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.
Dudes who show up trying to dictate to feminists can’t let go of the notion that they’re not the center of the universe (which apparently has an asshole).
Hey CassandraSays, speaking of which, do you have any advice on how to help teenagers with creeps they can’t recognize?
It hasn’t come up lately, but back when I was on chats more often, there were a couple REALLY skeezy creeper guys who would hit on ANYONE presumed female–even lesbians and me. (It was a GLBT chat, he was a “straight ally.”) A bunch of the girls didn’t seem to recognize the creepery, and I didn’t really know how to warn them, especially since he was a self-pity sot.
He would do things like randomly send chat actions like ‘hugs you,’ and I would be like, “I don’t know you. Don’t do that.” And get a response like, “y do you hate me? :(” I, of course, am old, married, and prickly, so had no problem saying, “I don’t even know you. I’m not talking to you,” but kids, you know.
Fidelbogen: Never saying something once when he can say it 3 times.
In unrelated news, I stayed up last night eating frosted mini-wheats, then had a giant donut for breakfast and nothing for the rest of the day except cake in the afternoon. I now have a stomach ache. Causal relationship?
@ LBT
Hmm, I’d have to get more directly involved in the situation to help, because it depends on the kids and how good they are at setting boundaries, but in general I feel like the best thing older people can do to help is make it clear that setting boundaries is a GOOD thing and not something you should feel guilty about. Also if/when they tell you about the sketchy behavior making it really clear just how not OK you think that behavior is. Reinforce their own sense of something’s not quite right about this and let them know that you have their backs, basically.
Also! Pointing out manipulation when you see it. Like, that “do u hate me, wah sadface” thing? So manipulative, and so worth pointing out what bullshit it is.
RE: CassandraSays
Yeah, this was something I ran into fucking YEARS ago, it’s just something that still bugs me because I’m sure I’ll run into it again. (We’re kinda a weird Multi Dear Abby for teenagers on DeviantArt. Still not sure how that happened.)
I tried to deal with it by laying down my boundaries firmly and refusing to be guilt-tripped, (“I don’t hate you; I don’t know you. I don’t want to talk to you.”) but still pretty sure it was spun to be, “Aw, why you being so mean, he’s such a Nice Guy!”
Dude, you were hitting on lesbian teenagers and ME, who is married and has no interest in your heterosexual ass. You are NOT nice.
For some reason I never get the “but why are you being so mean?” crap except from the creeps themselves. Not quite sure why, actually.
markb – sorry, I should have expanded on that! There’s been a lot of rape-related threads on Pharyngula lately, and the usual complement of “but what if” trolls, whether of the “but what if you’re both drunk?” or “but what if she’s underage in this state but not that state?” types. The latter invaded when talking about that poor girl in Montana.
Someone described the situation vis-a-vis underage people very well, talking about a society where Class A has all the legal power, as well as the power of age, experience, etc, and Class B has no legal power at all; they can’t drive, vote, drink, etc, etc, and spend at least eight hours a day in a setting where they are under Class A’s direct control. The point was about how even someone on the cusp of going from Class B to Class A – reaching legal adulthood – still has none of the legal power of a Class A person. The relationship cannot be equal, simply because of that power differential.
That’s what I had in mind with your MRA troll and his claims of a child being able to make up her own mind about whether she’s ready for sex. He’s presumably not talking about kids together but about children being available to adults.
I’ll go look for the comment if you like, it was laid out much better than my summary here.
Yes, and it’s closer than you think! One of our former Prime Ministers said Oz was the arse end of the world. 😛
@katz, CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION. EAT MOAR CAKE. (No seriously, I think that correlation does equal causation in this case, and you should have an antacid and no more sugar for a while.)
RE: Kittehserf
That seems highly unfair! I went to your country and what I saw was quite nice.
RE: katz
I can’t imagine eating that much sugar in a go. I’m with cloudiah on this one.
LBT – yeah, Keating didn’t win any friends by saying that!
Cloudiah, thanks for the fidelbogen pointers! I looked through his recent posting history and saw him responding to a comment from “manzboobz,” my MRA imposter, as if he were me. Good times.
LBT: I don’t think a lot of people *really* have that much trouble with my name, since the prime folks motivated to abuse it have presently taken to calling me “Thimbledick” (um, hello, misandry?). This is marginally better than my previous appelation, “Justin Bieber”.
Also: hells yes, more The Tick.
“or “but what if she’s underage in this state but not that state?” types.”
Argh do they have issues with the concept of age difference? Cuz I’ve violated that one. Had my ex-fiancé’s mother known we were fucking, my ass would’ve been toast as MA is a strict over/under 18 while CT has age brackets — I’m two months older, so sexytimes in MA between our birthdays was technically stat rape. Perfectly legal in June, and October, but the end of July through the end of September? Nope, stop fucking your fiancé.
Versus a goddamned teacher in his 30s and a young teen! 14 being legal in some states is moot to the power differential! (It’s legal here…assuming the older partner isn’t more than two years older, or in a position of authority)
That’s never okay (looking at you Hugo. Fucking. Schwyzer.) — like, I have a friend who had a crush on his TA — senior undergrad and young grad student TA, he waited until the semester ended, asked her to coffee, and asked her out over coffee, she declined, life moved on. Why’d he wait? Didn’t want to put her in the awkward position of still having authority over him and being asked that.
Why do these people not have functioning logic centers? Replacing motherboards and logic boards is maybe within my skill set, but theirs are BERs (beyond economical repair and about half the electronics in the shop have been stamped with that stamp)
“Versus a goddamned teacher in his 30s and a young teen!”
The teacher was 49. 30 was the number of days the judge gave him.
Some context for Dworkin, McKinnon, et al:
I remember the radio explaining that men raping their husbands was now a crime someplace, and finding this shocking. I also recall (about the same time) hearing that non-marital cohabitation was taken off the list of illegal things in some other place.
This was ca 1977. The ’70s were a strange mix of progressive, regressive, and aggressive. Plato’s Retreat was a business (public sex club), there was a whole lot more nudity in movies, but Anita Bryant was dominating the headlines (and explaining that “original sin” was Eve giving Adam a blowjob, and that was the big sin of homosexuals).
Against all of that (and the ERA being killed, and women becoming cadets at West Point, and all the hullabaloo that caused) the feminists who were actually looking at how society looked at sex don’t seem all that out of place.
I also don’t think they were all that, “sex negative” so much as, “this is a fucked up dynamic, and until it’s changed sex is really problematic”. Not so much that there couldn’t be relationships that had healthy sex, but that society put a gloss on sex that meant even healthy sex carried unhealthy baggage.
One of the things that I see (speaking as someone who was coming to the age of reasoned thought in the middle seventies, and sexually active in the middle eighties) is that the 2nd Wave had a strong effect on me. When I look at people like Scalzi (who is just a bit younger than I), I think the same.
My sense of “That shit is WRONG!” is strongly shaped by having read those women talking about how the male/female dynamic was fucked up, and not wanting to have anything to do with it.
That (I hope) has made things better (at least in my part of the world). If enough people came to that same set of moral views, then the world will get better by that much. Not overnight, but one small step at a time.
(Because I’m feeling devastated after the massive rape story thread on Pharyngula and need Muppets.)
Argenti – of course they ignore the power differential, age differences and positions of authority, because it suits them to. These guys may not be rapists but it’s crystal clear they want to be.
It’s like the other thing pointed out in Pharyngula – the grenade thread, iirc, or one of the ones that followed it recently – re: all the talk about grey areas.
Crossing the line into a black area (consent-wise) means you’re a rapist; crossing the line into a grey area means you’re willing to be a rapist.
leftwingfox – hugs if you want ’em.
and now I need to get to bed (because I have to work tomorrow. Hell, the only day I’m not working until at least next sunday [about which I don’t know yet] is Monday).
Cat gifs also upthread if you want them.
And yeah, part of my discomfort about some of the modern criticisms of second wave feminists is that honestly, those women changed our sexual culture in a really profound way. The stuff they say may seem dated now, but that’s not because they were wrong when they said it, it’s because to a certain extent they succeeded in what they set out to do.
Well shit, that’s what I get for not looking these things up before commenting! Thanks for the correction.
Pecunium — there’s a reason I’m fond of “that’s some shit right there”. Too bad MRAs are so far over the line that I never have cause to say it here.
Kitteh — well yes, of course they want to excuse rape. I’m wary on labeling all grey area sex as wannabe rapist though — “is this consent?” = wannabe rapist, “is this thing we both really want to do actually legal?” = consent (dear gods I number of times I have violated CT obscenity laws! [with consenting people and thus fuck that noise])
Maybe I’m just disinclined to give a shit about the exact wording of the laws (I am, after all, playing a pirated copy of a game I do own, but lost the key for) and more inclined tmworry about the actual morality of the situation — making their creepy really creepy even if legal, and consensual but illegal things not remotely creepy.
Pecunium — oh is that where you’ve been? I’m sorry, that sucks. G’night!