Oh, Men’s Rightsers, can you just make up your minds? Only a couple of days after blaming trolls for the spamming of Occidental College’s rape reporting site with false accusations, rather than acknowledging it as the work of Men’s Rightsers in his own subreddit who were proudly encouraging and taking credit for it themselves, Men’s Rights subreddit mod sillymod is now defending the false rape reporting as “unpopular” but thought-provoking activism.
![sillymod 6 points 7 hours ago (13|7) First you have to believe that we did something wrong in order to want to get our reputation back. Sometimes people fighting for a cause are going to do something that is unpopular in order to make a statement. I don't think we do need to get our reputation back. I think the act stands for itself, and it will get people to stop and think. permalink source save give gold hide child comments [–]TheIdesOfLight [+20] 15 points 4 hours ago (22|7) So I guess that whole "We were trolled"/"It was SRS!" bullshit is off the table? You can't pass the buck and convince yourselves everyone else is guilty but you and now it's become an act of bravery? Wow. Yeah, watching you flip flop on this for the past three days has been both alarming and rewarding. You didn't make any kind of statement, Sillymod. The entire internet and media is sneering at you and you still can't just say WE DID A TERRIBLE THING. PERHAPS WE SHOULD REFLECT ON IT AS A WHOLE. permalink source save parent give gold [–]ninioquiroz 6 points 3 hours ago (12|6) No, because that would require a level of maturity and self-awareness that this "movement" clearly lacks. But, does anybody else think feminists are to blame for all the world's problems?](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/sillymod2.png?resize=493%2C520&ssl=1)
This whole exchange is worth reading — it continues on for a number of comments beyond this, with sillymod’s rationalizations becoming increasingly baroque. It’s extremely rare to see critical remarks like those from TheIdesOfLight actually get upvoted in the Men’s Rights subreddit. The Occidental College fiasco has divided the Men’s Rights subreddit like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Some are appalled by it; others are digging in their heels.
Speaking of which, here’s former subreddit mod Celda defending the false rape reports in much more straightforward terms than sillymod:
![Celda [-1] 5 points 18 hours ago (9|4) I agree that the subreddit deserves some responsibility for that. But - there was nothing wrong with those actions. I saw the news articles in which it says they were spammed with hundreds of reports, of being raped by fictional characters, accusing the staff of the Dean's Office (the form is run by the Dean's Office), etc. Those reports are non-harmful - and the goal of shutting down the online form is quite a laudable one. I am actually quite disgusted by the number of people who are defending the existence of an anonymous online form intended for reporting people as rapists.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/celda.png?resize=521%2C231&ssl=1)
Elsewhere, Celda has called the false reporting “quite moral and laudable.”
Thanks to the AgainstMensRights subreddit — which, again, is not actually against rights for men, but against the reactionary clusterfuck that is the Men’s Rights movement — for keeping close track on all this.
And that’s real.
Science+true statistics+swearing, the MRM formula for “success!”
I KNOW. I feel like I need to pad my desk because my head keeps hitting it lately.
Why has there been such an explosion of ableism recently? Not to mention people really wanting that to be the hill they die on in terms of defending their right to keep on using that language even after folks ask them to please stop.
Dunno. It’s frustrating because I don’t want this to feel like a community defined by correcting people’s language, but as long as people keep coming in using inappropriate language, well, it’s got to be corrected.
@Katz
I wouldn’t have actually said anything about the ableism had I bothered to refresh after I’d written the first half of my comment, because I would have seen that there were some call-outs already, and I know that sometimes it feels like we are all just blindly attacking all at once. But associating mental illness with being a terrible person does hurt me, and it does hurt other people in this community and outside of it.
That was kind of just half a thought. What I meant was, it does hurt people, so I feel like I want to say something. It can be hard to strike a balance.
I’m getting really tired of asking people to knock it off, that’s for sure.
Ditto to all of the above. I don’t want this blog to come across like Feministe, where it’s a constant train of carping about terminology, but I’m fucking sick of the mushroom-growth of ableism that’s been around lately.
Note to everyone thinking of delurking: you’re very welcome here but please, for the love of the Furrinati, will you not use ablelist language! It isn’t too much to ask people to think before hitting Post Comment.
“The slow-digesting MRAs
Feel periodic urges
To renovate their image with
The aid of massive purges.”
With apologies to the college classmate, back in 1983, who came up with the quatrain that inspired this doggerel.
I have to be honest with all of you. I learned about ableist language here because I had no clue what that was about. In my language, Portuguese, some words that mean “crazy” in English are used are positive reinforcements and it is hard sometimes to get over these habits in another language. I learned by reading everything and in the beginning I was quite confused then I started to understand it.
However, now I have stopped using things such as “these people are completely crazy” and so on because of this blog even in my own language. I was not aware of it at all, even tough I have a clinical psychiatric condition myself. I am also telling others and they can see why using terms like that are not okay. But I can’t help myself saying “wow, this is crazy” as in “wow, this is awesome” in my own language as we say that far too much where I come from. But in English, now that I have written it, it does not make any sense =D
In another note, I think we should always stop using some term some people find offensive. Even if you don’t yourself, just listen to the one who is bothered by it and respect it. Now I get annoyed myself when I see this kind of ableist usage as well.
oh, yes, and thank you for teaching me about this issue. ^^
“Thought-provoking”? Oh, Sillymod, you continue to live up to your monicker. That, and “oh my, they do so love to double down on their dumbth” is really the only thought that this shit provokes in me. How do these guys manage to put on their pants every morning without tripping themselves?
Also, false reporting is “moral”. What is TRUE reporting? MISANDRY!!!
Also, Celda is ignoring the fact that several users talked about how they wanted to make serious false accusations against actual people – not just make up reports that have absurdities like the perpetrators being fictional characters. They actually want to harm people as a form of activism.
For the crime of working at a college that believes rape to be a real thing that actually happens, I guess.
Telling people not to cyberstalk, troll and attempt to ruin innocent lives is MISANDRY!!!
From the Celda thread:
Apparently he didn’t read the WhiteThrone comment that said “Get a list of every ‘feminist’ at Occidental College”.
Not content with just having their own facts, MRAs have now decided that they need their own history too.
(Even when people can go back and point to the bits that they’ve just changed.)
Even if they only intended to show that the system is broken (which isn’t true, because they generally did it for both of those reasons), they would still be blameworthy because they think that it was okay to make false accusations so long as they serve political ends.
And so their means are not consistent with their ends, and that makes them not only shitty human beings, but also terrible activists. That conclusion is the most charitable one. In reality, they really were vindictive and hateful, not righteous human rights activist who just made some Innocent Mistake.
Rewriting history is classic cultic thinking. And yes people, I happen to think that the MRM has the hallmarks of a cult much like the Ayn Randroids are a cult. So sue me.
Kittehserf: “Note to everyone thinking of delurking: you’re very welcome here but please, for the love of the Furrinati, will you not use ablelist language! It isn’t too much to ask people to think before hitting Post Comment.”
I think sometimes people have no idea they’re being ableist or offensive. I absent mindedly described MRAs as “crazy” the other day, and I often use terms like bonkers, nutty, etc. I’m learning to catch myself and be more careful, both here and elsewhere, and I cringe when other people spout off ableist language now. But for me anyway it was just ignorance and that’s pretty innocent. What I’m trying to say is telling future commenters to not be ableist will probably be met with a sincere effort but they’ll fuck up anyway, as it I have from time to time. Some very well meaning people honestly just don’t know better until they know better. I’m sure you know this, I just wanted to explain my ableist tendencies are not intentional.
I find it funny when they act as if people can’t see that they’re lying about what just happened only a few days ago. It’s like watching a toddler trying to get out of trouble.
I think people should be careful in comparing certain groups to cults. It’s disrespectful to cult victims to carelessly call some group/ideology/whatever cultish. I do think that such a comparison can be made without engaging in appropriation, but far too often I see people making comparisons to Jonestown and throwing around the word “cult” without any due consideration for people who have been actually harmed by cults.
What is worse is not only are some of them are trying to pretend that the fiasco did not happen but those very same people who are saying it that it did not happen are also trying to still justify what happened. Cognitive dissonance anyone?
Like when toddlers cover their eyes and think they’re invisible.
“This never happened, but if it had happened that would have been OK. But it didn’t.”
It’s like they don’t realize that people can go back and read what they wrote previously.