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.
Cassandra – lol! “Take your cat to work, aka don’t get any work done and don’t get much attention from the cat.”
I wish we’d had Mags as a kitten; he might have grown up very differently. At least he’s not so aggro over There, now, and he has a massive garden to patrol. Still likes to sleep stretched out on people with his head under their chin, though. 🙂
@ kittehserf
I totally agree, and that’s one of the many reasons why it was so frustrating to see people arguing that he had done so much good, that we should let him redeem himself to the movement. He never said anything that haven’t been expressed by a woman previously, and he also said a lot of really condescending and offensive stuff. And he made money doing it. But people acted like it he was the holy grail or something, I don’t get it.
My old cat also liked to sleep curled up in the small of my back when I was laying on my stomach, which again was cute when he was a kitten but not so cute once he weighed 10 pounds.
I never followed what was going on – I’d never heard of him before reading MB – but yeah, what the hell did he do that was so special and nobody else did, and how on earth does it outweigh the real harm he’s done?
Cassandra – OW. Cat back’s bad enough when you’re lying on your side and they curl up in the small of your back and you can’t move (yes I’m looking at you, Katie) but on top? Breathing, who needs it?
That piece of advice still completely boggles my mind, because it seems so beyond the fucking pale to me. I guess I have to deal with him more than Schwyzer, since he’s apparently become the gay voice for my generation or some shit.
Frankly, I’m becoming deeply thankful that I figured things out using superhero slash fiction. At least I didn’t have shitty advice to contend with, just awful fashion sense.
“since he’s apparently become the gay voice for my generation or some shit.”
Fuuuck, according to who? Savage himself? Who would want him as representative of anything but “cis white gay man with poor sense of boundaries and lots’n’lots of bigotry”?
Mind you, when I read things about him in Raw Story and commenters start going on about how wooooonderful he is, I wonder just how much they know about him.
@LBT:
Which one of the three are you referring to in particular, out of curiosity?
FTR, I’m wary on this one — questionable math will always get my attention and a reply, the same for D’AWWWW KITTEHS!!, and AVfM being one big steaming pile of shit after another…
Whether Jason was falsely accused…I see no harm in believing him as it does happen, and afaik, she isn’t involved in this conversation. But on the flip side…I can totally see rapist ex #2 saying exactly the same thing (well, his wording was “anything that could be considered rape and if [I’m] misremembering” or associating other things with his name…that was a doozy of an email! [oh and stalker boy, if you’re still keeping tabs on me, here’s my middle finger])
Didn’t Savage also advise people not to date bisexuals, because they were untrustworthy or some shit? And that bisexuals should just date eachother? Or am I confused?
Sorry, to steal phrasing from pecunium…I digress.
Markb posted:
“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.”
Hey markb, what did the MRA say about the poor girl’s suicide? That it’s the result of a blissful romance being snuffed out by a ruthless justice system? Oh, and that fucking judge who proclaimed that the girl was more mature than her age, ergo the sex was consenual. What the ever-loving- fuck? If he isn’t fired, I’m going to be pissed.
@ kittyserf
Basically yeah, according to him, and some straight cis people who can’t think of any other non-straight/non-cis writers.
@lbt:
(erm, “which of the three pieces of advice,” in case that wasn’t clear… I know next to nothing about Dan Savage save that he is gay and a little about his “it gets better” thing)
@ LBT
I’d pick an unfortunate tendency to wear your underpants on the outside of your spandex leggings over advice from Dan Savage any day.
fit-to-flip, fair point. But in my experience, predators will pretend to be lots of things. I was in college during the first Gulf War, and lots of young guys pretended to be anti-war because there were a lot of women involved in that movement at my campus. Most of them weren’t predators, just horny young guys, but some of them were definitely “off.” They got outed pretty quickly. I think the best we can do is listen to people who’ve been assaulted, and have each other’s backs. I think it would be cool to write a feminist version of The Gift of Fear, specifically to help younger, less experienced/more trusting women to learn to trust their instincts.
OH. Eucliwood was here (under the name Eunie Townsend / Eunecromancer). Lovely. You’re right to think she’s a troll, and I’m not surprised to see her show up where I am again.
I’ll just leave this link here for you all to peruse at your leisure. http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2013/01/10/well-that-escalated-quickly/
Wear underpants on your HEAD instead of take advice from Savage.
fit to flip: yeah, he’s said some awful stuff about bi people. And trans people, fat people, and women people.
Shiraz — afaik he has been fired, but if you’re in the US there’s a petition to disrobe the judge — http://act.weareultraviolet.org/go/1066?t=3&akid=588.552343.3j0tgK
He didn’t comment on the suicide directly, just dropped in to say the evil patriarchy was telling young girls they weren’t mature enough to consent to sex with adults. I said the cut-off rate (18 years) was necessarily arbitrary and he opined that the cut-off rate should be whenever a girl is old enough to say she had been raped or something. Didn’t make sense to me either.
So, basically, if she’s old enough to talk she’s old enough for sex. What a surprise.
markb – oh, urgh. 🙁
fit-to-flip, LBT – I frequently get the impression that if one’s not a white cis gay man into every sort of kink possible, one’s not really a RealPerson™ in Savage’s view.
@AB…I find it hilarious that we posted such similar comments and have such similar usernames. For what it’s worth, I think you articulated my* thoughts better than I did. 😉
*our? that sounds kind of creepy, but I don’t want to take credit for your thoughts, I just think we’re 100% in agreement on this point
@kitteh:
Yeah, that always rubbed me wrong too. I’ve posted before that I was initially a HfS fan (love the acronym, btw), but it was because I first came across him when he was writing specifically about reconciling Christianity and feminism. At the time, he was the best blogger on that topic I knew, and I still think those specific writings are excellent (although you won’t catch me quoting or referencing them except in this context, because I will not support him). But once I started reading his broader feminist posts, I immediately noticed that problem. It was actually a bit of an introduction to feminist disagreement for me, because I found him through a blogger I respected and was like BUT HOW DOES SHE NOT SEE THIS?!?
I think the fact that he managed to pull the wool over some prominent feminists’ eyes for so long when less-prominent (and some other prominent) feminists saw through him early on is rather instructive.
@Markb
Wow…just fucking wow.
@Argenti
Yeah, I sure as shit have already visited that link…but thanks.
::tilts head thoughtfully::
I’d like to see MRAs wearing their underpants on their heads.
Especially the guys who complain about being expected to wipe their arses.