From time to time, something will happen on the Internet or in real life that I know I should write about for Man Boobz, but it’s so infuriating or depressing that I can’t bring myself to write about it. The recent bullshit on Reddit involving a young woman whose story of a sexual assault was met with angry disbelief until she provided video proof that her injuries were real is a perfect case in point.
Briefly, what happened is this:
A young woman posted about a sexual assault she’d endured a day or so earlier – a man had tried to rape her, pushing her to the ground and scraping her face on the pavement. In a separate topic she posted a picture of her injuries, most notably a giant scrape on her cheek. You can see it at right; click on the picture to see it full size.
Then another Redditor noticed that some time back, the same woman had posted a picture of herself in zombie makeup. This, he said, made him skeptical that her injuries were real — it was probably just a good makeup job.
That was all it took to send Reddit into a full internet lynch mob frenzy: obviously this woman was a liar and an attention whore and, even worse, possibly a feminist anti-rape activist! Redditors suddenly became both medical and makeup experts, and declared that the giant scrape on her face was obviously phony. (Not to me; I tried arguing with several of them to no avail.) It got ugly, very ugly, very quickly.
The woman at the heart of the storm asked if she needed to post an actual video of her cleaning the wound on her face to show that it was real; a redditor demanded that she do just that.
So she did. (Here it is.) Long story short: the scrape is real. The woman also posted a picture of the business card given to her by the police detective she’s spoken to when reporting the incident. It’s now pretty clear that there is no reason to doubt that her story is true. Even the Redditor who originally challenged her story realized that she was almost certainly telling the truth.
Here’s her post offering proof to back up her story.
At this point the lynch mob lost its steam; some people even apologized to her.
But the evidence of the ugliness remains in a host of different threads and different subforums on Reddit. I honestly don’t have the energy or the patience to sift through all of the ugliness; luckily, Jezebel has given a decent account of the whole spectacle; you can go there to get some more of the details.
You might also want to look in to the main thread where most of the ugliness occurred — though at this point many of the vile accusatory comments that got upvoted when everyone seemed to assume she was lying have been retroactively voted down. (The screenshot I posted above gives a better idea of what it looked like at the time; here’s another screenshot with some of the choicer comments.)
Naturally, Men’s Rightsers contributed to the ugliness – though most of the worst comments appeared outside of the Men’s Rights subreddit, and a surprising number of r/mr regulars refused to jump on the original “she’s a liar” bandwagon.
While many Men’s Rightsters are now apologetic, others still think she may be lying.
Here’s a good discussion of the whole thing in ShitRedditSays, and a followup.
G.L. Piggy, what I don’t understand is this girl’s motive. You say, “there is legitimate reason to harbor at least some doubt about that claim given that rape and rape accusation can be a political act”, but I’m not clear on what she had to gain from it. Power to do what, exactly?
You’re right that there’s been several instances of people faking stuff on the Internet (Alexa Di Carlo was an older IT guy posing as a younger female sex worker, there was that blogger who pretended to be a lesbian Muslim in the Middle East, and I’ve heard of at least two people who tried to fake having cancer online. But all of these stories had some kind of definite gain: the older IT guy would have “Alexa” recommend him as a client; the “lesbian Muslim” got page views and, if it had gone on, probably some kind of book deal; the “cancer victims” asked for money.
I ask this because, besides “She wanted to prove all men are rapists!”, you haven’t shown jack shit as to why she’d go to all this trouble.
C’mon, just admit it. All them bitches is lying ho’s!
Own your bigotry! It’ll set you free! (Unless you’re a slave to the New World Order)
Stop dancing around your hate!
Obi-Wan has taught you well. You have controlled your fear. Now, release your anger. Only your hatred can destroy me!
“Current girlfriend. And I don’t blame her for initially blaming me. I accepted that a jacked up grill (even from collateral fallout) was a function of my being out too late at night around drunk people. But, I ask, am I not engaging in (self) victim blaming?”
Yes. And I would blame her for blaming you. That shit is fucked up. If someone kicked the shit out of you, it’s not your fault, it’s the fault of the person who did it to you. Period. You are (I’m assuming here) an adult, and you can hang out in public whenever and wherever you want within the law of your particular residence.
As for the rest of your post, I have no doubt in my mind that some woman have made false rape accusations. Hell, I knew a girl like that in high school myself. She was an immature child. However, there are always two sides to the story and always more details we miss while trading stories with friends. Your coworker who dropped the charge, did she say it was false, or have you considered that if she was raped, she didn’t want to be re-victimized by the situation, or she was threatened? Because that happens a lot. Are you sure you are not biased against the woman’s story and in favor of the males from the start? Because I think you should rethink your position. Men get screwed sometimes, this is true. However, that is no reason to assume all women are liars.
Quakers:
When someone makes a claim to abuse – a negative action in the philosophical sense – they must provide proof for their claim. We don’t constantly send people through courts of law where they must prove their innocence for crimes that may or may not have been committed. If that were the case we’d never stop going through the cycle of proving our innocence. But on another note, maybe Obama could co-opt that idea for his jobs plan.
Jenn:
that’s where i differ from you, but i guess we’re both being logically consistent. i accept a “should have avoided that situation” argument and also apply that to *some* instances of sexual assault. i’ll chalk this difference up to realism versus idealism.
some of my skepticism has more to do with just being skeptical of any grandiose claim made by anyone – male, female, rape, non-rape. i wonder if guys who are outspoken on this issue suffer somewhat from the issue of rape a.) being a hot-button issue that gets a lot of attention and b.) being one of few potentially grandiose claims (whether deserved or not).
Reddit is not a court of law, GL. And like I said before, this is more than just skeptism here, we’re talking about outright hysterical anger directed towards her.
Some of the so called skeptics just decided she was guilty of lying too. So there’s no proof that she was raped, but there was also no proof that she wasn’t.
And did she even name the guy? no. If she wanted revenge or to smear some innocent man’s name, she’d need to give a name in the first place.
When someone makes a claim to abuse – a negative action in the philosophical sense –
Point of information: It’s a positive action, i.e. they are making a positive statment, “x took place.”
I didn’t get involved in the initial post, but her follow-up where she tried to push the “women are never believed about rape” BS showed her to be doing it all for political reasons as G.L. Piggy thoroughly explained. She’s nothing but a drama-whore pushing a BS agenda regarding rape, an agenda that in the end harms a great deal of men.
but her follow-up where she tried to push the “women are never believed about rape”
IN a post and comment threads where she was … not believed about her attempted rape.
Are you thinking about what you are typing?
If she were a troll (which, clearly, she isn’t), what exactly would be the negative consequence of believing her? You’re shown to be a person of empathy and care for your fellow people who sympathizes with survivors of rape? How horrible.
“i should also point out that this type of “Tits or GTFO” mentality occurs in all parts of the internet.”
I dunno if someone has already covered this, but G.I. Piggy, it’s . . . pretty fucked up that you think “Tits or GTFO” is about internet skepticism. It isn’t. The key phrase of internet skepticism is, as always “Pics or it didn’t happen,” (followed by the classic. “Photoshop. I can see the pixels.”)
“Tits or GTFO” is a way of degrading women, by insisting that they have to expose themselves sexually in order to participate in a social group that makes no similar demands of men.
(The “insisting that they expose themselves sexually” is the degrading bit; the “no similar demands” is simply relevant to the fact that “Tits or GTFO” degrades women, not people in general.)
It’s a vile thing to say, it’s not used the way you say it, and the conflation you make says worrisome (though perhaps unsurprising) things about how you understand relations between the sexes online.
Piggy:
She was associated with FACE PAINTING?!
I didn’t realize that. Clearly face-painters can’t be trusted.
You know the old saying, paint your face once, shame on you; paint your face twice, shame on me!
Or something like that.
Really, Piggy? “I know a guy who was falsely accused so all women are liars”? I know a woman who was raped by a man. All men are rapists.
Are you out of what little of a mind you ever had? Your ‘logic’, such as it is, is stone-cold stupid.
Koss’ numbers weren’t off base; the data is the data. What they weren’t, was universally generalizable. No single study is.
Really? Because I’ve literally only ever seen newer statistics, compiled by RAINN based on DoJ reports and studies of unreported rape, quoted by feminists. It isn’t until MRAs were whining and puling about “how feminists never shut up about 1/4 women are raped” that I heard that it was a thing ever claimed, and you’ve certainly never shut up about it since. And I’ve never heard an engagement on newer, more comprehensive data.
You’re angry that feminists don’t correct a difference that amounts to a roughly 9% difference in likelyhood? Because I’m angry that you’re willing to keep pulling your victim-blaming, ‘false accusing’ bullshit given that 1/6 is raped.
And your point would be what, exactly? I mean, your “movement” gleefully conflates assault and murder in discussing violent crime rates men suffer, and act like that’s all murder. That doesn’t bother me because assault is still a problem. It deserves less punishment, to the extent one can say any crime deserves punishment, but that doesn’t make it a smaller societal problem. Do you imply sexual assault is somehow not a societal problem? Or a smaller one?
The answers to posters such as Amy Angelwings queries regarding stats in support of my allegations regarding women lying about rape, along with their repeated abuses of the law, should be available there, for anyone of good faith, who is prepared to acknowledge that just as (some) men rape, (some) women LIE, and lie and lie…
I’m always amused when ppl can’t spell my 3 letter name xD
I asked about stats in support of your allegations? No I didn’t… xD THIS is what I asked 😀
Still waiting for your responses to those questions XD
I love how you dodged by pretending I asked something else :3
I still dun understand all these internet detectives o_O They keep saying this isn’t a court of law, and then they are acting like it’s a court of law and it’s important that stories about rape online that don’t even mention a name of the alleged rapist must be taken apart to preserve… something… important… xD
You would think “we don’t know what truly happened” means… you don’t say nething and move on right? xD
Oh hay it’s Catalogue! xD The guy who thought me, Zhinxy and Trish’s snarking of the rape prevention tips list was gendering rape somehow XDD I hope he comes back to explain how xD
The bit that I find odd here is seizing on her “history of face-painting”, when the kind of make up that is considered an entirely normal lady-face is actually a lot more difficult than painting your face like a zombie for a party.
Here is the wound face paint that supposedly proves she’s a liar: http://i.imgur.com/A9EXh.jpg
Notice in this picture that you can clearly see the the edges of this fake wound peeling off of her face. Notice that in the picture of her real bruised face there are no such peeling pieces. Anyone who can’t see the difference between the two images is either stupid or trying to push their own agenda.
@DKM I’m the one who called you out on reliable stats for “false rape”. I then provided reliable stats I had found unbiased sources that put the percentage of suspect claims of rape on par with the average of false reporting of other crimes. I also asked whether, since rape is no more frequently falsely reported than other crimes, you were equally skeptical of people who, say, reported something stolen (where, unlike in the case of rape, there is an obvious potential gain in the form of insurance or other compensation for the stolen goods). If you are not equally skeptical of all other crime victims then you are targeting rape victims for unfair scrutiny. Since the staggering majority (though of course, not all) of rape victims are women I suggest this is a misogynist attitude. However, since you’re keen on noting that men can be raped, (as if anyone here was likely to be unclear on that point) when you claim that “some women lie”, etc. meaning some reports of rape are false you are making invisible the male victims of rape; if men can be rape victims then they can also falsely report rape so the liars you accuse must necessarily include men. Obscuring the male victims of rape seems contrary to your stated purpose, do you not agree? At the very least you’re perpetuating a hostile discourse about rape that discourages the same men who already under-report and whose cause you claim to champion.
The site to which you linked as a source of stats on false rape clearly has an agenda promoting fear about and an inflated concern with false rape claims. The stats it reports would not be trustworthy as unbiased data, therefore I do not feel they are worth considering.
Piggy:
You seem to be taking for granted that these “half-shadyvsexual encounters” were not rape.
Piggy:
None whatsoever, and I think I made that clear (and said it didn’t effect the conclusion I drew).
Simple assault, actually. Or else it’s about tied. Considering that when someone who actually was sexually assaulted said “here are the injuries I got from a sexual assault” the reaction was “that’s a shop, I can tell from the pixels” I’m amazed anyone believes someone who says they were sexually assaulted and not (otherwise) injured. By contrast, non-sexual assault (well, battery) involves injury by definition.
Nonetheless, compassionate people who aren’t jurors should default to believing claims of any type of assault, sexual or non.
I mean, is your argument that if someone claims they were beaten, we should believe them, or is it that if someone claims they were raped, we should not? Because I’ve been agreeing with the first, but nothing you’ve said convinces me of the second.
Hey Donsie! Apparently DKM thinks we’re the same person! XD
But Donsie doesn’t even have Ami in zir name!
*says amNESiA*
Hershele: By contrast, non-sexual assault (well, battery) involves injury by definition.
No. Battery requires physical contact. Shoving someone is battery. No injury required. Assault is a credible and believable threat.
If I say I intend to bash someone’s skull in, it’s not assault. If I say, and then raise a baseball bat an start to walk toward him it’s assault.
If I stop, poke him in the chest with it, pushing him into a chair, and then leave, it’s Assault (see above) and battery.
In most jurisdictions it would also be some form of “Assault with a Deadly Weapon”.
If I took a swing at his head, and he ducked, and then I left, it would be something on the order of, “Assault with intent to Kill/Maim”. It might be rated as attempted murder, but probably not.
I’m not getting the whole “It would have been more credible if it weren’t political.” I mean, how dare someone take a bad situation and use it to raise awareness about said situation. As far as I’m concerned, taking something horrible, learning more about it, and spreading the word is one of the hardest, scariest, and bravest thing one could do. But it also becomes empowering, because whatever happened doesn’t own you, you own it. That’s a healthy thing.
Piggy, I’m all about taking responsibility for ones own actions. Unless you started the fight and swung first, the person who attacked you is the one who should be held responsible for hurting you. You say it’s idealism, I say it’s action and reaction. Someone made the choice to beat on you. You are the one who got hurt. The person who hit you should be held accountable for that choice.
No matter where you go and when, a person has to be held accountable for there actions. What’s more, by having that attitude you contribute to a safer environment wherever and whenever you are. the more people who have that attitude, the less likely they will put up with, or engage in that behavior. Humans are pack animals, and we tend to be heavily influenced by each others behaviors. That’s a stone cold fact.
I don’t see why this is a mystical fairytale idea, here.