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.
Yes, that’s what I understand, too. Never forgotten the description of Luath getting swiped by a porcupine in The Incredible Journey. Echidnas’ spines aren’t like that, they’re just pointy.
That article didn’t happen to be from the Catskills did it? Cuz my aunt’s dog did at…twice (friendly, but not so bright)
Re: poisonous platypus spurs. Exactly! It’s one of those fascinating facts that somehow gets lost in between the duck bill and the egg laying. I only found out about it through reading the Patrick O’Brian “Aubrey / Maturin” series of books. And they just recently found a fossil proto-mammal with leg spurs analagous to the Platypus. Probably an ancestor, and a very ancient one.
RE: Kittehserf
Saw the movie, not the book, but that scene effortlessly convinced us as wee children to never fuck with a porcupine. Not that we’ve ever actually encountered one; they don’t hang around the parts we’ve lived in. (We HAVE encountered a family of armadillos, though! They were surprisingly friendly.)
LBT — that dog tried eating one in NY state, you spend much time away from cities up here and you’ll run into all sorts of things. In my experience woodchucks are very skittish, but harmless (and surprisingly cute! There’s a family of them behind the shop who’re spoiled rotten — leftover salad, celery, you name it [except onions, because I know cats and dogs shouldn’t have them so I figured play it safe on the shop “pets”])
I never saw the film, though my copy (inherited from my brother or sister) of the book had shots from it on the cover. I was so young when I first saw it I couldn’t say the name, and it was the Increbible Jermery. 🙂
Seannan only won the one. (right now I’m listening to the Shewesbury Folk Fest {Martyn Lawrence… you want to listen to him}), but that’s one.
My Beloved keeps kosher, I don’t. She buys me ham,and sausage and other tref delicacies. This was jamon iberico, free range pigs/hogs fed on acorn mast and wild forage. O M G!!!!. It tastes of cashews, and acorn and walnuts and unction, and has a toothsome sexture, with a lace of salt and it’s glorious. I am failing it, terribly in my attempt to explain it.
(really, I mean it about Martyn Lawrence)
re porcupines. I’ve seen one (in the wild, that was a glorious walk in the snows of february in Ottawa). It fell out of a tree. So CUTE!!! and it looks so pettable. I managed to restrain myself. Stayed at least 10 feet from it (and the photos sucked), so as not to scare it.
But it looked so vulnerable I just wanted to cuddle it and make it feel better.
Googling Lawrence,e just don’t expect me to eat ham (I pretty much keep kosher by dint of hating red meat and lactose and I disagreeing…pretty much because PEPPERONI PIZZA, I really am a sucker for cured meats)
Ham is A CURED MEAT! (I think this may be the cure they are hoping for). 🙂
Nope, not happening. Too salty. (You hate mangos like I hate salt, like, I might be the only person in the country who could use to eat more salt)
And my googling got me an architect by the same name, which, while entirely one of my “ooohhh pretty” things, isn’t what you meant, some help here?
Now I’m hungry.
I just remembered a horrible comments section I once read on GMP (when they were gradually getting worse and worse, but still had good stuff occasionally, and before that horrible rape apologia shit). There was this woman who wrote about how she loved giving BJ:s and totally got off on doing that, and was posting instruction videos on, uh, various BJ styles I guess? on the web. Okay, so far so good. She also identified as sex-positive feminist. Nothing wrong with that. But OMG the comments. Guys start posting about how “this is a kind of feminism I can totally get behind, hehe” and she responds in kind, with “yeah, sex-positive feminism is the best!”. As if the job of feminism was to ensure that men get great BJ:s.
Don’t know how many sex-positive feminists have that attitude, but also totally something to be criticized… Like “Oh anti-feminist man, you ought to embrace my kind of feminism, because I’m not a threat to you; on the contrary, me and my sisters will provide you with awesome sex!”.
I actually think this obsession with legal age of consent as a measure of what’s morally right or not is typically American…
Here in Sweden the age of consent is 15. But people are generally okay with a scenario involving a 14- and 15-year-old couple having consensual sex out of curiosity and the like… Technically the 15-year-old will have committed a crime, but people realizes this is a thing that happens and it’s not particularly strange. AND at the same time pretty much everyone would regard a 25-year-old having sex with a 15-year-old as a super creep, even though it’s legal.
Any age you designate as the age of consent is gonna be somewhat arbitrary, but it might still be a very good idea to have one in order to arrest predators preying on kids. That we ought to have an age of consent doesn’t mean that it’s a magical line dividing perfectly morally okay sex from rape, and then if you discover that the age of consent varies between places this means that you have discovered that the magic doesn’t work after all and therefore sex with children ought to be considered okay. THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS.
More than a very good idea, it’s essential, because otherwise it gives free rein to those who claim “Zie wanted it, zie knew what it was about” of single-digit children. Which I have seen done.
Don’t be too sure. I remember the family next to us at a campsite had a flat tyre, they’d driven from Victoria. Changed it, then took the flat one to be fixed/ replaced.
Oh dear. It wasn’t a nail, it was an echidna spine that had driven right through one of those super duper 4 wheel drive tyres. They remembered then that they’d driven over some roadkill – towing a caravan doesn’t make you very manoeuvrable on the road, even though you wouldn’t swerve anyway when you’re doing 100+ clicks.
@LBT
Nope. It was people proudly declaring themselves “non-practicing pedophiles” and expecting it to fall under YKIOK.
Sorry, Pecunium and Argenti, who’s Seannan? You don’t mean Seanan McGuire?
Emily, yes I do.
Dvarg: We’ve spent a lot of time (because of MRA/PUA idiocies) going over the issue of consent, and the consensus is 1: there needs to be a “bright line” 2: That bright line is artificial. There will be people for whom 15 isn’t too soon.
But those cases don’t justify making it not a bright line. For most of them (I was having sex before the age of consent in the state I lived) it’s not an issue. They are making an informed decision, and won’t complain; nor is anyone else likely to.
@Pecunium, do you know her personally? Congrats to her. I’m not familiar with the podcast, but her books are great.
Mildlymagnificent:
I remember someone on Pharyngula (you?) once saying, “If you drive over an echidna, the animal isn’t the only thing that goes flat”. Judging by that, echidna spines seem to be strong enough that they shouldn’t break into your your skin if you go pet the animal.
RE: emilygoddess
It was people proudly declaring themselves “non-practicing pedophiles” and expecting it to fall under YKIOK.
Hrrrrm. That’s a big gray area for me. I feel like giving people with those feelings somewhere to talk and learn coping skills about it could be really helpful.
Buuuuut seeing how young the tumblr world is, how PUBLIC it is, and how shitty it is for dialogue in general… that really seems a SHITTY choice of venue, and being used in a really creepy way.
YKIOK?
“Your Kink is OK”?
While I would support a forum to help pedophiles learn coping skills of the “this is how you go about not actually abusing any children, or creeping people out in a more general sense” variety, I’m not seeing how a “yay my kink, which happens to be sex with children!” Tumblr would in any way accomplish that goal. I don’t use Tumblr enough to know how to go about doing this, but if there’s a way to ban people who post questionable stuff on your Tumblr I think that’s exactly what any kink space there should do when people post pedo-apologist stuff.