Something weird is going on.
Yesterday, A Voice for Men’s Facebook page was temporarily suspended. I’m not sure how long it was down, but by the time I discovered Paul Elam’s announcement of the suspension late last night, it had been restored.
Elam — who apparently decided to come out of retirement for the occasion — declared that the suspension
appears to be the work of censorious feminist ideologues working in a modern Facebook environment that favors their agenda.
Mike Buchanan — the head of the UK’s ludicrously unsuccessful Justice for Men & Boys party and a longtime AVFM pal — declared in a comment on AVFM and in a post on his site that the censorious feminist ideologue responsible for this dastardly deed was a woman named Rose S Garston, a self-described “thorn in the side of MRAs” who had taken credit for the suspension in a post on her own Facebook page.
As proof, she posted a screenshot of the note she got from Facebook informing her that her complaint had led to AVFM’s suspension. Garston also took credit for getting the Exposing Feminism Facebook page taken down.
So, case closed then, right? Well, not exactly.
Because “Rose S Garston” does not seem to exist.
True, a Google search of the name shows there was a woman of that name born in 1903 in New Haven, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this almost certainly dead person is not the one posting on Facebook.
The rest of the Google results link to “Garston’s” Facebook page, to several comments “she” made elsewhere using “her” Facebook account, and to and assortment of MRA and Alt-Right sites that picked up Buchanan’s post.
“Garston” scrubbed “her” Facebook page of most of its contents sometime last night, but an archived version of the page — linked to in Buchanan’s post — raises even more red flags.
The page portrays “Garston” as a “fat acceptance” activist as well as a feminist. But to my eyes it doesn’t look like the page of a real feminist or fat acceptance activist. It looks like the work of a troll.
For one thing, there’s the matter of the picture purportedly of Garston that sits atop the page — showing a young woman holding a sign explaining why she supports fat acceptance. I don’t doubt that the person in the photo is a real fat acceptance activist; a Google image search shows that the photo was originally posted two years ago on a Tumblr blog devoted to fat acceptance.
But it’s also appeared on a zillion other pages since then, including a number mocking fat acceptance. It’s on Know Your Meme. It was used in a Youtube video called “The Fat Acceptance Movement is Bullshit.” Internet-famous fat-shamer (and fat person) Matt Forney used it in a post on “Fat Acceptance, Cultural Marxism and Identity Politics.”
It’s literally the first image that shows up if you do a Google image search for “fat acceptance” — making it the obvious pick for a lazy troll looking for a picture of a fat activist to pretend to be.
Then there’s the Facebook post from “Garston” in which “she” sets forth “her” views on the subject.
Stop the fat shaming. Fat is beautiful. Fat is healthy. It is the patriarchy that has dictated women must all be skinny as rakes for the viewing pleasure of men. Fuck that. You want that donut? That chicken burger and fries? That 15inch pizza? Then, go for it. Get it down you. Enjoy 🙂
Word of advice though. Being fat wont stop men catcalling you. At my heaviest I was 717lb and men would still catcall me when I was in my mobility scooter buying groceries.
Really? Really? If this was written by anyone other than a troll, I will eat my cats.
Assuming “Garston” is not the honest-to-goodness feminist fat acceptance activist “she” purports to be, then who is behind the account?
Could it be Elam himself or some other AVFMer trying to gin up some attention and sympathy?
I doubt it. Not that Elam wouldn’t stoop this low. He would. But I don’t think that Elam has the imagination to come up with something like this. And I doubt he would risk getting his Facebook page permanently banned in order to stir up a fake controversy.
No, I suspect it’s the work of someone who doesn’t much like feminism, or fat acceptance, or AVFM.
Could it be the work of some longtime fat-shamer like Forney or Roosh? In addition to using the same picture that Forney used for his post dissing fat acceptance, “Garston” also posted a screenshot from a Dr. Oz show about a 700-pound woman. As you may recall, Roosh made a bit of a spectacle of himself during an appearance on Dr. Oz to discuss his own fat-shaming campaign.
So … maybe? Probably not, though.
Regardless of who did it, if the point of this apparent trollery was to cause a headache for AVFM and to stir up animus towards feminists, well, it’s succeeded at both.
Over on the Men’s Rights subreddt, the regulars worked themselves into a self-righteous frenzy over what proved to be a very short-lived suspension.
Someone called NixonForBreadsident got 97 net upvotes for a comment decrying what he saw as
a co-ordinated effort to render anything against feminism on Google, Facebook and other social media. As in they’ve literally had meetings to push this agenda.
This is a major fuckup on their side though, the world has been steadily getting pissed off by feminism and the one thing that unites people is when you censor content.
NOTHING is too big to fall. Remember that.
Our old friend ThePigmanAgain declared that
this is very bad news. The hammer is starting to fall all over the place and one has to wonder how long it will be before the PC fascists who run FB start to ban ordinary members who also happen to be MRAs.
r4ks4k was a bit more succinct, saying only
Well then f**k facebook.
The original comment did not contain the asterisks, of course.
I have no idea how this whole thing is going to shake out.
Your move, troll. I guess?
@Sevenofmine
What’s even more ironic is that Nintendo is a 100+ year old company that at one time, used to run a chain of “love motels” before they got involved in video games. Likewise, I often hear rumors (although being rumors, I can’t confirm this) that Nintendo isn’t really a fun place to work and is sort of a “evil mega-corp” in some circles in Japan.
But it’s knowing things like these that make me an enemy of gamers and well, a “failure to be a gamer” and looked at oddly when I tell people I’m learning how to build video games.
Ha, yeah, sure. It’s definitely part of the feminist agenda for a woman to get her account suspended for posting the harassing messages she’s received (and evidence of her reporting him to FB), while the harasser suffers no repercussions.
And FB’s “real name” policies that harm trans folk are super feminist.
As well as Facebook’s draconian anti-woman-nipple policies. Feminists hate womens’ nipples!
I think he a word there.
Also, the “co-ordinated effort” he’s talking about here and links to is about preventing online abuse. So, he’s managed to line up feminists as… against abuse? So they’re really just saying that anti-feminism is abuse? Like… do they hear themselves talk????
Okay, Stephen Fry can seriously fuck right off.
First of all: A trigger is NOT “something that upset you once”. A trigger is something that reminds you of something that traumatized you.
Second of all: That’s. Not. What. Trigger. Warnings. Are. FOR. You putrid turnip.
Trigger warnings are like allergy warnings on food packages. It’s simply someone giving you a warning, and allowing you to make a choice to proceed and deal with the consequences, or turn back now and not worry about it.
For instance, if I were allergic to nuts, and a candy bar had an allergy warning on it that said it was processed in the same place as other candy bars with nuts in them, I could then think to myself: “Hmm. Should I take some allergy medication just in case? Or do I want to try to eat it anyway and just use my epi pen if it gets too bad? Or should I just not eat the candy bar at all and buy something else?”
No one is telling me I can’t eat the candy bar. No one is telling me I have to eat the candy bar. I’m not being forced to do anything, but rather I’m being allowed to deal with it on my own terms, and weigh the consequences before being thrown head-first into it with no warning.
Same thing goes for trigger warnings. It isn’t telling abuse victims/survivors what they can and can’t read, it’s giving them an option to deal with it on their own terms instead of just throwing something in front of them out of the blue that causes them to become triggered.
“No one will like you if you’re going through trauma and you can’t keep a handle on yourselves at all times! No one likes to deal with people who are suffering from mental illness unless the symptoms are super mild!”
You know, I would think that someone who’s dealt with mental illness before would be a bit more sympathetic to people who are not always able to have their shit in check, and who will have bad days and who will sometimes have flashbacks and who aren’t in control of their mental illness.
But fuck me, I guess.
Though, more importantly, fuck you Stephen Fry.
The hell.
But it’s Stephen Fry. Stephen *fucking* Fry. He’s supposed to be awesome.
Sad now.
Holy fuck, how condescending can he get? He’s using “uncle touched you in a nasty place” as a way to minimize the idea of trauma. For that to make sense, he would need to view child abuse itself as a pretty minimal event. Ick. Ick ick ick.
Dawkins has made similar comments. Like you havent experienced rape, much less as a child, people who have are telling you its terible, but youre insisting its no big deal? fucking assholes.
&if Rapp is saying stuff like that, fuck her too. fuck Micheal Jackson & David Bowie & all their apologists. fuck 4chan & 8chan & reddit & everyone who contributes to a culture of excusing the rape of children & expecting victims to pretend it doesnt cause psychological problems.
Rapp’s essay is here.
Didn’t we all? I cheered for Tom too.
Just skimming it, its longer than the homework Im procrastinating on… it seems problematic at best. In her conclusion she is basicly making the argument that looking at images of child abuse for the purpose of personal pleasure doesnt necessarily cause child abuse. This is obvious bullshit when it comes to real images, because demand fuels supply. Soo based on what I did read of it – problematic & wrong-headed at best. People who are buying images of children being harmed are thereby harming children & absolutely, to protect children, should be in jail.
She claims that the rates of child abuse are lower in Japan, and Id have to read more closely to see her support properly, but I wonder if thats a lower rate of reporting or a case of correlation not meaning causation. I think its at least a little bit of nonsense to say that pressure to protect kids better is “imperialism”. The U.S. has an oppressive relationship w Japan due to us abusing Japanese-Americans & committing horrific genocide, but Japan has also been an oppressive colonizer in its own right so Im not sure how far you can take that argument. From what Ive read that may not be accurate, Japan has censored depicting body parts, I know they punish weed possession way too harshly, so why not be stricter on images of real child abuse? Why make this argument? It may be in a grey area, but to me its sketchy.
Which of course doesnt make GG any less scummy, They are total scum, what theyre doing is hypocrtical trashy scumminess.
Agsin, I dont tweet insults or threats at Cosby, or doxx him. I comment on how rapists are shit, I stop watching his show, thats about it. GG has never been and will never be a defender of children or rape victims in general.
idk I didnt want him to eat the Road Runner
@Paradoxy
That is an excellent comparison, and I bet the same people who roll their eyes at me when I order gluten free (on the rare occasion I risk trusting a restaurant to prepare food for me) and who complain about foods like deli ham or potato chips being labeled as gluten free are the same people who complain about trigger warnings.
I don’t buy the ham that’s certified gluten free because I don’t know what gluten is, as they often assert (I can tell your way more than your care to know about what gluten is in a culinary sense and in a chemical sense). I know that pigs do not contain any gliadin molecules. But the fact is, a large number of manufacturers add fillers to ham that include wheat, barley, rye, etc., and if I ingest even 50mg of those grains I’ll be very, very sick for several days. If you don’t like the GF certification you can ignore it or buy another product. It’s not hurting you, but it not being there could hurt me.
I think the jury is still out on whether there’s a causal link between looking at child porn and acting out. But the production almost always involves actual child abuse. So decriminalizing possession increases demand and gives money to the child sex traffickers.
I think that’s actually a much stronger argument for criminalizing it than some speculation about how fantasies impact behavior (and it would justify some pretty harsh sentences). The “those thoughts are bad” argument raises questions philosophers still haven’t figured out.
@paradoxical intention:
Well said. I would add that not only are you not saying you are forced not to eat it, but neither are the other kids who do NOT have a nut allergy. Similarly, a trigger warning doesn’t mean that your high school English lit class can’t study Shakespeare. It just means of someone is severely traumatized from experiencing some of the horrific subject matter of Will’s tragedies, they have a heads up to either ask for an alternative assignment or grout their teeth because the upcoming reading and discussion will be rough.
@ history nerd
I was down at court recently and a (very hardened) judge said the worst thing about child porn cases was that over the years you saw the same kids growing up from being toddlers to pre teens and knowing they were being constantly raped for all those years.
just awful.
I just skimmed her thesis because I don’t have the energy in me right now to read a defense of the possession of child porn. It strikes me, based upon what I skimmed, that she’s prioritizing anti-imperialism over other considerations, which seems … misguided. Japan would not be my first choice of example for cultures that have been victimized by Western imperialism, for instance. The logic of “Japan has low (reported) child sexual abuse rates, therefore they’re doing everything right and there is no possible room for improvement” is highly questionable. There seems to be a necessary corollary that some child sexual abuse is nothing to worry about, and as long as the (reported) rate is low we don’t need to care about the residual, which obviously does not meet with my approval.
I wrote some stuff in undergraduate that I didn’t really believe, because I carried the opinion that it’s better to write something that can be richly sourced than something with few/poor sourcing that matches my views. It’s possible she did something similar here. She needed a solid thesis, she genuinely believed that imperialism is an evil of the first order, found something related to that which could generate two pages of citations, and she went with it.
I have so much admiration for people who investigate and prosecute child porn. It’s got to be one of the hardest jobs in the world. I can’t imagine having to look at children being abused like that all day. I would probably cry myself to sleep a lot. It must take such a toll. I just hope the agencies that employ them give them all the free counseling they need.
This isn’t quite the same thing, but I found this article quite fascinating. http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1234-5-things-i-learned-pretending-to-be-molested-kid-cops.html
Whatever issues Cracked has, their personal experience articles are very good.
I wrote plenty of complete bullshit as an undergraduate, but at least it got me A’s.
@Alan I feel bad for people who have to look at that shit all day for a criminal case.
I’d probably have a bunch of unhealthy thoughts about going Punisher on any adult involved.
Not that I have the experience or expertise to do so, but I’d go to some damn dark places mentally.
@kale
I’m afraid to ask, but what did Bowie do?
@thatbear he has afaik been accused of rape a few times including of a 15 year old girl, altho I must note she didnt view it as a rape, but that doesnt matter much to me, what he did was wrong. I loved, loved him & his music for 15 years but fuck him.
ETA: if you guys @ me & I dont revisit this thread its because my heart is breaking & I feel sick & punchy just thinking about how rape culture extends to children. Maybe someone should post some brain bleach.
Child porn cases are probably the most draining area in criminal justice. In just about all other types of case you can cope by employing detachment and often some gallows humour; that’s not applicable with child porn.
There’s also another horrible factor. A child rape case is obviously awful, but at least we know that the victim has been ‘saved’ from further abuse, and there’s the possibility they can get help to try to recover. With child porn cases, those kids are still out there, suffering ever day.
People who prosecute and investigate can get some relief knowing they’re at least making some impact on behalf of victims. Defence lawyers though don’t even have that. It’s not a field where I’ve done that many cases, but I have on occasion had to remind myself of all the basic principles behind our justice system (“Even the Devil is entitled to representation” and all that John Adams stuff). Such offenders are of course loathed even within the prison system; and they do face additional consequences. Must confess, don’t lose any sleep over that.
ThatBear –
Allegedly, had sex with a couple of young teenage fans when he was 22 or so. And by “young,” I mean, “possibly as young as 13.”
This is what one of the girls (Lori Maddox, later Jimmy Paige’s “girlfriend”) claimed as an adult, but she also claimed she “wouldn’t change anything” about it and described it in glowing terms. She also said she was 15 at the time, but I guess it doesn’t add up? It’s kind of confusing, but I can completely believe it happened.
We had an excellent conversation about this here at WHTM back in January, on a post David did about some stupid crap some Manurespherians said about Bowie just after his death. It’s hard to deal with when it’s an artist you love so much precisely *because* they were so anti-toxic-masculinity, and there seems to be evidence that Bowie grew the fuck up and didn’t carry on with such predatory patterns later in life, but obviously nothing excuses statutory rape.
For what it’s worth, I’m about 90% sure that this song and music video he did is his way of being honest about the incident: