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.
RE: Kittehs
Fuuuck, according to who?
I dunno, I just keep running into the fucker. Probably because of the “It Gets Better” campaign. (Which. Uh. Seeing the past year? I’ve become a lot more cynical about it. Sure, getting raped for a year in my teens was bad… but being homeless and destitute was pretty shit too.)
RE: kirbywarp
The incest one. I am fine with incest play… but OMFG acting like it’s real with other partners is SO NOT FUCKING OKAY.
RE: fit-to-flip
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?
I read him saying that about ASEXUALS. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he said that about bi folks too.
RE: CassandraSays
I’d pick an unfortunate tendency to wear your underpants on the outside of your spandex leggings over advice from Dan Savage any day.
Yeah. I mean, come on, you’ve got guys running around in brightly colored, skintight spandex, wrestling on rooftops while bellowing about their life philosophies, and you expect me to believe they’re paragons of straight masculinity? HA!
RE: markb
…oh god that has some really awful connotations. On top of everything else.
Christ, these guys are so interested in tricking unexperienced virgins into their beds they’ll say anything.
It’s the bellowing bit that’s annoying. SHUT UP YOU FUCKING SUPERHEROES PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO SLEEP HERE.
RE: lousycanuck
Random off-topic from reading the post you linked, but folks have trouble with your last name? That’s so weird to me. (But then, I’ve got kinfolk down in Louisiana; I see a lot of French names.)
I still read Slog, the blog Savage posts his column on, because there are some great other posters and some interesting journalism (sadly, the comments are overrun with MRAs). Periodically I’ll read one of the Savage Love columns to see if he’s gotten any better. He has gotten better, actually, but he periodically slips up and it’s clear that while he’s policing himself more, it’s mostly to avoid being yelled at by mean evil people who don’t realize he’s right and they’re wrong. Which means I guess that he hasn’t actually gotten better, he’s just acting better.
The only superhero I’ve ever liked was The Tick.
This was the actual quote. I’m not sure how much thought actually went into it: “How about we set the boundary at “does this particular girl assert that she has been raped or not”? You know, maybe actually consider the thoughts and feelings of the female in question rather than forcing our own beliefs and modalities upon her and erasing her personal agency? The idea that no girl under 18 is even mentally CAPABLE of consenting to something is literally Patriarchal. I mean it straight up has an overt, direct lineage to the history of young women as property.” So I think I paraphrased him wrong. Still doesn’t make sense.
Oh, and if this is the place for posting GIFs, my new blog post has one of my favorites that I’ve ever seen. The post before it is a really funny comment from Shaenon, that I don’t think I shamelessly plugged here, but it’s worth a look just in case you missed it.
If you guys would just stop being funny/artistic, I wouldn’t have to have a blog! 😀
@Cassandra
The Tick! Spoon!!!
@markb
Wow. He’s really sounding invested in all this.
markb – oh, fuck. Yeah, way for an MRA to pervert the idea of agency to ignore all the facts about children’s mental and physical development and the HUGE power differential between anyone underage – even if they’re seventeen and a few hours away from legal adulthood – and an adult.
Not to mention the total giveaway in referring to “females”. Yeah, he’s not looking for an excuse to coerce girlthings instead of womenthings at all.
Cloudiah-
Yeah, I should specify that I’m not just talking about guys wearing ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ t-shirts because they think it will help them get phone numbers. That’s obnoxious, but, like you pointed out certainly not specific to feminism or the end of the world.
I mean specifically men who sexual assault and manipulate women by portraying themselves as totally enlightened and totally incapable of sexism. These men often take up positions of authority or influence in the feminist community which
1. gives them lots of opportunities to be around women new to feminism
2. lets them establish the ‘feminist norm’ so women have to seek approval from them (which people do when someone is portrayed as the ‘expert’- they have credibility and potentially fame, so people look up to them)
3. gives them a shield to fend off any accusations.
So we have these men being treated as some kind of ‘super feminist’ and being given opportunities like speaking and teaching and leading, which can be problematic in and of its self. And then, when women come forward to share what happened to them- these men are largely allowed to get away with it. Rumors are dismissed, often times the worst that happens is they move to a different social circle.
But what I don’t see happening? Feminists taking the first person to speak out seriously and addressing it in a timely manner (it often happens for years and we don’t hear boo till five women have spoken up). These woman are not encouraged to speak up in the first place, and if they do, they usually get ignored. And then these men keep getting invitations to conferences, and interviews and articles and social groups. And even if it does start getting attention, the invitations will keep coming and the defenses will keep coming.
And for the life of me, what I really don’t understand is WHY?
WHY do we let these guys stick around, WHY do we prioritize them over their victims, WHY do we tolerate this behavior from a guy as long as he pays lip service to feminism, WHY WHY WHY is it so impotent to have men in the movement that we will justify and defend them- even when they are completely disingenuous.It breaks my fucking heart. It really does, and I see it happen again and again and again.
Sorry Cloudiah, I guess I kind went on a rant there- I’ve just been so frustrated with the way things have been going.
@LBT:
Yeah, I thought so, just wanted to make sure.
Fucking hell. It’s the commonest of common sense. If you want to do something, and you’re part of a group of people who want to do the same thing, and you interact with someone who is actually doing the thing you want to do (as far as you know), you’re going to want get in on it.
100 levels of not ok.
RE: CassandraSays
Last night I got to watch a cartoon where Captain American tries to infiltrate the African nation of Wakanda for the military… and promptly gets his ass served to him by Black Panther, after a quick exchange of, “Please leave my country,” “NO! AMERICA!”
I had to admit, I found it quite refreshing. I don’t know much about Black Panther, but every time I’ve seen him, he seems like someone I’d like to actually hang around if he were real.
David bait! fidelbogen is posting some weird shit on Reddit right now!
This is probably a response to this thread.
RE: kirbywarp
Yeah, and that article was like, just a few months ago, so it’s not like back in Savage’s dark days either; I read it in the paper while getting frozen yogurt with hubby.
Kinda ruined my yogurt date to be honest, because I kept going, “What? WHAT? He can’t have actually said what I thought he said right? RIGHT? OH GOD WHY DID THIS GET PRINTED?”
RE: cloudiah
Fidelbogen obviously has not met Tom Martin.
I kinda want to put the two of them together in a room. Just to see who would drown in verbiage first.
“A Feminist who is an “MRA”, is like a Square Which is a Circle”
You know what, I actually agree with Fidelbogen for once. MRAs and feminists are almost nothing alike.
I think invested is a good word for it, yes.
kittehserf: not sure I follow you re: someone who is seventeen and a few hours away from adulthood.
Wow, fidelbogen doesn’t realize the MRA and feminism isn’t suppose to mix — they are meant to repell each other. ‘Cause, like, the MRA hates women, dude. Hello, dumbass? Are you awake? Hello? Are you awake?
I feel like my comment made me sound like I think no feminists are speaking out against these things, which is definitely not true. But the movement as whole, particularly the more mainstream sectors of it are largely responding this way. Unfortunately the people speaking up do not appear to be the majority or at least the most influential.
Yeah, it’s probably the first time I’ve agreed with fidelbogen, which is not a comfortable feeling. But he has such a hilarious way of expressing himself.
In other fidelbogenisms du jour:
Here’s a pro-tip about rights…
If “human right for group A” and “human right for group B” are ever contradictory, or part of a zero sum game, they ain’t human rights.
My own wish is for feminism to walk through the exit door of the universe.
My god.
THE UNIVERSE HAS AN ASSHOLE???
I have to point out here that what fit-to-flip is saying is exactly the reason why I display so little patience with dudes who show up in feminist places with questionable attitudes about sex, and/or with the assumption that they should be boss feminist. If the guys in question want to go “omg u r such a bitch” then fine – protecting younger and more vulnerable women is far more important to me than being universally liked.