Do you ever get that kind of email that makes you want to compulsively wash your hands? The kind that makes you think, “Well, this computer is completely soiled, time to get a new one”? I do. Here’s an example, and this is how it starts:
Rape is a controversial topic, i get that. But we need to keep a sober mind and try to analyze rape in a way that is rational and objective.
A lot of people are against rape and the reason why they are, are well-known to almost anybody. But i have to offer a different perspective on this controversial topic
You’re probably done already. Just that announcement that they’re going to “analyze rape in a way that is rational and objective” is puke-inducing…you know they’re not, but are instead going to try rationalizing abusing human beings. You are excused if you have no desire to read further, because I guarantee you, it gets worse. Much worse.
Id like to give six good reasons why rape is good for society
1) It instilles shame in women
Thats actually a big factor. The shame instilled in women is one of the reasons why rape is a good thing.
Women need to be ashamed otherwise they go off the rails.
They need to be concentrated on themelves and their shame otherwise they become a burden to society.
Only women who are deeply ashamed of themselves can properly focus on the good they can do in the world.
2) Destroys the self-esteem of women
Women with too much self-esteem are a danger to society. Some of them will even get politically involved and will try to change things for what they percieve is the best for society. And we all know that cannot be allowed to happen.
3) Makes it easier to control women
A direct consequence of the first two points. Ashamed women with low self-esteem are way easier to control and it should be obvious why that is a clear cut advantage for society.
4) Shows women their role in society
It makes women depart from following their dreams and concentrate on themselves which will show them their proper role in society.
5) Many women enjoy their rape-experience
At first glance it seems counter-intuitive, but yes. I guess a majority of women really enjoy their rape-experience.
An even those who don’t are often glad their life has been enriched by a valuable experience. Even though they didnt like the act in and off itself, nevertheless it taught them some valuable lessons.
6) There is genuine satisfaction involved
We always look at the rape from the perspective of the victim but never from the perspective of the perpetrator
Many men dont have regular sexual encounters and cant afford a good prostitute, so they obviously have to rape somebody
I think rape really manages to satisfy many men and makes it easier for them to cope with the hardships of this life.
Think about it, would you rather deal with somebody who is totally sexually frustrated or with somebody who is satisfied because he just had the pleasure of raping some woman???
You see, there are obviously aspects of rape that are good for society. If you keep an open mind and really try to think about it rationally you will surely see that there is much to say in favour of rape
I hope you change your mind (which you will surely do) and consider rape to be one of the few good things in life
I wouldn’t normally do this, but this sick fuck has crossed a line — and I don’t care whether they’re “trolling” or are serious. Here’s the header information from the email. Please note that there is no verified digital signature, so it could be someone spoofing someone else’s email address, so don’t bombard the sender with hate mail — I’m more interested in seeing the message traced and the sender regarded as a pariah.
Delivered-To: pzmyers@gmail.com
Received: by 10.107.170.95 with SMTP id t92csp80910ioe;
Fri, 21 Nov 2014 08:12:49 -0800 (PST)
X-Received: by 10.152.27.202 with SMTP id v10mr5860959lag.13.1416586368743;
Fri, 21 Nov 2014 08:12:48 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path:
Received: from mout.web.de ([212.227.17.11])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id xi1si597103lbb.29.2014.11.21.08.12.47
for
Fri, 21 Nov 2014 08:12:47 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of ardentatheist@web.de designates 212.227.17.11 as permitted sender) client-ip=212.227.17.11;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
spf=pass (google.com: domain of ardentatheist@web.de designates 212.227.17.11 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=ardentatheist@web.de
Received: from [46.114.141.235] by 3capp-webde-bs19.dlan.cinetic.de (via
HTTP); Fri, 21 Nov 2014 17:12:43 +0100
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-ID:
As for his argument — utterly dismissable. It requires regarding women as less than human, and less deserving of basic human dignity.
Now excuse me, I have to go wash my hands some more.
My Poe sense is going crazy, yet at the same time I can’t help but feel that you were just emailed by an actual rapist.
Jesus fuck this is disgusting. I don’t even know what else to say. I’m not sure if I want to laugh or cry. I definitely know that I need to shower, now.
Although you do include the worst of it below the jump, and you do note that it’s terrible, I think a trigger warning at the top would be really good.
Wait… hold on…
From the domain of Ardent Atheist? Like… Emery Emery and Heather Henderson?
Um… I really hope that’s spoofed…
For those who claim that sociopathy isn’t a true disorder, the above is Exhibit A that you’re wrong.
It is difficult to imagine seeing someone more devoid of morality and basic human decency. Fucking horrid.
The ‘sender’ IP address (46.114.141.235) maps to:
E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co KG in Dusseldorf Germany
NateHevens, as far as I can tell “ArdentAtheist” is the username. The domain was http://web.de/
Actually reminds me of something I just read on Jezebel — reposted from io9 about an article discussing misogyny in academic economics (from Bloomberg). The original author points out two economists who suggest ‘gentle, silent rape’ and ‘unconscious rape’ are a boon for society.
if interested, here’s the link to the original article at Bloomberg
economics is a dismal science for women
Someone sent from a Hilton hotel in Detroit? Not going to be easy to track or tie to a real person… Assuming it isn’t from Emery et al, why would someone want to frame them?
I am desperately clinging to the hopes that this is a sarcastic or joke email that got lost tone. Cause a lot of those points seem too on the nose to be entirely sincere. Not to mention sending it to you with that kind of obviously disgusting opinion seems like a terrible lack of audience knowlwdge
My Poe sense is also tingling, and it almost seems like I might have read this (or at least some of the points) before in a context where it was clearly represented as satirical, but maybe all the misogyny-rationalising crap just runs together after a while, so I can’t be sure.
Yeah. It’s a Poe.
PS: After today’s news in rape (the serial high school rapist in Oklahoma and the economists who see nothing wrong with rape as long as you use roofies or the like first), I just can’t muster more outrage. The world is broken in so many ways.
here’s the Oklahoma story link, if interested
why were three teenage rape victims bullied out of school in Oklahoma
PZ, you should forward the entire email, including the header to: info@cinetic.de and abuse@cinetic.de. They can research if the apparent sender is the real sender or not.
I’m pretty sure whomever sent this email was making a parody/joke. It seems kind of obvious to me–does it not to others?
diana6815,
One of the things in that article that stuck out to me was the 14 year old who watched the video of the other victim and said something along the lines of “It didn’t look like rape. It looked like she was screaming. If I had heard her side of the story it would have been different.”
And it is a statement like that that makes me wonder if the email is real. My Poe sense was a-tinglin’ as well, but on the other hand…
You know, I FUCKING DON’T CARE IF IT’S A POE. The word “Poe” is used so goddamned often as an excuse to ignore hateful, stupid shit…if I could, I’d put it on the blacklist, except that it’s such a short and common sequence it would end up blocking a lot of common words.
So why are you people telling me it’s a Poe, as if that fucking matters?
Tashiliciously Shriked:
Well, sort of. If you read the beginning and end, you will see that this e-mail’s purpose is essentially to proselytize. The author supposedly wants to “rationally” convince PZ that rape is a good thing. It’s not so much lack of audience knowledge as much as lack of self-awareness and moral sense. (I will admit that it is entirely possible that it is supposed to be satirical or sarcastic. They did a shit job if so).
tigtog: If you saw it before, it didn’t use the same wording:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS517US518&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=%22Women+with+too+much+self-esteem+are+a+danger+to+society%22
Peter Zachos:
“Like, it’s so obvious, you guys, duh”.
Such certainty.
Please, show your reasoning. Your incredulity is not evidence.
As the parent of two small children (both under three) I just have to say, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!?!? My initial reaction was that this was some sick fuck who is obviously trolling but as I trudged on all I could think was that I would prefer raising my children in a bubble then for them to encounter someone this deranged.
I tell ya, my disillusionment with the atheist movement is almost complete. Our time is better spent fighting for feminism me thinks.
I am depressed.
Don’t forget the brain bleach.
@yazikus
I know … that’s a question I raised…how does screaming = pleasure? Also, how does a rapist traipse around town playing a rape recording to anyone who will listen and with impunity?
@PZ Meyers
I couldn’t agree more. The fact that our society believes rape should be used as punishment or a control mechanism is hard to deny. First thing many do when they hear someone ‘bad’ is going to jail is laugh about how that person will probably be raped. Also … when misogynists disagree with feminists (of both genders), the first thing they do is whip out the rape threats.
Whether this is satire or not, it’s a position some real people hold and it’s helping to break the world.
Whoever wrote this needs a fucktonne of very public humiliation.
Drat … I didn’t mean to type both genders in 20… and thus imply there are only two … should have typed of ‘all’ genders…my bad.
Jesus that jexebel article makes me want to puke
I wish people wouldn’t state that something is a “Poe” when they believe it to be satire. Poe’s law is that it is impossible to distinguish between sincere extremist opinion and satire of said opinion. So, of course it’s a “Poe”, but that doesn’t answer if it’s bad satire or not. Given that PUAs and other woman-haters often use similar logic means it could go either way.
@Tashiliciously Shriked
I’m not ashamed to admit I cried through half of it. It’s good though that the knitting circle is raising awareness (one of the members called Jezebel) and working with some of the high schoolers on the Yes All Daughters FB campaign (including the walk out scheduled for Monday). Can’t erase what the girls went through, but maybe they can effect some school policy change
I don’t care if this is supposed to be a joke. It’s not funny, and whoever wrote it needs to be tracked down and, at the least, counseled on how wrong and dangerous this whole line of thinking is. Ewwww.
PZ, go pet the cat. She’ll enjoy it, and it’ll help you to detox.
Some brain bleach for those who need it:
http://i.imgur.com/S1keDm1.jpg
You know what, PZ? You are 100% correct. I’m sorry I said that my poe-sense was tingling, because it really doesn’t matter.
I guess… I guess I can’t cope with that idea that there are people out there who actually think like this. I think I just desperately want it to be a joke. At least then, if it is a joke, it’s not from someone who actually thinks this way, but from someone with perhaps the shittiest possible sense of humor. Either way it’s disgusting, disturbing, and unforgivable, but I guess, for me, it helps to believe that this is a joke and not sincere.
So I apologize. I was wrong for including that.
Seriously PZ? A Poe is satire. Here’s a definition of satire:
“the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues”
Satire is the very opposite of “hateful, stupid shit”. How can you label a text that way and claim it is irrelevant whether or not it is satire?
The existence of poorly executed satire does not in any way change the fact that satire, in principle, is well-meaning and often effective. And the fact that this particular piece of satire (assuming that’s what it is) was poorly executed does not mean its author should be treated as a pariah.
Thinking further on this, whether or not the person who wrote it believes what they wrote, they still sat down and wrote it. And then emailed it to PZ, with no disclaimer (not that one would have made the content less terrible). That in itself it is pretty fucking bad. That they had on the top of their heads all of the most vile reasoning for rape, and that they felt compelled to share them. Just. I don’t know. Not cool.
Looks like this guy (I’m just going to assume that the sender is a guy…) is from Germany, sorry for that.
E-Plus is one of our big mobile telephone service providers, does this just mean that he sent the E-Mail from his mobile phone, or could he be working for them?
#2 NateHevens: I don’t think the ‘real’ Ardent Atheists are involved in this, I see no reason why they would use a german E-Mail address.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a Poe. The point of Poe’s law is that no matter how stupid, or sick your joke is, someone will take it for gospel. Even if this clown wrote it as a joke, (which I doubt) someone, somewhere is nodding there head in vigorous agreement.
Saying it’s a Poe is just trying to diminish the ugliness of the statement. This shit is sick, and the guy who wrote it needs to be examined.
I said what i did in my firsy comment because the thought of a human bieing rationally thinking that up makes me want to just give up.
Looking at the IP address and the related mail server, it seems that whoever did this simply registered for an Email address at http://web.de and then sent their Email using the website’s browser interface for Email. And those could, but often don’t, include the IP of the user sending an Email – they rather use the IP of the server.
If anyone feels the need to pursue this, the next step would be to contact web.de directly with the header information, as the originating IP can always be found in their server logs. But that’s not something they are likely to give out unless you have some kind of formal, legal complaint. The best manageable in this kind of situation is point out a breach in their terms of services (assuming they have one that finds using their services to spread this kind of hateful content objectionable), and get the sender’s Email account disabled. But this is worth nothing considering how easy it is to create a new account.
If it’s satire, it’s shitty satire because you can’t tell it from the shitstains who really do think of women as a separate category than people. And it still reminds some of us that there are people who think like this.
You know what’s the worst part of this for me? Being completely unsurprised. Rape is used as a corrective tool and punishment all. the. time. That’s rape culture and someone writing it out instead of just going along with society’s assumption makes no difference.
Prison rape jokes? “Real men’ raping lesbians to straighten them out? Family members and partners “teaching” you? Punishment for trying to out in the world like a human being?
It’s there, it’s always there and it’s real. We deal with these fuckers all the time, why is anyone surprised?
Then again, I’ve been a victim of this kind of rape (explicitly) so…
… Not to mention that the most appropriate person to contact the host (the most entitled to feedback) would be the receiver of the Email (sorry, PZ).
konrad –
a) that’s a hell of an assumption and
b) do I really need to say this? All together now…intent isn’t magic.
A good piece of satire has humour (none in this example) and/or parodies the ostensible position in more subtle ways than just ‘being incredibly offensive’. This execrable bit of writing fails entirely.
Why is everyone hung up on declaring it satire? There’s nothing to indicate that it is and what’s the goddamn point of doing so?
Declaring it bad satire just makes you feel better so you can go back to ignoring that this is really what people think instead of just confronting it as the problem it is.
Congratulations, you great allies you!
*sigh*
Fuck this, I can’t do it.
My gut feeling is that the writer is serious, but knows their attitudes aren’t well accepted. I suspect they really have a problem dealing with women, and being super-aggressive makes it simple to deal with in their *minds*.
Was that from Dawkins’ second email account?
Duckbilled Platypus @34:
Oh, this E-Mail absolutely violates their terms of service.
https://agb.web.de/registrierungspflichtig/AGB/20130108/ under point 7.6.
Basically you’re prohibited from sending massages which are offensive, discriminatory, glorify violence or incite hatred against parts of society.
Sadly you’re right about the easiness of creating a new account.
My sincere regrets and apologies to JAL in particular and everyone in general for getting hooked into the Poe/satire derail. It was entirely inappropriate.
Clearly, men should have no restraints, and women should know nothing but restraints and violation. Proper roles, what?
Sick, sick, sick.
re konrad @29:
“Poe is satire”, I think not. Poe’s Law is: “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.”
.
And then everyone else, myself included, confuses: sarcasm & satire. I think Carol Burnett, on Colbert, said, “sarcasm is saying the exact opposite of what you really mean to say, i.e. lying for humorous effect.”
I tried to read this email’s points as merely sarcasm of all the rape outrage, but that didn’t work. Even if xe was trying to be sarcastic, he’s put too much effort into sounding like a rapist, so the only conclusion can be: he is disgusting. Too bad the banhammer can’t bop him specifically.
This really makes me want to throw up. Arguing that what is bad for women is good for society is saying that we are separate from society. We aren’t people; we’re some substructure of society that supports the “real people” to get on with building civilization. We’re just beasts of burden that are useful as long as we stay out of the way.
It doesn’t matter if this was meant to be satire. Even if it was, it likely wasn’t trying to point out how messed up misogynists are. It was probably a “let’s piss off feminists and laugh about it” joke. And that’s if it was a joke. I’ve seen absolutely serious blogs argue that self esteem is bad for women (because it turns them into boner-killers or something), and no, I will not dig them up or link to them. I’ve seen enough disgusting shit for the day, and I think it’s time for curling up with the cats and letting their purrs bleach my mind of that awful email.
Posting the header information is recklessly irresponsible. If you are concerned you should have contacted the police or people who are able to use this information responsibly. What were you wanting to achieve by posting this on a public forum? I hope this is somebody making a poor joke but if this is somebody trying to taunt somebody or worse then you have played directly into their hands.
As for the contents of the email, it is disturbing even to think that this was a joke. That is not something you want to read outside of a Stephen King book. An illustration of what victims of on-line harassment go though and another marker to the depths of depravity humans can sink to.
Why? You are looking at the method, rather than the message. PZ retains the right to publish any information he considers pertainent with such an e-mail.
Show with third party evidence that going the the police will result in anything but a file marked “shred in X months” is generated.
kallyfudge, #47
And tell the police what?
Saad, #49
I forgot to mention, this guy isn’t just breaking web.de’s terms of service with this E-Mail, I think he’s also breaking german law, though I don’t know how, if at all, this kind of thing would be punished.
Satire is only effective when it’s clearly satire. The point of all writing is to convey a message. If the message you convey is the OPPOSITE of your intended message … the writing has failed.
Just because this sounds like some other satirical writing and is UNBELIEVABLY offensive doesn’t make it satire. You can hope that the intent was satirical, but given that we live in a rape culture, that hope may be dashed.
Also…the person who sent it might actually have mistaken the previous ‘version’ for non-satire. How many conservatives don’t get that the Colbert Report is satire? They sometimes use the show to prove points. Mind boggling but it happens.
I think the satire/non-satire debate is moot.
What would the police do? PZ was harassed by David Mabus for years and notified all sorts of police from his local police force to the FBI and RCMP. The results of the notifications were zip point shit. Literally nothing happened. What do you think the police will do in regards to this email? Does the word “nothing” mean anything to you?
You’re absolutely right, kallyfudge. The email presented in the OP is clearly in violation of the Don’t Write Or Send Shitty, Rapetastic Email section of the US Criminal Code, and must therefore be handled in a manner fully consistent with all relevant sections of said Criminal Code…
Oh. Wait. There is, in fact, no such thing as a “Don’t Write Or Send Shitty, Rapetastic Email” section of the US Criminal Code. Hmm. So… how come you want PZ to “contact the police”, kallyfudge? Which law (or laws) do you imagine this email to violate, that you think the cops even can or should do anything about said email, or its author? It is a puzzlement…
It’s a Poe!
Please tell me that it’s a Poe! T_T
Ok, humanity, fuck you.
cubist, the E-Mail was sent from Germany and while it maybe doesn’t violate US law, it does violate german law, since it is illegal here to glorify violence in writing (and I’m pretty sure rape counts as violence). Our speech isn’t quite as free as yours, and I think that’s a good thing.
F.O. @54
Read PZ’s post @16.
Don’t call it a comeback.
Good for you, PZ.
Satire doesn’t work unless there’s a context that helps show it’s satire, even if it’s something as simple as knowing a person’s true beliefs. This e-mail lacks that context, so it doesn’t matter if the writer was trying to satirise sexist bullshit.
Nate,
You know Dave Futrelle posts about men saying this stuff every day. Reconsider.
Says a man who has never called the police and had them brush him off.
Come down to Earth, Sweetie. The air is thicker down here and I think your brain needs the oxygen.
Society being this numinous thing that’s completely independent of the people in it, seeing as something that is not good at all for women and for the men who aren’t rapists is “good for society” somehow.
Sorry, Nate. I will write, “I will not threadrupt 25 times”.
Even if it’s a poor attempt at satire it’s sick.
the E-mail was sent to PZ with the only obvious effect of just pissing him off. There was clearly nothing funny either in the sentiment nor the words used. PZ did not ask for it and once he got it he can do what he wants with it. He chose to share it with everyone and further help the sender share his ideas with everyone by posting the header
that sounds very just and equitable to me. If you do not want this kind of reaction on PZ’s part do not send him inflammatory hateful crap send it some where else.
try thunderfoot maybe
uncle frogy
Jackie the Social Justice Wizzard @59
I can’t say enough how much I value David Futrelle’s work We Hunted the Mammoth
Keeping up with misogynistic BS is necessary but painful. I couldn’t wade through the cesspools he braves.
kallyfudge #47
Are you new to the internet?
diana6815,
Right? If I could, I’d send him a ball pit full of cuddly kittens.
Jackie the Social Justice Wizzard @67
hear, hear :-)
@kallyfudge
Michael Nugent, is that you? Are you complaining again about PZ posting hand grenade posts again? Are you suggesting PZ call the email sender and sit down and discuss Xe’s position on rape in order to understand motive before posting something as disgusting as full header information? Let’s protect more rapey rapist, please.
Won’t someone think about the rapists?!?!?!?!?!?!
*shed single tear*
I swear I’ve read this before… I mean the exact wording. A few weeks ago.
I wonder if this is one of those things being spread around?
(I really don’t feel like googling any phrases to try to find out)
Jafafa Hots: See my comment at 17.
Here’s another search result for exact phrasing that only turned up this post:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22.+Ashamed+women+with+low+self-esteem+are+way+easier+to+control%22&oq=%22.+Ashamed+women+with+low+self-esteem+are+way+easier+to+control%22&aqs=chrome..69i57.1710j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=0&ie=UTF-8#q=%22.+Ashamed+women+with+low+self-esteem+are+way+easier+to+control%22&filter=0
IF you read it elsewhere, it didn’t use the exact wording as this one.
To those defending the “it’s a Poe” analysis and whining about posting the header information: there is no meaningful difference between thinking it’s funny to send emails that appear to advocate rape and ACTUALLY advocating rape.
This is the very definition of trolling.
Sending a well known feminist a “rational discussion” of how rape is actually good?!
As Chris Carter would say.. “C’mon man!”
You’ve just given the troll all he could ever want.
Remember that time The Onion decided to satirise the way women who are actors are discussed in the media and ended up writing a tweet using an extremely offensive term to describe an 8 year old?
The excuse “it was satire” did not wash, as I recall.
I can’t read ‘We hunted the mammoth’ most days. The hatred is too disturbing.
As PZ said, you know, when you read the words ‘rational’ and analyse’, you are not going to see anything of the sort.
Good work to the people able to identify the IP.
Jeff S:
*facepalm*
Really? Are you really gonna give us “don’t feed the trolls” B.S.?
Why should we be any kinder to the perpetrators of incompetent satire than we are to the perpetrators of incompetent medicine or incompetent engineering?
I am curious about what magical divination method people use to determine something it just trolling, or, must be a “poe” (plenty of other people in the comments have pointed out how ridiculous that explanation is and how useless the term is).
As for satire, well, I really wish a lot of people would stop trying to attempt it. They do not understand satire and confuse it with stating outlandish, horrible statements and miss out on creating actual, satirical components. Good biting satire can be a wonderful thing but few seem capable of creating it.
But not something that the applicant-for-secession-from-the-human-species responsible should face any CONSEQUENCES for, mind. That would be IRRESPONSIBLE.
Fuck you.
Seven of Mine @73
QFMFT!
I personally can’t tell if it’s a shitty disgusting “joke” or a shitty disgusting masturbatory fantasy. It’s overlong for a joke and not funny, so I tend to think the person’s motive was to dwell on sexual assault for their own amusement and / or to discomfit others (and to push the boundaries of Freeze Peach 4chan style).
My sniffer sniffs out a bit of the worst MRAs quoted (and ridiculed) on WeHuntedTheMammoth and some 4chan ‘edginess’ (ick) and a bit of a sophmoric whiff of the frathouse. I could easily believe that a 19 year old wrote this as a hazing punishment at the behest of his frat. But a frat where reading MRA sites and subreddits is something many of the guys do.
(No, I’m not an FBI profiler, I’m just spoofing one. I hear they aren’t very accurate either. I’ll add “white male, under 30, with a low paying job, likes to talk a lot.)
You know, actually, I think real free speech would be completely unharmed by a broad provision forbidding advocacy or threats of rape. In fact, as we’ve seen recently it’d be stronger for it.
The content of that email is not even worth considering. Its purely designed to get a reaction.
By all means if you can identify the troll that would be awesome. Ive got no problems with PZ posting the headers. Its completely fair game.
However in cases like this I do think the best thing to do is to ignore it. It’s not worth getting upset about it. Hopefully it doesn’t upset anyone.
Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) @82
I hate that threats only merit action AFTER they are acted upon…that is to say, if you assault or kill someone, AND you threatened to do so beforehand, the cops will charge you with something slightly worse (because it wasn’t spur of the moment … you had ‘intent’).
Granted, a threat can get you a protection order, but the cops have to get to your home before the person hurts or kills you for that to be at all helpful. AND protection orders don’t really work for online threats (I guess a court can order you not to post on someone’s FB or email them … I heard it was done in a domestic abuse case — can’t remember which, but again … what’s the point?)
This is NOT ok. Threats imprison people with fear. They never have to be acted on to do harm. We need to address that reality.
Jeff S,
Did you read the email? Did you mean to say, “Hopefully this is upsetting to everyone”? Because it should be. It is really upsetting. And we should be upset. We should not be complacent about such attitudes and ideas, because that is what perpetuates them. I think you are way off point here.
Jeff S #83
Are you new to the Internets?
seriously?
I had that feeling too for the first few lines. Then by the time I’d read more than halfway through, the feeling diluted into everyday disappointed disgust. I think anteprepro’s got it. Somewhere, someone has started this shit avalanche rolling and it’s turning up in various guises in various places. But the initial push is sort of lost in the larger turmoil.
Jeff S @ 83
Fuck off. When the fuck are you going to stop thinking you have the right to tell other people what to care about? When are you going to realize that people who’ve been neck deep in this shit for yearsa, if not their entire lives, might know more about it than your ignorant, privileged ass? Go the fuck away.
Hey Jeff S.
If you think plenty of men do not believe and promote this sort of misogyny than you are willfully ignorant. The only reason you believe that is because you discount everything women and their allies have been telling you.
You can fuck right off.
This shit is documented.
If you think bullies and abusers want anything other than to watch their targets endure pain in silence, you haven’t had much experience with bullies and abusers. You just love to provide them cover, though. Don’t you? You have nothing critical to say about what they do, only how their targets respond. I see which side you support. Don’t play like you are on the side of the angels, assbutt. You’re transparent. You’re sexist as fuck.
*then*
balls.
sez jeff s: “You’ve just given the troll all he could ever want.”
You must be new to Pharyngula, jeff s. This is a rude blog whose commentariat feeds trolls. No: Pharyngula doesn’t just feed trolls, it force-feeds them—feeds trolls until they projectile vomit, after which the Horde intubates trolls’ esophagi with specially-designed feeding tubes that have fast-acting valves on the ‘business end’ so that the projectile-vomited excreta does not and cannot interfere with the Srs Bsnss of feeding the ever-lovin’ bejeezus out of trolls. Pharyngula straps trolls into a special Feasting Chair, with a hollow ball-gag thru which molecularly-balanced GMO Food-Like Substance™ With 100% RDA Of All Necessary Nutrients is insinuated into their system; the Feasting Chair also has those weird wire clip-thingies to keep the eyelids from closing (like in Clockwork Orange), and massive subcutaneous injections of the aforementioned Food-Like Substance™.
“Don’t feed the trolls” has already been proven to Not Work, so “Feed those troll bastards until they frickin’ explode” just might be worth a try, hm?
Networks beginning with 10.whatever are from the non-routable IP address range; the .de address is a free mail service (a la gmail) Since the 10.- network is where the message originated, it appears that the connection was tunneled through TOR. Whoever did this made some effort to conceal their tracks, and did so successfully – a backtrack would require national-level secret handshakes (i.e.: FBI would have to ask the German secret police, that kind of stuff)
Cowardly douchebag is good at covering tracks, which means that it knows it’s being a cowardly douchebag.
Jeff S @83
Fuck you. You’re never going to be on the receiving end of misogyny, so you don’t get to tell anyone else how to respond to this.
How dense are you? You’re always doing this, trotting out bullshit about what people (women in particular – you know the actual victims of these attitudes) should be concerned about. Or is it that you are in fact trolling? Either way, you’re disgusting.
More brain bleach.
http://imgs.abduzeedo.com/files/articles/baby-animals/Baby-Animals-042.jpg
http://www.iwallscreen.com/stock/awesomely-cute-baby-animals.jpg
http://media.techeblog.com/images/cute-baby-husky.jpg
https://31.media.tumblr.com/78afda6670863de85ecd02a605af7540/tumblr_inline_nb2vajADvy1syspg5.jpg
I know I’m now running the risk of over-apologizing, so I’ll be careful. But I do want to say that I’m sorry again. I started the Poe/Satire thing, and I really wish I hadn’t.
And JAL… I really am sorry to you, as well. I should never have gone there and I did. It was a big mistake.
Jackie @59… I know. I guess I just… it’s too much sometimes. It really is. And I often feel lost and don’t know what to do.
Reading this email just… I… gah. It’s not fucking worth it. This sick shit… this more nightmare-inducing than any horror movie or creepy-pasta or whatever… and then it doesn’t help that I’m privileged enough that I don’t ever have to worry about it being more than nightmare, which just makes it worse.
I need brain bleach. I think we all need it. Have this cute koala drinking water:
But we were told in the Nekkid Lady Shirt threads that standards are totally different in Germany and that German women don’t feel threatened by any of this ‘sexism’ stuff. Remember?
Jesus fuck. Fighting the urge to Dettol my flaptop screen. And eyes and brain.
I can’t tell! At first glance, I would have sworn that this was some Jonathan Swift style “A Modest Proposal” thing, where the writer attempts to point out villainy by using a horrific argument.
But… do such people like this exist? I hate to say it but realistically they probably do, and they’re all rapists themselves.
It makes all the difference in the world. On the one hand, if it was intended as some sort of anti-rape screed, the writer needs to be informed it was in bad taste and not obvious what their intention was, and to work on their delivery (or stop trying altogether). If it’s genuine… I just don’t want that person to ever know true happiness in their life, ever again, as they get locked in a room with every fear and insecurity they’ve ever had.
Cubist @ 91
Your response was, without a doubt, the highlight of my day. Thank you for that.
@94, NateHevens.
Ah, that’s better. Nothing like a koala to cleanse the ol’ not-soul. My dear ma worked for a long time at Cleland Conservation Park (only a half hour from where that video was filmed) as a koala handler. As a result I’ve always had a soft spot for them (especially the babies. Ridiculously adorable).
FYI all & sundry: drinking is not normal koala behaviour. Most of their water requirements are taken care of by their diet of young eucalyptus leaves and they spend most of their lives aloft in trees. During hot spells however (no shortage of those in South Australia; we regularly top 40 C/105 F during summer and we get bugger-all rain) they’ll descend to look for water – that, and if they happen to be on the ground changing trees, they won’t turn down a free drink (like any Australian). Must’ve been a hot one in that video.
Back on topic (because I could talk about marsupials all bloody day): Poe, not Poe, who gives a rank shit? What it is, whether “genuine” or not, is hate speech. The writer deserves to be named and shamed – and perhaps have their general location made public so as to make it easy to avoid them. I, for one, don’t want to be around someone that would write that shit and then choose to send it to someone, regardless of whether they believe it wholeheartedly or just think it’s fucking funny. There need to be consequences for acting like a hateful little fuckwit, even “as a joke”.
I read diana6815‘s article that she posted in #12, and then saw Jeff S posting his garbage about not feeding trolls. And then I thought about all the other ways that society tries to get people who are treated badly to shut up…
Don’t feed the trolls? I would rather learn to either feed them poison, or find an analog to overfeeding them until they burst. I would like to see a world where people actually want to find out who does things like this and publicly shame them. That sort of thing only happens by spreading news about situations like this. Even if it is a poe, we get confused by them for a reason that makes them valid subjects of outrage.
Fuck you Jeff.
I don’t care what the motivations of the sender were
1. That’s pretty irrelevant because unlike the shit that’s there I can’t see them
2. There are three scenarios I can think of
A) The writer means it, in which case they’re a disgusting misogynistic piece of shit
B) The writer wanted to troll PZ and the HOrde, which means the writer does not consider women to be human beings who are actually affected by that shit every day and who therefore didn’t think they (most likely he, but we know there are a few women out there who are equally hateful) should not have to put up with being dehumanised, in which case they’re a disgusting misogynistic piece of shit
C) The writer thought this was funny satire, which means the writer does not consider women to be human beings who are actually affected by that shit every day and who therefore didn’t think they (most likely he, but we know there are a few women out there who are equally hateful) should not have to put up with being dehumanised, in which case they’re a disgusting misogynistic piece of shit .
3. All those of you who are more concerned for whatever disgusting misogynistic piece of shit who wrote this than for the actual victims of gendered violence: Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
I’m not convinced. The 10.whatever addresses are in the top-most Received lines, indicating they are part of the intranet which routed it to poopyhead.
Received lines are usually prepended, so you have to read them in reverse order to find the originating IP. (Check the dates, notice the older dates are on the later lines.) Doing that reverse-order reading, the originating IP (assuming its not spoofed and so on) is 46.114.141.235 which belongs to an ISP(? cellphone provider?) in Germany (E-Plus Mobil), and is described as “IPv4 addresses dynamic assigned to mobil devices”.
The implication then is this was sent by an E-Plus Mobil subscriber from a mobile device, and sent from Germany.
dark jaguar @ 97,
If you think that hate-filled screed bears any resemblance to Swift you need to do more reading, good reading. I recommend about 20 years locked in a library, preferably the library of a European university – the sort where you could examine real satire, about 2000 years of it.
Satire requires real linguistic skill (not present) and sufficient grasp of how the audience already thinks and may feel (sometimes known as empathy) in order to draw the reader into the game and get that person at least a third of the way into the piece before they realise that someone is playing games with their mind. This doesn’t qualify, even as stand-up comedy – which can be pretty crude and ill-thought-through.
Every “argument” in that disgusting email has been raised here – though usually surrounded with vast layers of “um, arrh, sort-of” and “yes, but” to cushion the ego of the nonsense-speaker. Each one as it has been raised has been shot down in flames.
The more percipient of those still trying to hedge their bets, to give the writer the benefit of the doubt, let alone “correct” PZ’s behaviour, might care to note the little announcement – just below the bright yellow DONATE button – that PZ reserves the right to post full details of any email threatening violence. It’s been there for years.
And quite a few of you should be ashamed of yourselves.
I never seem to understand the inability to understand the reply ” no” it is simple.
Is it wrong of me to want to hurt this person? And i mean hurt like in hospitalize. Fuck.
Where is the all-seeing eye of the NSA when they could actually be useful and worth their salt for once?
Here’s yet another piece of evidence that misogyny and rape culture is very, very far from just an American problem (in the Western world). It’s endemic in the heart of supposedly more enlightened and progressive Europe. In Germany, which is reputed to be significantly more left-leaning than the US. But don’t let that reputation fool you: Germany has a huge reservoir of far-right idiots, including outright Neo-Nazis, and a large part of the populace agrees with them on various points. Knee-jerk vilification of political positions viewed as “overly leftist” is very common.
Even though explicit Nazism and its advocacy is effectively outlawed in Germany, the womb it crawled from is still going strong in its heartland, and these days, epigones are more likely to be atheist than anything else (few view themselves as Christian, but many embrace, or at least welcome, neopagan and esoteric beliefs and practices). They include large numbers of very active and assertive women, but again, don’t let that fool you: They hate feminism too. (After all, it’s a perfidious Jewish invention.) Sadly, many (perhaps most) other Germans agree: anti-(straw-)feminism is a very mainstream sentiment in this country, among the religious and non-religious alike. So no, I’m not the least bit surprised to see something this vile come from a German address.
The sender may not identify with Neo-Nazism or the far right, they might have done it “just for the lulz”, but their disturbing mindset is very much in the same vein.*
(The newest “wave” of antifeminist backlash is a considerably more international phenomenon than you might think. Especially in Germany it’s sadly pretty big, or at least vocal. But as Susan Faludi and others have shown, the backlash phenomenon is old and the basic patterns repetitive with little variation. It’s really just dudebros panicking, fearing for their threatened privileges to be arseholes, there’s nothing more to it.)
Why it is impossible to read this as satire is obvious: as others have pointed out, this way to think is common as dirt. It’s not actually extreme at all. Quite unlike feminists who seriously wish to cut off men’s balls (although individuals like this one make the wish very understandable). I doubt that such feminists even exist (although experience teaches that adherents can be found for every absurd idea, I haven’t encountered any in this case). Sure, there are those who call the kind of liberal feminism dominating FtB “fun-fem”, and they don’t think highly of men, and male-bodied trans people, in general, but even they are not like that.
@61 vaiyt:
L’état, c’est moi. Society consists only of rich cis/het able-bodied white men, i. e., “polite society”, everybody else can shut up and shine society’s shoes or whatever. These are Untermenschen and they’re completely disposable and irrelevant. The Dawkins class – the intellectual élite – makes its own morals, as befits the Übermensch.
Hey, religious fundies, you’re right. The hatetheists are exactly like you describe them. Because they’re exactly like you, they just worship themselves in a different guise (“objectivity”, hence Objectivism).
*Self-identification with the far right is rare thanks to the stigma it has rightfully acquired, of course, but that means it makes more sense to examine if a person’s beliefs, words and actions align with the far right in practice regardless of their self-image. So I see no problem in calling out people for falling in line with it, including people who identify themselves as left-wing or even far left, since these stances do have some widely agreed-on meanings. This also resolves the horseshoe paradox: If a, say, a Stalin or GDR apologist’s behaviour and beliefs of what states should be run like in practice substantially coincide with those of the far right, there is little point in accepting them as part of a left-wing movement. They clearly do not have the same ideals as the rest of the left wing. When Nazism, Juche, dominionist theocracy, neo-reactionary, anarcho-capitalist and even radical-vegan utopias end up agreeing on so many central points and converging on essentially the same kind of quasi-religious dictatorship/plutocracy, we have a distinction without difference on our hands. That’s why I strongly disagree with those who dismiss the left-right distinction as unimportant, as it is often a self-serving and dishonest ploy to avoid tainting by the association with infamous dictatorships. It’s also the reason why people who bash anything associated with left-wing politics, whether due to uninformed prejudice or consciously reflected ideology, should not be allowed to get away with denial: if you agree with far-right stances and concepts, you’re not actually “centrist”, “moderate”, or even “progressive” or “leftist” – it’s that weaselly question-begging and protesting too much which has created confusion about the labels.
I’m with comment 101.
That guy probably has committed the equivalent of a felony under German law. Unfortunately, it probably won’t be easy to pin it on him.
In theory, you need to provide legal ID to purchase a SIM card in Germany, however, this isn’t strictly enforced with prepaid accounts. And E-Plus sells a lot of these.
blf:
Yep. Google use 10. within their network. That topmost ‘received’ header, and the ‘x-received’ one, are entirely typical for mail received by gmail, as anyone with a gmail account can verify for themselves.
The tone of this part
sounds to me very much like the sarcastic agreement with absurdly wrong claims, in the way typical for satire. A few years ago, I would have thought this was a dead giveaway and the e-mail’s sender needs to be told that their attempt at humour went horribly wrong. Since then I’ve read enough MRA writings to realise that some people actually write this kind of over-the-top bullshit and mean it.
Marcus @ 92
There’s exactly one thing you got right here: The 10.0.0.0/8 network is reserved for private use by RFC1918. Unfortunately, the headers don’t show 10.0.0.0/8 as the origin network of the message; they show it as its final destination, implying that Google uses that network for its GMail servers. The actual origin is 46.114.141.235/32, which is designated as “received via HTTP”, meaning web submission. Tor does not use the private region for its routing; indeed, it could not work if Tor exits used private addresses. 46.114.141.235/32 is not an active Tor relay – meaning the submission did not come directly from Tor. If it did pass through Tor, then the submitter went through some sort of VPN afterwards – which just doesn’t make sense.
On the subject of “a Poe”, I don’t see how the term itself is unhelpful. What is unhelpful is the tendency to use it to say “oh, but it’s not real, it’s parody” when the default really should be “holy crap, even if that’s parody it’s too easy to confuse for the real thing so cut it out!”
And a last thing (quote from the email coming up):
Being in this “totally sexually frustrated” category myself, and having had to cope with comments along the lines of “you need to get laid” from way too many people, I find this segment of the mail to be rather disturbing. It fits pretty well in with the dismissal of Blanc and his ilk as only appealing to “pathetic lonely men with poor social skills”. Not only is it an attempt at victim-blaming (“women have themselves to blame, if they didn’t ignore us we wouldn’t have to abuse them”) but it’s also an attempt at deflecting responsibility for rape culture. “This isn’t something the cool kids do,” it says. “It’s the losers, the people society already deems inferior who are responsible.”
Right, because that’s the reason high profile men in positions of power use social settings to seek out victims. Uh-huh.
(And just to be absolutely clear: I’m not even pretending this is what’s most wrong here. It’s just an aspect of it that I noticed that I don’t think others have mentioned.)
This is not “a Poe,” unless Poe’s Law has changed meanings lately. This is a good old fashioned TROLL. And one that’s working marvelously well, at that, given how many people have risen to this obvious bait. Everyone here knows the old saying: “Don’t Feed The Trolls.” And yet…
Everyone here knows the phrase, “Jesus loves you,” and yet…
I swear the next idjit who recites that fallacious cliche, “don’t feed the trolls,” is going to get kicked. It’s been recited as dogma for years, and it has never worked.
Tell me, Radium Coyote @ 112, how to you imagine that these destructive ideas get passed on from generation to generation? Do you thinks it might be because Person A spews hate speech and a whole crowd of supposedly mature people rush to his defence while further maligning his targets?
Besides, you know what the troll policy is here – feed ’em until they burst and lose no opportunity to bring their stupidity / malice / whatever to the attention of people who have some sense. How many people reply to complaints with “but I need evidence” on a dozen topics? Well, this is evidence.
The electric derail about trolls reminds me of the recent studies indicating that the predominant social characteristic of Internet trolls is sadism. Which does not seem too far away from what this probable criminal is suggesting.
Well, if you read red pill reddit or several of the manosphere blogs this is not a satire/sarcasm, it is entirely in line with one of the lines of thought this sort of scum promotes.
Check the following posts on We Hunted the Mammoth WARNING open descriptions and discussion of rape in quotes used:
Reddit hits a new low with a subreddit promoting the “corrective” rape of “sluts” and “harlots.”
Five Reasons You Should Not Marry, or Date, or Probably Even Live in the Same City With a Fan of Return of Kings
These Men’s Rights Activists and GamerGaters get off — literally — by fantasizing about sexually humiliating feminists.
Jay Smooth has an excellent video entitled “Why I Will Feed Trolls If I Damn Well Want To.”
Radium Coyote @ 112
And yet what? There are lots of sayings everyone knows. So fucking what? Everyone here is an adult perfectly capable of using their own fucking judgment about whether to respond to any particular post, you supercilious jackass.
You think if there’s no response, the author of the email says to themself “well gawsh, nobody reacted, I guess I was wrong about all that rape stuff”? I’d prefer the author be pleased with the attention and know how reprehensible we find xir than be disappointed by a lack of attention but having not been repudiated.
Another way of saying “don’t feed the trolls” is “abuse is the fault of the abused.” That same reprehensible idea is the central thesis of this hateful email.
Ryan Cunningham @119
I couldn’t agree more.
The Jay Smooth video Al Dente linked is a must watch. There are trolls and then there are trolls. There are people who say stupid shit to get a rise out of people and then there are people who say vile, bigoted shit to silence people. Telling people in the latter category to not feed the trolls is SIDING WITH THE FUCKING TROLLS.
Saying shit to get a rise out of people is abusive.
I wonder if they sent that email to other people too. I wonder if Dawkins got one. Probably put it up on his fridge with a Skeptic magazine magnet.
Networks beginning with 10.whatever
Yeah, I got that totally backwards. :( That’ll learn me to try to figure out headers after I’m exhausted and have had a vodka tonic. :( And, embarrassingly enough, I used to teach internet investigation techniques, back in the day. Uff Da!
Exactly. Saying misogynist shit to get a rise out of people is abusive and misogynist. Saying racist shit to get a rise out of people is racist and abusive. Saying ableist shit to get a rise out of people is ableist and abusive.
Trolls aren’t special. They’re just douchebags trying to see if they can get away with being Shrodinger’s douchebag. You want to know what really plays into their bigoted, hateful little hands? Giving them a pass when they claim, after the fact, to be insincere about their bigotry. Or uncaring. Their sincerity or degree of passion on the subject doesn’t matter. Spouting hateful misogyny is spouting hateful misogyny, the end result is the same: women get abused and raped and killed by abusers who feel empowered and supported because of shitstains like the person who wrote this email.
Luckily for us, I think this troll is wrong. Rape isn’t really controversial to most people. They’re against it, just as they are against murder and theft. The controversial part is when misogynists try to define “legitimate rape”, and argue that certain kinds of rape aren’t “real” rape. Even that kind of thing sounds wrong to the mainstream. But this troll is far past that, and is arguing for rape as some kind of bizarro social good. That’s beyond even most misogynists. So congratulations, scumbag, whoever you are. You’re pissed us off but you’re still wrong.
atheist @ 126
I hate saying this, but I’m not sure that’s true. The idea of “it’s only rape in Sweden” got a lot of traction around Julian Assange’s case, well beyond the MRA movement. (I mention that case because to me it was an early appearance of the rabid misogyny of many Internet-centred activists.) The media certainly presented it for a good long while as a possibility, rather than the outright absurdity it was. There’s also a fairly widespread acceptance of the “it was just drunken sex” claim, which is very commonly at least on the edge of being a “not really rape” claim. So although such claims are certainly not taken as gospel, there’s at least enough vestigial controversy that you’re not shown the door the moment you say “well that’s not really real rape”. And, of course, the supporters of such redefinitions are vocal enough that they can manufacture the appearance of controversy even when there is none.
@odin – 22 November 2014 at 11:18 am
What you say makes sense, and I agree. I’m interested in the distance between the sort of “it’s only rape in Sweden”/”legitimate rape” controversy you’re describing, versus our troll’s straightforward insistence that rape is a good thing.
I’m not convinced it’s a Poe. While most MRAs are anti-rape (at least in principle), there are a significant minority who advocate complete legalization.
atheist @ 128
I guess the question is about the definition of ‘mainstream’. And, really, when you look at things like the over 80% support for a single-payer medical insurance system amongst the US population and the complete impossibility of that suggestion politically … which is ‘mainstream’?
hyperdeath @ 129
It’s “a Poe” whether or not its intent is parody. The point of Poe’s law is the indistinguishability of parody and non-parody. That’s also why this is irresponsible and well worthy of censure even if intended as parody.
@odin – 22 November 2014 at 11:43 am
It seems to me that MRA-type views are minority ones, that get inflated by the loudness of their supporters. It seems to me that the numerical majority of people do not agree with such views, and furthermore the authorities mostly agree with this numerical majority. That’s what I mean by “mainstream”. Just as feminism is a social movement which presses from the margins of society into the mainstream, the anti-feminist counter-movement we call “MRA’s” is emanating from a marginal social position and attempting to affect the mainstream.
I understand your point about popular policies that are blocked politically, but I disagree that attitudes toward rape are really political in the same way as single payer. It is also useful to remember that even in nations like Iran or China, the government has to pay attention to public sentiment. Even tyrannical rulers have to deal with the public, if they want to survive.
I would like to propose Ken’s law: If you can’t tell unequivocally that something is satire, then it’s not satire, regardless of the writer’s intent.
I’m really not sure what “mainstream” attitudes to rape are (though research has shown that a disturbingly high fraction of men admit to having committed rape, provided you don’t use the R-word when asking them).
Some years ago, in the village where I had grown up, an estranged husband raped his wife. My mother told me that many men in the village were incredulous when he was charged. It couldn’t be rape, they argued, because a man was entitled to sex with his wife, with or without her consent! I was aghast: I had thought that that view had largely died out. Then I learned that the concept of marital rape had only existed in English law since 1991, not sometime in the 1970s as I would have guessed. That was my privilege speaking: as a guy, I simply hadn’t needed to learn about rape culture, and made the mistake of thinking that attitudes in my lefty metropolitan bubble were the norm. Now, I’m more inclined to shut up and listen to what women have to say on the subject. They live with this shit every day, after all.
The screamingly obvious problem with “Don’t feed the trolls” is this: You can’t starve them to death… They simply get more ravenous until the odious screed becomes the horrific deed. It is a very short hop.
@Morgan!? the Slithy Tove – 22 November 2014 at 1:22 pm
I used to hang out at a blog called “Sadly No!”. Many of the regulars really earnestly tried to ignore the trolls. Long story short, it never worked. The fact is that we comment on blogs in order to have conversations. And a conversation is generally too delicate to survive a speaker who is determined to tear it down. “Don’t feed the trolls” is a losing strategy.
@Moggie – 22 November 2014 at 1:05 pm
Point taken.
Regarding kallyfudge #47:
I smell a concern troll….
I’ve been thinking about the fact that this email came from or was routed through Germany. I just read it again (despite the awful feeling it gives me) to see if there were any signs of whether or not the man is a native English speaker. I think he’s native, I only found a few errors, thats instead of that’s, cant instead of can’t, off instead of of, no capitalization on I as a first person personal pronoun, a few missing periods (full stops). Those could easily just be typos, I find lots of those kind of mistakes in my own messages. He spells analyze with a z, that’s the American spelling, but he spells favour with a u, that’s not usual in American English. He doesn’t write well but he’s not illiterate and is very familiar with current turns of phrase like “I get that” at the end of a sentence. On the other hand, “makes women depart from following their dreams” sounds a bit off. If he isn’t a native speaker, he has probably lived in the English-speaking world at some point and continues to both hear, speak and write English frequently.
Supposing he’s an American living in Germany, he could be stationed on a military base.
Given his opinions or his awful sense of humor, he’s not a regular reader of this site and is probably not a creationist (Christian) either. That means he probably heard of P.Z. through slymepit or gamergate or 4chan circles. What is the international traffic in those circles, does anybody know?
atheist @ 131
Possibly. But as Moggie points out at 133, marital rape is a shockingly recent concept. Considering that an awful lot of diverse groups, including plenty of religious groups and general conservatives, want it done away with again, I honestly think you could consider the subject controversial in “the mainstream”, even going purely by the numbers. And if you go into analysing the political influence at play it probably gets even worse. :/
It would certainly be easier to “fix” the single payer problem than it would be to fix attitudes towards rape. But that doesn’t make the latter “not political”. There is absolutely no question that misogyny is strongly correlated with both other bigotry and certain political views. The fact that in very many other issues the institutions of the state lean strongly towards those political views isn’t coincidental. Put bluntly: The state and its representetives tend to be farther to the right than the people subject to them.
chimera @ 138
What’d be your judgment of my writings? I think there’s enough comments through this thread for you to try it. Just out of curiosity. :)
chimera,
Your analysis seems a bit… far-fetched. To put it generously.
Poe. Gotta be.
Hyperdeath: “here are a significant minority who advocate complete legalization.”
I’m scared to google.
annie55, don’t be afraid to google what poe means.
I thought a Poe meant… that point at which trolling and satire become indistinguishable, so assume satire.
But I just now went and checked out those reddit links, and I feel sick. This is a real thing in the real world.
annie55,
Did you even read the thread?
Not thoroughly…I have now and I am mortified, as much by my ignorance as by what I’m seeing in the wider net.
YES.
Now can those of us who aren’t targeted by them due to our privilege pretty fucking please stop rhetorically asking this? It’s basically like going “I HAVE CANDY AND YOU DON’T :D” to people who don’t have the luxury of not being confronted with their oh-so-very-realness on a daily basis.
I just want to quote,what JAL said on this thread and put it in red fucking blinking lights, but I’m on an iPad so I’ll just say READ what JAL wrote.
ASSHOLE:
Kicks a cat. Posts “I just kicked a cat”.
SATIRE:
Sees someone kick a cat. Sees someone write about eliminating food stamps. Posts “I just kicked a cat; I *work* for my food.”
POE:
Guy reads local newspaper: “public schools are teaching mullycoddlism by having class pets”. Guy reads post: “I just kicked a cat; I *work* for my food.” Thinks “What an asshole.”
TROLL:
Sees someone else kick a cat. Posts “I just kicked a cat”.
JUST ANOTHER ASSHOLE:
A troll who thinks he’s done a poe but for all intents and purposes is really just another asshole.
If ever I was in any doubt that such a thing as evil exists, all I have to do is read that abomination to have all doubt expunged from my mind.
Like PZ @ 16 and JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness @ 39 (among others), I just don’t care if this vile poison represents the earnest opinion of a monstrous rapist or is the incredibly offensive and inept attempt at ‘satire’ from someone very nearly as monstrous – someone who sees the heinous suffering caused by our rape culture and thinks “that’s good for a giggle”. Either way the author of this repugnant drek clearly doesn’t see women as people, or their suffering and violation as harmful to society, but instead sees women as either disposeable sex toys or props for their feeble attempt at ‘comedy’.
Both positions represent a level of hatred and contempt for women that is hard to contemplate. The supposedly ‘satirical’ interpretation really does nothing to reduce the toxic character of the email – since when did treating rape as a fit topic for humour (calling this humour is being altogether too generous) become acceptable? Or at the minimum some kind of easily dismissable lesser evil? It is still dehumanising, and it is still misogynistic. Throwing up one’s hands and saying “it’s all just a joke; can’t you take a joke?” doesn’t make it any better. In some ways it makes it worse.
Morgan!? the Slithy Tove wrote:
Most are even happy with dominating a conversation be repeatedly posting their screeds throughout a thread, or scaring off the more regular posters by abusing them. Ignoring trolls may work for the “look-at-me!” types, but there are far more types of trolls out there than those. Aggressively banning sometimes works, but it’s a pretty big task. Since most trolls want the existing commenters to take them seriously, it seems that dismissive ridicule works on all but the most persistent varieties, as well.
ck
Yes, this person sent their screed to PZ’s email, not a public forum. This is an obvious harassment technique, not simply “look-at-me” trolling. Also, who wants to bet PZ is not the only feminist who received this email? How many women received it? How many survivors of sexual violence? I doubt this harassment is isolated to just PZ (not that it’d be ok if it was).
To be honest, I feel much better thinking that this is a troll rather than real.
If real, my brain goes into full cognitive breakdown.
If troll, I can process it as a pathetic imbecile that makes fun of a problem that hurts countless people, eventually diminishing it.
On not feeding the trolls: I have no experience on this so I have to defer to those that have more, but regardless the ensuing discussion has been interesting.
The problem with posting such information is..
” there is no verified digital signature, so it could be someone spoofing someone else’s email address”
as pointed out by PZ.
What tends to happen when you post such information on a high profile blog is harassment from an uninformed lynch mob of whomever they perceive sent the email. If PZ received a letter with a return address with such vitriol inside would he post the return address on-line? I would expect not.
@ 60 “Says a man who has never called the police and had them brush him off.
Come down to Earth, Sweetie. The air is thicker down here and I think your brain needs the oxygen.”
I have actually, but it hasn’t made me support lynch justice.
Most of the other comments based on what I said, I think I am answering by repeating that my criticism on PZ was only in that he broadcast the return address. I have nothing against publishing the message itself, but publishing the non verifiable return address is a recipe for disaster.
I respect PZ but when you are wrong you are wrong. I promise to carry on criticising you PZ, I am sure you are quaking in your boots…
p.s. @ 69 “Michael Nugent, is that you? Are you complaining again about PZ posting hand grenade posts again? Are you suggesting PZ call the email sender and sit down and discuss Xe’s position on rape in order to understand motive before posting something as disgusting as full header information? Let’s protect more rapey rapist, please.”
err.. no i am the person behind the person you think it is, manipulating this web of lies that the sheep take for granted as being the truth. or some such perversion of reality that fits your liking..
Yawn, you have no evidence.
What lynch justice? No link, no evidence, dismissed as fuckwittery.
Since you are wrong, are you quaking in your boots?
Who gave you permission to define reality except for your own delusions? No evidence, so dismissed as such.
PSA (this is so easy)
Doing this
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
Results in this
It makes comments with quotes easier to read.
It is also good form to address commenters by name.
Name and number is good, too.
You need something more than Comic Sans to represent that post. Perhaps Zalgo text?
Why do assholes like kallyfudge label criticism as “lynch mob justice”? Don’t assholes like kallyfudge recognize the difference between people being angry at a different asshole (yes, kallyfudge, you’re not the only asshole posting on the intertubes) and people hanging someone? Do assholes like kallyfudge have the slightest acquaintance with reality?
@ F. O.
Distinction without a difference, yo.
kallyfudge, #153
What lynch justice, you stupid fuck?
If I knew who wrote that email, I’d treat him like an asshole too. And I’d make others aware of it so they can start doing it too.
Also, is expressing that rape is good a crime? What the fuck would PZ tell the police? And which police?
The writing style reminds me so much of the stuff on http://shitmystudentswrite.tumblr.com/. I can only imagine that the person who wrote this either is, or has the mentality of, a socially maladjusted twelve year-old boy.
Lynch mobs: For when histronic comparisons to Witch Hunts and Thought Police just aren’t inflammatory enough.
Lynch mobs, for when they want to demonstrate with prima facie evidence that they indulge in hyperbole that has no basis in reality, which means they lie and bullshit. And if they lie and bullshit, why shouldn’t everything they say be subject to the highest skepticism, and essentially dismissed unless they provide third party evidence to back up their claims. Until you do that kallyfudge, there is no reason to believe or consider any unevidenced assertion you make as any reasonable argument. Your choice cricket, but if you have a point, evidence it, rather than trying for an argument for you being ridiculous.
I know quite a few twelve year-old boys.
They don’t talk like this.
This is the territory of adults.
The only thing the police take more seriously than the act of rape itself is the allegation by a calm citizen that somewhere someone thinks rape is good.
Are we lynching people with our words again?
Oh. That’s too bad.
Funny how we’re always “lynching” misogynists and yet, no one ever get’s mutilated and murdered. That’s a strange sort of lynching. It’s almost like it’s just talking back to (most often) white men, but apparently it’s really terrorism/abuse/nazi/inquisition/lynching.
The more you know…
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s–X92yasgX–/191aja41ifsj6gif.gif
That’s your privilege, isn’t it FO? Forgive me for the dorky paraphrasing but…
You merely adopted the dark. Huge swaths of humanity were born in it.
Me too. There are plenty of things that my privilege kept me having to experience or even notice.
You’ll adjust and you can feel a little bit proud of yourself for that. Faced with a reality they do not want to accept and do not have to accept, scads of people will choose anger at minorities and denial of their experiences over acceptance.
You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of when I was a true believer. When I first let go of magical thinking after a lifetime of being trained to believe in supernatural stuff and to fear existence without it, I was uncomfortable. I wanted to believe that I’d be reunited with my departed loved ones again. I wanted to believe I was loved, guided and cared for by a wise and benevolent creator. But I wanted to know the truth more. I did and I got to re-grieve all my dead loved ones, because for the first time they were really dead to me. That wasn’t fun. :/
That feeling passed. Then came acceptance and then relief. I hadn’t been recently burdened with reality. I had been burdened with bullshit previously. The only reason I had not been miserable being so out of touch was because I didn’t know how fantastically wrong I was. Being OK with being uncomfortable was part of waking up to reality. I don’t always like what I see, but I’m glad I can actually see it now. I hope you’re glad too.
@Jackie the social justice WIZZARD!!! #166: Yup.
Jackie,
Indeed, funny type of lynching in which… no one is actually lynched. Words, how the fuck do they work again?
Hey, kallyfudge, do you know why you’re writing complete shit out of your ass?
Harassing people is frowned upon here. You have no shred of evidence that the owner of that email, whether they’re the writer or not has been at the receiving end of any harassment from the readers of this blog.
And everything about lynching the others said.
Chimera, there’s quite a few slymers in Germany as well
I’m pretty sure I read that verbatim on wehuntedthemammoth.
PZ, please remember trigger warnings in the future.
Pretty certain kallyfudge is a concern troll now… Lynch the bastard! Metaphorically speaking, of course! ;-)
Why? I agree that the combination of analyze and favour points to a nonnative speaker (and that probably so does the use of “depart”).
Oops, forgot to mention:
QFT and bookmarked.
David, #174
I missed that. Perfectly said, Ken. I gotta remember that to use that.
Damn it, Myers. I just bought this thing.
Now I have to go take a ten-hour shower in flaming Lysol followed by fifteen minutes under an industrial sandblaster.
The reason that the e-mail might seem familiar isn’t that it’s a Poe. It’s that the same arguments were recently put forth in a charming new Reddit forum, Philosophy of Rape (TW horrifying rape talk). The manifesto, or if you’d rather not taint your brain or internet history, here’s David Futrelle’s summary. (Intaglio posted the latter at #116.)
PZ, I’m a bit ticked you had to share this…
With this said, I would verify the address from Germany that was given by #5. It this is where it originated, the website is an actual company. That means someone did this during work hours (?) If you know someone who knows German, check out the site, verify this is the origin and send this to the attention of their human resource department asking them to trace the origin within their company.
I just lynched kallyfudge. And Dawkins, and Harris, and Nugent. All the pitters too. All I did was comment! No one should have this kind of power. What have I done! I never should have used strong criticism! The blood won’t come off! Don’t make the same mistake I did! Run from your keyboards!
If it weren’t so damn useful when used by people actually able and willing to describe the underlying reality I would wish non-literal language use was painful.
There is nothing wrong with the person who wrote this email that getting double-tapped wouldn’t fix.
Feed the trolls…into that Fargo wood-chipper.
I feel awful now. I’ve never raped anybody, but now I see that I’ve been selfish, failing to contribute to an overall better society.
Trouble is, I’m not sure I can change my ways. I don’t think I’m a good enough person to embark upon a sustained policy of raping women. To me the idea seems reprehensible, and I don’t think I can change my perspective. I know it’s wrong, but that’s just me.
So I’d like to apologise to everyone for being such a selfish bastard, but I’m afraid I’m going to carry on being an abstainer from rape. I hope you can all forgive me.
questioningkat@178:
It was sent via web.de, one of Germany”s largest webmail providers. No real ID is needed to set up an account there, or at least, it wasn’t last I did so. The mail was sent from an E-Plus mobile device: E-Plus is one of 4 major mobile networks in Germany, and one especially active in the prepaid market, often through resellers. A prepaid SIM card – put very simply: the chip card that tells the mobile phone what number it belongs to – is quite hard to trace, as they only legally, but not always practically, need to be linked to a real person’s ID.
If that arsehole knows what it’s doing on a technical level, that mail is at least hard to trace, possibly not at all really. In any case, it can be done only with a public prosecutor committed to put ressources into this… unfortunately I can’t bring myself to hope for that :(
Wow there’s a lot of idiots about.
So to clarify for those insisting that I provide evidence that some unfortunate has been lynched… I never claimed that anybody had been lynched. I merely pointed out to PZ that there was a risk when posting the header information that this can happen. And it could happen to the wrong person.
I don’t think any sane reader of my previous comments could get the idea I was protecting the actual person who wrote those words so I will leave it at that
Citation mother fucking required, or nothing but inane hyperbole.
Then never, ever, sound like you are defending such a misogynist, unless, you want to be lumped in as a rape apologist. Which shows your logic and reason weren’t working. PZ makes the decision to post header information, and he does it without your input. If you don’t like that, fade into the bandwidth.
I’ll confess, I haven’t been able to force myself to read the whole message through. I skimmed as far as “destroy the self-esteem of women” and then my eyes rebelled. I’m with the people who say that this is utterly inexcusable and “utterly without socially redeeming value”, and others have said what I feel far better than I could.
Somewhat OT, I thought I’d give some history to the phrase “don’t feed the trolls” : back in the day, like 30+ years ago, back when what we now call “the Internet” was just the ARPAnet and restricted to organizations with US government contracts, UUCP was the main transport mechanism for discussions, and the number of people with access to any kind of computer was many orders of magnitude smaller, “trolling” referred to posting blatantly inflammatory articles just to see people get upset, as in “trolling for flames.” (Cf.: trolling for fish.) The canonical example (not sure if it ever actually happened) was posting “recipes” for cat stew to rec.pets.cats . One could trust that the troller didn’t actually believe what he (it was usually a he) posted. In that context, and that context only, ignoring “trolls” made sense.
By now, the old-fashioned “trolls” have long since been drowned out by on-line thugs and evangelists of hatred. It’s as if high-schoolers TPing houses had been superseded by cross-burners and car bombers. To continue to repeat “don’t feed the trolls” is like saying that the FBI’s response to Timothy McVeigh should have been to “get him to clean up the toilet paper and have him grounded for a week.”
I see no evidence that the author of the E-mail does not believe everything he wrote, or that he sent it solely for the purpose of seeing PZ get worked up, and I think it is reasonable to judge him as being utterly serious — even if he later disclaims it. If you make comments about hijacking a plane when you are at an airport, no amount of saying “it was just a joke” will keep you out of prison, for obvious reasons. In the same way, if you write stuff like AVfM or Elliot Rodger, “it’s a Poe” or “it was just a joke” is not a defense.
Regarding 183, thanks for the FYI I’ve learned something new.
Here is something that has been bothering me – “Rape is a controversial topic, i get that. But we need to keep a sober mind and try to analyze rape in a way that is rational and objective.” I’ve heard/read this before. specifically “i get that…analyze rape rational and objective.” Maybe it’s because I dabble all over the atheist sites, but something is very familiar about those specific words.
This seems to reek of the whole Shermer incident with PZ and Ardent Atheist involvement and even the Dawkins date rape comment. This person needs to be found and exposed. Now I’m curious and will obsessively search … :D
UNLIMITED POWER!!!
Not sure how that e-mail can be taken seriously. If anyone can explain, please do.
Ass backwards. The E-mail is serious until YOU can evidence it otherwise….
The wording is completely off. The usage of words with negative connotations as opposed to more neutral words,
indicates that the writer is not interested in persuading anyone, nor personally holds these beliefs/opinions.
The argumentation resembles more an attempt to caricature a type of mentality, rather than actual attemts at
persuasion.
The composition displays deliberate contradictions regarding intent.
The reasoning used, indicates a mental capacity that does not correlate with the vocabulary used.
Consider the fact that maybe you’re not the target of a constant barrage of rape threats and other people (mainly women) are, frequently. I.e. your personal experience is no guide to how many other people perceive the world.
randomdude, you misunderstand everything about “taking [the email] seriously”
We don’t take the ravings of rabid misogynists, racists, homophobes and other bigots seriously because of the cogency of their arguments – obviously they have none; i.e. we don’t take their “arguments” seriously at all. We take things like this email seriously because they reflect and are a small part of a toxic culture that is a serious and present threat to our lives and welfare and those of others. The “argument” is drivel; the threat is real. Rapists are supported and protected by the culture of which this email represents an extreme example. Not to mention the fact that making threats of and/or incitement to violence is an act of aggression in itself.
Do you happen to be a member of any group that is routinely and systematically discriminated against and physically endangered? No matter who is spouting off, screeds advocating – demanding – that you be brutalised in the context where you are routinely at risk are ipso facto an act of aggression against you.
While reading this, all I could think about was Rick Grimes and “Besides, I already made you a promise”.
Random dude, you made unevidenced claims in #191, as you showed no examples, or linked to proper usages, etc. Why should I believe a word you say?
opposablethumbs… no, i dont misunderstand everything about “taking [the email] seriously”.
My point is that you shouldent take this email seriously for several reasons:
1. The email is obviously not written by someone who actually purports these ideas, quite on the contrary,
it’s written in a manner wich the arguments within, cannot actually be used to support or influence anyone
in favour of what is said. It uses a multitude of retohrical methods to ensure this, to the point where it is
unable to even further strenghten similar existing views.
Let me summarize some of the rhetoric used:
The arguments are so outlandish and without any support whatsoever, thus anyone that thinks that rational thought should influence the validity of idea’s or views, cannot accept them.
To accept any of these arguments as valid, one has to be willing to accept something as valid without any support
or explanation. Basically, accepting something just because someone said it. Nothing needs to make any sense
nor having any probablility of beeing true.
Can you immagine any person, willing to accept something merely because someone said it? The identity of the
person is not even relevant. Anyone can say anything at all, let me repeat, as long as anyone says anything,
the criteria for validity are met…
Ok, so lets ignore the validity of the statements made for now. Lets assume a person is reading this, and that
the arguments made could be valid somehow. So the person reads someone claiming that rape is good, and it makes
women feel ashamed. And women need to be ashamed, otherwise they go off the rails, become a burden to society and cannot focus properly on the good they can do for the world.
Ok, so the first arguments will to most people indicate that there might be something severely wrong with the writer,
due to severely distorted thinking and outlandish claims that seem downright delusional, without having such views already.
Moving on, the reader either needs to have similar views and opinions, or just decide to give him the benefit of the doubt in spite of there beeing huge warning signs already.
In any case, the following statements supposedly explains and justifies it this way:
The shame is a neccessity, otherwise the women go off the rail.
They become a burden to society unless concentrated on themselves and their shame.
Only deeply ashamed women can properly focus on the good they can do in the world.
Wait, what?
First, the definition of “going off the rail” apparently is either behaving strangely, or in a way not acceptable to society,
or to be spoiled by bad management.
So, they need shame to avoid strange or unacceptable behaviour, or the shame is a vital part of properly managing them?
Ok, either gotta pick a definition and hope its the intended one, or accept that the shame is needed because women will
act some undesired way or not.
Next one, fortunately only requires that women are a burden to society without any consequence, or women have a lot
of shame and concentrate on themselves without it beeing noticable. And most likely there’s been extreme amounts of hidden rape that seems not to affect women physically or emotionally like normal rape does.
The last argument shows that lifesaving or other universally considered good deeds are not actually good when a woman does them, unless she has some deep shame helping her focus on doing it.
To cut this short, generally, women need to feel shame because of something, and the reader most likely has never been actually able to see what is going on around him. Or the writer is talking absolute shit, wich most likely has been proven wrong by firsthand experience.
I’m not actually going to go into any more of the arguments, as either the arguments or reality has to be rejected by
the reader without having similar views already, and even then first hand experience is most likely at odds with statements made. And that is just the first argument. This is assuming the reader is able to think.
If the reader already has a similar view, and thus all the issues so far can be ignored, there are still bumps in the road.
The post starts off by saying that a lot of people are against it, and that the reasons are well-known to almost everyone.
This, even tho beeing a gross understatement, says that a lot of people actually dissagree with their views.
Truth by consensus is the process of taking something to be true simply because people generally agree upon that. And people have a tendency to follow the herd, and adopt the commonly held notions and views. The notion that the majority is right is not uncommon and may be supported by the thought that the chance that the majority of people are actually wrong in their beliefs is small, and that the least probable outcome is that the majority is wrong. That wich is very obvious and clear, has a much greater chance to be well-known compared to something that is less obvious and clear. Thus, almost everyone knowing why lots of people are against rape, while the pro-rape side is mostly unheard of and reasons why anyone would be pro-rape are largely unknown and for most considered unthinkable, indicates this beeing because it is very obvious why someone should be against it.
Already 4 lines into the text, there are several things that might give a notion that the other side is right and pro-rape is wrong. A reader that already has similar views, most likely will not change them, but there is a chance that the confidence in these views might be lowered.
Because the notion of hurting someone else is so widly accepted as wrong, there is a great chance that “pro-rape” people have a need to justify it. This assuming they dont live in a culture that considers women totally devoid of any worth or rights, but as property that can be used and treated as one wishes. In many nations where violence against women are commonplace, they usually justify it with religion. Claiming it a means to an end, beeing to uphold a religious law or similar that demands f.ex. a certain code of conduct, responsibility or duty. Justification is usually either claiming it to be
neccecary as a means to an end or not that wrong/bad.
In this email, the wording used is to convey sadistic intent, wich completely offsets the process of justification.
If one is trying to justify something, one uses words that have less negative connotations or makes it sound less serious
or cruel/bad than it actually is. This email has very specific wording, for example saying it destroys their self-esteem.
If one wants to justify destroying a womans self-esteem, one would surely not say it destroys their self-esteem, but instead use a less extreme word, saying f.ex. it reduces their self-esteem.
The email is also highly focused on women feeling shame and ruining their self-esteem, wich cannot be interpreted as anything but sadistic, completely offsets the justification process.
The point beeing that everything that is supposedly purported in this text, is so damn methodically countered by its own rhetoric, that it cannot actually be its geniuine intent.
Considering the arguments made in this email, it has absolutely no connections to any specific culture, and it does not represent an extreme example of any culture. This email is a caricature of sociopathy coupled with retardation.
And it does actually matter who is spouting off, this email is clearly designed to have the opposite effect of advocating.
It systematically displays the kind of intent that may actually be hidden behind some of these veils of justification.
My point beeing that taking this seriously is a problem, a big problem, as it indicates a clear inability to understand others and how they work.
Lastly, there might be typos and some parts that might seem to make no sense. This is due to it beeing composed while suffering from lack of sleep.
randomdude, that’s a lot of unnecessary typing. You could just have said “I didn’t bother to read the hundred-odd comments upthread” – the hundred-odd comments explaining why the matter of intent/poe/satire/trolling/lack of coherence/etc. etc. etc. in this email does not matter in the slightest. Your painstaking grammatical, logical and orthographical analysis is wholly irrelevant to the point under consideration.
A couple of hundred comments is not a long thread by usual standards around here, so I suggest that you nip back up the screen and read (I have no great expectation that you will, as you didn’t even read my one short comment).
@opposablethumbs, yeah, I did not bother to read all the comments. And I’m gonna try and read through em, I have a feeling I’ll quit again tho. Still have not seen what you’re referring to explaining why the rhetoric doesent matter at all. In my opinion it matters a lot, if a person is painstaking methodical to remove any doubt of this beeing sincere, that person proves it is sarcastic in nature. The person does actually make an effort to avoid it be taken seriously, in addition he actually is actively supporting your side with this email. I can ramble on a bunch more but gonna stop now.
And btw, what comment are you referring to, that you assume I did not read?
Oh, and I did read the majority, but still not found very much supporting your claim that the rhetoric does not matter the slightest.
Randomdude, your wall of text is still not making sense to me. Still no conclusive evidence as to why the writer isn’t sincere, merely your view of the e-mail. And using <blockquote>text to be talked about</blockquote> will make your points a lot clearer.
Where is your third party evidence on how writing such a screed should be done to be sincere?
randomdude
This is the point at which you should have said to yourself “Oh, shit.” and stopped typing.
Ok, first of all, anyone who actually rapes someone, would never write anything like this, a person who would sincerely write a message advocating rape and legitimizing it would most likely not do it to actually try and convince anyone to actually have it legitimized, but actually do it as a means of abuse, to in a way socially rape women.
There is a HUGE difference between a person who would write this kind of crap sincerely, trolls and those people who want to expose stupidity ect.
The likelyhood of someone actually writing a text like this, with legalizing rape as the intent, is quite small.
If a person actually wanted to legalize rape, would most likely never support this openly with such a letter, as it would be counter-productive. The only way actually achieve this goal, would be through manipulation, claiming other goals that could actually be intended, instead. But such an attempt makes no real sense anyway, if the desire is committing rape.
Its much easier to actually just do it, and extert an effort on not getting caught instead.
Any attempt at legalization, would take so much effort and time, that actually seeing it come to fruition, would most
likely allow an estimation of some time in retirement to enjoy the fruits of the labour, at best.
Getting caught raping would ruin all progress, making it a no go, and patroning rape as a more direct method, would ruin the vital element of surprise. Both methods reducing rape possiblity on total.
Doubt any avid rapist willing to sacrifice so much, in solidarity towards fellow rapists.
Legalizaton of rape, I think would diminish the effect and pleasure derived for the rapist.
By raping someone when rape is illegal, one does not only violate the other persons body and mind, but the persons rights and a feeling of total lack of protection from society. And if the perpetrator gets away, the victim recives no justice or support, feeling failed by society, overlooked and left alone. The feeling of safety would most likely take a much bigger impact when illegal, as the difference of before and after is much greater.
Thus, actually trying to persuade someone else, and bring about a change, would on so many levels be utterly counter-productive. And I find it highly unlikely that anyone would openly support anything like that, and actually want/be willing to rape someone. In order to not understand how self-defeating that actually is, the person has to be so retarded that
it probably wont be an option to actually write it anyway.
This email, is composed in a such self-defeating manner, that only a severely retarded person could be the author and be sincere. The problem is, that its methodically self-defeating, covering every possible angle thinkable, leaving nothing able to support the supposed intent at all. People that actually hold these beliefs would most likely dislike anyone putting it forth as a sincere attempt.
And yes I know, I should cut all of it much shorter and structure it better, but I’m not very good at that.
Just so you know, the posts have actually been cut down and reworked.
(If I actually did not hold anything back, the explanations would include personalities and how they develop with nature and nurture adding neurochemistry, completely overstreching and making an unintelligble mess, including some statements that could make ppl go completely off the rails and no possible way of ever getting the conversation back on track.
So yes its a huge mess a lot of the time, but I guess I deviate a tad from the rest of you, so I can only say sorry, but I am actually doing my best on structure.)
Damn, that one did not seem THAT big when posting.
randomdude @201
Your evidence to support your armchair psychology is what? You make several claims about rape and the motivations of rapists but give no clue about how you reached your conclusions.
@randomdude, #201:
Precisely. Which is why I keep telling all those people who say that they were raped by Paul Shanley that they’re totes wrong.
If by this you mean that there are more people who, when discovered to have personally written such a passage, fall back on, “Joke! Trolling! Grow a thick skin, whydontcha?” then insist, “And I meant every word of it. May laws against rape end tomorrow!” you are undoubtedly correct.
But
1) This is not a distinction between a) those who don’t wish to end (or drastically limit) the reach of anti-rape law and therefore prosecutions for rape and b) those who do.
2) You don’t appear to actually be arguing that in the rest of your comment. You appear to be arguing that, given
an argument for legalization is, per se, an indication that someone doesn’t want rape legalized (or even decriminalized).
That’s crap.
Finally:
What? You seem to be insisting that the intent of the e-mail is the legal absolution of the author for (future?) crimes.
But no. What is the e-mail’s intent? The free and frequent injury of women, to the benefit of jerks who like to hurt women.
Assuming, for a moment, that this person has no intent to rape or desire to rape whatsoever, and that **your** argument is correct: the immediate goal of the perpetrator of this e-mail is merely to hurt women through trolling in a way that they hope will allow them to witness, to their glee, the effects of the pain they inflict, how the fuck is that in conflict with the psychology of someone who would enjoy widespread rape and the public recounting of such rapes from the perp’s point of view that legal impunity would enable?
@randomdude, #201:
as a separate matter:
Fuck that and the mind it rode in on.
I’m assuming that randomdude did NOT read any of Elliot Rodger’s manifesto before pulling the ‘no one writes like this’ idea out of his ass…
randomdude, since you fail to provide third party evidence, it all comes down to your opinion.
I’ll let you know when I, as a long-time skeptic, accept your unevidenced opinion (which seems to be the case with all liars and bullshitters) as anything other than bullshit.
Don’t hold your breath….
Sorry, working on a respponse, not much sleep lately so its going really slow. This has also been a contributing factor to previous posts beeing more of a mess than usual. Btw, I did not provide any evidence deliberately, as the posts are already on the verge of beeing unreadable. And thought it better to deliver upon request, rather than giving a really poor attempt due to issues with space.
Anyway, its coming, just going to take a little extra time.
You didn’t provide evidence because you thought it would make your posts worse and you still thought you had something worthwhile to say. Words fail.
I was going to post a quite detailed explanation, basing it on personal observation
and deductoin.
But I dont see the point anymore, so I’m giving a briefer explanation instead.
I have over some time observed a lot of different people varying in personalities
and background, giving a wide range wich I have used to base this on.
I have noticed certain patterns repeating amongst typical traits, and tried to compile
a system based on this.
Some observations:
1. Violent people rarely seem to threaten or scare, but instead suddenly change from
normal to violent when angered. Violence seeming to be a part of the behavior used to
manage situations.
2. Most people do not use violence unless needed, and only very few is willing to
harm others without reason.
3. Threatening people rarely seem to get physical, but seem to present themselves
in a manner to avoid conflict. Many presenting themselves in an intimidating
or tough manner, claiming dangerous associations and retaliation, using fear
to avoid conflict. The ones presenting themselves intimidating were usually
most afraid and first to attempt escape.
4. Intimidation as a defense is a common strategy in nature. Intimidation is almost
allways used to avoid conflict, and avoiding conflict is highly benefical.
5. Causing fear most often results in a fight or flight result, wich is an emotion
designed to increase capability in extreme situations, allowing to overcome
tougher obstacles than usual. By causing fear in a animal or human, and the flight
repsonse does not kicking in, one is left with a highly agressive and more dangerous
than usual adversary.
6. By using threats and scares, one increases alertness,awareness and focus.
Beeing percieved as a threat can result from using scares and threats, resulting
in recogniton and attention. The difficulty to go unnoticed gets increasingly
harder as the reputation grows, recogniton may be passed on to others and
populated areas become even harder.
7. If going to assault a target, getting within range is needed. Unless one can get
within range without beeing detected as a threat, the chance of target acting to its
own advantage, like calling for help, improving capablity or fleeing. Moving into
range when target is fleeing, will take much longer or may be impossible, determined
by speed. Thus, getting within range of target before detection is highly
advantageous.
8. By threatening and using scares, the chance of beeing considered guilty of
such acts increases enormously, and the chance of beeing accused. Belief of
innocence beeing hard to attain without solid supporting proof.
9. The use of threats and scare is almost allways to gain something without
having to act.
10. By actually beeing in company with a rapist a limited time, and learning
the how two others were committed and information about the assaulters, I learned
a bit. None seemed to show intimidating factors usually, but seemed to appear normal.
Did not show any hostility towards women normally, using only physical force during
assault, nor using violence to achieve submission by use of physical pain.
The first hand experience displayed no major deviations in conduct, and gave no
indication of any hatred towards women.
The first time (did not know about
the rapes yet), he was sitting with a female wich he apparently had chatted up
in a bar or club, and brought with him to the afterparty. They sat besides eachother
and had physical contact, where he got quite frisky a few times resulting in her
removing his hand from her crotch in a calm manner. They talked more with eachother,
than the rest of us, but other than that, nothing unusual.
The next time, I heard him admit he had been in jail about 10 times for rape,
and said something like “With women, sometimes you just gotta take it.”
But that was pretty much the only think I heard him say about women.
The chance of willing to commit a rape and also pubish threats about rape, is
highly unlikely. There seems to be a correlation between violence and verbal
intimidation, indicating the more violent, the less chance of making threats, and
the more verbally intimidating, the less willing to enter physical conflict, wich
is highly likely in rape.
By publishing threats and scares about rape, one gains attention and alertness
is increased around you. Being known for rape threats will cause any attempt at
getting in a situation to rape, much more difficult. And the act would be much harder
to commit as well as more dangerous, as victim might be prepared for assault and/or
in fight or flight mode, wich increases chance of fighting back with hightened
capacity.And if actually sucessfull, the chance of getting accused is substantially
increased as well as it beeing believed.
Basically, by using threats and scares about rape, will make rape difficult, dangerous,
and hard to get away with.
That was brief?
Citation mother fucking needed, your word is not evidence, it is your view, not a view of an expert that has been credentialed, which you haven’t shown any credentials either. What is the problem with presenting third party evidence???? I guess it doesn’t agree with your views….
randomdude @210:
You really shouldn’t base your opinions of the way the world works on anecdotes. That’s not evidence.
I’m going to give one response that will cover all your points:
Your personal, subjective experiences do not mean your opinions are based on evidence. If you want us to believe that your opinions are evidence-based, you need to cite evidence to back them up. Anecdotes are not evidence.
And this is to laugh:
You’d think the threat and scare of going to jail for rape would make rape difficult, dangerous, and hard to get away with. And yet, rape and sexual assault continues to happen. At an alarming rate.
Crip dyke:
If by this you mean that there are more people who, when discovered to have personally written such a passage, fall back on, “Joke! Trolling! Grow a thick skin, whydontcha?” then insist, “And I meant every word of it. May laws against rape end tomorrow!” you are undoubtedly correct.
No, the reason I say its highly unlikely is due to the futility and backlash it would cause.
Any actual legalization of rape is close to impossible to attain for obvious reasons. That in itself will make it a pointless
endeavour. To actually write one that has any chance of actually persuading anyone, needs it to be extremely good without just further damaging your goals. Anyone able to do that most likely wont support it. By actually doing this,
there is a risk of backlash if the writer is identified. That may cause social, professional and sexual issues, like loosing friends or your job. You might get a rapist stamp wich will cause problems getting a sexual partner, if thats wanted.
If raping someone is the intention, this will get close to impossible if well known, and most likely chance of beeing lethal.
If not, the chance of beeing caught and convicted his increased dramatically. Not to mention the chance of beeing
falsly accused, wich most likely will be belived, and you risk inmprisonment for something you diddent do.
an argument for legalization is, per se, an indication that someone doesn’t want rape legalized (or even decriminalized).
That’s crap.
What?
What? You seem to be insisting that the intent of the e-mail is the legal absolution of the author for (future?) crimes.
But no. What is the e-mail’s intent? The free and frequent injury of women, to the benefit of jerks who like to hurt women.
Assuming, for a moment, that this person has no intent to rape or desire to rape whatsoever, and that **your** argument is correct: the immediate goal of the perpetrator of this e-mail is merely to hurt women through trolling in a way that they hope will allow them to witness, to their glee, the effects of the pain they inflict, how the fuck is that in conflict with the psychology of someone who would enjoy widespread rape and the public recounting of such rapes from the perp’s point of view that legal impunity would enable?
Well, the point is, its so damn contradictory, its not possible to be an authentic post.
The argumentation and statements of the post are completely irrational and unfounded. If this is the actual arguementation of the author, we are most likely dealing with someone with 100 or less IQ.
But, the post is written in a manner that is closer to that of an academic. The wording used is abnormal for people with only basic education, yet there are frequent idiotic grammar errors usually made by kids, and even illogical typos.
He writes instilles instead of instills, wich is adding a letter that doesent even sound like its in the word.
The letter is neatly spaced and organized, puntcuation on all missing 4th sentence and all but 2 of the 6 last, where he
also has three question marks wich is something teenagers do to. This effect is usually used to stress the importance or severity of the question, but he uses it on a neutral rhetorical questoin?
His arguments are completely irrational the most closeminded opinions thinkable, and asks you to look at this rationally
and openminded.
Quote:
I hope you change your mind (which you will surely do) and consider rape to be one of the few good things in life
This is written to a feminist, and assumes it will actually change his mind. Noone would actually assume that.
The email seems to be sent from Germany, wich are notoriously bad at english. (TV and movies are dubbed, all of it)
Yet he uses a vocabulary that is far beyond the average forigner with years of english classes.
Last but not least:
Every damn argument he uses, is actually an argument used against this kind of thing. They are the core arguments
against oppression against women. These are the most common things to criticise about female oppression specially in ilsam.
So, letter is displaying a reduced mental capacity, grammar errors that of a small child.
But writes in a manner and with a vocabulary that of a grown up, with at least some education.
Arguing for rape, using the most standard arguments against female oppression.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Did you even read the following sentences?
It makes no sense to come with threats and commit the crime.
The fact that it actually incrimnates you is reason enough.
Tony! The Queer Shoop
I’m going to give one response that will cover all your points:
Your personal, subjective experiences do not mean your opinions are based on evidence. If you want us to believe that your opinions are evidence-based, you need to cite evidence to back them up. Anecdotes are not evidence.
Yes I know that, the reason I have built on this is that its a close to 100% consistency in addition to beeing common in nature. The more physically capable you are, the less intimidation tactics are need, the less you are capable of defending yourself, the more intimidation or camuflage tactics are needed.
The essence of intimidation beeing able to avoid conflict, thus beeing a substitute for physical capabilities.
And this is to laugh:
I meant if identifed.
You’d think the threat and scare of going to jail for rape would make rape difficult, dangerous, and hard to get away with. And yet, rape and sexual assault continues to happen. At an alarming rate.
The threat of actually going to jail for raping someone is kinda small, as the victims often dont report it.
If they do, they risk beeing sexually assaulted by cops, this is actually a problem.
It’s hard to tell exactly how big the problem is, because few people are collecting data. Researchers have to rely on arrest reports and press accounts, which leave out unreported or unprosecuted cases. But even that limited evidence suggests sexual assault is a significant issue in police forces, as The American Prospect and Truthout have reported. According to the Cato Institute, more than 9 percent of reports of police misconduct in 2010 involved sexual abuse, making it the second-most reported form of misconduct, after the use of excessive force. Comparing that data to FBI crime statistics indicates that “sexual assault rates are significantly higher for police when compared to the general population.”
Many women also find the police very difficult to deal with when filing the report, making it a very unpleasant experience.
When its reported, momst cases are shelved without any real investegation.
Cops usually dont give a shit.
Anyway:
Why does it not make sense to not actually incriminate yourself, of crimes you actually commit?
randomdude @196:
None of that is “obvious”. That’s your opinion. Given that there are people in meatspace who share many of the same opinions as the letter writer, I don’t have a hard time believing the writer was sincere.
@215:
Before I go any further, can you please use the blockquote function to copy/paste the comments you’re responding to?
<blockquote> put yer quoted text here </blockquote>
will get you
(this is assuming you’re not on a tablet or cellphone that makes copy/pasting difficult)
****
I guess you didn’t understand my point. You’re trying to extrapolate facts from your subjective experiences (i.e. anecdotes). You can’t do that if you’re seeking to form an opinion based on evidence. You haven’t cited anything that supports your assertion that “its [whatever “its” is supposed to refer to] close to 100% consistency”. Until you do that, your assertions are going to be dismissed.
I’m well aware of that. I was trying to point out that your assertion
doesn’t hold up bc there are threats and scares related to rape. People know that rape is a crime and that one of the possible consequences of that crime is jailtime . One of the big problems in our Rape Culture is that people don’t recognize their actions as being sexual assault.
@ randomdude
You’re fucking incoherent and ignorant and you need to shut the fuck up. Nothing you have typed is even worth responding to but I plucked out a couple sentences to illustrate what an abject moron you are.
The minute you start saying things like this shit? Asserting that you know what “nobody” would ever do? Arguing from an assumption of what nobody would ever think? You’re starting from a premise that it’s not even possible to verify the truth of. I’m not sure it’s even possible to be less rational than that.
We have numerous regulars here from all over the world, yet you would not be able to tell from their comments that they’re not native English speakers. Further, people who are native English speakers are capable of visiting Germany and sending emails while they’re there. This is a ludicrous assumption to make.
Your arguments are completely irrational and yet here you are asking us to treat you as if you’re rational. Your arguments are fucking self-refuting.
No citations. Without citations it is all your opinion. I dismiss evidenceless opinions. Either evidence your opinions with third party evidence, or shut the fuck up. You word is never, ever evidence. YOU ARE STUPID.
@randomdude
You need to go read the entire archive at We Hunted the Mammoth. Don’t try to comment there or argue with anything. Don’t try to organize the contents into some pseudo-forensic analytical framework you pulled out of your ass. Just read and read and read (and watch all the videos) till you start to understand how common this sort of writing/speaking style actually is and how many men are completely open about their desire to freely rape and abuse women. Look at what men like Roosh V—who admits he’s a rapist—and men like Julien Blanc—who takes pride in sexually assaulting women—say about women and consent. Also look at how often they not only get away with what they preach but make a living at it.
Seriously, fuck off and don’t come back till you’ve read at least all the OPs on WHTM. If you still don’t get it, read all the comment threads, too.
Is randomdude still pushing hir already refuted pipedream that the email writer couldn’t be a rapist? As A. Noyd noted @219, Roosh V takes pride in being a rapist and will happily teach his techniques to anyone who pays.