Last night, a regular commenter in the Men’s Rights subreddit — inspired by a thread on 4chan — posted a link to an online form on r/mensrights under the headline “Feminists at Occidental College created an online form to anonymously report rape/sexual assault. You just fill out a form and the person is called into the office on a rape charge. The “victim” never has to prove anything or reveal their identity.”
This headline is not only inflammatory but untrue: Yes, Occidental College has an online form that allows victims of or witnesses to sexual assault to report the incidents to the school. But, as a statement at the top of the form makes clear, the point is to collect data on how much sexual violence there is at the school, who the victims are, and so on.
If the person reporting the crime names the alleged perpetrator,
a member of the Dean of Students Office will meet with that person to share that the person was named in an anonymous report, review the Sexual Misconduct Policy, and inform the person that if the allegations are true, the behavior needs to cease immediately. Information shared in this form alone will not result in anyone going through the grievance process.
I’ve put the last bit in bold to emphasize a point: No one will be charged with anything based only on information gathered using this form. As would be clear to anyone who thought about the matter for more than a few seconds, it’s rather difficult to investigate, much less prove, a rape if you don’t actually know who the victim is.
Somehow this rather elementary fact eluded the OP, and virtually all of those who left the hundreds of comments on the popular post.
Indeed, a host of Men’s Rights Redditors were so convinced of the innate evil of the online form they all had the same bright idea: let’s flood the school with false reports of rape and break the form. Here are some of their comments. (There are more in the thread.) Note the number of upvotes each of these suggestions got. (Click the images to see the comments in context on Reddit.)
While a few commenters stood up to point out that in fact the school will not charge anyone with anything as a result of anonymous information gathered by the form, they were outnumbered by Men’s Rightsers gleefully reporting that they in fact had reported false information. Among them:
![froggymorning 46 points 15 hours ago (59|13) I've already filled one out. permalink source parent save give gold hide child comments [–]Muffinizer1 6 points 7 hours ago (9|4) Was kind of fun. I swear to god though, if they track us down it would be terribly ironic, however it's mildly likely.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/froggy.png?resize=546%2C171&ssl=1)
It’s one thing to criticize an anonymous reporting system because of its potential for abuse; this is something else entirely.
The post has been up for 17 hours at this point, with more than 700 net upvotes, and some of the calls for “breaking” the form have been up for nearly as long. The moderators of Men’s Rights have done nothing to stop their subreddit being used to interfere with a school’s attempt to assist rape survivors — including men.
“Breaking” a school’s rape reporting mechanism is apparently a form of Men’s Rights activism.
Unless it’s against a man. Then it’s just the worst.
Slow clap for the dumbest group on the internet. Bravo, pip pip, you sure showed those nasty feminists trying to help rape victims, including but not limited to the doodz.
According to this poster in SRS, who claims to work at Occidental, the RKWs have turned in some of their sickest fantasies as homework:
http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/comments/1t3ydx/low_hanging_fruit_special_rmensrights_teams_up/ce470db
And the r/MensRights moderators don’t give a shit about false rape accusations now:
http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/comments/1t3ydx/low_hanging_fruit_special_rmensrights_teams_up/ce47caj
All of which just highlights that while these boxer stains are doing little more than pissing on the rug, they believe that they are initiating an actual legal process.
Yep, they just showed themselves to be even worse people than I previously thought they were.
Again.
No bottom to this barrel.
RE: Ally
Good. Maybe that person will get away to better, nicer people who have more to accomplish than spamming people.
Gross AND Stupid! The favorite MRA combo!
@ Argenti – in the UK I think you can get locked up for life but I think the only way you’d get actual life imprisonment is if you’re a serial killer, like Nilsen or Hindley or someone like that, or another really severe crime, you wouldn’t get that for rape.
However being given a ‘life sentence’ doesn’t always mean that you’ll be guaranteed to spend your whole life in prison anyway. There’s very few ‘whole life tariffs’ where you’re never allowed out and that’s for the crimes above.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5086978.stm
Limiting it to on-campus IPs seems like it would be a sensible move.
This is awful in so many ways, but I’m also a bit worried about the poor researcher that has to deal with all of this terribly messed up data. Is there any way to alert the people dealing with the forms that this is going on and where it’s all coming from (like, maybe a link to the Reddit thread?) ?
If somebody’s going to the trouble to try and formulate more accurate sexual violence statistics, I feel like giving them what little help we can would probably be the non-asshat thing to do here; for the greater good and all that.
what did I just read?
this is… this is…
“asshat” is not enough anymore.
I am glad, as Ally showed, that one of them could see past the incredibly amount of bullshit.
*incredible. argh!
@Ally
Nah, they’re ok with placing false rape acusations on feminist men, or men who generally disagree with them. A false rape accusation is only an inexcusable crime if it a specially vetted MRA is the alleged victim. Everything else is men’s human rights activism.
By the way, they keep saying “We’re just spamming the form because we want to get the school to change it!” But if this becomes widely known to the point that the school yields to their demands, the reputation of the school will go down. And that means that survivors will be even less likely to report their victimization because fewer survivors will have trust in the school.
I hate MRAs with every fiber of my being.
It also means that the people who look at these reports will be less likely to trust the veracity of them – or perhaps throw them out entirely if they sound like the reports from the trolls.
Seethe.
Further proof that MRA’s don’t just hate women; they hate EVERYBODY. This is what happens when you choose to view every human interaction as a battle for dominance over each other. Toxic masculinity at it’s finest.
I’m wondering why they used the word “charged”, which suggests a criminal charge. Rather than simply a disciplinary action by the school. Is it just a case of using the word loosely, or do they actually think that the right to face one’s accuser in a court of law no longer applies to those charged with rape?
I’m struck by how often MRA comments begin with something like, “First, let’s get a list of all the feminists…” Where is this list? How do you compile one? This is the kind of resolution that “sounds” action-oriented, but is safely within the realm of unactionable fantasy.
I figure it’s hyperbole, markb; the idea that they might have even a complaint put against them is just that terrifying. *eyeroll* Never mind that I could go and file a police report against any random dude I wanted, saying they stole something of mine or flashed me. That’s kind of how the law works; someone makes a report, they choose whether to press charges, then they go and see if they have a case at all. Just making a report doesn’t mean anything’ll happen; I only made mine against my rapist in case he tried it again with another teenager. (Which I was pretty sure he would.)
What these guys want is free rein for rapists. Anything with the slightest potential for drawing attention to their crimes, anything that might broaden people’s understanding of rape, or how prevalent it is, enrages them.
I’d have to go through all the state and federal statues to know for sure, but I can’t think of any places in the US where rape by forcible compulsion is a life sentence. Usually, it falls somewhere in the 5-15 year range, roughly equivalent to or slightly higher than aggravated assault/battery. There are only a few circumstances under which a person would get a life sentence for rape. One is a serial rapist charged consecutively, which these idiots aren’t talking about. The other is rape with aggravating factors, which is available as a charge in some places. Aggravated rape is good for 20 or 25 years or even more and is restricted to extreme cases, such as when the victim sustains serious injuries.
Finally, in a very small number of states (two or three, at last count), forcible rape of a minor is a capital offense. It’s very rare for a person to actually be executed even in these jurisdictions, so in practical terms it is a life sentence. So unless these assholes are running around the streets of New Orleans attacking eleven-year olds, there’s not much of a risk.
I hope the university has a method in place for weeding out the trolls…non-university IP numbers on the form, for instance. I sure don’t envy whoever has to weed through all the dreck these guys are slinging at them…
Yet another example of males reacting irrationally and getting mangry over nothing. Why can’t they just calm down and use logic? I’m starting to get the idea that men naturally have a lesser inclination towards critical thinking…
Jokes aside, this is a truly horrible display, and aside from the sweeping generalizations about men, I stand by the previous paragraph. There’s really no thought behind whatever is going on here – in fact, I’d say it’s more like anti-thought. A group getting themselves whipped up into a furor over a fabricated hot-button issue, and lashing out in a thoughtless and irresponsible manner.
I just want to put up a giant banner that says “ANOTHER GREAT VICTORY FOR THE RIGHTS OF MEN” and throw confetti and cheer, with a fanfare playing in the background, until they realize I’m being sarcastic and start to rethink their lives.
RE: dlouwe
I will happily get the marching ass band to play a Bronx cheer in their honor.
The MRM: Another Day, Another New Low
How does this help men?
These assclowns can step on all the Legos.