This Is What It Looks Like v5

In response to my post about a recent tiff on Manboobz, David Futrelle commented (I did not approve the comment, but I did respond to him via email):

Toysoldier, this is a completely dishonest piece, and you know it. (If you don’t know that, well, I don’t even know what to say.) Did anyone on Man Boobz suggest that you were imagining your abuse? Did anyone say that you deserved it? Absolutely not. The discussion was about whether or not feminism had caused this abuse.

Of course, once Futrelle posted a link to my blog, it did not take long for is regulars to attack me. One of things I have learned in dealing with people online is that the less valid their complaints, the more likely they will get nasty. One of the things I have learned in dealing with feminists, especially those online, is that they go to that extreme faster than most people.

So it comes as no surprise that Bostonian, a Manboobz’s regular, would write this:

TS is one of the few people I am sure are lying about aspects of his abuse. It is way to convenient a narrative for an antifeminist. He could have been abused, but I doubt his abuser actually specifically identified as a feminist.

Tamen tried very hard to get Bostonian to qualify that, but to no avail. To the contrary, several other Manboobz regulars joined in. 

Sharculese wrote:

on the other hand, this is horseshit. it’s toysoldier. sophistry and ham-fisted accusations are the only things he knows how to do.

That was in response to whether I help or care about abuse victims. When Tamen asked if it was a little over the top to accuse a rape victim of lying or if I am special case, Sharcules wrote:

well obviously toysoldier is a very special case. seeing as he’s completely bugfuck and all.

but yeah, good on you for demanding i explain a particular rhetorical flourish i used. that is definitely the sign of someone who is arguing in good faith and should be taken seriously.

Later Sharcules stated that Bostonian’s comment was “fucked up.”

Pecunium added this bit:

Tamen: While I appreciate the sense of concern you are expressing, it would help if you were being honest about what Bostonian did.

Which wasn’t saying TS was lying about being abused, but of padding it with details to make it more useful when beating feminists with it.

Hellkell wrote this:

Look, Tamen, if I thought Bostonian was over the line, I’d say so (others would too, this is not Shrinking Violet Theater up in here). Bostonian is NOT accusing TS of lying about abuse, but of fudging the aspects to fit his axe to grind re: feminism.

Perhaps you’d understand that if you could be arsed to read. It’s much easier to feign outrage.

Keep in mind, this happened on the same thread just a day or so after another poster, who the Manboobers rightly challenged, spent five pages denying someone’s rape.

Futrelle did make an appearance, but only to complain about me pointing out that he mischaracterized my words. He said nothing of this regulars accusing me of lying about part of my past. Indeed, the accusation that I lied about my abuse goes on, with several of the Manboobz regulars trying to argue I was abused while also arguing that I am so dishonest that I nothing I say can be trusted. Or as Penucium put it:

So yes, I wasn’t completely clear with what I do/don’t have problems with. I don’t think speculation about why someone recalls events of their life in the way they do is all that good an idea, at least not without more direct insight than we have. I can see why someone who has been through the thousands of comments TS has made/caused to be made, chosen to misrepresent on his own blog, might decide they have that sort of insight.

Which is what i was trying to say. I see why Bostonian thinks that, and I understand it, and I can accept it as defensible, if problematic, position to take.

As for what Penucium was getting at, CassandraSays provided that:

FWIW, I’m not OK with people speculating that Toy Soldier is lying about having been abused. I do think that he’s deliberately misinterpreting/twisting her supposed feminism in an attempt to make some sort of grand point about feminism (that in general it’s in favor of the sexual abuse of male children), and that he’s totally out of line for doing that. I don’t doubt for a second that the abuse happened. I just find the way in which he’s attempting to use what happened troubling, and I think he is incorrect in claiming that if his aunt was a feminist, that means that feminism made her abusive, and therefore feminism makes women abuse little boys. It’s the narrative that he’s constructed around the abuse the rings false, not the actual abuse. Child abuse is horrifyingly common, and I see no reason to doubt that someone who says they were abused was. It’s just that their having been abused doesn’t then make them officially Right About Everything that they choose in terms of political causes as adults.

For the record, I never stated that feminism makes women abuse boys or that feminism made, i.e. specifically ordered, my aunt abuse me. I did state, “I said that feminism caused her to behave the way that she did, and that her views are very much a part of feminism.” I stand by that position. Ideologies, especially those geared towards an “us versus them” dynamic, can and often do cause, i.e. lead, people to behave in horrible ways. It is ridiculous to claim that feminism could never cause a person to think or act violently, and it is hypocritical to make that claim while saying that the men’s rights movement makes men violent misogynists.

As to Cassandra’s point, the problem with arguing that “the narrative that [people] constructed around the abuse […] rings false” is that one does not know what happened to the person, let alone that they constructed a false narrative. Taking that tact only silences victims because it sends the message that if they say something that does not sound “right” people will accuse them of lying. Or as katz put it:

[W]e find it unlikely that the rapist was expounding on her philosophical beliefs to the child she was abusing.

That sort of thing does not help rape victims. It does not make them feel believed, make them want to come forward, or in any way encourage sympathy and empathy towards them. One would think that people who railed against a person who spent five pages attacking a rape victim would have the sense to realize that.

As expected, Holly Pervocracy also took issue with my post:

…In fact, Tamen, Roberta was telling a MAN who had been raped that he wasn’t really raped. And Toysoldier was just pleased as punch with her.

and later:

Except that TS is clearly gloating in Roberta’s trolling (because two male-rape erasures make a right???) and trying to shame me for talking about my rape, and I don’t think you need to be defending him.

I can understand why Holly would distort my comments that way, even to the point of ironically ignoring her fellow regulars accusing me of lying about my past while complaining about someone essentially doing the same thing.

However, at no point did I gloat about anything or shame Holly for talking about her rape. I simply noted that Roberta used the same tactics many of the Manboobz regulars use, and that Holly mentioning her abuse did not stop Roberta’s attack, as it should have done. Several of the Manboobzers claimed I accuse rape victims of lying, but they never produced a single example of me doing so, which they cannot because I never made such accusations. I never denied that LBT or Holly were raped, nor did I agree with Roberta’s attacks on them.

Holly went on to write:

This is not a “taste of our own vile,” as we do not make a hobby of telling rape victims that their experiences didn’t count. Nobody has claimed that TS is making up his abuse, we’re only questioning his conclusion that his abuse was the direct result of feminism. Bostonian is questioning TS giving details that his aunt was a bigtime feminist and told TS she was abusing him for feminism’s sake, not questioning that TS was abused or saying that his experiences don’t count as real abuse.

Actually, Bostonian did claim I made up my abuse:

TS is one of the few people I am sure are lying about aspects of his abuse. It is way to convenient a narrative for an antifeminist. He could have been abused, but I doubt his abuser actually specifically identified as a feminist.

That is a clear statement that I lied or might be lying either about the abuse itself, my aunt’s political identity, or both, and Holly apparently has no problem with that. That is why I wrote the first post. Manboobz regulars do exactly what Roberta did to people they disagree with, as the regulars demonstrated on that thread. They could have disagreed with my post without attacking me personally, accusing me of lying about my abuse, or erasing part of that abuse they do not agree with, yet they did not.

Hahahahaha, isn’t that the whole point of his post? Relishing the “comeuppance” we’re getting for something we didn’t actually do?

The regulars spent the better part of 20 pages arguing that my aunt was not a feminist and called me a liar and coward when I would not back down from my position that feminism negatively influenced my aunt’s behavior. I did not relish what Roberta did. Indeed, it is difficult to relish something I find cruel, malicious, and sadistic. I simply pointed out that Roberta did exactly what Manboobzers tend to do, which Holly pretended not to understand:

How is it “toying” with someone to respond to their inflammatory comments?

If you deliberately try to provoke an emotional response, you are toying with them. If you try to set someone off because they said something you do not like, you are toying with them. That is what Roberta did, and she was fairly good at it. That is also what the regulars did to me, to Anthony Zarat, and even what they were doing to Tamen.

Holly went to say that my comment “Hopefully being faced with someone who mirrored their own behavior will teach the Manboobz regulars that what you do to others someone might do to you” meant:

In other words: “I think male rape erasure is just dandy, as long as it happens to bad people I don’t like. A great cure for rape erasure is more rape erasure! But to different people!”

No. I meant what I wrote. I would hope that someone who treats other people horribly would realize how badly they behaved if someone did the same thing to them, and I would hope they realize that their own behavior may have encouraged it. If you spend your time trashing other people, it sends the message that it is okay for people to do that, which in turn might make someone do it to you. That is why we have the adage “treat people the way you want to be treated.”

I am grateful that Tamen questioned Bostonian’s comments, although I regret the trouble he went through for doing so. However, those responses point to the irony I mentioned in my post. The Manboobz regulars have no problem doing the very thing Roberta did, and they had no problem defending it.

On a related note, while I realized that some people would read my post as Schadenfreude, that was not my intent and I think that is fairly clear. Pointing out that people are getting the same thing they dish out is not the same as enjoying or relishing it, and neither is saying that things have a way of coming back on you.

What I think is unfortunate is that the Manboobz regulars had an opportunity to prove me wrong, yet they threw it away.