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.)
Equal time for cats!
Okay, since a couple people aren’t as aware of how U.S. health system works….
The big thing to remember is that health care is, in the U.S., almost entirely a private business enterprise. Doctors are essentially private contractors; hospitals are simply larger-scale businesses. This is even mostly true of government-operated hospitals. If you’re not going to an explicitly free clinic (which often don’t exist in some parts of the country), you’re going to end up in the regular system.
So, the core idea is, you go in, you get your medical treatment, you pay your fee.
It’s the last step that’s so FUBAR.
You can either pay all your own costs out-of-pocket, or you can pay for health insurance. As noted, insurance is often, but not always, provided by the employer. (Note: Under Obamacare, this is supposed to move to “almost always”, but we’ll see if it actually gets implemented that way.) Typically, you still end up paying part of your premium; you may also have a choice of providers, or you may have to go with one company. (Larger companies usually can offer more choices, because having lots of employees means they can tell insurers that they’ll have a larger pool of captive customers, so more insurers will bring their rates lower to make a bid for that access.)
There’s two main models for health insurance:
HMOs are very restrictive. You usually have to choose from a small number of primary providers in your area; any specialist visits require a referral from that primary caregiver. HMO doctors are essentially employees of the insurance provider, which means that you’re pretty much at the mercy of their ethics–if the company’s a good one, your doctor will do best by you; there’s been cases, though, of HMOs providing heavy pressure on doctors to limit referrals and care offered to the bare minimum.
In exchange for this, you usually have lower premiums on your insurance, and lower co-costs on visits.
The PPO (and some variants) plans allow a good deal of latitude on what doctor you go to. The insurance company picks up a percentage of the cost; you’re expected to pay the rest. There’s usually two different rates–one for “in-network” care, which means the doctor has agreed to pre-negotiated rates with the company; the other is for “out-of-network” care. The benefit for staying ‘in-network’ is that the company picks up a greater percentage of the tab. In theory, staying in-network can usually mean about 80% of the cost being picked up by the company, and some services at 100%.
Sounds fair enough, but there’s a fair bit of fine print:
1: You’ll usually have a co-pay for services; this may be $25-50 for an office visit, and up to a couple hundred dollars for a trip to the ER.
2: In addition, you’ll usually have a deductible–a set value that, until it’s reached, you have to pay ALL bills for. Some plans have a variable deductible–high-deductible plans usually mean lower premiums–but then, obviously, higher out-of-pocket expenses if things go bad.
Some PPO plans offer debit accounts where you can stick some additional cash (pre-tax) to apply towards expenses under the deductible. FSAs ‘dump’ at the end of the year (unspent money is lost); HSAs, which can only be attached to high-deductible plans, allow the money set aside to ‘roll over’ from one year to the next. PRO-TIP: If you’re young and fairly healthy, the HSA is very likely to be your Gold Standard–you can set aside money now, and when you’re older, it’ll be ready to cover the deductible when trouble starts hitting. This is extra-true if your employer offers a contribution to the HSA account.
Confused yet?
Oh, well, then, I suppose I shouldn’t bother mentioning that vision and dental are almost certain to be under separate plans, usually with completely different rules. Getting decent dental coverage, especially, is a royal pain in the ass, even if your regular coverage is good.
****
So, what if you can’t afford health insurance? Well, then you have three choices:
1: If you’re really and truly dirt-poor, you can get on Medicaid. This will generally result in lousy service; many doctors refuse to take Medicaid patients because the government shorts and delays the bills.
2: If you’re old enough, or on disability, you can get on Medicare; very similar to the above.
3: If neither of the above apply, then you’re on the fun track. Thanks to that dirty communist, Ronald Reagan, hospital emergency rooms cannot turn away a patient who cannot pay–emergency care must be provided. Thus, most ERs in poor areas see a steady stream of indigent patients suffering from mild maladies like the flu, or fevers, etc. Of course, these folks still get told they’ll be expected to pay, but eventually, the folks burdened by medical debts go into bankruptcy, whereupon the hospitals just smile, nod, say “We understand” and write the whole thing off.
Haha, little joke there. No, no. What happens is the hospitals figure out how often they are going to get stuck with the bill, and then factor that amount into the bills that everyone else pays. To give an idea of just how bad it is, fully 60% of consumer bankruptcy in the U.S. cited medical expenses as the straw that broke the camel’s back. Of course, these bankruptcies usually also negate a lot of other debt, because hey, if you’re going to court, anyway, may as well clear the credit-cards. So there’s a huge drag on the economy which is almost invisible because of this “system”.
Oh, and if you’re one of those namby-pampy hippies who actually, y’know, cares about people, well, it’s worth noting that the ER model of medicine means that the working class generally can’t afford medical care until it is, in fact, an emergency. Thus, minor conditions that could be treated easily early on get much, much more complicated by the time someone actually accepts an ER trip.
Over the years, several attempts have been made to incorporate a single-payer model, similar to Canada’s and most of Europe’s. These have always been blocked, usually with accusations that a government-operated health-care plan would be the ultimate in inefficiency, needless bureaucracy and heartless dogmatism. Then, when Obama suggested the Public Option (which would essentially be just like private insurance, but available to anyone without such), the insurance companies insisted they couldn’t compete.
@freemage
Thanks for info (in serious. I can’t tell if people think when I say this I am being sarcastic, but I’m not). Didn’t know all of it, just had a vague idea :/ Got to go without dental insurance for a year (plus? can’t remember when it got lost) when my mom lost her job, and now that we actually have it again I’m still out of the habit enough I haven’t gotten around to getting an appointment. anyway. Yeah, US health care sucks. :/ /stream of consciousness.
It was weird, the first year I had Medicare (one of those privately managed ones, because it cost the least and included prescription drug coverage), the birth control pill I was on actually cost more than buying it without insurance. It is about equal, now, I think.
This year, it seems a whole class of muscle relaxers was dropped from coverage. My doctor was dismayed.
Good god, that turned out longer than I expected, even. Sorry about that….
Marie: Seriously, I cannot recommend enough that you go to your dentist while you’ve got coverage. Get as much done as you can possibly afford now, before you lose it; that way, if you have to go for awhile without, you’ll be better able to skate by. (Gods, I wish we had an HSA-style plan for dental coverage….)
I think that cat is blowing raspberries at all of us.
freemage, good summary.
If you have a strong stomach this does an excellent breakdown of the US health care system and why it costs so much:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2136864,00.html
Also, in a city of 250,000 people, we have FOUR doctors willing to take new Medicare patients. One of them is a walk-in clinic of 5 nurse practitioners under a single doctor.
Dear theseventhguest, allow me to offer you your complimentary Man Boobz Welcome Package. (Now conveniently as one link, to avoid moderation.)
(Anyone with ideas for things to add, please comment on the page!)
One small change from the ACA is that insurance companies can no longer have copayments for doctor visits that include childhood vaccinations, and this change is already in effect. Before the ACA, health departments and clinics had trouble keeping up with the amount of parents who would go to them for their babies’ shots because they couldn’t afford copays at pediatrician offices. Even worse was that some children were just going without their vaccines because of the copays, at least until school enrollment where you have to be up to date on your shots to go to public school.
The new change will end up saving a lot of money in the long run, because boosting vaccination rates lessens disease rates, and disease costs more than vaccines, both for the treatment of the diseases and the long term effects that come from them.
For other doctor and ER visits, there are still copays, though, both for people with health insurance and Medicare.
That’s another good point. It ends up being more expensive in the long run, too, when people are unable to get teeth cleanings, Xrays, and fillings every six months. Small cavities end up becoming a tooth abscess requiring an extraction or root canal.
And speaking of US health insurance…
🙁
One can excuse Paul Elam for getting confused about how journalism is supposed to be done, because it appears journalists themselves are sort of confused on that point as well nowadays (see: Boston coverage, Complete incompetence of)
Post updated w/ Cloudiah’s info.
BlackBloc, you’ve got a point. But to give the press a tiny teensy bit of credit, at least they’s not STILL insisting that a “dark-skinned male,” or those two guys put on the cover of the NY Post the other day, are the real suspects. Elam’s been presented with clear evidence that he’s full of shit, and all he does is spin.
@freemage
I’ll try to keep that in mind. Just have to ask my mom if I can go (since she’d be paying if it’s not all covered.) And actually get around to scheduling one. No lisence makes this harder, cuz then my dad’s got to take me, but my mom’s paying, so she’d probably call them…idk. Just complicated 😛 I’m rambling again.
@theseventhguest
um, wow. O_o
also, are you new here? If so, have a welcome 😀 If not, I apologize for my shitty memory.
Marie, go to the dentist!
I don’t have insurance, and so tend to wait until there’s an emergency. The last two times I went it was because, er, giant chunks of tooth broke off in my mouth.
I have resolved to do better, but haven’t been back since my last emergency.
I read AVFM comments for the first time. Yuk.
That poor woman. She took down her actual blog about her real job overseas (I wonder why?) and the AVFMs are claiming its a sign of guilt – no indication that people might not like suddenly getting the attention of a bunch of misogynistic creeps because they’ve been mistaken for a fictional character.
@David
Ow. ::sympathy winced::
Gee, why aren’t they over here thanking us for the publicity?
After the complete life-destroying mess it made of identifying the Boston bombers, Reddit needs to back way, way off the doxxing–sorry, “investigative journalism”–for a while.
Yes, if you google her name there are a dozen other MRA sites calling her a sexist and a racist and destroying her name online. It was bound to happen that avfm would dox the wrong person. The lesson I take is the growing influence avfm seems to wield over the other MRA sites. They take anything said and publish it. No independent look, no criticism allowed. They’re all just avfm puppets in this case, and that’s just where avfm wants them. Unfortunately they are caught repeating a buncha libels and Gramps did it to them without a second thought. Wonder how they feel about Gramps right about now. Wonder how Gramps will try to wriggle out of this. Avfm is the serpent inside the MRA. It can never have any credibility with that site still active.
Sorry, that comment by me was responding to saltpickles.
@Shaenon
ugh. What’d Reddit do? (somehow missed)
They decided that the bomber was a missing Brown student named Sunil Tripathi. Internet sleuthing for the win! Wait, no.