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.
I’m going to have an all-about-me moment which I hope isn’t too obnoxious. Yesterday (?) I said something about how ableist language hurts me, others here, and a wider community, and I hope it didn’t come off like what Brooke is describing. What I meant is it causes measurable harm to the lives of disabled people. I apologize if it came out as “mind your Ps and Qs because of my precious precious feeeelings.”
/all-about-me moment.
“Harms” rather than “hurts” – exactly.
RE: Argenti
Oh and LBT’s Borg critters are up,
Hooray! Thanks Argenti! And I’ve got Critter #7 right here: Einstein the Rat!
RE: Shaun DarthBatman Day
WPS means that you will not be held criminally liable for anything you ever do. Examples include… George Zimmerman
Um. George Zimmerman is Hispanic.
@Viscaria
Actually I didn’t do the greatest job expressing myself, because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being personally offended or hurt by people saying “MRAs are awful people, it’s like they are mentally ill.”
I was being critical of how a couple of non-regular posters (one in particular, but I’m not going to name names), responded to people describing MRAs as mentally ill in a way I thought trivialized the issue.
They seemed to be suggesting that new posters merely need to fall in line and learn to avoid saying certain words in order to appease the regulars. I don’t like it when people correct ableist language in a way that seems to patronize, rather empathize with, the people directly hurt by the language and also fails to ask people to examine the moral implications of what they say.
To me that takes humanity and social responsibility out of the equation, and reduces the idea of privilege to PC pantomime that meant to placate minorities (who in turn are portrayed as being hyper-sensitive and overly demanding).
Again, Viscaria, I don’t discount feelings like yours, in fact I hate when people dismiss the hurt they cause rather than own up to their own behavior. In my case, I can’t believe how flippant I’ve been with ableist language when I’ve personally dealt with mental illness since adolescence. I don’t need to act more polite, I need to do better.
Hopefully all this at least makes some sense.
Yay, the critters are amazing, LBT. I can’t wait to see the tiger.
@auggziliary
If this creep bothered to read the article, he would have learned that the father wasn’t charged with Torture, it was the other defendant who was charged with Sexual Torture, which is a felony and is not “defined as psychological duress”.
If you check wistfulbreeze’s post history, his main hobby is making excuses and gaslighting in support of accused pedophiles, which is a hell of a way to use your free time.
@Brooked
All the relates. I have a persistent tendency, even now, to refer to myself as “crazy” in a derogatory fashion when I’m having a depressive episode or anxiety. It’s really hard to kick that particular habit because it’s so common.
@ Brooked
Yep. For the record, this is also why I’m not on board with the whole “well you have to be careful what you say here” thing. It frames the community here’s unwillingness to tolerate ableism, racism, and so on as being a matter of them being oversensitive, and the problem as being the words used rather than the ideas behind the words.
Auggz, this stuff is too horrifying for words. That child abuse TW applies to the below as well.
Only the worst kind of human would refer to prohibitions about child sexual abuse as “extremely disgusting to our society’s mores,” like it’s some arbitrary western idea that we should not do violence to children.
Abusing children is not a mistake. This man chose to inflict horrors on his own son.
Having an interesting hobby makes a person dynamic. Selling their child to pedophiles makes them a criminal.
This site is the one I’d say least fits the “you have to be careful what you say here” mould. That brings up places like Shakesville, which seems to have degenerated to an ego trip for the founder, where anything at all will get you banned, or to a lesser extent, Feministe, where they sometimes seem to take the sub-head about “defending the sanctimonious women’s studies set” far too seriously.
This place is for mocking misogyny, and we have a hell of a lot of fun with that and other stuff, and OT is on topic half the time. “Don’t use sexist/racist/trans*phobic/homophobic/ableist terms and don’t be an asshat about your religious/political beliefs” isn’t such a huge thing to ask, is it? Is it? It’s hardly the walking on eggshells some people seem to think.
@Brooked –
While you did not name names, am I correct in assuming that I am one of those “couple of” offenders that you mentioned?
@ Kittehs
Exactly, which is another reason that my patience with that attitude has run out. If that makes me a mean meanie, oh well.
I’m going to steal some of this discussion for when I get around to updating the welcome package, but I will link to this thread so people can see who said what.
@Cloudiah, there was quite a long discussion about the recent outbreak of ableism on the ‘As The Worms Turn’ thread as well, just in case that helps.
Seriously, I’m just tired of the ableism.
I’m aware that it’s really hard to kick the habit. I’m still working on it on meatspace, and I’ve caught myself using ableist phrases in my everyday thinking. But that’s because we don’t think about what we’re saying when we say that something is “insane” or that some idea is “crazy”. We’re not used to thinking about it, because in society, people with disabilities of any kind is demonized. And while things are slightly improving for people with physical disabilities, this is not the case with people with mental disabilities.
You wouldn’t call someone a [n-word] because black is bad and a black person should be ashamed. Why would you call an idea “insane” to express how terrible the idea is, when there’s better words for the same idea that doesn’t further stigmatize mental illness?
Well, that’s repulsive. Uuuuuggggghh.
And yeah, shit like this is why I feel like rape culture is something that extends to children of all genders. It’s like, no matter WHAT horrible thing you do to a child, SOMEONE will find some way to excuse it or pretend it never happened, all while analyzing exactly WHAT was done to the poor kid in this incredibly creepy invasive way.
Good on the Redditors for bringing the thumbs-down.
auggzilliary – *gags* The apologia is disgusting.
You’re welcome . Someone else helped me so we pay if forward .
If you need help just ask me .I was confused too. Even after I read the welcome package!
@Rahu
Actually no, you weren’t who I was referring to. In fact I had no idea why you would think that until I went back to ‘As the worms turn’ thread and reread your post about feeling overwhelmed by regulars “correcting” new posters. While I don’t agree with you, I thought it was a perfectly reasonable comment in which you expressed your opinion. I have no problem with that then or now.
In the end, I’m concerned that many of the regulars, who generally do a great job of politely correcting new posters, have reached their boiling point. I’m relatively new, but I do have a lot of affection for this board because the regulars here are quite funny, genuinely accepting and can discuss feminism without threads turning into Feministe-style sensitivity training death spirals.
Luckily it sounds like Cloudiah will ride to the rescue and put something in the welcome package so posters doesn’t have to play language cop every time a newbie drops an ableist stinker.
Me too. 0_o
If it helps at all, I feel totally willing and able to keep calling out the driveby-ers day and night. It’s what I come here for!
I’m willing to do it, I’m just unwilling to be super polite about it, especially with repeat offenders and/or people who whine about how haarrrddd it is not to get yelled at here.
Polite?
THIS
IS
MANBOOOOOOBZ
*kicks troll into Freudian pit filled with Georgia O’Keefe art*
Urgh, more of the sexual abuse trigger warning.
“after conviction, sex offenders have very low recidivism rates as compared to the general prison population.”
So much wrongness. I mean, unless we include like…drug possession and sex workers (who, I’ll note, are frequently not harming anyone) sex offenders have some of the highest recidivism rates.
And how is selling a child for sex not causing psychological distress? How is keeping a kid out of school worse than that?!