn’t have a clue what was going on, it’s probably just as well it didn’t happen.
@Argenti Aertheri
AFAIK the math is technically right, even though presented incorrectly. It makes no sense to apply the 6% to a random sampling since it’s “6% of accusations are false”, not “6% of people are accused falsely”. But in any case, If there’s a 6% chance that an event occurrs, there’s a 0.36% chance that it occurrs twice. So if there’s a 6% chance that A OR B are false, there’s a 0.36% chance that A AND B are false.
Though I’d argue that applying a statistic like this to individual cases is quite nearly useless. And, as girlscientist pointed out, the 6% stat doesn’t even apply in these cases, so it’s all very very moot.
I am so confused by everything in this comment thread.
RE: Historophilia
Oh good, it’s not just me.
On the part about David being a child abuser (in that Elam article):
………WTF?
I guess I could probably try to help clear up some of the confusion.
The atheist/skeptical online communities are undergoing something of a sea change, where we’re actively fighting harassers and antifeminists and actually gaining some ground. We gained enough ground that some people who’ve been harassed and abused actually started naming names. There has been a violent backlash against this from the antifeminist quarters.
A timeline of the names being named is here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2013/08/12/sexual-harassment-accusations-in-the-skeptical-and-secular-communities-a-timeline-of-major-events/
Everything in this comment thread appears to be reactions to one person “in the know” who’s actually as far as I’d guess an antifeminist, trying to muddy the waters about whether or not AVfM’s accusation against me holds any water. The suggestion is that because we at Freethought Blogs have a hand in publicizing the names being named, we’re publishing false rape claims, or third-party “telephone game” accusations with zero evidence, when in actuality, *someone* knows each of the people who are coming forward and is vouching for them personally. PZ Myers is the focal point, and Michael Shermer, one of the names being named, even threatened to sue. So far, no suit. But all the antifeminists are at peak frenzy.
The Slymepit is our A Voice For Men. FtB is regularly vilified by them (and even by supposed fence-sitters) as the shrill, feminist-infested cancer that will kill the atheist/skeptical movements. That there’s overlap between the Slymepit and their non-affiliated antifeminist bretheren, and the AVfM braintrusts, is absolutely no surprise.
So now it’s all hands on deck trying to shore up the pro-harassment crowd’s defenses, and they’re launching evidence-free broadsides at our bloggers in an effort to prove just how bad evidence-free accusations can be. As though we didn’t know. As though we didn’t take that into account before weighing the evidence in front of us.
Anyway. Sorry for threadhogging. Hope that helps.
I can understand why. I have a hard time keeping up with all of this, and I have been following it all for the last two years. The relevant facts are that Jason is not a rapist, and that AVFM are real shitty people.
I won’t be surprised if more pitters will make their way to this thread. One thing they do very well is obsess over every little word and every little action by a member of FtBs. And considering that David has some overlap with readers of Manboobz, FtBs, and other pro-feminist sites, it’s probably just a matter of time. :/
I’m actually an infrequent lurker here myself, including the comments. I’ve seen Pitchguest show up once. He’s definitely one of the metastasized obsessives.
Yeah, I’m sure the Slymers have Google alerts on “lousycanuck” and other variations.
Everyone, if you see bannable (as opposed to regular) trolling, remember to email David! I know we think of him as all-seeing and all-knowing, but he could probably use a little help. :D
I love “metastasized obsessives,” and will be stealing.
I think Pitchguest got his ass banned from here, IIRC.
Not to worry about threadhogging, Jason. Pretty sure you can’t hog a thread about yourself.
I’ve never seen him to be gross or overtly abusive, but he is an overly pedantic, obtuse, tedious, disingenuous, dishonest, and tiresome MRA and anti-feminist sympathizer. Whenever he shows up, a giant sucking sound is heard and any enjoyment you may be getting from the dialogue disappears into the void, never to be seen again (until someone gets fed up enough and bans his ass).
I’m glad David applied the hammer.
@lousycanuck
Your gravatar looks familiar.
theladyzombie: Yup. That’s his schtick, socratic assholitude. Of course, he’s really poor at logic and reading comprehension, even where he’s long on vocabulary and verbiage, so all he has is asking questions about every little turn of phrase until he thinks he has you on a technicality.
Yup. And then blames it on English not being his first language and him simply “misunderstanding” you. Yup yup!
Me: Reads title. Says: “Oh man, this is gonna be GOOD!” Grabs food. Sits down. Prepares for hilarity.
LBT and others who are confused. Jason/Loucy Canuck’s timeline of the most recent events is useful, but it also helps to have some of the big-picture history. For those who find New Atheist Movement in-fighting, even over social justice issues to be boring, please feel free to skip this (I know now that I’m calling up the Great Old One, Wal’Loft-Ext, but sometimes, I just can’t help myself.
*****
Back in the day, there were some blogs about science, on a site called, appropriately enough, “ScienceBlogs” (started in 2006). Some were hyperfocused on their scientific fields; others addressed science and how it relates to the larger community, or issues within the scientific community. And it was good. Three of these blogs concern us: Pharyngula (hosted by PZ Myers); ERV (hosted by Abbie Smith) and Dispatches from the Creationist Wars (hosted by Ed Brayton).
All three of these were strong supporters of what is commonly referred to by the media as “The New Atheist Movement”–which is pretty much the old atheist movement getting more press.
Meanwhile, another blog site, Skepchick, started up in 2005 with a specific focus on issues of skepticism and feminism. The founder, Rebecca Watson, was the key blogger, but there have been several others as well. As is common with the internet, they received some pushback for their feminism, but as a collective, they were in a better position than many to deflect it and support one another, so they remained strong and vibrant in the community. The two sites had several bloggers with strong ties and mutual respect.
Then 2011 happened.
In April, National Geographic bought ScienceBlogs. While a good fit for the most part, some of the more… colorful bloggers expressed concerns almost immediately that NatGeo was going to want them to adopt a gentler, more ‘civilized’ tone, and they began discussing options.
In June, Rebecca Watson went to the World Atheist Convention in Ireland. After giving a speech about the difficulties faced by women in the movement and the difficulty of dealing with the ‘meat market’ vibe that many of the conferences have, and spending an evening in the hotel bar, further expounding on the points in her speech, she announced at three in the morning that she was tired and going to bed. Someone in the bar, who’d been there for the conversation, followed her into the elevator, and invited her back to his room, ‘to talk over coffee’. Watson, recognizing a proposition when she heard one, declined.
She then described the encounter in a vlog entry, finishing with the comment, “Guys, don’t do that.” The atheist/skeptical blogosphere, bastion of rationality and intellectualism on the internet, promptly lost. It’s fucking. Mind.
Elevatorgate, as it came to be known, consisted of increasingly hostile posts, counter-posts and harassment campaigns waged between various bloggers. Myers, who’d already been supporting diversity in the movement, came down squarely on Watson’s side; Abbie Smith and the folks at ERV were at the lead of the hyperskeptic movement that insisted that Watson was going to be the death of sex in the universe, or something. During this time, the comments section at ERV, in reaction to being called a slime pit, adopted the nickname “The Slymepit” in an effort at reclamation or irony or something.
The heat of the conflict turned the concerns about NatGeo’s management into a self-fulfilling prophecy–several sciblogs writers got told to shape up or ship out. Brayton and Myers had already developed a bailout plan, and launched Freethought Blogs in November of 2011. Meanwhile, the Slymepitters eventually formed a separate forum and website which took on that name.
Since then, whenever the subject of feminism and harassment in the movement has come up*, the leading sides in the battle have been FtB and the ‘Pit. Some individuals who are not technically posters in the ‘Pit are still frequently regarded as members by the FtB folks, simply because the ‘Pit is so forceful in their praise of these people. JT Eberhard, for instance, insists that he’s not a slymepitter–he just makes rape jokes, writes badly reasoned arguments in defense of others privilege, and insists that the only great wrong is speaking angrily (about feminism or racism–but as a white gay atheist with an eating disorder, rage about religious overreach, homophobia or ableism is totes okay–because those issues are actually important; seriously, the guys is like the poster child for partial privilege).
*: There’s been a few major battles in the post-Elevatorgate era:
1: An effort to get conferences and groups to establish clear policies barring harassment–including enforcement of those policies. This has led to a couple of
2: The ‘civility’ conflict, in which one fails to understand that insisting on the right to treat women as inherently inferior is already uncivil, so FUCK THAT NOISE. The pinnacle of this was the speech by Ron Lindsay at Women In Secularism 2, where he spent the entire welcoming speech telling the attendees that he was worried they might be getting too aggressive in tone lately.
3: The Grenade–we’ve talked about that one here, in which PZ Myers published an accusation of rape against Michael Shermer, an author and speaker in the skeptic community, made to Myers by a woman he knew. The context of this accusation has been repeatedly distorted by the ‘Pitters and their allies, who desperately want to make it seem like Myers just posted it ‘for the blog hits’. (I think you might remember that convo, LBT.)
*****
Okay, I’m done. Sorry for that.
Man, I was not disappointed. Fighting false rape accusations with more false rape accusations is a “tactic” I’ve never heard of before.
They do realize that it’s not the same as fighting fire with fire, right?
Hey! So, I’m going to take a perhaps controversial stand here. I don’t know anything about Jason/lousycanuck except for his “confession” from 2009, which I just read.
Just going to say: (1) Paul Elam is a lying loathsome despicable misogynistic liar who lies all the time. However, (2) just because the person who is accused of rape now identifies as a feminist, I’m not going to automatically trust his story that he didn’t actually rape someone. The fact that his ex wanted to get back together with her accused rapist also does not exactly work to clear his name (since that’s a common reaction to trauma), and the fact that his ex claimed to have been raped in a somewhat hard-to-believe manner doesn’t automatically make me think that the entire story’s a lie.
I think it’s gross that Elam gleefully used this piece of LC’s history against him while at the same time caring absolutely nothing for rape victims. I also think it’s gross that people tend to disbelieve oppressed people’s claims of rape on the basis of the non-oppressed accused rapist claiming innocence and seeming like a “nice” person who would never do that.
Freemage… couple points of clarification. It was 4 am, not 3. Also, the vlog she posted was about the conference as whole; Watson spent maybe 5% of the vlog on the incident, and even laughed it off like it really wasn’t that big of a deal. I think she, like me, thought “guys, don’t do that” (which has become the actual catch-phrase of this in-fighting) was an agreeable thing to say. Apparently, a holy hell of a lot of dude-bro atheists disagreed with her because… I guess… they felt that elevators were the only settings in which they could get any sexy timez… or something.
Otherwise, though, you’re write-up is probably the best summary I’ve seen on this whole issue. So good job.
@lousycanuck – hi, thanks for commenting here. I read PZ’s column so am a little bit aware of what’s going on.
The irony is, if you weren’t a feminist, Elam and his little abuser-lobby mates would be wanting to give you virtual back-slaps if they thought you’d raped a woman. This is, after all, the man who’s declared he would vote “not guilty” in a rape trial even if he was convinced the (male) defendant was guilty.
Glad to see that cretinous Blinded By Science got the heave early. Those posts had TROLL TROLL TROLL written all over them from the first.