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.
This looks like another interesting development (if nobody’s linked it here):
http://www.reddit.com/r/againstmensrights/comments/1t78zq/a_new_mra_sub_is_forming_and_it_looks_like_it/
Ha, I knew it! Or didn’t, otherwise I wouldn’t have posted. I gotta confess, I’m warily giddy, and hope it doesn’t get swarmed.
RE: Falconer
BIG BEBES! I can’t believe they’re almost a whole year old now!
RE: auggziliary
And now they’re blaming the victim for other rapes? Seriously?
This is actually very common. And then they switchback if you DO make the report and say it’s proof you’re just doing it as a grudge because otherwise you’d understand you’re ruining your precious rapist’s precious little life. *eyeroll* The amount of cognitive dissonance and emotional whiplash involved when people are faced with a rape disclosure is staggering. It’s gotten to the point that I just have canned one-liners for people being assholes when I tell them.
@Mass Hysteria
That’s how it read to me, and it made me kind of uncomfortable. I mean, comparing mras to antiracism activists is like… just not any sense making. One wants a dominant (men) group to maintain their privilege and the other one wants equality
Yeeeeaaaah. Like, there are plenty of assholes on tumblr, but I side-eye the “bullied just for being white” thing on principle.
To further clarify, I have yet to see any asshats on tumblr go after someone “for being white.” What happens is they come after someone for saying something racist… and then the shit gets completely out of control, due to how tumblr keeps track of things. It’s very easy to find things without context (like, uh, thorough formal apologies and retribution made afterward) and then bring something up again and again and again, not realizing the whole fucking thing was put to bed years ago.
The problem isn’t WHAT they go after people for, it’s HOW they do it.
I can definitely say as one of the least attractive men in existence, I will still feel uncomfortable if someone I didn’t know offered me sex regardless of whether I found them aesthetically pleasing or not. And even though it’s been years since I’ve known the touch of another human being, I’d still refuse.
The assumption that any man would say “Yes! Let’s fuck right now!” in response to any offer of sex from a woman does make me wonder just how disconnected from the rest of the population these men are. As everyone already said, wouldn’t you find it a bit weird if some random person walked up to you and said “fuck me, please”? It’s not like these guys are able to conceptualize a scenario in which women are actually horny, so why would they think the woman was offering? Wouldn’t it seem a bit suspicious, from their perspective? Would they not fear that spermjacking was afoot?
It can’t be that they’re just doing the all-women-are-Angelina-Jolie thing, because it’s not as if they don’t waffle on at great length about how ugly they think most women are.
Maybe they think men are wandering around with wads of cash sticking out of their pockets, ‘cos we know women are only attracted to $$$$.
But then, this being one of Owly’s maunderings, who knows what was going through his festering excuse for a mind?
katz is to be congratulated, btw: I never had an image of Owly (thank Ceiling Cat) but now I see him as the grey-bearded character from AVfP.
I’m less disappointing with these anti feminists and more disappointed with my generation.
I feel as if the OP either misunderstood the purpose of the form, or deliberately left out significant information, then propagated it. I feel disappointed that my people will so willingly take up “arms” against something they barely know about and destroy something so beneficial to society.
My belated tribute to the tigers for weed meme:
Tyger, tyger, smokin’ hot
in the shady parking lot
What immense amount of pot
can match the fearful price you got?
(Apologies for William Blake)
Love it, Arctic Ape!
The assumption that any man would say “Yes! Let’s fuck right now!” in response to any offer of sex from a woman does make me wonder just how disconnected from the rest of the population these men are. As everyone already said, wouldn’t you find it a bit weird if some random person walked up to you and said “fuck me, please”?
Heck… I’ve turned down women I know, and like: because the circumstances seemed less than ideal (no matter how flattering it also happened to be). Some random woman I don’t know? Not gonna get the time of day in that scenario.
Holy shit! I went to look at the thread again (to see if any response has been made in the, “well no one actually did anything” sub-thread) and saw this gem
Dude is admitting to threatening his (I can only hope former; because she dumped his sorry ass) girlfriend, and bragging that he got away with it.
Anyone want to take bets he’s of the, “women commit as much DV as men do” school of asshole?
Pecunium, that story, wow.
@Mass Hysteria: Yes, you kinda did misunderstand me, TBH(no offense meant, though, it happens.). Since you brought it back up, you may wish to re-read what I said; I merely pointed out that there are a *few* bad apples in the social justice movement who do use it as an excuse to be completely bigoted jerkoffs, instead of calling out *actual* racism, discrimination, etc., but that also, these bad apples are only a small fraction of what is otherwise a noble movement, most of whose adherents, myself included, actually do try, in whatever ways possible, to make the world a better place(including the exposure of actual racism & other prejudices, structural, individual, or otherwise).
Whereas the Men’s Rights Movement is the complete opposite and never actually had the objective of helping men & boys, but rather, it was always about their hatred & fear of, and desire to control women(of all ethnicities!), and that the “Bad Apples” were always dominant in the MRM.
Does that make a little more sense? Sorry if I rambled a lot the last time, btw…..I try not to do that.
@Pecunium: Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if he *was* one of those, “But, but, women do it just as much!” type of unsavory persons.
I’ll bet, BTW, the “threat” was, “WTF are you doing with a gun? I’m calling the cops!”.
Of course he is – look how his comment is phrased. He says she took his gun and threatened him, while calling the cops. Implication: she is the violent one, threatening him with a gun. and the police bought that version of events.
Whereas, seems to me, she took his gun because she was afraid he would use it on her (or be otherwise violent towards her) and went to call the police. I’m guessing that the supposed threat was along the lines of “don’t come near me or I’ll shoot” i.e. a warning that she would use the gun against him in self-defense because she was afraid of him.
In other words, he’s a shitweasel.
@Artic Ape
Okay, that tiger poem had me cracking up. XD
Ah…. I misread it is, “she was being loud, so I took my gun and went out to deal with her”.
But yeah, I’ll bet it was her removing the gun from him, and him coming after her because of it; and saying she’d regret it.
To give a tiny shred of fairness to the MRA, It isn’t really that baffling that they bought into the story without doing any research or even reading the web page they are flooding.
I mean, for one, these guys live in a delusion where having a Vagina means you can pretend to be holy and get away with murder, so someone saying ‘a form to insta-blame men!’ fits right into their world-view Biases. And not only that, but these guys Regularly take each-others words for ‘facts’ over anyone else, assuming the world to be under the influence of Bias, which is amusing.
@Pecunium
Actually, the part you bolded was that *she* took the gun. AKA: she was threatening him. (unless you mean the ‘I confronted her.’ bit, thought hat is vague, to say the least. since confrontation can mean anything from ‘stern back and fourth’ to ‘fight’.)
Obviously There is no way to know if the story is true or not, but I wanted to point out that In his version of the event, Fantasy or not, she was clearly the aggressor.
@titianblue
I think your reading into the story too much. Obviously there is no way to confirm his story, or confirm weather he is changing details,Unless we find it somewhere int he news or something I guess, But He doesn’t really provide enough details to infer anything like that, if you ask me.
As little love as I have for MRA types, I don’t really like to see flat out assumptions on the motives of people you only heard a paragraph on, who may not even be real. I feel this is too close to a Bias for my comfort. (Then again, since this came out of the mouth of a MRA, maybe Its more indicative of how much he would warp the truth. I dunno.)
@titianblue: I’m inclined to agree with you on that, btw. Too many of these MRA type fellows are all too willing to twist the narrative to make it look like that they’re the victims, when in reality they were the perpetrators of said violence; TBH, this is probably one of those cases.
@Cassandra:
“It can’t be that they’re just doing the all-women-are-Angelina-Jolie thing, because it’s not as if they don’t waffle on at great length about how ugly they think most women are.”
Honestly, I think it’s just a case of hypocrisy with many of these jerks and that they just alternate between the two just so they can find something to hate, you know?
@Pecunium: “But yeah, I’ll bet it was her removing the gun from him, and him coming after her because of it; and saying she’d regret it.”
Could very well have been the case.
@marinaliteyears: It’s more tragic than anything else; but their worldview really is truly dangerous to women…..all women. (P.S., a friendly warning: no offense meant, but I’m not sure that using the word “delusion” is terribly wise: there are some more regular commenters here who have conditions that they deal with….just so you know.)
@AlternateSteve90
Mmm. alright, point taken.
In that case, I suppose I need a new word to talk about the utterly Incorrect world-view they hold.
I suppose I’m pretty insensitive. but Thats no big surprise. I’ve lived in a bubble my whole life, so i’m hoping to become more sensitive to stuff like this. Thanks for pointing that out.