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.
I see the blockquote monster’s up early …
Case in point in terms of what emilygoddess is talking about – Snowdrop Explodes. There are always guys like that hanging around the edges of any group of sex-positive feminism, trying to manipulate the ideas in ways that prevent other people from asserting boundaries. Do not like.
Also ugh, I remember that Jezebel article on anal sex, and getting into an argument with some idiot who was all “but it’s an erogenous zone, so if people just tried it”, and people were going “well, I did and I didn’t like it”, to which she just kept repeating “well, it does feel good, so if you just tried it…”. I mean, I know this is apparently a shocking idea, but different people like different things! Much like some here hate mangoes and I love them, while I love chillies and other people here can’t stand them! I’ve even met people who dislike pizza, chocolate, and ice cream!
FUCKING SNOWDROP EXPLODES. Just ARGH WTF.
Plus, people’s tastes change over time! Shocking, I know, but sometimes you like X when you’re twenty, and then don’t like X but prefer Y when you’re forty. It’s not like all humans have the exact same standards imprinted on birth, never to change again.
It reminds me a lot of the boundary-pushing that people do with food actually. I spent my entire childhood having to insist that no, I really don’t like certain foods, and yes, I really have tried them and I still don’t like them. But much worse, because with sex sometimes you really do know in advance that you won’t like something even if you’ve never tried anything at all like it.
And it’s worse when people then treat their romantic partners the same way, insisting they just try whatever sexual thing it is that they want. If somebody really is into a certain activity, like anal sex, threesomes, etc. then they should look for a partner with the same interests. But instead they will date someone who doesn’t want it and then resort to coercive stuff like “If you really loved me, then you would ______ for me” or “If you can’t meet my needs, maybe I will find someone who can”.
There should be a new version of Green Eggs and Ham where Sam I Am says “Hey, if you are interested, I can offer you some green eggs and ham, but if not, that’s okay too. No pressure”. Instead he pesters the other guy an entire book until the guy breaks down and eats the breakfast just to shut him up. So the lesson ends up being “If someone says they don’t want something, just pester them until they try it anyway. It’s for their own good”. And the picky eater was shown as being in the wrong until he ate the food.
Now that I think about it, Green Eggs and Ham is a good analogy for all kinds of boundary pushing, like an aggressive salesperson or a meth dealer. They will keep pushing someone who says “No” until the other person wears down and gives in.
Perhaps I’m overanalyzing things? I still like the book, and I would still read it to my own kids, but I’d also say “Hey, if someone tells you they don’t want something, respect their decision” and “It is wrong for other people to push you into trying something you don’t want”. It at least sets up lessons about setting boundaries and demanding other person respect them.
Cassandra: It reminds me a lot of the boundary-pushing that people do with food actually
SO much this.
I hate the, “well you’ve never had it done right”.
Sorry, there is no way you can do mangoes right. Also no way to make cooked spinach edible (the occaisional spanokopita excepted. I kept wondering why a brand of canned lentil soup was always something I had a hard time eating, because I like all the other soups that company makes. Then I saw there was a small amount of spinach in it.
Saying,”you’ve never had it done right” is gaslighting. It’s telling the person their memory/experience is wrong.
Fuck that.
My mother managed this perfectly well. she didn’t say, “you’ll like this”. She insisted on our taking three bites. If we didn’t like it, we could refuse to finish it. After that we could refuse to take it onto our plates. Every so often she would insist we take another three bites, “because tastes change”.
That was brilliant. It trusted us, and forced us to test our beliefs. But she didn’t say, “you’ve never had it done right,” and she didn’t torture us if we said we didn’t like it. She took us at our word. Knowing the “three bites” were all we had to manage also made it bearable (if not pleasant).
It made me (at least) adventurous.
RE: thebionicmommy
And it’s worse when people then treat their romantic partners the same way, insisting they just try whatever sexual thing it is that they want. If somebody really is into a certain activity, like anal sex, threesomes, etc. then they should look for a partner with the same interests. But instead they will date someone who doesn’t want it and then resort to coercive stuff
That’s pretty much how my rapist behaved. He wanted a virginal teenage girlfriend… but he also didn’t want to have to deal with the inconveniences of inexperience, or boundaries in general. It was pretty unpleasant.
Ugh, that’s awful. That’s what my shitty ex would do to me because he wanted a threesome. So he’d whine “If you just tried it, you’d like it” even though I insisted I was straight and not attracted to women. I wanted to tell him to enjoy Rosie Palm and her five friends instead, but he had such a violent temper I didn’t dare.
My ex tried pretty much every manipulative argument in the world when he was into something that I wasn’t. I finally figured out the best way to shut him out was, when he was all “well there are other people who like it”, to respond with a shrug and “OK, I guess you should go find one of them, then. Obviously this means we’re breaking up, but oh well.” (shrugs again).
“Sorry, there is no way you can do mangoes right.”
I beg to differ!
Of course, you don’t try getting me to eat eggplant, I won’t try getting you to eat mangos! (Well, drink mangos, it’s mango juice that I love…particularly with vodka)
RE: emilygoddess
Yes, I took great pleasure in making that guy cry when we left.
RE: Argenti
Out of curiosity, Italian eggplant or Japanese? Or both?
Not sure I’ve ever had Japanese.
It’s less mushy/watery, but if you don’t like the taste of Italian eggplant you probably still won’t like it.
Best eggplant = the long lighter purple Chinese kind, imo.
I don’t understand how anyone can pester another person into doing something they don’t want to do. If you succeed, the experience is likely to be less than stellar, because the other person will be annoyed with you the whole time. Maybe it’s my Jewish guilt in action.
Yeah I don’t like fried eggplant either, so it probably doesn’t matter. Tofu definitely does though, I usually hate it but Mrs. Sree makes a mean vegetable tofu (if ever in Pittsburgh, stop in at Sree’s downtown, $5 for enough food for lunch and dinner)
Tofu I’m picky about – I really like it in some stir fries, but it has to be the right kind of tofu and cooked just right. Soft tofu I can’t stand, except as a dessert. Agedashi tofu makes me feel ill, though I do like the broth it comes with.
She uses pretty firm tofu and it’s fried with veggies, but if you don’t like it, you don’t like it.
Yes! The whole idea of sex with some hypothetical person – didn’t seem a bad idea in my teens or twenties. Now? Repellent and, frankly, frightening.
THIS. Just on the food issue, it’s nice to see acknowledgement that it is boundary-pushing. Y’all know what I feel about being told I should be eating spicy food, and absolutely YES about sex having even stronger boundaries and issues.
argeniti: “Sorry, there is no way you can do mangoes right.”
I beg to differ!
You can beg all you like.
markb – power trip/controlling, maybe? Entitlement, certainly, and indifference to what the other person wants, or a conviction that they know sooo much better than you do what you’d like. Don’t know if you were reading here when I’ve mentioned being told by a friend’s mother in LA I have a “timid palate”. This followed persistent teasing/pestering about trying hot food. Now I’m Australian and grew up on a very English-based diet and I have NO tolerance for any sort of hot food or spices. I won’t eat things that have white pepper in them, because it’s really unpleasant for me. You can imagine how difficult that is to work around in California, and it didn’t help getting all this shit. It was even more annoying, because my friend’s mum is lovely and I don’t think she got how nasty this was. Fortunately the “timid palate” crack ended it: I said flat out that I don’t associate pain with pleasure, and my friend took her aside and told her to knock it off – and she said she’d got the message. Took long enough!
Mango and orange juice is good, but mangoes themselves? Not for me. The flavour’s meh, the texture I don’t much like, and they are so. fucking. expensive. they’d want to be greater than strawberries to be worth it.
Strawberries ♥ ♥ ♥
RE: Argenti
Japanese eggplant is, instead of a deep purple oblong, more a light purple tube. They’re smaller than the Italian kind, and sweeter if you roast them.
Also, tofu is one of those things I’ve relentlessly trained myself to tolerate. (I hope to eventually go vegetarian, like Sneak.) It’s still rare that I actually ENJOY it, though. It seems to be happening more often, at least? That’s encouraging, because I really do WANT to like tofu.