When is a false rape accusation not a false rape accusation? When it’s leveled against a feminist man.
That, in any case, is the logic behind an appalling post on A Voice for Men attempting to smear a male feminist blogger named Jason Thibeault, who posts on FreeThoughtBlogs as Lousy Canuck, by proclaiming him a rapist.
The post is a typical bit of AVFM “satire” — that is, sophistry — arguing that “by his own feminist standards” Thibeault is a rapist … because he was once accused of rape by a girlfriend, as he wrote about in a recent post. And since feminists believe that ALL accusations of rape are true, AVFM’s Birric Forcella argues, Thibeault is thus a “confessed rapist.”
Obviously, this argument is ludicrous on its face. Feminists don’t believe that all accusations of rape are automatically true. And Thibeault, for his part, says that he was falsely accused.
This doesn’t stop AVFM from giving their piece the frankly libelous headline: “FreeThoughtBlogs’ Jason Thibeault, confessed rapist.”
AVFM may defend its post as “satire” — they have a rather expansive definition of the word — but that headline is pure libel. It’s false — and would be so even if the accusations of rape were true, as Thibeault (who’s responded to the AVFM post here) maintains his innocence.
And AVFM’s intent is clearly malicious. In the first comment to the piece, AVFM founder and publisher Paul Elam declares frankly, and revealingly, “Karma is a BITCH.”
Thibeault’s real crime, in AVFM’s eyes, is that he has publicly supported women who have come forward in recent weeks to accuse prominent skeptic writer Michael Shermer of rape and sexual assault.
And so they have responded by making what is an unequivocally false accusation against him in a headline on their site.
Of course, this isn’t the first time A Voice for Men has falsely accused someone of something based on bad evidence or no evidence at all.
In April of this year, Elam (along with a number of other MRAs and an assortment of White Supremacists as well) worked himself into an uproar over a blog post from an alleged feminist allegedly working in a college admission office who claimed she was routinely trashing applications from white males.
Though even the most rudimentary amount of fact-checking would have revealed that the woman they blamed for the blog had nothing to do with it, she had her contact information posted online by MRAs and others, leaving her open to harassment and widespread vilification. Elam contributed to the hubbub by posting a vituperative post identifying the wrong woman by name — and only after being called on his mistake by numerous other MRAs did his finally retract the post.
You can read about the whole appalling affair here.
Elam has also made false accusations against little old me. In yet another case of libel-by-headline, he accused Jessica Valenti and me of being “child abusers” … because we’re feminists. (Seriously, that was the entire basis of his accusation.)
And at one point, either lying outright or misled by a troll, he put forth the absurd conspiracy theory that I was somehow responsible for an appalling Reddit forum known as the Beatingwomen subreddit.
In his post on the subject, he claimed to have “intel” from two separate sources that “confirm[ed]” my involvement in the subreddit — he provided none of this evidence — and promised that “further word” on the subject would be forthcoming.
Of course, this evidence never materialized — because it was fraudulent and/or imaginary. Elam dropped the subject. I had and have no connection to the subreddit.
And not long ago, AVFM’s Dean Esmay very publicly accused its former Canadian News Director Kristina Mendez (AKA TheWoolyBumblebee) of (maybe, possibly) running off with the money she collected for a center devoted to the memory of Earl Silverman, a Canadian MRA who committed suicide partially out of frustration over the difficulties he had in funding the DV shelter for men he ran out of his home. The folks at AVFM have admitted quite plainly that they have no evidence of wrongdoing here.
Apparently, AVFM’s strategy is to prove that false accusations are common by making as many of them as they possibly can.
EDIT: Added the bit about Valenti and me.
Though I will say that if AVFM told me that the sky is blue, I’d go check, just on general principles.
Oh, that gif. Reminded me of the first time the kids did a tour of the US. We were happily taking advantage of the freedom to not get home in time for meal/ homework/ bath/ music practice and associated domestic duties. So, of course, the cats who were used to lots of cuddles in kids’ beds were getting little more attention than food and an occasional hello. They were not used to being without constant companionship and spoiling.
One night I’m delighted to be on the phone because one of the kids called. There I am innocently standing in the hall, phone to ear, and the biggest of our three cats at the time took a standing jump from the floor to get onto my back. All four sets of claws digging, sliding and destroying their way down as he slipped. I wasn’t too thrilled at the time, but we did start paying all of them a bit more attention thereafter.
Aaaaaand, just got a friendly blast of sardine breath in my face from Pearl. Charming.
That’s one of the reasons I posted Dean Esmay’s comment about Jason being innocent. He literally has NO idea whether or not Jason is innocent, but instead of just saying, “Obviously we’ll never know what did or didn’t happen” he goes with “Obviously Jason is innocent” ‘cos we all know women always lie.
Fuck AVfM.
My current cat is a sweetheart, but my first cat…well, this one time the boyfriend and I were having sex and apparently kitty did not appreciate being ignored. So he jumped on the boyfriend’s ass and held on for dear life, making full use of the claws of doom.
He also chose my cat-hating (and hated) aunt to jump on, out of a room full of much more cat-friendly people. He got treats later for that one.
Right. I’m used to atavistic mouth-breathers like this simply assuming the alleged victim is making it up from whole cloth. When it’s a man creating an allegation (of false rape claims), OBVIOUSLY I must be innocent. Because penis.
It makes me wish for a TARDIS so I could stop myself from publishing that post. To have his support in this, predicated only on his prejudice, bugs the hell outta me.
I guess the only thing we know with certainty is that everyone associated with AVfM is an unrepentant asshat who deserves to step on LEGOs forever.
I think it’s also worth talking about (in a general, not specific sense) abusive people (often but not always men) using feminism as a shield or disarming device. It’s gotten to a point where I am very wary of men who approach me by immediately discussing feminism, because I have seen guys use phrases and concepts that come from feminism or other social justice movements to manipulate women. Like, they use ‘sex-positive’ language to sort of shame you into hooking up with them. They imply that you’re worried about being ‘slutty’ or have a problem with sex. When they get called out they point out what a great ally they are, and how so many men are much worse- how could you think that about him?
The underlying tone is that feminists should be so grateful for male allies that we don’t challenge them- and that we’re in constant danger of losing their support. It’s kind of the perfect place for a predator to hide.They portray themselves as one of the good guys who really gets it. So if one girl speaks up and says ‘Hey this guy sexually harassed me!’ he can turn to the people around him and say ‘Well, you guys know I’m not like that! I mean, look at how much time I spend talking about feminism!’.
It’s scary to me, because I’m seeing a trend. And I don’t really feel like the feminist movement knows how or is capable of addressing it.
fit-to-flip, I don’t think people have that hard a time spotting those kind of faux feminists — maybe not everyone spots them, but look how many people were onto Hugo Fuckin’ Schwyzer for years before he imploded. They out themselves pretty quickly when their behavior doesn’t match up with their words.
Fit-to-flip, like PUAs claiming the main reason women are reluctant to have sex with them is fear of slut-shamning? Or how women who don’t react favourably to getting negged must obviously have self-esteem issues?
I’ve encountered several guys like that, but like Cloudiah said, they’re not hard to spot. Not that the manipulation might not still work, but that’s not to do with feminism specifically.
fit-to-flip: Yes, I absolutely agree. Schwyzer comes to mind immediately. I’m sure I know of others who’ve feigned feminism as part of their pick-up artistry, too. And it’s telling that any male feminist is immediately hit with “you’re just pretending to be feminist to get laid” by the MRAs, possibly because it’s part of their own repertoires.
You can pretty much figure out everything MRAs are about by reverse-engineering the stuff they say about other people, honestly. Their projection skills would be the envy of any movie theater.
Right now a line from Team Harassment is that they’re afraid to speak out against the great and powerful Freethought Blogs because they’ll get labeled a rapist. I can’t help but see a smackerel of guilty conscience in that.
Lousycanuck: They seem awfully brave about stating that fear loud and clear though.
Cassandra, love those gifs! Who’s the guy – singer, actor?
Your first cat reminds me of Magnus. When we bought him from the RSPCA he was all sweet and cuddly and purring. What we didn’t know was that he was coming down with flu, so not at all his normal self. Couple of weeks later he was better (and ewww the treatments involved) and I reached down to pat him, from the front. He ATTACHED himself to my arm – didn’t rip but just buried his claws in me and bit. You should have seen my arm; my friends at work said I looked like I’d been got at by a vampire with bad aim.
I learned then to never pat Mags from the front, only from the back. He liked being patted and he liked sitting on laps; he loved head-butting. But it didn’t take long before his mood would change, and then you had to get him off, fast. I’ve had two workmates who knew about him almost wet themselves (by their own admission) when he planted himself on them, and he sliced up the hand of one of my managers who didn’t listen when I said, “Stop patting him NOW.” My guess is Mags had been badly treated, teased, or something, when he was young (he was only 18 months old when we got him). He also hadn’t been neutered, which didn’t help – spent his whole life here getting into fights and looking like Frankenstein’s Cat, only with tubes instead of bolts sticking out of his neck.
Magnus and Tom
@Jason:
Yeah, that pretty much goes without saying for me.
I’ve always thought that the reason MRAs yowl so long and hard about consent and constantly try to figure out where the grey areas are is because some of them have very large skeletons on their closets.
Schywzer got away with his shit for years, with the support of people who didn’t see what he was about and who dismissed his racism (or didn’t see it) as well, alas.
LousyCanuck – I can’t see MRAs pretending to be feminists for any reason. One, they hate women too much, two, they’re not feckin’ SMART enough to pull off that stunt.
hellkell – yeah, they’re likely the rapists who don’t want to be called rapists, whereas PUAs pretty openly don’t give a shit about consent.
I have to admit, I’ve sometimes thought that men who go overboard trying to convince everyone how feminist they are are doing it to get into some woman’s good graces. Mostly college guys. Who write heartfelt essays in their college paper about how they understand now what terrible things women have to go through. Okay, I only saw that once, but still.
@ab
Yeah, I guess like that, but I don’t think they’re really trying to convince people-I think they’re just trying to pull a ‘gotcha’.
@cloudiah
The problem is while you might spot the more obvious ones, I believe there are a lot that simply get classified as ‘they mess up sometimes, but they’re fundamentally all right’. Sure, there were people speaking up against Hugo Schwyzer, but he was still getting airtime on a number feminist sites- for years! If anything, that makes me more worried- Hugo was and to some extent still is, protected by people in the movement.
And it’s men like Hugo who are older and in positions of some authority over women that really worry me. Because they get present themselves as this expert on feminism to younger women who haven’t been in the movement that long. Sometimes this guy is there introduction. And its nice to think that everyone can spot a phony really quickly- but I don’t see it happening.
And I also think they deliberately go after people who are less likely to pick up on it. I’m starting my second year of college, and I see these guys- and sometimes it takes me awhile to think- huh, this guy is off some how. They prey on naivety. And maybe you’re right that more than not figure it out, but in my experience, being the one to not figure it means you’re shit out of luck. It’s not a fair price to pay. And if people are figuring out that ‘hey, this guy is creepy and rapey’ but not forcing him out of their space and going out of their way to catch the unaware up to speed…That’s not okay. Rape shouldn’t be an accepted casualty of not making waves in the community.
Plus, I do think when these guys associate themselves with feminism they get more sympathy from society as a whole. Like ‘Gosh, this poor guy actually agrees with them, and they still accused him of sexual assault! If anyone’s innocent it must be him!”
I’m amused at the number of newbie trolls who kindly announce themselves immediately by going, “COMMENT COMMENT,” and then, immediately afterward, “CENSORSHIP RAR!”
RE: Dan Savage
Fuck that guy. Really.
I’m in a weird position in that sex-positive feminism was actually instrumental in my recovering from the Raping Year. It was my first exposure to the idea that all my prior sexual experience (rape) wasn’t what all sex could be.
I was also lucky that I ran into the types who were all about being able to say no just as easily as saying yes. It was so mind-boggling to me that my husband would accept a no with no guilt-tripping, no demand for reasons, no nothing, just an, “okay.” I STILL feel lucky about that, honestly.
Re: MRA’s don’t pretend to be feminists. Don’t count on it. I’m currently in a discussion with an obvious MRA on another site who is trying to use feminist arguments in defense of his position that the 14-year-old girl raped by her 49-year-old teacher in Montana was old enough to give her consent and that statutory rape is bogus. He (I’m pretty sure it’s a he) thinks patriarchy is at fault, apparently. I pointed out that sex with underage males is also statutory rape and he clinched his MRA bona fides by going off about how women who have sex with boys are given lighter sentences than men who have sex with girls.
@ kittehs
The dude is Kim Heechul, singer/actor/comedian/all around media personality. His band is terrible, but he himself is pretty much made of awesome. Bonus video – take your cat to work day. Might work better if the cat wasn’t a Bengal.
The problem with my first cat was that when I first got him he was so tiny that it didn’t hurt when he bit me, since he was mostly gumming me, so I thought it was cute and encouraged it, and taught him to play rough in general. Which proved not to be such a great idea once he was full grown and stalking me whenever I tried to go to the bathroom at night.
Oh, THAT piece of Savage’s advice. Thank you, LBT, I’d managed to forget about that.
I hope it’s the worst thing he’s ever said, but I don’t believe it.
fit-to-flip – yes, HfS’s predation on his students, and the way he had people like Marcotte and Filipovic (sp?) on his side for years, shows it’s not always easy to see a predatory shit pretending to be a feminist for what he is.
But even if HfS hadn’t been a racist, rapist, murderous filth, his whole “Here’s how you do feminism” line puts him over the limit for me.