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.
Good summaries. SO much has happened. The weird part is that small fish like myself, EEB, skeptifem, and other people who are not known at all, who may or may not maintain blogs, have also been targeted. The harassment we get isn’t much compared to what Jason, Ophelia, Surly Amy, Stephanie Zvan, and so many far more public figures have experienced. But it’s plenty.
It’s still too much.
Utterly off topic, but my brain skipped straight to “small fish” and was disappointed you were not talking about swimming critters (fish and math, the thinks my brain does well!)
…unlike English. That should be things, not thinks.
A thought just occurred to me about Dworkin’s writing on sex. (Joy of joys, there’s yet another rape thread on Pharyngula and Skepchick.)
In the recent weeks there have been dozens of women opening up about their experiences of rape (and assault and harassment). Most importantly, many of them didn’t think it was rape, or at least refused to think about the possibility.
Add up the likelihood of many women, say just the quarter who have been raped, seeing sex through these distorted goggles. Now add in some additional theoretical [choose a number] who’ve never admitted to themselves that they’ve been raped. Now add in the overlap from women who’ve been subjected to intimate partner violence but not been raped. Suddenly you have a significant proportion of women who have good reason to see what they thought was “normal” sex and “normal” relationships with men as being made of all things horrible.
Perhaps the sex negative “attitudes” of second wave feminists was partly driven by all the silence of women around just how many of them had truly horrible relationships with men in their backgrounds.
Ew! 🙁
I guess I meant he doesn’t blow into a thread then immediately start in with the “YOU ARE A [SLUR] [SLUR] [SLUR] I HOPE YOU GET [OMITTED], YOU [SLUR]”
Which so many of them do.
I actually read Scalzi’s Whatever blog, just not all the time. I must have missed that. Shame. I would have loved to see Scalzi apply The Mallet of Loving Correction to Pitchguest.
Coz he really is a bottom feeding wormy turd.
Argenti: wouldn’t that be a Furrier transformation?
kittehserf: Typing the words on their own (before putting personality in) got a lot of BDSM ads I could have done without. I’m going to list that right after “when researching octopus mating habits, do NOT google “tentacle sex”. A friend linked me to a genuine paper, but damned if I can find it now. The post you found is simplified, & is talking about political psychology, but it’s not wrong. Think of the people who hang out with bullies.
what gets me is all theses wankers that rabbit on about “freedom” & “freethinking” & suchlike, but yearn for a strong daddy to lead them. They have more issues than National Geographic
Wow, the Slymepit people really are good at holding grudges, aren’t they? So far it appears to be their most distinguishing feature as a group, that and the tendency to assume that everyone on the internet knows and cares about their various grudge-matches.
Manboobz, this wasn’t a rape accusation. They were saying that by his OWN standards, he is a rapist. AVFM may have points of lame in my book but what they were -actually- saying is right and I’ve said it myself on multiple occasions. If he tried to take me to court for libel, though, he’d lose, because the court would see that I was not actually accusing him of rape.
He is someone that hasn’t even apologized and taken responsibility for his own recent accusation…just blames the source of his sources, as if everyone who didn’t purposely lie is off the hook and not responsible for accusations. And I see no signs of him backing off with this support of this whole “If you’re accused you’re a rapist” attitude, and people who don’t automatically believe that people like him, who were accused, were rapists, are rape enablers, apologists, etc. The stinkin hypocrisy pisses me off.
Oh great, a moderation filter. I’d bet $10,000 that Manboobz isn’t going to bother publishing a comment saying that his accusation that AVFM said that Thibeault raped -anyone- is actually false. Hiding comments that threaten one’s own statements and what not. Sigh. Humans.
:;waves to all the FtB regulars visting/delurking::
“Coz he really is a bottom feeding wormy turd.”
Or bottom-feeding worm’s turd, maybe?
takshak – aargh, no, tentacle sex, avoid, avoid! 😀
Also I should have posted Furrier when I thought of it. I coulda been a ninja.
Eumie, you can donate that $10,000 directly through my paypal. And I will cancel all MB fundraisers for the next year. Thanks for your support!
Worm feeding on a turd in a bottom.
If David got $1 for every commenter who said “I bet you won’t post this comment, you pro-censorship meanie” shortly before their comment was posted he’d never need to fundraise again.
“I coulda been a ninja.”
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3b/5a/93/3b5a93c6be23f5e40b8b1ee6039718e8.jpg
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1d/6c/19/1d6c190ac6dc99f8d1ea21cecd7fe43d.jpg
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b4/f7/de/b4f7de05363355ad398c1194b96f7d75.jpg
HE PUT IT IN QUOTATION MARKS – HE WAS OBVIOUSLY MOCKING THE NOTION! HE EVEN CLARIFIES THAT!
Seriously, it’s like these people can’t read properly…
…Apparently not…
Tunnel vision and cognitive dissonance are amazing(ly repugnant) things!
::looks at ninja kitty pics::
::dies of terminal Cuteness Overload … The Furred Screen of Death … ::
Arrgh!
katz – “Worm feeding on a turd in a bottom.”
ewwwwww! 😀
I’ve actually argued that point myself, but it isn’t really a defense for the TERF holdouts, merely an explanation. (I’ve stopped describing that crowd as “second wavers” because it’s too broad a brush.) It’s clear that the sex-negative feminists are coming from a point of genuine trauma and suffering; that shouldn’t be minimized or ignored. But their problem is that they tried to create a one-size-fits-all feminism based on the experience of white, middle-class, frequently-closeted victims of abuse, and wound up alienating women who didn’t share their experiences. The result, as best as I’ve been able to understand it, is that the sex-negative/TERF crowd seems to feel that the third wave has bastardized all their best ideas and therefore assumes that their own experiences are being shoved back in their face.
That’s kind of an odd way to frame things. I’ve encountered plenty of older feminists who’re not comfortable with sex-positive ideas who’re not anti-trans, and some people who’re sex-positive but a bit uncomfortable with trans people. I just don’t feel like this stuff breaks down along lines that simple or obvious.
Of course, that isn’t what’s really happening; third wavers still have their problems with leaning heavily white and middle-class, but are far more accepting in general, addressing women of color, transwomen, sex workers, and even male allies. And the core issues — patriarchy, workplace rights, abuse, women’s health — are still at the center of the program, because they’re the important bits. The sex-negative/TERF crowd has fallen into the familiar denialist patterns, and are looking increasingly foolish and authoritarian as the third wave leaves them behind. And, like I said, it’s particularly tragic because the traumas that put them where they are are still real, and the battles are still being fought.
It’s either the message or the delivery, and the third wavers already know the message and reject it.
Cassandra:
I don’t think the people you describe are really the core of the problem. I’m referring more to the Cathy Brennan types.
Also I find using the phrase sex-negative to refer to people who’re uncomfortable with sex as a result of trauma more than a little distasteful. These has to be a way to get the idea across without the unfortunate implications associated with that phrase when applied to those particular people.
Hm. You are probably right about that, although I wouldn’t really know how to phrase it. The truth is, as far as I can tell, the “sex-negative” thing isn’t negative per se so much as nearly incoherent. As for the trauma issue, I don’t think someone who is personally uncomfortable with sex because of it is sex-negative, simply because there’s a huge difference between “none for me, thanks” and “everyone must feel the way I do”. The latter is what the “sex-negative” crowd seems to be saying (and if they’re not, they’ve done a terrible job of saying otherwise). The former, though, that’s a personal matter to be respected, live and let live kinda way.
As we’ve seen with some contextualizing of Dworkin recently, to dismiss second-wave feminists with negative opinions about (mostly heterosexual) sex as stupid or blind would be a grave mistake. In their (often middle-class, white) communities, I can totally see getting that perspective on things.
Marital rape was legal, rape otherwise was rarely prosecuted, marriage was a bum deal for women (more housework, less earnings, fear of losing economic stability by divorce), graphic sex was solely the domain of (male-focused) porn, slut-shaming was even more endemic, and a range of other issues. In other words, I’m not surprised that some people looked at their world and decided that consent effectively did not exist in it. And given the immense baggage that the legal and social context gave people, that it may well not be possible for it to exist.
I think, ultimately, they were wrong about that, but I think we should as aggressively question the way sexuality is treated in society today, but while maintaining a strong respect for people and their sexual preferences.
I feel like maybe the trauma is interfering with people’s ability to recognize that their experiences aren’t universal. Which means that we need to point out that they’re not universal experiences, for sure, but I feel like labeling the people themselves sex-negative is counterproductive, and a bit insensitive too. I’m just imagining what it would be like if I was a rape or molestation victim and someone, in the middle of an argument, started going on about how people like me were so sex-negative.