UPDATE: I have no reason to believe that the harassment alleged by Kyle Lovett — which I discuss below — involved anyone even tangentially connected to this site, or indeed that it ever happened. The “evidence” he provided only showed that he got traffic from a link on this site. He never provided any evidence that the alleged harassment occurred or that, if if did, it was perpetrated by anyone who found his site through my site. The rest of my piece still stands.
The other day, a commenter here linked to the blog published by one of the moderators of the Men’s Rights subreddit. Kyle Lovett, the mod in question, says that not long afterwards, someone contacted his workplace saying that he was a member of a “hate group.” Claiming to be concerned about his safety, he temporarily hid his blog. And stepped down as mod.
Lovett says he suspects that this person who he says contacted his work is a Man Boobz reader, and has now provided evidence that seems to back up this suspicion. If Kyle is indeed telling the truth about the harassment, it was a Man Boobz reader who contacted his workplace. (There is no evidence it was one of the regulars here, merely someone who was reading the comments in that one thread. Nor am I completely convinced that the alleged harassment happened; Lovett has lied about things in the past.)
But if the harassment happened let me be blunt: That’s not cool. I don’t like that sort of harassment when it’s directed at feminists, and I don’t like it when it’s directed at MRAs. As Rebecca Watson once said, in a different context, “guys, don’t do that.” Seriously, DON’T DO THAT.
All this said, Lovett and other MRAs are acting as if the link to his blog here was in some way equivalent to “doxing” – that is, tracking down the personal information of someone posting anonymously, and posting it online, for purposes of harassment..
It isn’t. Kyle publishes his blog under his own name, and he regularly posted links to it on Reddit. It was no secret that he posted on Reddit as Qanan, just as my real name Is no secret.
I’m not sure why it’s necessary to point this out, but I will anyway: If you publish things on the internet under your own name, people will indeed connect your name to these things. There is absolutely nothing wrong with posting a link to someone’s blog. No one here advocated harassment in any way.
Needless to say, the indignation on the Men’s Rights about this is hypocritical, to say the least. MRAs harass feminists all the time.
A Voice for Men, the worst offender in this regard, has published the personal information of feminists, and once put out a thousand dollar bounty in an attempt to find out the identity of one feminist who had been posting anonymously online. AVFM head Paul Elam talks about “stalking” feminists and on his radio show gleefully discussed the prospect of not only revealing the names and addresses of women he considers evil, but also their routes home from work. He orchestrated a harassment campaign against one commenter here, which led to people contacting her workplace in an attempt to get her fired. There are many more examples.
Meanwhile, today on the Men’s Rights subreddit, one commenter’s call to harass a woman got two dozen upvotes from the regulars:
Guys, don’t do that.
EDIT: I have added a few comments in the post above to highlight my concerns that the alleged harassment may be a fabrication; I will remove these comments of Lovett provides proof, publicly or privately, that the harassment occurred.
Oh and I don’t think AZBM is a reincarnation of any of our trolls since they seem to have a long standing blog, and they claim to be posting from T Dot
@AMZB
Sorry for mangling your acronym. People are skeptical about his claims precisely because he hasn’t done anything so bad. He claims that it’s likely to be someone who found him through manboobz, but his posts don’t place in the top 100 or hell, even top 1000 of vile comments posted here. He was clearly trolling, but there was never anything vile about it. I think David also mentions that he seems to have a history of lying. If it did happen, practically everyone here is of the opinion that it’s uncalled for and wrong.
@Shadow: Feel free to use the pronoun “she” to refer to me. I am not against “they” as a generic third-person singular—I think it solves the gender bias problem neatly—but why use it if one doesn’t have to?
@AMZB
Absolutely. I’d barely skimmed your blog so i wasn’t sure of your gender, or if you had a particular pronoun you preferred. No offense meant.
AMZB: someone on this thread I think raised the issue of whether the details he gave in the posted story added up–the questioning was, i think, not whether or not somebody called his employer but whether or not he could ‘prove’ it was someone from manboobz.
.
@Shadow: That makes sense. I guess it just seemed a little victim-blamey to me (c.f., “She has lied about something in the past? She couldn’t possibly have been raped!”), so it made me a little uncomfortable.
It seems strangely unwarranted to me that someone would attack him, but it didn’t occur to me to doubt him because of that. Technically it should surprise us that someone would go after him for no reason, but I have learned never to be surprised at the internet.
@Ithiliana: Oh, I see. I must have misunderstood, then. I agree that that would be difficult to prove, and it does seem he has leapt to conclusions.
@Shadow: No worries, I wasn’t offended! I am glad you don’t assume people’s gender. I was merely letting you know because there’s no way you would otherwise find out. My blog doesn’t really have a lot of demographic information.
AMZB: I think one of the reasons I’m reacting a bit snarkly (besides killer allergies) is that you don’t seem to have read this whole thread — I can understand asking for links to a discussion some days ago, but right here in this thread:
Holly: “nothing on manboobz gives any indication about where he works”
http://manboobz.com/2012/03/16/on-harassment-dont-do-it/comment-page-1/#comment-135596
Xardoz: “He was trying to retire as mod a few days before”
http://manboobz.com/2012/03/16/on-harassment-dont-do-it/comment-page-1/#comment-135612
Snowy: quotes Qanan’s post and discusses lack of evidence
http://manboobz.com/2012/03/16/on-harassment-dont-do-it/comment-page-2/#comment-135764
And n terms of who would call his work: it’s always possible that somebody he’s had conflicts with in the MRM might have taken this path as well, or just a regular troll, trying to shitstir, or someone who wants to make trouble for the people ‘arguing’ with Qanan: i.e. people who lurk/read on a blog don’t have to necessarily agree with blog owner, and might decide what the hell, let’s report him because the MBZers will be blamed.
There are examples of all these things all over the internet!
Those other possibilities seem a bit stronger in the context–i.e. the relative lack of conflict between Qanan and the regulars here (I don’t know what he might have done in the past), and the pretty strong emphasis among many of us that revealing that sort of personal information or using it to harm somebody is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
There are communities on the internet who harass and go after people for various reasons; this site is not one of them.
@AMZB
Good to know 🙂 And it’s nice to see another denizen of Canuckistan here 😀
Yeah, like ithiliana said. It’s not that I’m doubting someone tried to harass him, it’s his claim that it was a poster here, based on the fact that there was an increase in traffic after he trolled here (Surprise! 8-)) and that there was someone from Ann Arbor who posts here and went to his blog from here. The amount of effort required to track him down is not even close to proportionate to anything he’s said here, which was merely annoying trolling not vile trolling.
Maybe someone outed him for wanting to steal ozymandias? 🙂
That’s the best I’ve got.
@Ithiliana: I skimmed the comments and did see those ones, but I probably wasn’t reading carefully enough. I apologize if my comment was disruptive—I didn’t intend it to be! I was just sort of putting words to my own personal confusion, I guess.
I suppose the thing is, I read this blog often enough that I am accustomed to seeing despicable misogyny from the MRM. So I was extremely startled to discover that his blog didn’t seem to fit that mold. It made me wonder, “Am I wrong? When I speak out against the MRM, am I being unfair? Am I biased?”
So I guess my asking what he did that was bad was mostly about my own confusion and attempts to reconcile all this in my mind. I think of the MRM as pretty bad, and he is associated with it. Is my characterization wrong? Am I missing a side of the MRM that is reasonable? I just don’t want to be unfair, you see, and oversimplify things to the extent that I become a zealot. I don’t want to strawman anyone.
But then again, I probably spend far too many long, angst-ridden hours wondering if everything I think is wrong and biased. How would I know? If I am biased, then, tautologically, I am blind to it. This keeps me up at night.
@Shadow: Thanks for clarifying all that for me.
Out of curiosity, where in Canuckistan are you from?
@Kyrie: At last a motive that makes sense.
@AMZB: Thank you for explaining a bit more–that all makes perfect sense, and I am sorry that I started out so snarky!
I think there are definitely important issues regarding men’s rights in this country; however, the most well known MRM sites are not only not addressing those legitimate issues, they are instead focusing on attacking women and women’s rights. Since I’m firmly of the theory that we’re all biassed, and the best thing we can do is be aware of our biasses, I have no problem saying that *anybody* who blames “feminism” or “women” (and a lot of the pure dee MRM conflate the two) for their problems is misogynistic and should be mocked.
I gather from what David and others say here that there are some fairly legitimate aspects to the “father’s rights” movement, or some people who are reasonable in that movement. Qanan may be one of them. I don’t know: that’s so not my field (and when my father ran away with his graduate student, dumping my mother who’d put him through to his doctorate, I was in college, though he did try to play some games with my 16 year old brother and custody issues). I work at a rural university in a very poor area of Texas, and have a lot of single parents at students (mostly women, but increasingly, men–I know two single fathers right now who are students here). But as a woman in her mid-fifties, my sense (from listening to my friends, one of whom damn near lost custody of her child to her ex-boyfriend whom she was never married to because he proved to the asshole judge in Louisiana that she was a wiccan, not Christian), I seriously doubt that there is a systemic bias against fathers in the court system (which is not to say the court system is good).
I’m sorry these concerns about bias keep you up at night–and I know it can be hard to pick things up when skimming comments (I’m on spring break now, and was avoiding grading, so reading everything more than usual!). And trying to be aware of one’s bias (and I think one can become conscious of it) is good–but I’m a lot more concerned on a personal level about my biasses against people who are in the socially marginalized and less powerful groups (race, class) (am middle class, white, and queer) rather than white cis straight men who are spending a lot of time blaming women which is what I mostly see the stuff quoted in this blog as doing.
This is not actually true. What Father’s Rights’ claim to fight is an imbalance towards women in the courts, which isn’t actually present after you control for the fact that the evidence is balanced towards women; that is, the fact htat women provide the bulk of childcare in relationships. Even if men lost at the rates father’s rights advocates claimed (They don’t), that is *actually in keeping with the facts on the ground* of who spends work on kids prior to the divorce.
But they don’t lose as often as those folks say. They’re ‘reasonable’ in that they don’t want ot kill people, but not in the sense of having an actually reasonable position. It’s misinformed and wrong at the expense of kids, but if their premises held they’d be closer to fine.
@Rutree: Ah, thank you-I’m now wondering what I misremembered, but “reasonable” as opposed to “homicidal” may be it.
The issue is not whether some men have been unfairly treated (or not), but whether men as a class are discriminated against in child custody cases, then. And certainly the whole “paper abortion” rhetoric, and the “child care is spent by women on bon bons” is completely and totally unreasonable.
I agree with Rutee Katreya. The list of grievances on Kyle’s blog seemed so counterfactual to be just this side of Holocaust denial in my eyes. And this is part of my concern with nice-guy MRAs… they don’t spit hate so dramatically that they rate a quote on Manboobz, but they create a safe space for those who do.
The Manboobz connection Kyle holds out as evidence that my comment led to the “anonymous tip” is the assertion that his blog “got flooded by hits from manboobz site:” 15 whole hits in 30 minutes. And the supposed tipster having his IP absolutely makes no sense. A blog owner might be able to do that, if they were able to nail exactly when Kyle loaded a page he commented on, for instance, but that seems vanishingly unlikely. And more to the point: this would suggest that the owner of one of the MRA sites he visited is the tipster, since he’s pointedly not blaming David.
Maybe the “tipster” was just blowing smoke, though I share the sentiments of others who ask why someone would go after Kyle, of all people. If this did in fact happen to him and if my comment was somehow involved I would still feel shitty about it. I think what he is doing is wrong and hurts people, but I don’t think he should be targeted in his worklife for it.
Right now, though, I just feel scapegoated by him, though.
@Cotton Pony Wrangler: OK, that list is definitely the total vile MRM stuff, not just a specific father’s rights issue, so that clears that up.
He claimed 15 hits in 30 minutes was a flood: oh, that’s rich! (Maybe it is for him, but just that shows how UNimportant his blog is).
I sort of half figured that the accusation that he was accessing ‘hate sights’ from work wasn’t based on anybody actually having his IP because, as you say, that’s darn near impossible, but a sort of “let’s fling shit and see what happens” (especially given how some workplaces monitor internet access and block sites: I know more about it in the education realm, but have read friends in other fields talking about the blockage).
I suspect he is trying to scapegoat you, but there’s absolutely no evidence that linking sites he’s publicly linked to before is in any way the cause for this–I’m sorry you were put at the center.
But fifteen hits in thirty minutes! Oh, my stars and garters.
And that post he made about having a woman blogger’s contact information and being willing to give it to somebody who posts so it can be revealed and screw her up with her publisher (quoted on one of the pages I linked to) shows that he has no real problem with doxxing, which makes him doubly hypocritical on this one.
*internet hugs if you would like them*
There is no evidence in the United States that courts are biased against men. When the MRM cite stats like, ___% of custody cases go to women, they’re implying that men wanted custody and lost. It’s just so twisted how they present things.
@Rutee Katreya
“This is not actually true. What Father’s Rights’ claim to fight is an imbalance towards women in the courts, which isn’t actually present after you control for the fact that the evidence is balanced towards women; that is, the fact htat women provide the bulk of childcare in relationships.”
But what does a parents position of employment or home involvement have to do with a parents right to equal custody?
Are you less of a parent due to being the breadwinner as oppossed to being the homemaker?
Does working 50 or 60 hours a week to support your family negate your right as a parent?
How is the neccesity of being the financial provider less worthy of equal custody than the neccesity of being the home provider?
Is this the best excuse women can come up with to deny a father the equal right to be a parent, to love and care for his own children?
Is the use of state violence to kidnap a mans child and deny him the right to love and care for his own child an example of womens love, compassion and empathy?
How can anyone justify the actions of any woman to deny a man the right to love his children? Does the title of “primary caregiver” negate the right to be a father? Hatred of fathers, men, enshrined in law at the behest of women under the threat and usage of state violence.
I thought violence was bad? Or is it only bad when it’s directed against women? 84% of divorced men lose equal custody. If 84% of divorced women had their children kidnapped and were extorted funds upon threat of imprisonment, would that be bad?
An excuse to kidnap mens children is the vilest of excuses.
BoomBoom: well, in the context of custody cases, yes. In other contexts, there’s clearly shown prejudice against black men (that the MRM hardly ever talk about), and systemic oppression/bias against other groups based on OTHER areas of identity (class, sexuality, religion, etc.). But white men in custody disputes? Nah, not as a class.
And they not only present the twisted statistics, they use them as a reason to argue for terrorist acts and murder, and to justify men who kill their wives, exwives children, and strangers standing around (in beauty parlors, wasn’t one of them?).
@Ithiliana: I’m in a rush and don’t have time right now to respond to your comment—the RL is very demanding sometimes! But I just wanted to thank you for your thoughtful response. I really appreciate it. And no worries re initial snarkiness. You guys get enough trolls around here, I’m sure, that it is entirely reasonable to be suspicious of new posters. I should have been clearer in my initial post—apologies!
NWO, unequal custody doesn’t automatically mean no visitation and a restraining order.
@Holly Pervocracy
The only excuse for denying a man equal custody if he wants it is that the divorced woman hates the man she divorced. Hatred is the reason for the denial. It’s backed by state violence. Anyone who supports a law that denies a father the right to love and care for his children supports the hatred of men.
Also, mid page I asked a few questions about VAWA. Your thoughts?
Fathers are not being denied the right to equal parenting. If you look up us joint custody you will see that most states have it by DEFAULT. To get otherwise is very expensive and even if there is abuse, it’s not a given, especially in the state of California. I think people are just taking the MRMs word for this. I know of a man that did have a hard time getting equal custody and he fought for it in the state of Florida. But looking up what the laws are and from my own experience in a different state, it’s NOT the picture that the MRM paints.
There is a much larger problem with parents, mostly men, not paying their child support and pulling shenanigans. Everyone should call their local family courts and get a contact person to interview, they’ll let you know.
I had a mediation session that was quite telling. The person doing the mediation had us leave separately and had to watch to make sure that he was long gone because of his history and things that were said during the session. The mediator has had bad experiences with men chasing down women and beating them after sessions, so security was a button push away. Their procedures and the mediator’s demeanor told a story. Talk to security for family courts, talk to anyone connected with it, they’ll tell you. That’s not to say most men are abusive during the proceedings, it’s clear that when there is abuse, it’s usually a male and the experiences have been so horrendous that they have procedures surrounding this.