We’ve seen a lot of epic flip-floppery from Men’s Rightsers in the last few days on the subject of the Occidental College fiasco — that is, for those who haven’t been following it closely, the organized spamming of Occidental’s anonymous online rape reporting form with false reports by Reddit MRAs and 4channers. Notably, the Men’s Rights subreddit mod known as sillymod went from blaming the false reports on trolls one day to hailing them as necessary activism the next.
But a reader has alerted me to an even more epic flip-flop, this one from Pierce Harlan, a blogger obsessed with what he sees as an epidemic of false rape accusations.
Harlan started out as one of the voices of reason — at least by MRA standards — on the Occidental College spamming. Refraining from the hysteria of his fellow Men’s Rightsers about Occidental College’s anonymous form, he actually pointed out in one post that the form wasn’t being used to punish anyone and that anonymous reporting may be “a necessary evil” in order to get a true picture of the extent of rape.
On Friday, he went further, announcing in a post on his blog The Community of the Wrongly Accused that he was so disgusted with the behavior of his fellow Men’s Rightsers in the Occidental fiasco that he was planning to give up blogging entirely. The phony reports from MRAs, he sadly noted, “did no favors for the wrongly accused,” and this sort of “activism” only served to make MRAs look bad.
[T]he actions of the spammers were misguided at best, puerile and malicious at worst. They’ve given those of us who are trying to raise awareness about these issues in a serious way a black eye. I couldn’t care less how some radical feminist characterizes this incident, my concern is how it plays to middle America — and this can’t be spun in a positive way.
The incident, he wrote, was
the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. We’ve long sought to engage our readers, both here and via Reddit, to take certain actions that we felt could actually make a difference for the wrongly accused. These efforts invariably were met with either a lukewarm response or the sound of crickets chirping. …
Yet, now, someone suggests men’s righters spam a school’s rape reporting site, and for that they come out in droves. Hundreds of false rape reports. …
If we could have had this kind of support for the various initiatives we’ve tried to launch, I think we actually could have made a difference for the wrongly accused. We didn’t.
And so, he concluded in frustration,
the time has come to hand this blog over to others who will continue to raise awareness about the injustices to the wrongly accused. I will continue to follow the issue and offer my two cents on issues I think are important, but I’m not going to run this blog any longer.
Yep. That’s right. MRAs are such shitty “activists” that their most notable and attention-getting work of “activism” since I’ve started this blog drove the MRA most dedicated to that issue to such disgust and despair that he announced he was basically giving up the fight.
But Harlan’s retirement didn’t last long.
Apparently deciding that his camel’s back could handle a bit more straw after all, Harlan quickly took down the post announcing his retirement — though it’s still up, at least for now, in Google cache, and when that goes away, here’s a handy screenshot. (In case you’re not an ant, click to see it full size.)
On Saturday, Harlan came out with a new post suggesting that maybe he’d been wrong to challenge the hysteria of the false-report-submitting MRAs in the first place. Remember that bit from above in which Harlan said that the actions of the false-report spammers “can’t be spun in a positive way[?]” Well, Harlan decided he was going to give it the old college try:
Progressives are having a bona fide conniption over the Reddit Men’s Righters who spammed Occidental College’s anonymous rape reporting system with fake “rape” claims (from what we can tell, they were not really false rape claims, just snarky comments about the injustice of anonymous reporting). The righteous indignation from feminists is deafening. The spam attack, they tell us, is typical men’s rights hysteria, the result of an undeservedly privileged class being stripped of its power.
The men’s righters were out to prove that it’s too easy to abuse the college’s anonymous reporting system. We disagreed with the men’s righters and said we weren’t much concerned about the anonymous reporting system, but the more we read the progressive take on the incident, the more we wonder if we blew the call — maybe we should be concerned..
There was, of course, no reference to his post from the previous day, no acknowledgment that the “activism” he was now defending was the very same “activism” that had led him only one day earlier to decide to quit blogging altogether.
Down the memory hole it went. (But Google cache remembers.)
I guess when you’re a Men’s Rights activist, you have to take what you can get, and incredibly shitty slacktivism is about as good as it gets.
On the topic, oof. The only thing I can say is feminists love working in information technology and posting on Reddit!
@serrana
Storm stories!
1. I remember Ike. We luckily dodged a bullet there. However, that night my cat decided to go out and catch a rat, bring it inside, and drop it at my feet. If only she had killed it first. Instead of spending the night worrying about a hurricane, I got to chase a rat around the bathroom it ran into. Damn thing squeezed between the bathroom cabinet and the wall. Finally caught it and released it into the wild. (Didn’t seem fair to kill a rat which came into the house against its will.)
2. Living in Omaha we had 3 days of rain followed by a cold snap and early ice storm. The leaves were still green on the trees. A lot of the trees exploded and there were piles of dead trees for years afterward. This was a big deal in Nebraska. Arbor day is a state holiday.
3. Living in Northwest Iowa we had a blizzard and terrible wind which caused snow drifts the size of houses and ice almost an inch thick on the road outside my house. I remember as a kid being amazed at seeing bits of branches suspended in the ice.
I am sure other people have better stories. Toronto gets lake effect snow, doesn’t it?
Opium4themasses — when I was a kid we had an F4 tornado, well, close enough my mother’s rose bush got swept up (it’s okay, somebody else’s landed in the yard…which is so weird in its own right). Lost power for 3 days, just before my 4th birthday. My father lost all his fish. Amazingly, no one was killed, though the damage was impressive. This was, fuck, 25 years ago come July. Until fairly recently you could still find buildings with damage and spots where, if you knew
there’ debentures(dafuq autocorrect?) there’s been a tornado, it was obviously wtf happened to that tree, etc.Now, for perspective here…this was in Connecticut. We just don’t get tornados like that, or at all really. We get fucking blizzards, not F4s.
Potentially the best part? My father was at work, heard about the tornado and called to ask my mother to go outside and get his cooler. She refused. She did, however, chase my kiddie pool in a circle before realizing wtf was going on and shutling us to the basement. Us being nearly 4 year old me, my 10 month old brother, and my fucking ex-step-grandmother. She’s insufferable at the best of times, stuck in a basement hoping the house above you stays there? And I, of course, knew just enough of what was going on to acquire a serious fear of tornados.
Folks in tornado alley — idfk how you do, those things scare the shit out of me.
@ argenti: one of the nice things about living in southern Ontario is we never show up on any Discovery channel disaster specials.
Parts of Toronto are still out. I don’t know why, given we’re less well funded, but we are rarely out more than an hour or so no matter how bad the weather is. Lost power yesterday for 25 min & 10 min. I have nothing but respect for the lineworkers & forestry folks for going out in this crap. I have a gas stove & lots of scented motherfucking candles to keep the warm if it does go out.
No matter what happens, the MRA shitweasels will not change, they’ll just double down. David will never lack for material & popcorn shares will never lose value. I’ve seen crazy like this before, no amount of reality will impinge on them.
@takshak: I live just outside D/FW and so far, we haven’t either, although I’d argue a large part of it might just be sheer luck more than anything else…..
*sigh* so close to 24 hours. Cloudiah, I need another unicorn.
Takshak — Clicky to see why calling MRAs crazy doesn’t fly around here.
opium4themasses – wasn’t your kitty kind, distracting you from worrying about Ike! Cats are so thoughtful like that.
Yes, but thanks to you I’ve finally figured out how to quote on here! *said with joy and embarrassment of not being able to figure this out myself 😉
That sound you all just heard was my head.
STOP THE “CRAZY” TALK ALREADY. THE BABY JESUS IS CRYING, HAPPY NOW?
I mean shit, is it so hard to do?
@Takshak: Also, I’ll have to second Argenti…..and also, he put it better than I could.
@Yutolia: Still having trouble with that myself…..glad to see that you’ve figured it out, though. 🙂
@alternativesteve90
I’m not sure if Argenti told you yet, but Argenti’s pronouns are ze/zir/zirs, not he/him/his.
Just throwing this out here:
Maybe putting a link to the article Argenti linked to in the Welcome Package would help? And a statement about ableism?
I know there’s been a recent string of “crazy” comments, and there was a discussion about WTF was going on and calling people out about it and how to do that. Maybe having the statement and link in the Welcom Package and/or a “please read this before you comment” would help cut down on it.
I don’t know, though.
sparky, that’s a fantastic idea! I’ll go ask cloudiah what she thinks.
We had another outage here this morning, but it only lasted about 15-20 min. Hoping that’s the last. Toronto is really having the worst of it this year, though, and Robbo won’t call an emergency, because that means the deputy mayor gets all the glory, and His Frodness has to stand there looking all red-faced and useless. Fuck their luck…
Ally — thanks, I don’t think I had done my usual introduction.
alternatesteve90 — thanks, but I didn’t write that post, just saving that link since seriously, I’m going to have a herd of unicorns at this rate. (I’m collecting virtual unicorns for every 24 hours we fail to go without an ableist comment, after saying I thought a unicorn more likely than 24 hours without such comment on Saturday, I now have two unicorns)
Regarding adding it to the Welcome Package, I love the idea.
I like the idea of adding something to the Welcome Package, and will do it when I get a chance. Ally, will you email me the link just so I don’t forget what thread it was on?
It’s been Ableist Comment of the Day around here lately. What’s up with that?
“MRAs: We hate false rape accusations we’re going to spam a university with HUNDREDS of false rape accusations.
Hey, shouldn’t they all be arrested for perjury right now, like they are always hollering about whenever a woman accuses someone of rape?”
Not at all because of WPS (White Penis Syndrome). WPS means that you will not be held criminally liable for anything you ever do. Examples include Dominic Strauss Kahn, George Zimmerman, and Julian Assange.
And I’d like to add my echo for the end of all the “crazy” flinging.
I sent you an email like 45 mins ago. =P It has the link.
Cloudiah — I’ve started collecting them for the Borg, I may steal “Ableist Comment of the Day” off you if people keep doubling down (I won’t mock innocent mistakes, though at this point I’m not feeling too generous since we’ve said this Every Damned Day for like a week now, maybe longer)
Yeah, I’m not even reading all the comments and I’ve noticed a lot. 0_o
I’ll draft something for the Welcome Package when I get home tonight; I might send it to you and Ally to see if the wording is good. Or if you have suggestions for where it might go, and how to introduce the link, email me.
How’s your mother doing btw? Hope she’s doing well.
As for the link…I’m feeling snarky, maybe introduce it with “you know your other -isms, but how about ableism?”
Or put it at the end of the Welcome Package itself as “also introduced — a quick guide on why not to call MRAs crazy”
Introduced? Included. Spellcheck says I need sleep. I won’t get loopy for another 4~6 hours, but then I get my second wind and pull at least six more and going to bed at 4am on 34+ hours awake means getting up at dusk and FAIL.
Mmm, insomnia.
Oh and LBT’s Borg critters are up, took care of that earlier. Also, folks who don’t read their email, pop over to the post on monthly themes and weigh in for January’s. The Hivemind needs minions!
I read the email, but I’m afraid I’ve no idea for themes, Argenti, even without the “preferably do some writing for said theme” rider. The only writing I’m even thinking about these days is what goes in these comments.
As someone who has personally battled against misconceptions about mental illness while using clever phrases like “bat shit crazy” in conversation without a second thought, this board’s stance on ableism led to one of my Top Uncomfortable Realizations About Myself of 2013.
IIRC, I avoided saying something monumentally stupid when I first posted here by lurking and a getting a feel for the place before commenting. That’s an overall policy I highly recommend, because it prevented me from making my own “The MRAs are crazy nuts!” post.
The regulars here have always been patient with new posters who kick things off with “MRAs are crazy nuts!” and have also been good about turning it into a teaching moment. Yet it seems like it’s turned into a endless chore, so I understand the frustration and the need for a stock statement.
A statement would also be beneficial because while the regulars do a good job of pointing out
how ableism can reinforce pervasive social bias and negative stereotypes associated with mental illness, a few posters have cast the problem as merely bad manners run amok. I flinch every time someone corrects ableist language by saying many people on the board are dealing with mental illness, so you need to be more “sensitive” in order to avoid hurting their feeling. This board isn’t populated by fragile flowers or the language police, just people with a low tolerance for shitty behavior.
The real problem with ableism is that equating bad ideas, failed logic, idiotic behavior and social bias with mental illness supports the idea that douche bags who commit fucked up, socially unacceptable and morally wrong acts and the mentally ill should both be judged, ridiculed and stigmatized in the same manner.
TL/DR
Statement about ableist language, especially regarding mental illness = good idea
OK, Dave, I got the “Suspicious Site” warning again, and this time I got a screenshot:
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i236/gyalakias/manthreat_zps1bcf312b.jpg
Seriously, have somebody look into this.