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.
@marinaliteyears: It’s alright…..I’m not totally perfect in that regard, either, TBH(that, and I’ll admit that sometimes, I’m just not all that good at getting my points across…..).
I like “ass-backwards” as a description of worldviews that are not just wrong, but comically, absurdly wrong.
Ok, regardless who had the gun, there’s something amiss in that story. If he had, he missed the word “I” (ok, grammar is misandry), if she did…he went out to confront her?
Show of hands from people with experience around guns, you going to go confront someone who’s yelling and waving one? *sits on hands*
(In other news, my brother’s latest gun will turn 115 next year, which is kinda cool)
Argenti aertheri@
Well, this guy WAS presumably an MRA, So in his ‘Manworld’ women are too weak for guns! And men have to be brave and Stand up always, then get blamed! (even if he managed to get out of it with his wit!)
No actually, I have no idea, and I agree the story is.. at best very flaky sounding. It sounds kind of exaggerated or fabricated.
@CassandraSays
Ahah. I like it. It rolls well In my mind actually. I’m surprised I didn’t think of using that phrase more.
My problem with “delusion”, apart from splash damage, is that it implies these shitweasels don’t have any control over their attitudes to women. It ignores the willfull stupidity + hatred element. I just don’t buy that, however toxic their upbringing may – may – have been.
marinaliteyears — oh fuck, another thought. I was coming at it from the perspective of someone raised around guns, who can figure out how to fire even weird and old firing mechanisms. And was taught gun safety when I was barely older than Falconer’s twins (at that age it’s “do not, ever, touch a gun, get an adult if you see one”) I may not be the collector my father and brother are, nor shoot with any regularity, but I know my way around guns, and more importantly, gun safety. This guy may not. He may’ve honestly thought she wouldn’t know to cock the firing pin (a required step in shooting it). Which is just…getting a gun should be more than a background check, a gun safety course should be required too. Cuz that sort of stupidity is how people get killed
Oh and you can just call me Argenti, the Aertheri part is optional. On that note, idk if I did my usual introduction. I use gender neutral pronouns — ze // zir — what’re your preferred pronouns?
Ok, regardless who had the gun, there’s something amiss in that story. If he had, he missed the word “I” (ok, grammar is misandry), if she did…he went out to confront her?
Show of hands from people with experience around guns, you going to go confront someone who’s yelling and waving one?
This is why I assumed he had the gun, esp. because of how he characterised her.
He may’ve honestly thought she wouldn’t know to cock the firing pin (a required step in shooting it).
Depends on the weapon. A modern DA/SA auto, which he keeps, “in battery” is ready to go if the safety is off (and modern means post 1929 or so, with the Walter PPK).
If he has something like a Glock there is no separate safety, and the weapon is ready to go if it’s in battery.
Argh, more assumptions from one familiar with gun safety. Ya keep the safety et al on! Fuck, when we were kids the guns were either locked away, or had those stretchy band safeties that require adult strength to remove.
In any case, that would only make it less likely he’d confront her though. Well, by any logic, which this story is lacking.
Sure you might not face criminal charges but you will be brought into the Dean’s office and read the riot act and if you don’t think the names will go into some kind of database you’re delusional. There’s a reason courts don’t accept anonymous allegations. This is so open for abuse it’s not even funny.
LONG LIVE THE TIGERS AND WEED MEME!
You guys are the best.
Arctic Ape — I intend to do a Manboobz Mythos post on the Borg about the tigers and pot, can I quote your poem? (With credit and link, unless you desire otherwise)
No sir, I am most definitely NOT confronting them. Getting shot is not my list of Things I Need To Do Before I Die.
Just to clear up my own questions on the matter, I looked up the word on Wikipedia. I got:
Unfortunately, the entry doesn’t distinguish clearly between pathological (illness-related) and non-pathological delusions. But I did see a lot of things that sound an awful lot like what MRAs think, say and do in the general description and among the various types of delusions (see the full entry and you’ll know what I mean). The overlap is hard to deny. E.g., the idea that feminism oppresses men, while certainly not a product of mental illness, is a common delusion in the MRM. They think they are persecuted, and they rant about it at length to reinforce that idea (think of all those many-thousand-word screeds they write!). It is a belief that they hold with strong conviction, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Ditto their views on rape. You can cite all kinds of statistics proving them wrong, and still they glom on to that patently untrue notion that most rape reports are false like a Baptist to the gospels. Likewise, their willful misinterpretation of studies and statistics that blatantly contradict them…they literally see things that aren’t there. And they believe in them with cultish fervor.
So “delusion” isn’t a totally wrong word to use; much of their behavior definitely qualifies as the non-pathological type of delusional thinking/acting/talk. But you’re right that it does no favors for those who suffer from hallucinations, OCD and the like. And given the MRAs’ own ugly predilection for stigmatizing even the slightest manifestations of mental illness, and how they throw the word “crazy” at anyone who disagrees with them even slightly, it’s a most uncomfortable association. One that any decent person under psychiatric counselling or care would be understandably eager to distance themselves from. Including me, whom they would stigmatize for having been severely depressed 20 years ago, even though I’ve been quite well since. My only delusion during that brain-sick year was a firm belief that I was a dull nobody who was utterly unlovable and better off dead. (Of course, they being MRAsshats and I being a feminist, they’d no doubt say that this delusion was actually a truth.)
I’m just taking the MRA at his word:
So the couple have spent the day arguing. He blames her. He has no respect or liking for her.
She is yelling at him. He is trying to sleep. She takes his gun.
So she took the gun and she went to the living room, presumably to get away from him. He goes after her to confront her.
So she calls the cops. She’s the one with the gun, threatening him with the gun and yet she calls the cops. Could it be that she was afraid of him? The man who she went to the other room to get away from, having taken his gun? The man who followed her to confront her?
And surprise, surprise, he talks his way out of any problem with the police while she is not believed.
Yep, call it bias if you like but this has all the red flags for gaslighting and abuse. Hope she got clear of him.
I think the Wiki article’s first paragraph makes the important distinction:
False information and dogma definitely describe these arsewhines.
Bina, if you talk about MRAs being willfully self-deluding, you’ll probably not have a problem, here.
titianblue – and notice he never tells us what “I said the wrong thing” means. How trivial he makes it sound, and like a one-off.
That’s exactly what I mean — thank you! I hope that’s not a problem here, because I honestly can’t think of anything better to call it. Except, when I’m in a foul mood, FUCKWITTERY.
Haha, yeah. It’s not like most colleges rally around the accused, pressure the victim to use the college’s judicial system instead of involving the actual police, or do absolutely nothing to protect the victim or punish the assailant that it’s the victim who ends up dropping out. Hell, the college in question certainly didn’t create this reporting form in response to a recent failure to do jack shit about a rape.
Tell me more about how hard college is for rapists 🙁
“I’m going to kill you” could technically be described as saying the wrong thing, as could “you’re a worthless bitch”. All kinds of things which a partner could justifiably take great offense to and want to argue about could be described that way.
Re gaslighting: If that’s not a manufactured type of delusion, I don’t know what is. Brainwashing is proof that often, a deluded state of mind is manufactured by another party. One doesn’t have to be clinically ill in any sense to get that way, either. Or drugged.
You could say MRAs gaslight themselves. The gas in their cases being of the intestinal variety.
“Being read the riot act” refers to a literal thing – the Riot Act being read aloud to crowds to break them up. It’s not the rapist in the Dean’s office having to read it himself.
But I want to know who Andy He Abuse is!
Reminds me of the joke about St Peter asking Forrest Gump what God’s name is, before he lets him into Heaven.
Forrest: Andy.
St Peter: Where’d you get that idea?
Forrest: It’s in the Bible. Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me.
St Peter: Welcome, and enter. Run, Forrest, run!