Today I woke up to a lovely morning — the birds were singing, a cat clambered up onto the bed demanding affection from my wife and me, it was reasonably cool and not terribly humid, and I had a phone notification buried in amongst the pile of work server notifications that I’d received a pingback on my blog from A Voice for Men.
I’m really moving up in the world, building a genuine rogues’ gallery of people hellbent on making my life miserable. I must be a real threat to some people’s blinkered worldviews now! My name is apparently splattered across the front page of their antifeminist conclave with the epithet “confessed rapist” attached. Two days ago it was r/MensRights, now it’s the Alpha Males themselves beating their chests and beating on my reputation.
Why? Because I believe Shermer’s accusers and believe that he’s probably a lot looser with consent than he should be, possibly up to and including being willing to rape unconscious victims. And that I’m willing to believe this even despite my having personally experienced a fake rape charge at 16. Instead of becoming an angry man shouting down those uppity feminists for advocating for clear consent, I sided with the feminists, and therefore I am the enemy. Therefore I am a monster. And I must be STOPPED.
A “gentleman” by the name of Birric Forcella left a very long comment that I let to fester in moderation because I simply didn’t have the time to address all the myriad ways he betrayed his own lack of reading comprehension. This apparently chafed him enough that he went to Paul Elam and asked him to post it on A Voice For Men. And so there it is, right now, my name splattered across their front page with a demonstrable lie predicated on their both misreading my post, and the strawfeminist trope that every accusation must be 100% without a doubt true.
This despite their own admission that fake rape charges are exceedingly rare compared to actual rape charges — the lowest number I’ve seen on their site, though, is one in ten, indicating that 90% of rape allegations are true. Most statistics pin this at about 6%, give or take, though a large number of the studies skewing this number upward are demonstrably flawed and there’s good evidence the police attempt to cook the books by bullying the accuser until they recant.
So A Voice For Men and theoretically Birric both know that false rape charges are actually a smaller problem than real rape. Let’s crunch some numbers to prove my point, then we’ll get on with the actual meat of Birric’s argument and determine exactly how unethical one must be to argue as a devil’s advocate for the thing you must know is empirically wrong.
Let’s be exceedingly generous and take some super-high estimates to present the MRAs’ best cases with regard to rape. Imagine a stack of 5000 rape allegations on a rape investigator’s desk.
5000 rape allegations
Of the 5000 allegations, let’s say that 15% (a really, REALLY high estimate) are fake. So that’s 750. Let’s further assume these are 750 malicious fake rape claims, and they’re not actually just claims that are dismissed by police as “no crime”, despite ample evidence that there’s a lot of cooking of the books to keep rape numbers artificially low.
There’s still 4250 real rapes in that pile. Rape is also the most underreported of crimes, with some statistics suggesting as high as 95% of them not being reported at all. So, let’s go with a lowball estimate, more in line with common analysis: 50% of rapes get reported. Presumably, this wouldn’t include those 750 fake rapes.
4250 rapes (unreported)
4250 rapes (reported)
750 fake rape allegations
Of the 5000 rape allegations on that desk, only 25% of those will lead to an arrest. Number is more like 24%, in fairness, but we’re high-balling. And to be exceedingly generous to the MRAs’ arguments, let’s assume that 25% of each category is actually arrested, and that there’s no skew that might mean that fake accusations leading to arrest are actually any rarer than this.
4250 rapes (unreported)
3187 rapes with rapists never arrested
567 innocents are ignored by police
—
1063 rapists arrested
—
187 innocents arrested
Of those arrested, about 75% end up being prosecuted. Let’s assume that the ones without corroborating evidence, the false accusations, are equally disadvantaged here instead of the more likely to be dismissed.
4250 rapes (unreported)
3187 rapes with rapists never arrested
265 arrested rapists are not prosecuted
—
567 innocents are ignored by police
46 innocents arrested but not prosecuted
—
798 arrested rapists prosecuted
—
141 innocents prosecuted
The probability of being convicted after being prosecuted is actually at an all-time high. Assuming the innocents are not actually at an advantage here, assuming we’re looking at sheer percentages only, and assuming the best case scenario conviction rate, 63% will be convicted. The reason I think this is being overly generous is because 95% of convictions are the result of a guilty plea, and presumably innocent folk won’t plead guilty because they’re not, unless their lawyers think their cases are so toxic they can’t win and are hoping for leniency. Nonetheless, let’s give this one a tilt to disadvantage the innocent equally.
4250 rapes (unreported)
3187 rapes with rapists never arrested
265 arrested rapists are not prosecuted
295 rapists not convicted
—
567 innocents are ignored by police
46 innocents arrested but not prosecuted
52 innocents not convicted
—
503 rapists convicted
—
89 innocents convicted
After this, rape convictions result in a wide range of sentences, from 30 days to 30 years, depending on where you are and whether or not the rapes were violent or repeated. And even really blatant cases, where the perpetrator pled guilty to what amounts to serial rape of a minor, he still got a slap on the wrist of 30 days.
However, 21% of rape convictions result in probation. Again, let’s assume this is a raw percentage, and not skewed to the innocents’ benefit, despite the fact that one would assume judges would give lighter sentences to the more ambiguous cases.
4250 rapes (unreported)
3187 rapes with rapists never arrested
265 arrested rapists are not prosecuted
295 rapists not convicted
105 convicted rapists receive probation
—
567 innocents are ignored by police
46 innocents arrested but not prosecuted
52 innocents not convicted
18 convicted innocents get probation
—
398 rapists put in jail or prison
—
71 innocents put in jail or prison
Even with every single tilt on the playing field set up to artificially benefit the MRA’s arguments, only 10% of maliciously false accusations would land an innocent man in jail. Meanwhile, of 8500 actual rapes, 398 rapists end up in jail.
That’s 4.6%, assuming each allegation is not a repeat offender (which is, actually, a hell of an assumption). MAYBE those 398 rapists who end up in jail account for a significant proportion of the rapes that didn’t ultimately see justice — it’s well possible, given the giant backlog of totally untested rape kits. 95.4% of rapes do not see justice directly, even if the rapists ultimately do get put in jail after a later rape. The vast majority of rapes go completely unpunished for a variety of reasons. And those numbers are assuming a lot of things that benefit MRAs’ arguments that false allegations are the real problem.
False allegations (of the malicious sort) ARE a real problem, and I’ve said so from the beginning. I know from firsthand experience how they damage you if you’re actually innocent, but I also recognize these false rape claims damage others at the same time. They have two exceedingly nasty effects on society: first, they ruin individual accused folks’ lives, and second, they make it all the harder to see any measure of justice done with regard to actual rape. MRAs care about the first effect, but they demonstrably do not care about the second, no matter how much more pronounced it might be. The fact that I didn’t universalize the case of my malicious false rape allegation and thereafter assume all bitches be lyin’ about every rape allegation, means I’m an enemy of freethought.
How dare I think differently than them? I must be an evil, terrible man who should be silenced at any cost, even at the cost of exacerbating a fake rape case from almost twenty years ago, when I was 16 years old! Even if intentionally making my extraordinary case worse for me actually undercuts their own arguments about false rape allegations, about how prevalent they are and how life-wrecking they are. Even if it amounts to them punishing me, picking at my scars, trying to cause the sorts of trauma they claim to want to protect men from experiencing.
So, now that we know the scope of the ACTUAL problem here, we know that AVfM and Birric are willing to contribute to one of the two problems of malicious false allegations of rape. They were willing to tar me with “confessed rapist” when my story is nothing of the sort, because they believe that when feminists look at the numbers and see 95% of rapes going unpunished and say “that’s a problem”, that we’re actually saying “every accusation of rape is true on the word of the victim alone, and anyone accused of rape should be put in jail”. And so they splatter a whole lot of false rape charges across their front page, including ones against Avicenna, despite the accusers admitting it was a stunt designed to damage rape victims’ ability to come forward.
What’s really funny about their effort is just how much they have to intentionally get wrong about the story they’re using as a club the process. It’s a serious display of mental gymnastics that I’m guessing is motivated by a need to seem smarter than their proven inability to do math.
I’ll get to their misread of my story in part 2.
Yeah. I’ve found myself on the front page of AVFM too. Just for being ugly and crazy and stupid, though, so no libel involved.
Now THIS is how blogging should be done. Evidence tour-de-force.
Thought these manly men were supposed to be good at math and numbers and shit. Nice slap-down, Jason.
I wonder if it’s reasons like this that one keeps hearing about Men Going Their Own Way, rather than those men just, you know, being gone. “You’re still grinding gears in the parking lot, fellas! For God’s sake, ask a woman to read the map for you!”
Jason, I bought you a beer or two via the PayPal donate button in hopes it might make your weekend better.
Thanks Anthony, though that donate button is for the whole blog network. Given that our ad situation is a total shit show at the moment, it’s unlikely I’ll see any of that money after keeping the lights on takes their cut, then all the other bloggers.
It’s still not a bad idea though. If you think this kind of behaviour is bullshit, by all means, donate to the network to keep all 33 of our (active) blogs online.
Amusingly, that Forcella guy spelled PZ’s surname as “Meyers”. What is it about these people and reading comprehension (or lack thereof)?
Basic arithmetic ftw!
Yeesh. Their site name alone makes me cringe. A Voice for Men?… really? Must be the same type of idiot that cries for a White History Month or a White Entertainment Television channel. You know, in the name of fairness. Blech.
I wonder if they really expect to be taken seriously when they whine about false accusations while calling Jason an admitted rapist.
Jacob,
Aparently, at least some of them are willing to admit that they don’t give a damn about actually doing serious activism at all. They just really hate women and find that to be the best use of their time and effort.
http://manboobz.com/2013/08/29/fidelbogen-mens-rights-activists-forget-about-dv-shelters-for-men-focus-on-the-important-issue-yelling-at-feminists/
The point of the article seems to be that, if the same standards of evidence were applied to Jason as have been applied to Shermer, he would be a ‘notorious rapist’ already.
Which, of course, seems to be correct.
Copyleft: no, Shermer’s not even a “notorious rapist,” just “someone worth keeping an eye on if you aren’t interested in having sex with him”. If people thought the same about me based on one untrustworthy person lying about me, as they think about him based on multiple individual trustworthy accounts of his behaviour, that’s an acceptable outcome to me.
Lest we forget the kind of people that inhabit AVfM, remember that Paul Elam (who runs the site) had a public manifesto up for months, only very recently removed, that called for firebombing police stations and government buildings, aka terrorist acts. These people are unhinged.
How many of these people who make the assumption that rape accusations are false (until PROVEN in a court of law….. blah blah), and are so frantic about it feel that way because they don’t want to think of themselves as rapists but there was that time they got a girl really drunk and then fucked her but that wasn’t rape because rape is bad and they aren’t bad.
To those of you who once took a drunken stupor for consent: you are a rapist. Feel bad about it? Good. You should. Are you going to do something about it other than feel bad? I have a suggestion. Help educate people so they no longer think that a drunken stupor means consent. Actively work amongst your friends and relations to make taking rape lightly socially unacceptable. Stand up for both women and men who make such accusations, do not assume they are lying (but keep in mind that very occasionally a rape accusation is false, so no assaulting the accused). You cannot undo what you did and Jesus can’t forgive you because he is either dead or never lived at all. You must carry your guilt. But you can try to work toward making what you did less and less common. That would be a worthwhile thing to do.
This was obviously going to be the response, I’m just sort of shocked that the few attempts have been so hamfisted. Not bothering to check if someone you’re accusing of rape was in the country where the alleged rape took place and then that bit of garbled nonsense do not constitute anything serious enough to be concerned over (even though it appears that Avicenna did have a great deal of nonsense to deal with).
I’m curious if people have been considering how they will respond when the accusation is more plausible and difficult to disprove. There are a lot of folks over there that used to be friends with the good guys, and can recall events or parties they attended together in the past. I am assuming that it’s basically a countdown to someone putting together an accusation of a member of FtB or perceived ally.
What then? I’m inclined to disbelieve such an account because of the present climate, but if the accusation came in the form of, “I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but then I read ________ criticizing Shermer, and he did the same thing to me…”
To be clear, I’m not making these statements to cast doubt on the victim whose account was published at PZ Myers’ site, but given the obsession and dedication of the pitters and their ilk, it’s a safe bet that they will be amoral and disgusting enough to go to great lengths in an attempt to prove their point.
I can only hope that they’re worried just enough about a potential lawsuit that they keep everything hypothetical, but they’ve already crossed that line with Avicenna, they just did so very sloppily.
The police? You mean those inherently trustable allies to whom all allegations of wrongdoing must be brought otherwise you’re the judge, jury, and executioner in the Court of Public Opinion?
[…] There’s Jason’s A Voice For Men: willing to publish libel to “prove” points about fake rape claims – part 1, m…. […]
Their first mental deficit seems to be not understand the distinction between “credible” claims and “incredible” claims…. also “ordinary” vs. “extraordinary”…. Also how to be a good person while avoiding being a shit stain.
Police cooking the stats may not even be the main problem with that 6%. It’s not really meant to be a measure of false allegations. There are plenty of reasons a true allegation could leave no evidence to bother investigating (mainly if a rape is reported long after the fact) and a large portion of them are thought to be false claims, but not false allegations, because the complaint didn’t identify anyone.
Innocent people being pushed into pleading guilty is a significant problem in the US justice system. Ed has covered it extensively. However, to the best of knowledge, none of the people cleared by later DNA evidence were framed by the accuser. They seem to be mistaken identity and frame-ups by the cops, mostly. It doesn’t seem to be a major factor in long prison sentences, at least.
Ugh, the worst thing about all this bullshit is the realization that until about 10 years ago, I would have totally been on the side of those assholes on AVFM. I’m quite happy that I’ve learned to empathize and get past my own egocentrism as I’ve aged.
Maybe it’ll happen for these guys, but I doubt it. Thinking is hard, and so is acknowledging the hurt that you’ve inflicted on others through your rank ignorance and obstinateness in the past.
Anyways, I don’t wish to derail the discussion here. Carry on.
Math is haaaaaaaaaaaaaaard! ….. for MRAs.
Obviously Jason understands the point I’m about to make and I don’t consider it his responsibility to state it in this article, but I thought it should be noted that 750 false accusations, besides being equivalent to 71 innocent people in prison according to his calculations, is also 750 lives and reputations potentially ruined. The point being that jail time isn’t a foolproof metric to gauge damage.
Done – a $50 cut from a recent tax rebate. Keep up the good work!
Spooky Tran: “Potentially” being the operative word. And never forget that those numbers are exceedingly generous, and society is extraordinarily forgiving if a person is found not guilty. Ask the Duke Lacrosse players, all of whom are considered brave heroes who were put through hell, and whose lives are decidedly NOT ruined.
@oframe – I think that is really insightful. I do believe there are a lot of anxious dudes out there who are really REALLY frantic about what this says about past behaviors. Your suggestion to those people is a VERY good one.
@20-As Jason pointed out in the article 750 false allegations almost certainly does not add up to 71 people in prison in the real world. In Jason’s figures he assumed that those who are falsely accused are equally likely to be arrested, equally likely to be prosecuted, equally likely to be convicted, equally likely to get as severe a sentence as those who are in fact guilty. In reality, where there is little or no evidence (as there would be in a false accusation) the police and prosecutors would be less likely to proceed and most jurors would (one would be hope) be less likely to convict. Not to mention that the 750 out of 5000 reported rapes is about twice the high end of the generally accepted estimates of the rate of falsely reported rapes. More likely the # would be 100-400. Using Jason’s calculations that would reduce the # in prison to 9-36. On the flip side, the #’s he calculated for actual rapes where no one was punished was over 8000. Over 8000 women (and men) whose lives were potentially ruined by sexual assault and noone was held accountable.
I googled AVfM once.
One of the top results was an article published there that claims a study shows that “Female Rape Victims Enjoyed the Experience.”
So they are right to be upset when they are called “rape apologists.”
They aren’t apologizing at all.
They’re rape ADVOCATES. But That’s not accurate either, since they don’t just personally advocate it.
They are a VOICE for men… they want exposure, they want their views dispersed and adopted.
So they’re actually rape promoters.
I almost forgot, that # would not include people who were convicted of rape due to misidentification-that is a rape really occurred so was not a false report but the wrong person was identified and convicted. The only rape convictions I know of that have been overturned were where this occurred and DNA testing later showed the person convicted was not the actual rapist.
@13: I second this wholeheartedly. I’ve never raped anyone, but as a teenager, I engaged in some coercive and harassing behaviors (which I didn’t recognize as such at the time). I’m not proud of that, and I use that to motivate me to try to push back against undue social marginalization generally and rape culture and other aspects of patriarchy primarily and specifically (though our cultural systems of oppression/marginalization tend to be mutually-reinforcing and interlocking, hence the broad “social justice” movement). I can’t undo the past, but I can try to make the future better.
@20, 22: Hell, people and society are extraordinarily forgiving of CONVICTED rapists (consider the sympathy for how the Stubenville rapists’ lives had been ruined, or the judge cautioning kids to not post evidence of themselves sexually assaulting others to social media networks, large institutions like big companies or the Catholic Church protecting rapists instead of their victims), to the extent that I’m seriously skeptical of the actual harm caused by most false accusations.
Jason, as a long-time Manboobz lurker, it’s oddly comforting to see that there’s still no depth to which Elam won’t sink, no logical construction he won’t knock down like a tank through a brick wall, no word he won’t appropriate.
Slightly OT. I left a few comments on the “I believe Shermer’s accusers” post but ultimately found the discourse so infuriating I had to stop even reading it. I just went back to see what happened later, and, my god, those apologists just kept going and going. Also, my thanks to Cityzenjane for her kind words to me in the thread.
Jason, shouldn’t you have added to your story what other men already know to be true ? That probably 95% of false rape allegations are only spread in private and are never brought to the attention of the police, because the accuser knows she would get called out on her BS immediately ?
While I’m aware that you have apparently (and probably not as voluntarily as you may think) subscribed to the radfem ideology, I’d still hope that you understand why you were picked as the easiest target by the MRAs – they have identified you as an appeaser who doesn’t really believe in the gospel. But so have the radfems. And they know they can’t afford having a rotten brick in their wall of defence.
You already know what’s going to happen, don’t you ?
I got through half of that painfully illogical ill-conceived ‘article’ written by this Birric Forcella person, before I just couldn’t stomach it anymore.
It seemed like this long thing were he was sort of saying something like:
2+2=5 0x9=.010 55 divided by 5 is five, and other equally asinine things. *garbled look* =/
((hugs)) if you want Jason, and Ophelia too actually, since she was put through the ringer by these assholes as well. I’m hardly around, so, while I’m around, I might as well give hugs.
Oh I can see it happening right now, Tiberius. Look at all these people throwing me under the bus in service of their unevidenced ideology.
Then put your glasses on and try a little harder at recognition. I’m not sure the villains are who you think they are.
Moreover, kindly define “radfem” if you expect another comment to ever pass moderation.
4250/2=2125, reworking needed I think…
Malachite: no, it’s really unlikely that unreported rapes would land in a pile of reported rapes. *2 is intentional.
Hi. I just noticed that the source for the rape accusation against Avicenna is now being listed as “MRAs,” or perhaps it might be heavily implied that A Voice For Men is responsible.
I’m one of the posters who helped clear up a misunderstanding in the comments section of Avicenna’s blog post about the rape accusation. At the time, the ‘pitt and a man named Sanderson were accused of this crime (character assassination.) I and some other posters did some digging and found that Sanderson got his information about the rape accusation from a public post by Oolon on August 26th (which Sanderson linked to in his tweet about it), which apparently was taken from one of Avicenna’s blog entries written on August 13th, I believe (this is off the top of my head.)
I’m a little confused. At the time, most people in the comments seemed to understand that the ‘pitt and Sanderson were not responsible for the rape accusation. But the claims that they were responsible were left public. Now I see a different article claiming that “MRAs” or “A Voice For Men” are responsible for the false claim against Avicenna. I would like to know, has there been any evidence in the last day or two that points to them? This is still the same rape accusation, right? I take rape accusations very seriously and would like to get to the bottom of this, and find out who sent the accusation specifically.
EddieJamesOlmos, I thought the most recent
explanationrationalization was that the claim wasn’t intentionally malicious, per se, but was forwarded as an example of how easy it is for rape allegations to go through and how damaging they can be in “real life.” I’ve heard that this line of thinking was advanced by Pitchguest but I don’t really know any more. (I think I might have gotten this irectly from Avi’s blog.) I’m not sure how you would apportion blame in that situation, and am not sure why you do so.Sorry to make another comment so quickly; EddyJamesOlmos, I don’t think that you can or should conflate “MRAs” specifically with A Voice for Men. There are many MRAs out there, many with no connection to and some even with a fair amount of hostility to AVfM. For those not part of the MRA community, ManBoobz provides a fairly good running commentary on who thinks what of whom in MRA-land.
SOMEBODY fabricated a rape accusation against Avicenna, and the Slymepit’s most pressing concern is making sure everybody knows it is DEFINITELY NOT THEIR FAULT.
Priorities!
Thanks, Jason. It’s good to have (extremely conservative) numbers comparing false convictions to rapes that go unpunished. This post will be useful against people who dismiss the reality that sexual assault is devastating and utterly common with “but, FALSE ACCUSATIONS! SKEPTIC! eleventy!!”
One cavil, mostly off-topic, but this is a common misconception that I think it’s important to address:
Not true. Innocent people plead guilty (or confess to the police during questioning) a lot more frequently than you’d expect, for a variety of reasons.
http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/False-Confessions.php
Well, I don’t see what the point of that comment is, Sally. Of course nobody wants to be blamed for something they didn’t do. Not to mention your post isn’t even true. The ‘pitt offered to help track down the email information of the person who sent the false rape accusation to Avicenna. That offer is always open if he wants it. It’s hard to help out when nobody will let you help.
@darkwater: I noticed your point about MRAs, and it is a good one. I thought that because of the proximity of the names, MRAs might mean AVfM specifically. I’m not really sure how one would get from an anonymous false rape accusation to “that person is an MRA.” But it is somewhat plausible that a person who would make a false rape accusation against Avicenna would also not care for FTB, and I suppose it’s possible they could be a self-described MRA. Obviously I’m not part of the MRA movement and I have no idea what each MRA group thinks of the others.
“And so they splatter a whole lot of false rape charges across their front page, including ones against Avicenna, despite the accusers admitting it was a stunt designed to damage rape victims’ ability to come forward”
^I do think this part of the blog post is not true. Since the accuser is unknown, he or she obviously did not “confess” to anything. The link given is to a blog post railing against things pitters said, and it does not name the pitt or those pitters as the false rape accusers. The link given simply does not contain the evidence that Canuk’s post here implies it does. By all means, go after the ‘pitt for nasty comments or whatever, but not for things they never did, or words they never said.
And again, that offer of help tracking the email (in case the person who sent the email was stupid and careless) is always open, Avicenna.
Well, Sally, they do have their reputation to protect!
@EddyJamesAlmos: That’s been covered elsewhere. Someone who promotes an accusation in bad faith is just as responsible as whoever fabricated it.
At MB we tend to describe them as kids of four or so, stamping their feet and yelling “I’m running away! I am! I’m running away from home now and then you’ll be SORRY!” while never getting farther than the front porch.
As for Elam, he’s said long since that he would vote “not guilty” were he a jury member in a rape trial, even if he believed the defendant guilty. So yes, as Jafafa Hots said @25, these guys are not rape apologists but rape promoters. They’re the abusers’ lobby.
Priorities!
Protecting one’s reputation against the suspicion that there might be something about your chosen hangout and group of collaborators that lends itself to this sort of unethical, destructive behavior.
This is the same group that passes around the story that I fabricated a rape threat against myself, and have kept it going for over two years now.
I find it difficult to sympathize with their travails in having people associate them with reprehensible behavior, when they’ve been engaging in slightly milder forms of the same activities for years.
Yeah, sure, track down the originator. Then what? You really think Avicenna is going to want to press charges while he’s out doctoring in India? You going to stamp the Accuser with a scarlet A? What? Do you even know what the point of all this is? Rhetorical question, don’t answer.
You fuckers never think any of this shit all the way through.
/rant
I mean, remember when Thunderfoot made a big fuss about harassment policies? PZ criticized him, and I believe it was about that time that the meme that PZ harassed a woman at a biology lecture he was giving by asking her sexually suggestive questions. I mean, they were sexually suggestive but that was partly because the lecture was about sex, and the women knew ahead of time more or less what to expect, demonstrated no discomfort during nor claimed anything after. This was borne entirely out of the fact that PZ was in a video, talking about sex and sexual reproduction to a young woman. It was basically the Pitters’ fake idea of what having a sexual harassment policy would be like–i.e. dry, humorless, and sexless–applied to the real world completely out of context.
And this false accusation still surfaces from time to time!
So, I suppose THIS time it’s possible that the Slymepit played no role in fabricating false accusations against the people they don’t like.
But possible and probable are not the same thing.
Ah, but if they do track down the originator and Avicenna doesn’t press charges, it means the accusation never happened and Avicenna was making up the whole thing, right?
@EddyJamesAlmos,
He was posited as a “possible” suspect in the creation and spreading of false accusations, not actually a crime but libel for sure. He absolutely did spread them and apologised for it, good on him … Ooops, what’s this .. http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2013/08/30/poo-at-a-wall-part-i/
Sanderson is presented with a new libellous claim and immediately starts spreading it as truth with no evidence whatsoever! For me or Avi or anyone to assassinate Rich’s character, he’d have to have some good character to start with. He clearly doesn’t have any compunctions in spreading lies.
Why are you so invested in protecting this anonymous shitweasel?
Oh and Jason, sorry for the derail. I see manboobz has done a good job in taking apart the AVfM article as well, so hopefully not too much damage done.
I am interested in protecting anyone who is falsely accused of a crime. That includes Avicenna and it includes Sanderson. How much you all like or dislike the person falsely accused is irrelevant to the discussion. Repeating false rumors started by others is not a crime. If it were, everyone in the world would be a criminal at some point in their lives, because humans tend to examine information poorly.
Sanderson absolutely did spread the rumor. The false rape accusation went on Avicenna’s blog, then Oolon spread the story with the added claim that the ‘pitt was responsible, and Sanderson spread Oolon’s rumor to Twitter while pointing out that it was obviously a fake rape claim. For which he apologized and yet he is still listed as the false rape accuser in Avicenna’s blog post last time I checked. The summary situation is a person has been wronged and this wrong was not corrected, even though it costs nothing.
As for the way Avicenna was wronged, I don’t really understand the attitude that finding the person responsible would be victim blaming or useless. Is it better to do nothing? I mean, the person could be located (hopefully) and then addressed in whatever manner Avicenna wants. He could mention it on his vlog, involve the authorities, privately send the person an email, whatever. Finding the guilty party can only be a positive thing. Especially since the process of finding the person would provide the evidence necessary to charge them if Avicenna wanted to go that route.
On topic, I read that AVfM article and it’s pretty shit. Not that I was expecting better.