As I finished up my last post about Men’s Rights Redditors attempting to dox a so-called “conservative feminist” blogger who had confessed to trashing male applications when working in a university admissions office, I saw that A Voice for Men has run a post by Paul Elam identifying someone they’ve convinced themselves is the blogger, apparently using the information dug up by the Reddit doxers.
Their alleged culprit? “Arianna Pattek, a Georgetown grad student.” Other Men’s Rightsers have taken up the case, and the Conspiracy Subreddit is all aflutter about a post identifying her by name.
They’ve got the wrong person.
AVFM “proof” backing up their claims is that they have found a paper by Pattek that bears some vague resemblances to the blogger’s description of her thesis. But it’s clearly not a match.
Discussing her (then upcoming) thesis defense on her blog, the blogger refers to a number of topics, including men’s rights and paleoconservatism, that aren’t referenced at all in Pattek’s thesis. And roughly half the of her thesis deals with a topic — Holocaust Denial — that the blogger doesn’t mention. The blogger says her thesis is 120 pages; Pattek’s thesis is 95 pages.
But there’s an even bigger reason I know these two women are not one and the same:
The pseudonymous blogger claims to have gotten a doctorate in the spring of 2012.
Pattek got her bachelors degree from Georgetown in the spring of 2012. She’s not now, and has never been, a grad student.
Her thesis wasn’t a PhD. thesis, but a Senior Thesis that was a requirement for her minor in Justice and Peace, a program for undergraduates.
It even says so on the title page of the thesis itself: “A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Certificate in Justice and Peace, Georgetown University, Spring 2012.” A news article linked to in the comments on A Voice for Men notes that she was “the winner of the 2012 Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) Undergraduate Thesis Award.”
UNDERgraduate. UNDERgraduate.
They’re not the same woman.
All of this is clear from simply reading the “evidence” that AVFM has assembled.
Even without this smoking gun, even a cursory skimming of the blog and the thesis show that they were written by different people. The blogger, assuming she is even a real person and not the creation of a hoaxer, claims to be a “conservative feminist” and constantly bashes Muslims. Pattek, concerned about “marginalized groups,” seems to be anything but a conservative. The blogger’s writing style is crude and dogmatic, so much so that the blog reeks of hoax. Pattek, by contrast, writes smoothly and intelligently.
It’s almost as if we are talking about two different people.
Oh, wait.
A Voice for Men: not only shitty people, but shitty doxers as well.
Amazingly, someone who says he’s a friend of Pattek has gone over to AVFM to point out in the comments that she is clearly not the “conservative feminist” blogger — and has been dismissed by Wrong-Way Elam and the gang as a liar and “white knight.”
EDITED TO ADD: MarkyMark and The Elusive Wapiti have both climbed aboard the anti-Pattek bandwagon.
And Georgetown has officially clarified that 1) Pattek was an UNDERgraduate and that 2) she never worked in admissions.
Meanwhile, over on AVFM, someone called Disorderly Conduct has posted an appropriately critical comment:
I’m disconcerted by the certainty of other commenters that everything is true considering the amount and plausibility of evidence that currently exists. There’s nothing wrong with prodding the university for answers about Arianna and the website edits, but at the very least wait until more evidence comes in before you run off with your verdict.
It should be noted the credibility of the entire controversy is based on anecdotes taken from an extremely dubious and over-the-top blog. Anecdotes are NOT valid evidence of anything unless they are substantiated by additional solid evidence, and this anecdote has none. Evidence connecting the blog to Arianna suggests she might be writing the blog, not that what is being written is true. Additionally, there are serious discrepancies between the information provided about Adrianna on the cached Georgetown pages and the beliefs stated in the blog. Some commenters suggest this is to cover her identity, but there is no reason to believe this information was distorted or fabricated but the admissions blog post itself is not.
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1ckvgo/woman_who_works_at_college_admissions_rejects/
Mensrights reddit is not on board with this. One commenter who says they know about the Georgetown admissions process asserts that there is major gaps between their knowledge of it and how the blogger portrayed the process. This includes discrepancies between dates and the fact that admissions isn’t even run by a single person. Another commenter says there’s a committee involved in judging admissions. Putting this much effort into portraying your post as containing faulty information just so you can brag about seriously incriminating and illegal evidence is extremely implausible to me.To recap:
– There’s no evidence the post about trashing admissions is factual, and other evidence indicates it wasn’t
– There is insubstantial evidence the blogger was Arianna
– It is advisable to wait until there is substantial evidence before you declare it as trueAdditionally:
– I haven’t seen evidence Arianna was ever in charge of admissions (feel free to correct)
– The consequences of the conspiracy would have to be public or fabricated: the university publishes statistics about their admissions, and any number of people would have to cover it up or there’d be a suspicious spike in certain demographics
– The total number of people in the U involved in the conspiracy if all of it were true would be implausibly high
– Presumption of innocence has apparently gone to hell, and of all people to do it
Elam responds with this feeble bit of hand-waving:
I agree with much of what you post here, which is exactly why an affirmative response to the NCFM letter from GU is in order, vs the removal of information about Pattek from their website.
It is in the light of day where the lingering questions about this can be answered.
No, Paul, that’s not how journalism works. You get your facts straight BEFORE you publish. You don’t publish dubious — and in this case demonstrably false — information and wait for others to prove it wrong in the “light of day.”
This whole incident is shining a lot of daylight onto AVFM, and what it reveals is none too pretty — albeit not suprising in the least.
Thanks, Cloudiah, for bringing the Georgetown response and these comments to our attention.
EDITED AGAIN: The same Men’s Rights forum that thoroughly doxed the red-haired Canadian activst I wrote about earlier this week has also doxed Pattek, albeit less thoroughly; I’m not going to link to it. Some other sites that have wrongly trashed Pettek: ReyekoMRA, a conspiracy-mongering site ironically called What Really Happened, and Stormfront. Yes, THAT Stormfront, the hangout for white supremecists.
What’s amazing to me is that the discussion on Stormfront, despite being racist as fuck, actually shows more evidence of critical thought than the discussions of the AVFM regulars. Posting in the Stormfront thread, David Duke — yes, THAT David Duke — is critical enough to think that “feminist conservative’s” blog is bogus. Others are similarly skeptical. Meanwhile, another commenter there is able to figure out that whether or not the blog is bogus, there’s no way Pattek wrote it.
So it’s official: Paul Elam is dumber, and more blinded by hate, than David Duke.
I’m going to write Pattek a supportive email. (If you can’t find her email account, I can send you the email of hers I’m using.)
TLDR on Pecunium’s explanation of the American healthcare insurance ‘system’:
Bosses done fuck up shit for workers.
@leftwingfox
wow. ok, health care here really sucks… (never had to pay myself)
This applies to a lot of features of the American economy. The USA is pretty much the country in the Western world that was the most successful at killing off the workers movement. (Canada isn’t far behind but I live in the one place in Canada where there’s still a decent union system.)
Holy shit, did not know that about health insurance.
Hi everyone. Iv’e been following you for a long time, I’m just so used to everyone here. Anyway, I finally caught up on this thread and the last. I know it’s off topic now, but you were talking about Sci Fi books, and I had to bring out one of my favorites.
It’s called the Changling Plague, by Syne Mitchell. Her other books are pretty good too, but I like this one the best.
::waves to everyone:: It’s nice to finally be visible.
The Quebec system has suffered for years since the PQ (allegedly a center-left party, but had already morphed into a right-left nationalist coalition, and is nowadays fully center-right) under ex-Conservative PM Lucien Bouchard in 95 (96?) decided to slash costs by sending a large number of nurses on preemptive retirement, merged hospitals together, and generally made a mess of the whole thing. Then the Liberals (center-right on economics… we don’t really have a social conservative right) came in power with promises of fixing the mess and continued austerity measures all the way until they were kicked out by last year’s student movement. The Libs even added a 200$ “ticket moderateur” which is a flat rate everyone must pay on their taxes… a fucking regressive tax. My ex-gf (who is still ‘legally’ my civil union spouses because as she is unemployed I’ve always supported her financially and being both poly we’re always been sort of gaming the law anyway, as we were seeing other people, so why not use it to get the best benefits possible?) now has to pay that 200$ even if she has no revenue in a year. It’s ridiculous bullshit.
When I was a kid I could see a doctor at the ER in something like 1-2 hours. Nowadays, I’ve had one time I had a hairline fracture in my leg and had to wait 8 hours to get an x-ray, and almost decided to go home from sheer frustration… given it took me 3 months to fully recover with a boot, I can’t imagine how bad I’d be now if I’d have walked on it without a plaster or boot for 3 months just because the wait time had destroyed me.
I hear you; it can be really frustrating to live in a country that is part of your cultural heritage but that also feels so broken in so many ways.
So… back on topic: Georgetown has confirmed that Pattek was a Georgetown student, who never worked in admissions, and admissions at Georgetown doesn’t work that way.
And Boston gets some comfort dogs. So sweet. When my mother was in the hospital, they had therapy dogs visit a few times, and it really made a difference for her.
Okay, so first of all, the post they’re lathering each other up over is a year old, and the blog hasn’t been updated since last August. So good work on that timely rescue of the oppressed white males of Georgetown, guys.
Second, the post is really really obviously fake, as are most of the other posts on the blog. I mean, this?
We can’t boil people down to numbers or statistics, or reject people based on the color of their skin. I’m happy to say that I approved nearly 90% of all female minority and 80% of all (white female applicants especially if the girls want to study math or science) while rejecting over 50% of white males this week and hope this trend holds out.
Come on.
Lord, these boys are not bright.
@cloudiah
Ugh, the followups from mensrights reddits. Yeah, because colleges use undergraduate students to determine who gets admitted.
Ermm, you southerners know we have indoor heating here right?
Okay okay. I’ll throw some hand made quilts and duvets in along with the Timmies and maple syrup.
Seriously though, the weather in southern Ontario aint that bad, you aren’t going to have to declare bankrupty over a child birth or twisted ankle, aborttion arguments are being quashed as soon as they come up, and while wait times can be long, you will be treated for health problems.
I’ll take the cold over the nonsense American women are expected to deal with any day. But being Canadian, I’m clearly biased. And I live in a warmer region than the praries or even the more northerly parts of Ontario
Oh, and there are several areas of the US that are further north than I am. So maybe some of you would actually be moving south!
.
Re:cloudiah’s find, while I hope that response means the woman will see an end to her harassment soon, I’m a bit annoyed that GU even issued a response to that pack of rabid clowns.
Of course, now this just proves that Georgetown is in on the conspiracy. 0_o
Abortions are covered under MSI. Harper is trying to erode our health care system, but whrn his evil backbenchers test the waters to see if abortion is up for debate again, he shuts them down. Too bad he cuts funding to multiple other women’s programs….
Now that Georgetown has confirmed that the admissions post was a hoax, it’s only a matter of time for AVfM to admit their mistake and apologize to Pattek.
And by a matter of time, I mean never.
@ Brittersweet
Hey, we can be the smug ones too once in a while! 😉
No, seriously, you are right, I think a lot of Canadians have a superiority complex on health care (social issues/foreign policy). While I personally feel privileged to have affordable access to a decent system, it’s important to keep things in perspective.
(The amount of Canadians who seriously think that Canada is a post-racial, gender blind society in a world of “uncivilized” nations is staggering. In other words, Canadians may be less loud about it, but we’re just as full of ourselves)
Keep up the good fight for health care!
A commenter going by Disorderly Conduct posted this fairly reasonable message on AVfM:
Paulie’s cowardly response to that:
Here’s an idea, you damn asshats: Next time you think you have discovered the identity of a terrible feminist, try confirming that first before you dox them and unleash your attack weasels.
Which means AVfM is going to crow about how they brought GU to its knees and this is why the movement is really going places.
That ruins the fun of going off half cocked.
princessbonbon, You’re using shaming language! 😀
To be honest, the amount of fucks I give about shaming these dipwads has veered into the negative. 🙂
@Bittersweet, when the ACA first passed, I was disappointed we weren’t moving to a single payer system. But I decided that I can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good, and I view it as a first step to the end goal of single payer. Then when I read about politicians in the UK or Canada taking steps to dismantle or privatize their systems, I get depressed. If the programs aren’t safe in countries where they are almost universally loved, what chance would a single payer system have in the US, where half of people don’t want any healthcare reform at all?
But I don’t blame the hospitals, nurses, or doctors themselves for the faults in the US system. I blame the fact that access to care is based on ability to pay rather than need. I understand that healthcare is a finite resource and demand is greater than supply. But if it has to be rationed, it should be rationed in a way that makes sure that people with the greatest need come first while lesser needs may have some waiting times.
It’s not like Canadian doctors tell someone with a ruptured appendix to wait six months. If it’s an emergency, they’ll be taken care of first. Now if someone needs a knee replacement, they could have a small wait time because it isn’t a do or die situation. In my opinion, rationing should be done more like that, like a triage.
@ Cloudiah
Good work on finding a coherent comment on AVfM! Too bad Elam didn’t figure out what the commenter wrote.
It seems like he’s setting things up for the JAQing off excuse.