Nearly twenty years ago, when I was a sixteen year old wide-eyed innocent who believed the human race is generally good, I was victimized by someone’s lies. I told the story on this blog in hopes of achieving some measure of catharsis for myself, and providing real support to others for whom the same sort of lie had damaged their lives. However, I recognized later that the reason I got off so easy actually meant many people who were really hurt would never see justice, and that this was a problem with society that I would have traded more personal pain to see righted.

Today, someone who ostensibly agrees with me on the existence of the overarching problem with society threw those lies back in my face, attacking me because I disagreed with her that transgender folks should be protected from her attacks, in an effort to poison my Google search results for my name. That someone is Cathy Brennan. And she’s in totally appropriate company in the attempt at poisoning my search results — the same slander is also posted on A Voice For Men.

To catch everyone up a little less obliquely: when I was 16, my girlfriend accused me of rape. No, “accused” is too strong — she started a rumour that I’d raped her. This caused me considerable emotional distress that lingers to this day, but helped to inform me about the actuality of rape. Years and years later, I’m a blogger on the internet, and I am willing to fight the rape culture that I see around me — one where people can rape with impunity, and nobody seems to take rape accusations seriously at all.

Then the skeptical community undergoes something of a sea change where people who otherwise are skeptical of religion, of pseudoscience, and of shoddy economics, suddenly realizes it has a gigantic blind spot when it comes to treatment of women, uncritical acceptance of societally-enforced gender roles, and other aspects of life that to this point they have not examined. A culture wherein Good Old Boys in the so-called “upper echelons” of skeptical society turns out to have had whisper-nets built up warning others about their misdeeds for a very long time; wherein it turns out some have been likely treating the community as a sexual smorgasbord. Specific allegations are brought forth against specific “top men”, and the community — long simmering with rage over the merest possibility that “guys, don’t do that” is an acceptable thing for a woman to say about cold-propositioning drunk women in elevators in the wee hours of the morning in foreign countries — is rent asunder by the possibility that a series of multiply-corroborated accounts of sexual assault might actually have happened, despite the lack of evidence sufficient to put the person responsible in jail.

I back up the people bringing forth these accusations, explaining that I have sufficient reason to believe nobody involved is lying, especially considering how much social cost bringing forward an accusation of rape actually has. I explain the social cost — the thing that saved me when I was accused was a long-standing erosion of trust and an unfortunate aspect of the story that was easily disproven. The social costs for me had been to that point enormous, but the social costs to her were returned tenfold in that moment.

I further recognized that in my escaping more dire repercussions like, say, actually encountering law enforcement at any point, meant that actual rape was going unpunished. The lies that victimized me meant real victims were being doubly victimized! Stories recounted by victims on the internet, like EEB’s story of her being brutally assaulted by a stranger but being disbelieved by the police, crystallized me on the point that I benefited from rape culture directly, and strengthened my resolve to combat it and right some serious injustices that were being perpetrated in trade for my own comfort. For every one case like mine, there were potentially hundreds of rape cases where the rapists walked.

So I continued blogging about it, supporting rape survivors and questioning rape culture, to the point where I attracted the attention of the Manosphere, and A Voice For Men took it upon themselves to begin the destruction of my reputation via claiming that because I was accused of rape, I must be a rapist “by feminism’s own logic”, since in their mind, feminism claims that anyone accused of rape must be a rapist. They splashed my name across the front page of their site as being an admitted rapist.

Never mind, of course, that I know damn well that false rape accusations happen, and that the problem is rape isn’t generally even investigated. The “Men’s Rights Movement”, Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) who were once mistreated by a woman in perhaps a manner similar to my own, or who once played fast-and-loose with consent and got accused of rape as a result (but obviously nothing happened to their lives since they’re ever present on the internet to complain about their raw deal!) but grabbed that same cover story to protect themselves, have been polarized to fight against rape accusations where rational people might instead fight rape or rape apologetics. They do this as though rape accusations — the only injustice they’ve ever encountered in their hyper-privileged lives — are literally the only actual problems facing society today. They rally together to fight the Great Feminist Cabals that, in their minds’ eye, just want to throw all men in jail for looking at them funny, and they turn feminism into this huge straw dummy fascist state.

They attack me because I fight to have rape taken seriously, despite — no, in fact, because of — my own experience almost two decades ago. And so these MRAs sought to destroy my reputation by Google-bombing my name, associating it directly and inextricably with rape, knowing that someone might look me up, see my name and “rapist” on a website, and assume it absolutely must be true or else it wouldn’t have been published on the internet. And this sort of Google-bombing isn’t even a new tactic for MRAs.

Some months later, I post a petition asking that a judge be recalled after making the absolutely hideous decision to demand a retrial in a case where the physical evidence proved a man raped a Down syndrome woman because she “didn’t act like a victim”.

In my advocacy for social justice causes, I have encountered no single group of people more uniformly demonized than transgender folks. No matter how bad you think you have it, trans folk are scarce enough or closeted enough that it’s nearly impossible to find them — and when they found one another on the internet, some people decided that they had become at that point a threat that needed to be stopped.

One of that particular group of people’s most vocal opponents is the section of movement feminism that believes that trans folk are actually attacking, and attempting to co-opt, feminist spaces. These so-called feminists are helpfully labelled “trans-exclusionary” (per their self-selected name, “trans-exclusionary radical feminists”, or “TERFs”), and they hang out at a place called Rad Fem Hub, where feminists who’ve lost the plot of social justice gather to find new ways to victimize trans folks. They also talk there about legitimate feminist concerns, and even often perpetrate real, legitimate cases of that fabled unicorn of hate, “misandry”, so it’s not entirely an anti-trans site — but it sure looks that way to a trans person. Needless to say, they are the flip side of the MRA coin.

My posting of the petition — which I wholeheartedly support, obviously, seeing as the post is still up and my signature still valid — was slightly unfortunate, insofar as the person who created and was promoting the petition has had a history of attacking trans folks. I know of at least one other instance where the queen of the TERfs, payday loan lawyer Cathy Brennan of Gender Identity Watch and Name The Problem among other hate sites, had used a petition to discover the real identity of a trans person and then out that identity on her GIW site (a practice known in hacker circles as “doxxing”, as in “dropping dox”, as in “providing documentation of a person’s meatspace identity”). I further know that the TERFs at GIW, RadFemHub and elsewhere have a long history of digging up dirt on people who disagree with them and doing what they can to hurt them — contacting real-life friends, associates, or in at least one case the medical professionals charged with taking care of these trans folks. So, I was left with no choice but to post a warning on my post linking to that petition. I urged trans folk to use their own discretion before signing, knowing that other trans folk had been compromised in much the same way.

After putting up that post, I questioned @SisterTrinity on Twitter, the TERF who’d created the petition, asking if she was indeed anti-trans as reports (and links, and her twitter feed) suggested. She evaded and attacked and misconstrued the point of the question as some sort of unprompted attack, or as my withdrawing support for the petition, or of my targeting feminists explicitly. The situation escalated as I held my ground that while I supported the petition, I could not in good conscience ask my trans friends to sign, knowing they would risk having their identities compromised. I simply couldn’t live with myself if such a thing happened as a direct result of my actions. So my warning stayed up.

And Cathy Brennan herself got into the mix, calling me an MRA.

In TERF parlance, they mean that I’m advocating for the rights of men to impinge upon womens’ spaces, by advocating that trans folk be treated with basic human dignity. Because in a TERF’s mind, trans folk are comprised exclusively of trans women, and because in a TERF’s mind a trans woman is a deranged man attempting to pretend to be a woman to steal an assigned-female-at-birth’s feminine birthright (at this point in the narrative I can’t help but think “THEY TOOK OUR JORBS!”). So, anyone standing up for trans folk to not be demonized and attacked and outed, must naturally be a MEN’S rights activist. See the rhetorical switcharoo they played there?

But Cathy Brennan then did something strange, and rather interesting (if I can say that dispassionately). She did something that only one other group had done. She accused me of rape on the front page of her site, suggesting that because I’d been accused, I must be a rapist. On the same site, she attacks other pro-trans feminists, she attacks trans folk, she attacks cis women as supposedly being trans women, inextricably tying trans folks’ “dead names” to their current ones and horrible accusations of crime to people who merely want to protect others from undue harm.

In attacking the same person, in the same way, because that person did something that undercut their views, Cathy Brennan and her TERFs, and Dean Esmay and his MRAs, became inextricably linked. They are two sides of the same coin. Some of you already knew that, but this is just blatant enough that it can be used as a teaching moment.

TERFs to the left of me, MRAs to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

I’ll draw their fire while I can. They can’t even really hurt me that badly — I stand by my history, by my words, by my extensive backlog of advocacy on these topics, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I have every privilege working to my advantage. MRAs try to strip rape laws of their feeble teeth, TERFs will attack trans folk and give feminism a bad name, and while I have their attention I’ll draw their fire as much as possible so that they cannot continue to attack everything I hold dear. Every minute they’re on me, they’re not on you, and that, to me, is worth the trouble.

But the place they’re hitting is an emotionally raw one for me, even where they can’t hurt me otherwise. I can only tank for so long and soak so much damage though. While they’re distracted with me, go for the knockout.

The post Quick, while I have the TERFs and MRAs distracted, go solve all the problems! appeared first on Lousy Canuck.

Via Think Progress:

This week, the Department of Justice published new standards addressing the epidemic of rape and sexual abuse in our nation’s prisons. The guidelines, which apply immediately to federal prisons and give financial incentives for states to comply, are a laudable, widely praised, and long overdue step in combating rape in the United States.

Of course, the right-wing American Action Forum thinks the rules and action against prison rape are too expensive:

Not only is success questionable at best, the DOJ’s own estimates illustrate the fiscal effects of such a heavy-handed approach. The Department predicts that average total costs for each year will equal nearly $470 million. Many of the annual estimates are slightly below that figure. However, DOJ estimated roughly $745 million in costs for the remaining months in 2012. This $300 million spike, compared to other years, demonstrates the steep learning curve for state correctional facilities.

DOJ also chose to ignore concerns about unfunded state costs. The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) requires federal agencies to explain the burden their rules impose on state and local governments. Currently, any rule imposing more than $162 million in annualized inter-governmental costs triggers UMRA’s threshold.

I dunno, sounds like a good reason to actually tax the rich fairly, especially those making money off the for-profit prison systems you have in place.

But the real shocker about this is — wait, it’s not a shocker at all. Let me try that again. *ahem*

But the real totally-expected thing about this is that so-called “Men’s Rights Activists” are completely oblivious, because fixing prison rape — which largely happens to men, but also happens to women — isn’t about stopping those damned uppity feminists. They’ll use the issue of prison rape as a club, but don’t actually care to fight against the issue at all, as Manboobz covers.

If the Men’s Rights movement were truly concerned with helping men, rather than playing “oppression Olympics” and complaining about feminists and women in general, they would be all over this issue. But I have seen nothing about this on any site in the manosphere, aside from one post on the Men’s Rights subreddit that drew all of six (mostly ignorant) comments. (Looking through one large thread on the subject of prison rape that was recently on r/mensrights’ front page, I found zero references to the Justice Department’s new initiative.)

What accounts for this obliviousness? It could be because MRAs tend to regard the Obama administration as a tool of our (imaginary) feminazi overlordsladies. Or because they would have to acknowledge that women are also raped in prison. But I think the real reason is that MRAs are so disconnected from real activists working in the real world to combat prison rape that they are completely unaware of any of this.

I mean, fixing prison rape wouldn’t directly hurt feminism, so why bother? Dave Futrelle of Manboobz recommends you support Just Detention International if you want to end the horrible practice of prison rape by providing frameworks for protecting prisoners from rape, and punishing the perpetrators. JDI has a video up with prison rape survivors’ stories, and their reactions to the PREA [obviously, trigger warnings]:

Voices for Justice from JustDetention on Vimeo.

People complaining about misogyny will bring MRAs out in droves. People complaining about prison rape, for some reason, doesn’t. Now why is that?

The post DOJ releases new standards to combat prison rape. Right-wingers fight it, MRAs yawn appeared first on Lousy Canuck.

Wanted to throw this on the blog for a few days now, but it’s been… busy. Over at Google+, it seems the only people who engage with my linking back to various websites are the MRAs and antifeminists who probably make up the majority of the early-adopters of the technology.

I had posted a link to Chris Clarke’s thoughts on the latest skeptical sexism imbroglio, and the only answers I got were from one guy who was entirely disinterested in engaging with the points I attempted to make in a pithy, I-don’t-have-time-for-fisking-this kind of way.

Seriously, it’s a hell of a gish gallop. You should see it.

Allen HildebrandtJun 13, 2012

I think this is a trivialization of the issue men have with the topic.  You’re likely correct that there are bad actors in the argument, name callers, people who attack the women making the claim.

However, whether or not the claim is just and fair isn’t ever really addressed.  From the arguments I’ve been in with people, it isn’t so much as an assumption that all the men are guilty, it’s that the argument is that all men should be treated as potentially guilty, that the perspective of the person claiming victim is the only one that matters and the harm that it does is irrelevant so long as the woman involved is protected from harm.

Watson was unfair, both for posting what she did as well as having the expectation that men should behave in a specific manner that only considers her comfort.  As I said then, she’s perfectly welcome to be uncomfortable… but just because crimes occur doesn’t give anyone the right to treat every man as if he were a criminal and publically shame him because he didn’t technically do anything illegally wrong.

Jason ThibeaultJun 13, 2012Edit

That’s terribly reductionist of any of the argument, considering Watson is ONE ACTOR IN IT. She is not even a focal point, except how the anti-Watson brigade make her that.

But your worry that women might potentially have something to fear from “all men” stems from a culture that practically protects rapists from justice. So do something about that, so we men might be reasonably trusted.

Jason ThibeaultJun 13, 2012Edit

In other words, I think you’re making a terribly trivializing argument and you’re co-opting the whole thing as “men vs women” when here’s a man right here who’s done more for men’s rights than most, who thinks you’re not doing the arguments justice and Chris Clarke’s thoughts are spot-on.

Allen HildebrandtJun 13, 2012

Am I correct in parsing that last sentence in your previous post as implicit sanctioning of men not being trusted?

Trust should be the default mode, don’t bring to an interaction anything that it doesn’t warrant.  Implicit sexism swings both ways, and the implicit assumption that men should be treated as untrustworthy is an unacceptable position to take when trying to discuss the subject.  It taints a persons arguments in noticeable ways.

I would wager that about a third of the men who are being tossed in the same basket as the people who are misogynistic aren’t.  They just want men to be talked about fairly, treated fairly and not have to be treated like everything is always their fault.

You’re correct that Watson isn’t a focal point, the Elevator situation is just one of myriad examples of situations where no harm occurred but are being used as examples of unacceptable behavior.  People make mistakes, treat people with the common damn courtesy of accepting that we’re all sometimes lonely and don’t always think about our own situation and how things might come across.

Humility and tolerance is exactly what this controversy lacks, on both sides of the aisle, men and women alike.

Jason ThibeaultJun 13, 2012Edit

Read this.

Seriously, people like you, who miss the plot so completely yet put on airs of being the “reasonable ones”, are why I normally have a do-not-engage-on-G+ policy. >_<

Allen HildebrandtJun 13, 2012

You do realize that saying “People like you” bunches me in with people that I probably have not as much in common as you are currently, at the time of this conversation, you believe I do?

Misandry isn’t an acceptable position, and allowing some to participate in misandry in order to win some good favor from the misandrists isn’t exactly productive.  Just as humoring Misogyny isn’t.

Address my points, right or wrong, I’d prefer you to do that than to go to the “People like you” sentiment. At least by addressing my points, you’re being honest about the conversation.

As to your link, I read the link; Fear is not an acceptable response nor does it excuse sexist behavior.  Likewise, tailoring your behavior to cater to everyone’s perceptions of how the world is isn’t doing them any favors, and it’s a form of deceit.  I abhor deceit, even if it would win me friends, even if it’s the nice lies and the comforting ones.  I’m familiar with the people who say, “If other people are uncomfortable with that, maybe you need to change your behavior” that is often the underlying root of bigotry lobbied against gays and lesbians… that they should behave in a way that society feels more comfortable with.  Yet somehow, that’s supposed to be an acceptable way to treat half the population? It’s bad in one situation, but in THIS one it’s good?

I don’t accept that it is reasonable to treat men in the way some of these women treat them.  It’s a justification for them to continue their distrustful and often hateful behavior towards men.  Often men who’ve been thrashed and beaten by the same kinds of behaviors in the past for not being in any way a desirable potential partner.  It’s an implicit justification for judging people based on their looks and not the content of their character.

Jason ThibeaultJun 13, 2012Edit

You’re exactly what I described in “people like you” — people who’ve lost the plot but still think they’re the reasonable ones. I’m lumping you in with people like you. Jebus.

If you’re not working to end rape culture, you’re screaming against a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself. You’re complaining of sniffles when the body of society has a killer flu. Fix rape culture, and you fix the unfair fear people have of men. It’s that simple, and it’s not misandry.

But thanks for handing me a blog post in those gish gallops of yours. I’m copying this onto my blog so others can see what kind of nonsense memetics fester around these parts.

Allen HildebrandtJun 13, 2012

So again, not addressing my points in any way, merely denegrating rather than discussing.

Wanting men to be treated fairly isn’t endorsing “Rape Culture”, whatever that might be.  Just because a subsection of a group behaves in one way does not make it at all right for people to treat the entire group as if they are a subsection.

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