In his must-read GQ story on A Voice for Men’s conference last summer, Jeff Sharlet detailed an unsettling encounter between his friend Blair and AVFM’s “collegiate activism director” Sage Gerard, who, Blair told Sharlet, crudely propositioned her and gave her “the most unconsensual hug I have ever known.” (I wrote about it here.)
Now Gerard has offered a rebuttal of sorts to Sharlet’s article and, well, it’s nearly as creepy as the incident itself. Gerard admits that he was indeed flirting with her and that, yes, “[m]y talking to her included a reassuring knee pat and a hug.”
He also claims that Blair was literally hired by GQ in order to flirt with men at the conference and lure one or more of them into raping her.
Gerard starts off by declaring, with no evidence whatsoever, that Blair was a “plant hired specifically to flirt with men and get GQ a story.”
Then his accusations get even uglier:
Blair’s job was to get raped.
Jeff [Sharlet] wanted that to happen, not MHRAs [Men’s Human Rights Activists]. Blair would play Seven Minutes in Heaven if it got Jeff a rape story. She was there to confirm a presumption that MHRAs, MGTOWs or other red-pill folk are incapable of self-control and are ready to rape at a moment’s notice.
Happily for Gerard, he writes, he was able to see through this subterfuge in time, I guess, to keep from raping her.
Unfortunately for Jeff, I have an ability to detect manipulation, and I do not think with my dick. He calibrated his bear trap to clamp shut on a hug-trigger, which meant he could try to make me look like a pervert even with totally appropriate physical contact. Since he was obviously desperate to catch prey, his trap misfired and merely ripped my jeans without biting me to a standstill. Having narrowly evaded pseudo-journalistic “capture,” I can easily show you that Blair was, indeed, a trap.
He then proceeds to “show us” absolutely nothing that backs up this accusation. After briefly describing his conversation with Blair, which (aside from the “reassuring knee pat” and unconsensual hug) dealt with a friend of Blair’s who claims he’s been falsely accused of rape, he wrote.
I never intend to sleep with strangers, but Jeff framed this interaction as me using Blair’s pain as an excuse to eat her out.
I have no idea where that last bit came from either.
He follows this with a bunch of rape jokes I won’t bother to quote.
I’m not quite sure how Gerard expects that writing this creepy-as-hell post will somehow make him seem like less of a creep.
Wow, that is a TORTURED metaphor. It sounds like someone describing a D&D scenario rather than, you know, real life.
The idea that innocent women ‘lure’ men into raping them is just so impressively absurd that I can’t even take it on. It’s like someone who’s absolutely determined to believe that murder victims lure their murderers into doing it for the sake of sympathy. Like, it’s so wrong, you can’t even start to take it on, because the premise is so ridiculous there’s nothing to get a hold on.
“He calibrated his bear trap to clamp shut on a hug-trigger”
This isn’t a sentence. It’s a string of crudely nailed-together words.
Apropos of nothing, the turd polishing bit is one of my favorites from Mythbusters.
More turds from Sage Gerard.
So, people aren’t allowed to express emotions without having a stranger invade their personal boundaries?
If it was Blair’s opinion that the hug that Sage gave her was unwanted, then it was unwanted. Only Blair can know whether or not she wanted the hug. In a sense, yes, it was her opinion that she didn’t want it, but seeing as she is the only person who can judge what her wants were, then her opinion on whether or not she wanted to be hugged proves the fact that the hug was unwanted.
RE: alaisvex
UGH! NO DO NOT WANT. D:
When I feel bad, a hug is usually the LAST thing I want. (Unless you’re my husband. He gets a pass.) It’s hard for me to hug even my other system members, often, which is shameful but still. DO NOT HUG ME without my permission.
Times like this, I wish I was an X-men who could grow spikes or something.
@LBT,
RIGHT! Sometimes, when you’re upset, being touched is the last thing that you want, unless maybe it’s coming from someone who’s already intimately close to you. You’re definitely not the only person out there who has those kinds of reservations when you’re sad, which is why people like Sage Gerard need to observe proper personal boundaries.
“Honestly, if me hugging someone is the worst thing Jeff and Blair could spin, then that shows how little dirt on me they had to begin with.”
Um, how much more dirt do you really need besides “he pressed his body against somebody else’s without her consent”? He even admits to doing it. That’s frelling creepy.
Yeah! Like, I’ve had touchy-feely friends hug me, not realizing how bad an idea it was. But because they were nice people, they immediately let go of me because they realized how uncomfortable I was! (That or were fine when I put up my hands and said no.)
Seriously. It’s not a big deal for most people, because most people obey no and can see cues. (And if they miss the cues they apologize and don’t do it again when told.)
No! Blockquote mammoth! Why?
I wish I could find where I read the description of the hug… EVEN IF you weren’t sure whether someone wished to be hugged or not, the situation was not one where a hug was even remotely something anyone would think of.
If I remember correctly, Sage basically pulled her aside, said “I hope you don’t mind me hugging you,” then before she could respond immediately went into a full hug with back stroking. Out of nowhere. While she was being hit on by a bunch of them.
No facade of trying to be comforting about anything or thoughtful towards anything, just “I feel like hugging you now, so I will.” Frikken creepy as all fuck.
Add that context to the AVFMer’s description of her as a super attractive honey pot meant to seduce them into acting creepy, and you start to get a wonderful sense for why Blair described it as “the most nonconsensual hug of my life.”
I think it was clearly not a friendly hug. It was a let-me-violate-your-boundaries-and-maybe-you-won’t-object-and-then-I’ll-try-the-next-move-in-the-“seduction” hug.
I think that you’re right, GrumpyOldMangina.
I mean, SG is supposed to be there as an important figure in a “human rights” conference. So he meets a young woman who is (1) a journalist (2) accompanied by her boyfriend and (3) a guest of a nationally known journalist — and STILL he puts the moves on her, more or less in public.
Sage Gerard should be the poster boy for thinks-with-the-wrong-head.
But probably he’s pissed off the women at Kennesaw State, so this might have seemed like a rare opportunity for him.
Ah, but that’s where you wrong. As Mr. Gerard has boasted on many an occasion, he can avoid thinking with his dick long enough to refrain from raping a woman, as long as refraining from rape is in his best interests.
/sarcasm
@LBT:
Hey now, some D&D scenarios aren’t that tortured. “That dragon is sitting on our gold pieces” is perfectly straightforward.
With your luck, you’d end up as Marrow. (Content note for some body horror.)
I’m not trying to give you a hard time GOM, so sorry if it comes across that way.
I really hate the phrase “thinking with the wrong/little/other head. I think it really feeds into the notion that men can’t be expected to have any self control. It really takes responsibility of them. It implies that if a man is aroused he can’t be held responsible for raping someone or committing infidelity because his penis took control over his body. But that’s not how it works. Rape, harassment, cheating etc are all choices.
@WWTH: No problem at all. You only think with the wrong head if you don’t keep the right one in control. It’s sort of like that old excuse for drunken misbehavior, “It was the liquor talking” — well, you chose to drink it, and don’t try to tell me you didn’t know what might happen.
I think I get your point — some guys will try to use it as a defense — as in, when my penis talks, I have to follow its orders. I’m having trouble phrasing this well, but what it comes down to is living in society requires (or at least should) self-control,– the ability to resist temptation, including sexual temptation (I’m sure women have to do it too at times) — and if you can’t keep the little head (or whatever the female equivalent is) from taking charge, you’re going to eventually find yourself in a lot of difficulty.
Maybe 100,000,years ago it was a good excuse — but that was then, and it’s not now.
@GoM,
Perhaps you’re not actually saying that he’s incapable of resisting his sexual urges but rather that he doesn’t care about resisting his sexual urges, even if following those urges could hurt someone else and that he cares most about serving and satisfying his sexual urges?
@kirbywarp:
Here it is, in all its nonconsensual glory:
@Lith I don’t know how anyone could take a hug like that as anything other than unconsensual.
“I’m angry at how women can screw over men and get their way, like they have a desire to. You could do it to me. Anyway I want to hug you for no apparent reason, person that I don’t know and isolated from other people, and I will.” *tight, back rubbing hug* “I don’t want you to be annoyed at me for dragging you away but I did it because I really really wanted your time and attention.”
And it’s not entirely clear but it sounds like he went back for more. After making it clear that the message he was sending was sexual.
I imagine based on the article above that he’d claim it wasn’t, to which I say:
“Don’t put your hand on someone’s knee unless you want to have sex with them” -> puts hand on her knee.
I’m sorry, that’s not open to interpretation or ambiguity, even if you change the word “someone” for “man” it’s clear how it was meant. Note how she didn’t respond by putting her hand on his knee. That’s a Nope and that hug was creepy-time.
Creepiest creeper that ever creeped. No doubt the AVFMers would combat that with a cry of “if he was handsome you wouldn’t say that!”
To which, I would reply, “Yep. Yep, I would.”
This seems eerily close to the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which incompetent people do not realize the level of their incompetence. Do really creepy people not think they are creepy? I suspect they would be shocked to learn that most people find them creepy at all, and even simple explanations or examples wouldn’t convince them of it.