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.
Yup, DKM’s once again proving he knows nothing.
In Russian, there is a special term for this kind of weather, when it’s sunny and raining at the same time: “blind rain”.
When was it that ezer kenegdo came to be translated and contracted into a single word that connotes an inferior, subservient lackey.
Meller sat down to type, and the following error came forth: Okay, I should have been more specific. I should have clearly specified “a day cannot be sunny and rainy AT THE SAME TIME.!
A sunshower or sun shower is a meteorological phenomenon in which rain falls while the sun is shining.
I’ve been drenched in the bright sun.
YOU SAID THAT IF WOMEN DON’T DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU EXPECT THEM TO BE KILLED, EXCEPT THE FEW WHO ARE KEPT AS SEX SLAVES. THIS WILL BE A BETTER WORLD.
YOU SAID ALL WOMEN DESERVE TO SUFFER BECAUSE SOME WOMEN LAUGH AT MEN.
PLEASE EXCUSE THE BOLDED ALL CAPS: I GET TIRED OF TALKING TO RAVING LOONS WHO LIE ABOUT WHAT THEY SAID, AND WHICH ANYONE WITH EYES TO SEE CAN READ.
In short, you are liar, as well as an idiot, which is why I, nor many others, won’t drop it. You hate women, as they are, and insist that only if they are willing to enslave themselves to men do they deserve to live.
A brave man, one who believed what he said, would stand behind his words. A coward, one who values peace more than freedom, would weasel and waffle and try to pretend he had said something which was less offensive.
But no, the women and “manginas” here call you on your shit, and you cave, back-pedalling all the way, hoping to hide the shrivelled waste that is your soul.
*small moment of glee*
One of the reasons I love this site: the debunking of all ignorant half-assed claims, even about the impossibility of sunshowers (which happen in Texas all the time) which DKM claimed and which numerous people then smacked down. *happy sigh*
(We also get freezing precipitation which is neither rain nor snow. It is….freezing precipitation).
You guys rock. I’m back teaching, so less time to talk but I do adore reading in my spare moments during the day.
DKM introduced us to more new MRA punctuation. We have the dreaded two period elipse, now this: .!
What should we call it?
ithiliana: Sleet? 😛
The Stop Bang. It’s indicative of the way in which expressing that sort of stupidity will stop any chance you have of getting laid.
Cool. My mother always used to say, “When it’s raining and the sun is shining, a wolf is being born or a liar is paying his debts.” She said it’s an old Spanish saying. When I asked my roommate, who is Bengali, about whether or not she knows of any similar sayings, she said “When it’s raining and the sun is shining, a fox is getting married.”
“The devil is beating his wife (or kissing her), or getting married. It’s also witches churning butter.
Witches churning butter? I’ve never heard that! My grandma (the English one) always told me that if my palm itches, it means I’ll be getting money soon, and that if my ear itches, someone is talking about me. I love folklore, the differences – and similarities – are fascinating.
And of course, just as soon as I mention itching, everything but my ears starts to itch.
Obviously DKM bites his boss every time he’s told to pick up the boss’s dry cleaning and make sure his latte is HOT this time.
I’m gonna go ahead and put a trigger warning on this one – TW for sexual coercion.
When a guy says, ‘Suck me off or I’ll pull your hair out (which hurts like fuck),’ or ‘Suck me off or I’ll break a rib,’ or ‘Suck me off or I’ll tell your boss you stole from me,’ or ‘Suck me off and I won’t vaginally rape you,’ the choice can be pretty clear. And even if you were to bite, you’d still be in a vulnerable position with a very pissed off guy very close to you – he would probably lash out, and a punch to the temple or a kick to the ribs can do some pretty ferocious damage. And that’s if he doesn’t have a weapon.
“The Stop Bang. It’s indicative of the way in which expressing that sort of stupidity will stop any chance you have of getting laid.”
Perfect.
Molly Ren: “sleet?”
I don’t know. The meterologists talk at different times about rain, hail, sleet, snow, and then freezing precipitation. A quick look at wiki meterological report seems to imply there may be a range of freezing precipitations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precipitation_%28meteorology%29
Having watched it, the difference I see between sleet and f.p. is that the sleet (or hail) falls in discrete blobs or chunks. Freezing precipitation is sort of like what we used to call an icestorm in Bellingham, Washington–the ground, trees, bushes, grass, roof, get coated in a layer of frozen water — it’s beautiful but deadly.
My first year here I pooh poohed the meterologists, and then saw it happen on Thanksgving, and went holyshit, they’re right. It’s freezing precipitation.
We also used to have “freezing fog” in the PNW. That was a new one me after CNY winters.
Okay. youall have proven your point–whatever it is! It can rain and shine at the same time, and in the same location. I WAS MISTAKEN!! Weather in the same location can incontrovertibly also be hot and cold at the same time; women can offer blowjobs and other (likely) signs of consensual sex, and cry rape in agony and terror at the same time, probably a surface can also be soft and fluffy and harsh and prickly at the same time, and flowers can smell like beefsteak and perfume (perhaps with a little hint of the scent of the color indigo) at the same time!
I surrender! I suppose that people–if that is what you are–who imagine, not to say, assert at the tops of your voices, that humans can be male and female at the same time and to the same degree can conceive of, and perhaps even experience anything. You can, but I rather would not.
And you manboobz–and woman?boobz–call ME an idiot!!
I would rather be an ‘idiot’, and even an idiot with imperfect punctuation, than have a mentality like the one displayed by the feminists (and their male housepets) on this blog–and especially in your replies to my posts–in this article!. In fact, I think the fact that people like you strongly disagree with me, and with MRAs who share my general point of view, is the strongest advocacy of our cause! It certainly reassures me regarding MY intelligence and MY sanity!
Hey, I have a small challenge for some of you! Agree with me and disagree with me about the same topic at the same location at the same time. GOTCHA!!
I said that if feminists like Sharon Osborne, and her fans, continue to wreck things for everyone, men will have to create a better world–and better women–without the likes of feminists like them!
I have said the women who commit, or those who laugh at male castration or mutilation–NOT ALL WOMEN–deserve to suffer! Once again, learn to read before you criticize. i HAVE stood by my words–as written–Pecunium! I only emphatically deny your sleazy, nasty, and defamatory misstatements and distortions, inserting YOUR conclusions (fantasies??) and attibuting them to my writings.
With enemies like you, we don’t really need friends, do we? If manboobz. and its posters were friends of mine, and people like me, we would be in serious trouble! In fact, I might even engage the services of a competent (if there is such a thing) Psychiatrist.
The only thing that I am wondering about now is what are all of you wizards, geniuses, and demigods doing here on obscure blogs and websites? Why aren’t all of you doing your magic in Washington DC, Wall Street, and major Universities and tax-exempt Foundations?
YOU ARE!!!
That explains EVERYTHING!!
PEACE AND FREEDOM!!
David K. Meller
Meller, I’m not sure I can use tiny enough words for you, but it’s been said several times already that a.) Sharon Osbourne is not the feminist icon you believe her to be, b.) no one here has laughed at, made light of, or endorsed castration.
Why don’t you send CBS or whatever network she’s on one of your screeds? I’m sure they’d love to hear from you. Us, not so much.
But hey, keep backpedaling away from your own brand of hate speech.
RIBBIT!!!
hellkell
Okay, I’m stoned to the gills on painkillers and I don’t have my contacts in, so this might all be me, BUT – Does DKM’s screed make a fucking lick of sense? Even given his… rather tenuous grasp of human decency and common reality, it’s kinda out there.
Meller took to his computer,and let the following bleat forth to the world: With enemies like you, we don’t really need friends, do we? If manboobz. and its posters were friends of mine, and people like me, we would be in serious trouble! In fact, I might even engage the services of a competent (if there is such a thing) Psychiatrist.
Meller, from all you say you, and those like you, are in serious touble already. The world is going to hell, and you are going to have to invent sexbots so you can finally get around to killing all the women who won’t do be “feminine enough for you.
If you stand by what you said, well it’s nice to see you admitting you glory in the miseries of women.
But, since you know what the real deal is… why is it you aren’t in charge? Why is it that you are forced to come to places like this, and froth about the evils of the world to us?
Why aren’t the big think tanks paying you to help them set policy?
Or are they? Is this the clever plot of the IWF? Get Meller to make them look moderate?
Truly the ways of the MRA are subtle, and beyond our understanding.
I agree that you are a mistaken, and I disagree that you have any idea of what you really said.
One more time, to try to drive the point into DKM’s rather thick skull. People who laugh at the pain of others are assholes – they are either having an asshole moment or they’re living in one full time. Now, everyone has asshole moments. If that was the case with Sharon Osbourne, she should have apologized and done her best not to repeat the mistake. We’re human, we fuck up, to err is human, etc. If she didn’t apologize, she’s compounding her assholery. How many times do we have to say this, DKM?
But here’s the deal. She said one thing (unless she repeated the joke?). She doesn’t have a pattern of wishing men would disappear or be made into compliant fucktoys, she hasn’t (AFAIK) fantasized about killing off uppity men or claimed that men exist only to serve women or that men shouldn’t be educated or allowed to vote. You have made these claims about women. repeatedly. ad fucking nauseum. Based on this, I’m forced to conclude that you are determined to live your life as an asshole.
Kathleen: Meller is having the usual problem people in his position have. He is being held to his actual words. It bothers him, because he doesn’t actually think about them when he writes them; it’s all just a sort of emotional vomitting on the page.
Then, in the warm glow (sort of as it would feel were he to enjoy the pleasures of willing coitus), he sits back and thinks, “There, that’ll show ’em.” Sadly, he doesn’t look to see what his semi-sexual fantasies have churned out from under the bed; the dust-bunnies of his frustrated lusts (for the past, when women simpered, and men were kings, just as it is the Harlequin Novels of the late 60s, and early ’70s) have gone feral.
Having his actual words, in all their neurotic splendor pointed out makes him feel bad. One, he is shown; to his face, to be a sad and vicious little man, and two, the pleasant idylls of his memory are converted from fantasies of the perfect future to the holocaust he actually talks about.
Having to face that, to deal with his desires being what they are, instead of the myths he wants them to be, it’s hard. Like the Red Queen, he has to believe seven impossible things before breakfast.
Tough love is the only cure. We must, more in pith than in anger, keep showing him what he has done, that he may grow to regret it. It’s sort of like house breaking a puppy. You show him where he ought to go, and rub his nose in the shit he left on the carpet when you scold him.
If only I thought Meller were as self-aware as a puppy.
“Why aren’t all of you doing your magic in Washington DC, Wall Street, and major Universities and tax-exempt Foundations?”
Meller, you’ve uncovered my evil plan. I’m in DC *and* I volunteer at non-profits! MWHAHAHAHA!