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.
Pretty sure the word “karma” doesn’t mean “comeuppance”, and also I’m pretty sure the word “comeuppance” doesn’t mean “ah-HA, and now we shall accuse you of random things there see HOW DOES IT FEEL, person we dislike because of reasons?!?”
they were already doing that to PZ *before* the grenade post. It’s all they’ve got.
Sorry if the conversation has moved on, but it’s math, and I’m a masochist…
A few assumptions before I begin:
1) The 1 in 5 stat for the US holds close enough to worldwide to hold for everyone on the site in question
2) Each of them made an accusation, and they each made accusations against different peopl (I realize this one is a huge assumption)
3) 6% of all accusations, whether formal or not, are false
Goal here — how many men need to be in a room to have two who were falsely accused?
So then, from 1 & 2 we have 1 in 5 men being accused of rape, and adding in 3 we find that 1.2% of men have been false accused. But we’re talking about two men, so multiply 1.2% by 1.2% = 0.144%, and it isn’t looking good. Except those are the odds of two specific men having both been falsely accused, that is if I grab a specific pair of our male commenters, what are the odds they’ve both been falsely accused? Note, this is not the same as the odds that someone who was accused was falsely accused.
But that’s not what I’m after, I’m after the number f men you need to have a near certainly that two will have been falsely accused. Finding the odds of that for any given number of men (n) is…complex, the formula for calculating the odds of exactly R occurrences of something, when there are N times it could occur, and the probablity is P is given here — http://mathbits.com/MathBits/TISection/Statistics2/binomi68.gif (Q is not-P, and P is 1.2%)
Since I probably just broke your brains (and excel), one thing and then I skip the math and give the result, if you got that, you know how to check the math (use google’s equation function for the higher fractorials). I’m using 99% as the “goal” here — that is, how many men need to be in a given population (the site in this case) for either zero, or one, man to have been falsely accused. And seeing how excel refuses to do higher factorials, this isn’t going to be the exact number (which is fine since 99% is pulled from my ass anyways).
The 50/50 split for two men out of the group having been falsely accused (using the above) conditions is right between a group of 1,000 and 1,100 men. We had nearly 500 cis men, or just about 30%, and Alexa puts freethoughtblog.com as being linked from ~4,500 other sites, even assuming only the blog owner ever visits, 30% of that is 1,350 men and it’s probably a fairly safe bet that anyone linking to it has commented // may comment, and thus may’ve said they’ve been falsely accused. And the probability of at least two of those 1,350 men having been falsely accused? 99.999855%
So um, yeah, I think we can all safely say that it was bound to happen.
Footnotes —
I’m inclined to guess that formal accusations are less likely to be false, and thus the number of men falsely accused informally would be higher than 6% of accusations. The other assumptions at the beginning all have me thinking the same thing — it’d take less men than that to find two who were falsely accused.
——
SO THEN!
That question about people who’ve been accused more than once? That one is straight multiplication because you aren’t asking “of this group, how many can we expect to have been falsely accused?”, nor the inverse that I just broke my brain on — “how any men need to be in a group for it to be a near certainly that two have been falsely accused?” Nope, that one is asking “what is the probability that this guy who’s been accused
X times has been falsely accused 100% of the time?”
A handy chart then —
1 accusation = 6% (because we can eliminate such variables as his odds of being accused in the first place, that hit 100% the moment he was accused [obvious thing is obvious])
2 accusations = 0.36%
3 accusations = 0.0216%
4 accusations = 0.0013%
And I’m done at 5, cuz this is tiny and I have pizza — 0.00008%
—–
Both of them being falsely accused = two men in a group being falsely accused = how many men need to be in that group for two false accusations to be overwhelming likely (far less than there probably are considering how I calculated the group size)
One guy being accused more than once, odds of them all being false = multiply odds of false accusation until number of accusations is reached = 0.06 ^ [number of accusations]
PIZZZZAAAA
Holy crap.
I was told there would be no math
Sorry, Argenti, I have to skip those comments. It’s no more comprehensible than if it were in Cyrillic. (Y’know, the alphabet they use in Spain.)
Argenti Aertheri: *applause*
Of course, the fact that two of the three “accusations” were demonstrably invented from whole cloth in response to the Shermer thing, as chaff to try to prove a point, suggests that that mathematical exercise is moot here. While there might be another victim of a false allegation, those other two, Avicenna and PZ, shouldn’t count — because there’s no substance to them, they’re just the self-fulfilling prophecies of MRAs who want people to believe false rape claims are everywhere.
Also the whole thing with the “6% or rape accusations are false” is that it’s about rapes reported to the police, and conflates “the police didn’t bother” with “they didn’t think there was enough evidence” and “they coerced the victim into withdrawing zir complaint” and a host of other things. It should be called “rape reports not pursued” not “false accusations” because that description is bullshit.
I will never promise no math!!
dlouwe — if we picked two random people then 6% * 6% would be correct, but dude was hunting atheist // feminist men who’d said they’d been accused of rape, which makes it not two random men. Think of it this way, it’s the difference between saying that the odds that two particular cis women were raped are 4% (20% odds that that particular woman was raped as was that other particular woman) and saying that there are really high odds that at least two cis women here have been raped. If someone were to go hunting all our previous info, odds of finding two women who’d been raped would be the later category — asking two women here if they’ve been raped would be the former.
lousycanuck — you around for the survey? That was my baby. I am unable to ignore mathematics, it sometimes results in room temperature pizza! Thanks for the applause though 🙂
And I missed the third person accused, that’d put the number of men you’d need to find that well under 1,000.
Kitteh — “Sorry, Argenti, I have to skip those comments. It’s no more comprehensible than if it were in Cyrillic. (Y’know, the alphabet they use in Spain.)”
In short, if one goes hunting down male bloggers who say they’ve been accused of rape, it isn’t hard to find two who say they’ve been falsely accused, particularly if they’re all easy to find in one location and not hiding the info. On the other hand, if one is accused repeatedly, the odds that every single accusation is false drop to absurdly close to 0% damn quick.
Wow, Freemage. That is an act of devotion, writing up that history. Thanks for the lesson! I am so glad that I missed it.
Argenti – ah, translated into notmaths! Thank you. 🙂
Yeah, the whole thing with Shermer is that there’s a history, and lots of women warning each other about him. Which pisses the atheistheroworshipperdudebros off too. Not allowed to warn each other, not allowed to speak publicly … I think someone covered that in one of the more recent Pharyngula threads when YET ANOTHER douche was on about how Shermer’s life had been ruined, ruined I say! by any suggestion anywhere, ever, that he’s not a good person to be near, especially if he’s pouring drinks.
can we at least get a solemn vow on Fourier transformations?
atheistheroworshipperdudebros
look up “authoritarian submissive”, because these guanophrenic asshats reek of it.
It is so sworn. Anyways, the furinati don’t approve of that.
Kitteh said
Thank you for explaining this in simple terms that even I can understand. I think this is a distinction that needs to be made over and over again.
My pleasure, Alice! It was put pretty clearly on Pharyngula a while back. I can’t remember which thread it was, though. 🙁
Main thing is that the whole MRA “false accusation” meaning “women accuse any man they don’t like, or who they regret having sex with” line is bullshit (yes, I know, shocking). Not to mention their claim that accusation = gaol time or even social condemnation, when neither happens for the overwhelming majority of rapes.
@takshak – “guanophrenic asshats” love it!
D’you know a quick source of a definition of the authoritarian-submissive personality? Typing the words on their own (before putting personality in) got a lot of BDSM ads I could have done without. 😛
Oh, never mind – does this cover it?
It’s from a forum, not an academic journal, but it does sound like said guanophrenics …
Also question about the six percent thing: does also include stituations where the woman was raped but the police initially arrested the wrong person? Either by mistake or a case like in To Kill a Mockingbird where the victem blames someone outside the family to divert suspicion from an abusive parent or partner? Or is it only times when the police believe no rape occured at all.
Yes, it includes incorrectly identified subjects and subjects unable to be identified. Everyone will be pleased to learn that in Virginia it is no longer the policy for police to assume all rape accusations are false. This was the enforced policy until a few weeks ago.
I think it covers those situations too, SkyBison.
Ninjaed by thebewilderness!
That Virginia situation was mind-bogglingly awful – though in another sense, it could be said that the policy was upfront about what’s too often the default thinking anyway.
Yeah, that thing in Virginia was just… Ugh. Christ on a cracker, I am so glad I didn’t report my rape while living there :/
I’m not sure what gets on my nerves more: The libeling people to prove a point or the bad math in service of it. To determine the chances of three false allegations in a group, you would need to know the actual rate of false allegations. The 6% only replies to police reports, and none of these were reported. Also, it’s probably not an accurate number for those. Also, this would only apply if the allegations were independent, and they aren’t, and if you knew nothing except that an allegation is made, which isn’t the case here.
Skybison — idk on the source of 6% but the FBI puts false and unfounded reports at 2-8%, so most of them probably don’t result in an arrest. Particularly since that data is reported by the local cops who, um, aren’t always very good about not writing of rape reports from the get go.
So yeah, it would, but it’d also include reports deemed not to have had a crime occur (either there really was no crime and it was completely a false report, or the cops decided there wasn’t a crime), allegations that didn’t count as legal rape (don’t meet the requirements to be illegal where the report is filed), anything and potentially everything else that gets the report unreliable, etc.
Since I’ve never heard of a cop deciding that a calm person couldn’t be reporting a carjacking, they’d be hysterical (but not too much, then ze might be putting on a show)…I’m inclined to say the false report rate is on the lower end. Pure speculation though.
Blinded by Sciency-stuff: Actually Jason, since by your logic I am forced to presume you a rapist, I admit I find your presence here at a feminist safe space rather unsettling.
Good thing this blog is specifically declared to be a not safe space (esp. since misogynistic douchecanoes like you are allowed to post).
One final thought Jason, just to help you out, note in David’s post that even David recognizes the AVFM piece was satire. Terrible satire yes, but satire.
So we can add baffled by English to the nyms you are qualified to use.
I’ve never seen [pitchguest] to be gross or overtly abusive,
I have. I’ve yet to see him engage in much else. His routine is to be offensively obtuse, and not use foul language in his incivility. He took a spin ’round Whatever; I think he managed to make the acquaintance of The Mallet of Loving Correction.