Some people are easily fooled

Via Ally Fogg, the BMJ has published their annual satirical science story, as they do, and as usual, various slackish and hackish news sites have republished it as true (Hello, HuffPo!), and in addition, this time they’ve sucked in the MRAs! In this case, it’s because they published a stereotyped scenario of men trying so hard to make women happy and making them miserable in the process. You’d think they’d have noticed the second sentence of the abstract:

Mathieu encourages her psychotherapy clients “to try to live in the gray. There are a million shades of gray” (although a recent erotic novel suggests there are only 50) “on the spectrum of white to black, and each provides a much richer telling of a story that is hardly ever as clear as this or that. So, when we looked a bit more closely, we saw that ‘right versus happy’ was not so much about getting crowned the winner or loser, a genius or fool; it was more about flawed thinking and a desire to want to feel being in control.”

No clues there? OK, maybe they could have read the discussion:

The study has some limitations. There was no trial registration, no ethics committee approval, no informed consent, no proper randomisation, no validated test instrument, and questionable statistical assessment. We used the eyeball technique for single patient trials which, as Sackett says, “more closely matches the way we think as clinicians.

Yeah, clever bunch in the media and the ranks of the MRAs.

Please don’t do this

Ken Ham is all smug and indignant over something an atheist wrote about him. And this really hurts to say, but I think Ken Ham has a case. Here’s the bit of “satire” written about a certain despicable creationist.

I’ve decided that for my Christmas dinner I will capture and cook alive, slowly, Ken Ham himself. I’ve a lovely place in a secluded wood all picked out with a human size iron pot of oil just waiting for me to plop Mr. Ham into and bring slowly to a boil. There’s no need for me to gag him either because we’ll be SO secluded, no one will be able to hear even his loudest yelps of pain. Man, this is gonna be a great Christmas. I’m glad Mr. Ham took the time to remind me of how evil and nasty I am just because I don’t believe in his god. He took away any last twinge of morality in me that might’ve said, “It’s wrong to boil people alive in oil and eat them, so don’t.” Oh well, he has no one to blame but himself for becoming my Christmas dinner! Hee Haw! How’s that for imposing my a-theism on you, eh, Mr. Ham?

That’s…unpleasant. It’s threatening. It is allowing a fundamentalist creationist claim the moral high ground.

You know what it isn’t, though?

Funny.

Fools fail, f*ck their own sh*t up

You’ve probably already read Ophelia’s discussion of the latest MRA stupidity: a group of them on Reddit decided to flood Occidental College’s sexual harassment survey system with a collection of fake rape reports. The logic escapes me; people who claim that women make frequent false accusations of rape decide to inflate the statistics with false accusations of their own? Why? It was a spectacular own goal that effectively demonstrated that Men’s Rights Activists don’t actually care about ending rape, but are more interested in throwing up clouds of doubt and confusion to obscure their own repulsive activities and desires.

It was such a backfire that they’re now frantically trying to backtrack (It was so obviously stupid that even MRAs were aware of their mistake? That tells you how stupid it had to have been) and pretend that no, no one with any clout in the men’s rights movement had anything to do with inciting false reports. No, it was 4chan, yeah, that’s the ticket, it’s all the fault of those irresponsible pranksters at 4chan.

Except…here’s John the Other aka John Hembling, bigshot at AVoiceForMen:

jtoonbrothers

A word for Hembling: Yes, rape is a crime. So is falsely reporting a rape.

And gosh, but Hembling is really an awful person.

The silence of the men

A woman, alone at a bus stop, late at night. A series of men pass by, leering and sneering. One man accosts her persistently.

Over the course of five minutes, he verbally threatened me with rape, a beating, and kept trying to lurch closer to me. When I barked “BACK OFF” and raised my fists, he took a couple steps back, but unzipped his pants and started pantomiming taking his dick out while continuing to call me a bitch and a stuck-up ho. “I am going to slap you, bitch. You deserve to get raped. You deserve a dick in your ass. Stuck-up ugly slut. You’re gonna get raped because you’re a bitch and bitches deserve whatever they get.” At one point he made a motion as if he was going for something tucked into the back of his pants. I just kept yelling at him as loudly and aggressively as I could. But I was genuinely scared at that point.

Sounds familiar. I’ve seen second-hand that surly resentment from men on the internet — it takes some courage and strength to stand up against it in person. Then the bus arrives, and with it some hope of rescue.

It was the middle of the night. I was alone, without a working phone or pepper spray. But we were in a brightly lit place, so I decided to stand my ground and keep yelling at him to stay the fuck away from me and hope the bus would arrive soon, which it did. I rushed to it. The doors to the bus opened, and I called to the driver, “this man just threatened to rape and beat me and started to expose himself, please don’t let him on.” Blank stare from the bus driver. My harasser actually pushed past me, got on the bus, sat down in the front seat, told the bus driver “pay this bitch no mind, she’s a crazy-ass prostitute” and laughingly told him, “she been harassing ME”.

And the driver shook the man’s hand, and ignored the woman.

The man is calling the woman a “bitch” and a “prostitute”, and the driver seems to find it unlikely that he’s been harassing the frightened woman. He does nothing. He says nothing.

The driver eventually ordered me to sit down. So I did. And then asked him: “why aren’t you doing anything? Why did you shake his hand and laugh? That guy threatened to hurt me and rape me. Why would you do that?” He basically ignored my questions. Ignored me.

I sat there, in shock, while my harasser continued to yell threats and insults at me from the rear of the bus.

And she still manages to remain charitable towards the driver.

This morning I called the Golden Gate Transit hotline and filed a report. I genuinely do not want to get the driver fired. He seemed young and totally clueless and lacking in empathy, but not actively unkind. I just hope that some sort of protocol adjustment happens. Some kind of conversation where it’s made clear to each and every driver that when a woman begs them to call the cops or to bar an aggressive man from their bus, they should DO THAT.

That’s all she wants? I wasn’t even there, and I want more. I want men to stop being accomplices in harassment.

“Sad to see America INFECTING the rest of the world”

No, Ken Ham, it’s not. It’s sad to see a “public figure” like yourself preaching hate and homophobia, in response to this story.

It’s not just Ham. Here’s a sampling of the comments on that post:

Wow. These folks should actually be offended. They were selected not for merit, but as props. How nice for the Administration to reduce their identity to their sexuality.

Not just sexual preferences, but to their sins.

America is sending a message “we are a ungodly place” that mocks God

We are not so much a diverse place as we are a sinful place continually rejecting God’s word. Pray for repentance before it is too late for this country.

Just hope the Russians arrest these athletes. If it is illegal and they are there, then they are breaking the law – simple as that

Diversity happens in the sewer. You can’t stop it. Unity in the Truth is the high calling.

We have become a place of tolerance, tolerant to everything but the Truth. GOD is not mocked!

Sickness of soul. Pawns of Satan himself.

Seriously? What does being gay have to do with their athletic prowess? Go as athletes, not athletes with an agenda! And WHY does the FORMER DHS Secretary warrant tagging along? She does in NO WAY represent our country, in any facet, anymore. Send someone that does!

So the homosexuals are going to represent me? Even the communist’s deep in Russia reject homosex. I’d never thought that an atheist like Putin would be standing up for American values!

Obama has to be a closet homosexual. My mother has always said that she believed he was, and now I too have become convinced. I think that the wife and kids was just a cover up to get him elected in politics. Onama is a homosexual.

Now all that is sad.

I don’t think they bothered to read the article. The Obama administration is snubbing the Russian Olympics by not sending any high ranking members of the administration as part of the delegation — the most prominent politican in the group is the former head of Homeland Security — but they are including openly gay athletes, Billie Jean King, Brian Boitano, and Caitlin Cahow as representatives, not competing athletes.