MRA "Honey Badger" fails at facts, calls me a rapist
Last week GQ ran an article about the MRA conference that took place last summer. The responses in the comments section were predictably hilarious, with MRAs turning out en masse to cry about how unfairly they were portrayed as creeps and cranks.
And you'd think, since they're out to defend themselves in a public forum, that they'd actually succeed in making themselves look better than the article did, right? Yet somehow they managed to make themselves look even worse.
But then again this is the "movement" whose flagship site has Janet Bloomfield as their communications director: Janet "JudgyBitch" Bloomfield, the woman who managed to get herself booted off Twitter. I repeat: Their communications director cannot hold onto a Twitter account. That should give you an idea of how good MRAs are at presenting themselves as good and reasonable people.
Amid this stewing mess, one comment caught my eye because it was purportedly about facts. It was by Alison Tieman, a "Honey Badger" (woman who supports MRAs) mentioned in the main article. She was citing a bunch of rape statistics to argue that rape was not a gendered phenomenon and that men are raped at the same if not higher rates as women.
(Click for larger versions of images)
Text version: Feminists insist that rape is gendered despite all the evidence to the contrary.
38% of the victims of rape were men in the 2012 National Crime Victimization Survey. (This study requires men to classify their victimization as rape and as a crime, both requirements lead to a reduction of admitted male victims relative to other survey instruments so this number is only a lower bound on the number of male victims of rape.)
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2014.301946?journalCode=ajph
43% of college men and high school youth report being sexually assaulted or raped. 95% by women.
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/men-a0035915.pdf
51% of college men report being sexually assaulted or raped since the age of 16.
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/men-13-3-243.pdf
According to the CDC's 12-month statistics on sexual violence(the most accurate statistic on prevalence, 50% of the victims of “forced sex” were male. According to the CDC's lifetime statistics(the most accurate statistic regarding who is raping who) on who is perpetuating sexual violence, 80% of the men were raped by women.
http://i.imgur.com/Ps9wW.jpg http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf
I was curious, since this was an argument I hadn't encountered before. I didn't have time to go through all her links, but I did check out the CDC statistics which she said were the most accurate. (But only the 12-month ones, for reasons that you will see below.)
And oh, my God. The tortured logic, the dishonesty, the cherry-picking.... I couldn't let that go unchallenged on a public forum.
The argument summarized
Let me try to sum up Tieman's argument about the CDC stats, since things can get confusing in the nature of Internet debates. She focused on the CDC's 12-month numbers for 2010 and 2011 to say that rape, which she defined as physically forced sex, occurred in the same rates against men as against women. For that purpose she compared the 2010 12-month numbers, where 1.1% of women respondents reported being raped by forced penetration in the past 12 months, compared with 1.1% of men who reported being forced to penetrate during that same time period. Ergo, according to Tieman, men and women are raped at the same rates and rape is not gendered. Here's the table she used to show that purpose, excerpted from pp. 18 and 19 of the CDC report with word bubbles added in:
See source. Reproduced here for commentary... and mockery.
By the way, I misunderstood at first because Tieman or whoever put the word bubbles in this table has a shitty grasp of the English language. At first I read "1.27 million women forced penetration" as saying that 1.27 million women, you know, forced penetration, because English language. However, it's evidently meant to say that 1.27 million women were raped by forced penetration. Hence Tieman's argument of parity among male and female victims of rape.
So many problems here. Walk with me through the fallacies, if you dare.
Problem 1: Deliberately ignoring long-term data
Fallacy: Cherry-picking
This one becomes apparent if you turn your eyes like two inches to the left in the very table she presented. You can see that the lifetime prevalence numbers show that rape is very, very gendered and women are disproportionately the victims of sexual violence. Tieman's reasons for this statistical cherry-picking is a sight to behold. According to her, the 12-month stats are by definition more accurate because:
What?!
Text version: How much evidence would you require to question your woman-hating narrative?
If you have a choice between dismissing the CDC's 12 month stats and the lifetime stats, by definition the 12 month stats are more accurate because of uncontroversial realities about memory recall over time.
Yes, because with time--nay, with 13 months! 12 months and a day!--people start to forget they were raped, or start imagining rapes that never happened. Tieman cites no statistics or studies for this stunning assertion. Who needs things like "evidence" when you have truthiness on your side? Also, holy loaded question there, Batman.
Aside from the unsupported nature of this assertion, her avowed disdain for lifetime prevalence data breaks down just in the limited context of her own arguments. In her original post she cited at least one other study which also relied on self-reports of lifetime data.
In other words, she doesn't have a problem with the lifetime prevalence methodology so long as she likes the results. If she doesn't like the conclusion, as with the CDC's lifetime data, she'll claim that the methodology is flawed.
I can smell the cherries from here! Or is that bullshit?
Problem 2: Not understanding the difference between long-term and short-term data
Fallacy: Personal incredulity
Evidently Alison Tieman has no concept of the difference between short-term events and long-term trends. In her quest to discredit the CDC's lifetime prevalence numbers in favor of the 12-month numbers, she kept demanding that I explain the discrepancy between the two. And I attempted to do so, not once but twice:
Internal narration: WHY AM I EXPLAINING THIS TO A GROWNUP WHY
Text version for first attempt:
"How is it possible that two years in a row they've found equal or greater numbers of male victims yet the lifetime stats are so low for male victims?"
Uh... is that a real question? If you really need an answer, the average human lifespan is much longer than two years. It is possible for any of us to experience something we haven't experienced in a two-year span. Two years ago I had not experienced married life. Between then and now I have. See how that works?
Text version for second attempt:
"You have to explain why in the last year just as many or more men report rape than women."
I have already explained this very basic fact of life to you, that short-term events and long-term trends might point in different directions. If you are incapable of understanding the difference you should take that up with the education system that failed you.
Also notice how she incorrectly states that the lifetime prevalence numbers of men being raped are lower than the 12-month numbers. This is not only false from just looking at her pet table, it's impossible: People can experience sexual violence throughout their lives, but they don't all experience it in the same year.
I think rather she was saying that lifetime prevalence numbers were low for men in comparison to women, in contradiction to what the 12-month numbers show. This is symptomatic of a larger problem with MRAs, that male victimization and suffering don't matter to them unless it's somehow worse than women's and they can somehow work feminists into it. As many MRA critics have pointed out, men face legitimate problems but MRAs are not interested in addressing them. This is a movement built around hating feminists, not helping men.
Problem 3: Deliberately ignoring other forms of sexual violence
Fallacy: More cherry-picking
Another big problem was that Tieman excluded other forms of sexual violence and focused solely on a very narrow definition of rape, i.e. physically forcing penetration to happen. Notice that she left out the "other forms of sexual violence" that don't involve physically forced penetration, such as sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and unwanted non-contact.
This is probably because women still suffer more from other forms of sexual assault, even in the short-term numbers that Tieman argues are the only accurate ones. The long-term numbers are even starker. This is inconvenient for Tieman's conclusions, so she left out non-rape sexual violence.
Yet she has no problem citing non-rape sexual violence when it suits her purposes. Remember that study she cited that used lifetime prevalence data, which she claims to distrust? It also finds that the vast majority of sexual violence against the men in the study consisted of verbal pressure (31%), unwanted seduction (26%), and kissing/fondling (18%). Only 9% of the men who experienced sexual coercion reported physical force, which is Tieman's definition of rape.
Still, she happily cites these non-rape (according to her) forms of sexual violence to show men are sexually victimized at a high rate, but carefully excludes these numbers from the CDC stats when they show that women are victimized at higher rates than men. Those are some serious mental gymnastics right there.
Problem 4: Throwing male rape victims under the bus
Fallacy: I don't even know if there's a name for this. Consequences of mental contortions? Rank incompetence?
Yet a fourth problem is that the 12-month CDC numbers, Tieman's Holy Grail, don't find statistically significant numbers of men being raped by penetration. So even if she's somehow magically right that lifetime numbers should be disregarded in favor of 12-month numbers, then shouldn't that mean that men aren't being raped by forced penetration? One has to wonder why Alison Tieman, who supposedly wants to call attention to the suffering of men, is trying to erase an entire class of male rape victims with her selective reading of statistics.
When faced with facts, throw out false rape accusations!
Warning: Crude language invoking sexually violent imagery quoted below.
So how did Tieman respond to my pointing out these problems with her reading of statistics? By accusing me of raping women. No, really. She said I was pushing a woman-hating narrative to terrify women:
Text version:
How much evidence do you need to stop shoving a narrative of terror down women's throats?
[Lee:] "Rape is not gendered only if you ignore all the numbers you don't like and cherry-pick the ones you do."
Rape is gendered only if you insist on forcing women to swallow your propaganda.
Anyone who doesn't want women to live in submissive, shivering terror would long ago had enough evidence to question the validity of cramming women full of inflated, toxic statistics and letting them leak their poison into women's lives.
And ended with this bit of rhetorical turd:
Text version:
I have a final question for you: Is raping fear into women via questionable assertions about rape being "gendered" exciting for you?
So talking about rape statistics evidently makes me a rapist. Take note, anyone who's ever spoken on this subject with me: I may have committed this heinous crime against you without either of us realizing it.
Instead of laughing my head off I chose to tell her what exactly she was doing wrong. Besides, y'know, life in general. Okay, I laughed a little, because it's either that or barf.
Text version:
"Is raping fear into women via questionable assertions about rape being "gendered" exciting for you?"
LOL, now who's redefining rape? It excites me to point out how wrong you are. Do you get your fix from lying about statistics and making false rape accusations against people who trounce you in debate?
One hilarious/creepy thing about MRAs is the unintended revelations they make about their psychosexual insecurities. I counted four references in this one post to stuffing things into women's bodies: "Forcing women to swallow," "shoving a narrative of terror down women's throats," "cramming women full," and of course, "raping fear into women."
Someone should tell Ms. Tieman that there are plenty of ways (links NSFW) she can safely and ethically indulge her preoccupation of inserting objects into women's bodily orifices. As opposed to inundating random strangers with sexually explicit language, because seriously ick.
To her small credit Tieman did stop with the violent imagery when I called her out on her inappropriate use of the word "rape." Instead she continued to push her wildly speculative and selective brand of statistics, with all the problems I pointed out above.
My last reply to her is playing some annoying peekaboo on the GQ site, so I'll put it here:
Text version:
"You answer the question. How much evidence would you require to question your woman-hating narrative?"
And how much evidence do you require to face the reality that I'm talking facts, not a narrative?
"If the CDC's 12 month stats--the most accurate and comprehensive stats on sexual violence"
Those same "accurate and comprehensive stats show no statistically significant rates of men being raped by forcible penetration. Why are you trying to erase male rape victims, Alison?
"how about the NCVIS finding that 38% of sexual assault victims were male in the last year?"
...Which would mean 62% of sexual assault victims in the last year were female. Are you secretly a woman-hater yourself, to be quoting numbers like that?
"Or that the stats finding high rates of sexual abuse among male college and high school students?"
Show me where I denied that sexual assault is happening against men. Show me where I said it's not a problem. I said that the NUMBERED [sic] SHOWED that it's predominantly happening to women, and I objected to your ignoring and cherry-picking the numbers.
"of course it's justified to terrify women by presenting rape as gendered?"
I'm sorry that you're so terrified about this, but I would suggest seeking help to manage your anxieties rather than distorting statistics as a way to cope. Just a thought.
Remember, that was just one set of statistics. This is just a tiny look into the contortions MRAs use to bolster their vision of reality. And when you point out the ways they're wrong, they throw out wild speculation as fact and/or engage in distraction and bullying tactics. Or they accuse you of rape because, well, why not? After all the point for them is not the facts but maintaining their worldview at all costs. I feel almost sorry for them, that they have to resort to these tactics to have any peace of mind.
Dreamwidth entry URL: http://ljlee.dreamwidth.org/60555.html
And you'd think, since they're out to defend themselves in a public forum, that they'd actually succeed in making themselves look better than the article did, right? Yet somehow they managed to make themselves look even worse.
But then again this is the "movement" whose flagship site has Janet Bloomfield as their communications director: Janet "JudgyBitch" Bloomfield, the woman who managed to get herself booted off Twitter. I repeat: Their communications director cannot hold onto a Twitter account. That should give you an idea of how good MRAs are at presenting themselves as good and reasonable people.
Amid this stewing mess, one comment caught my eye because it was purportedly about facts. It was by Alison Tieman, a "Honey Badger" (woman who supports MRAs) mentioned in the main article. She was citing a bunch of rape statistics to argue that rape was not a gendered phenomenon and that men are raped at the same if not higher rates as women.
(Click for larger versions of images)
Text version: Feminists insist that rape is gendered despite all the evidence to the contrary.
38% of the victims of rape were men in the 2012 National Crime Victimization Survey. (This study requires men to classify their victimization as rape and as a crime, both requirements lead to a reduction of admitted male victims relative to other survey instruments so this number is only a lower bound on the number of male victims of rape.)
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2014.301946?journalCode=ajph
43% of college men and high school youth report being sexually assaulted or raped. 95% by women.
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/men-a0035915.pdf
51% of college men report being sexually assaulted or raped since the age of 16.
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/men-13-3-243.pdf
According to the CDC's 12-month statistics on sexual violence(the most accurate statistic on prevalence, 50% of the victims of “forced sex” were male. According to the CDC's lifetime statistics(the most accurate statistic regarding who is raping who) on who is perpetuating sexual violence, 80% of the men were raped by women.
http://i.imgur.com/Ps9wW.jpg http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf
I was curious, since this was an argument I hadn't encountered before. I didn't have time to go through all her links, but I did check out the CDC statistics which she said were the most accurate. (But only the 12-month ones, for reasons that you will see below.)
And oh, my God. The tortured logic, the dishonesty, the cherry-picking.... I couldn't let that go unchallenged on a public forum.
The argument summarized
Let me try to sum up Tieman's argument about the CDC stats, since things can get confusing in the nature of Internet debates. She focused on the CDC's 12-month numbers for 2010 and 2011 to say that rape, which she defined as physically forced sex, occurred in the same rates against men as against women. For that purpose she compared the 2010 12-month numbers, where 1.1% of women respondents reported being raped by forced penetration in the past 12 months, compared with 1.1% of men who reported being forced to penetrate during that same time period. Ergo, according to Tieman, men and women are raped at the same rates and rape is not gendered. Here's the table she used to show that purpose, excerpted from pp. 18 and 19 of the CDC report with word bubbles added in:
See source. Reproduced here for commentary... and mockery.
By the way, I misunderstood at first because Tieman or whoever put the word bubbles in this table has a shitty grasp of the English language. At first I read "1.27 million women forced penetration" as saying that 1.27 million women, you know, forced penetration, because English language. However, it's evidently meant to say that 1.27 million women were raped by forced penetration. Hence Tieman's argument of parity among male and female victims of rape.
So many problems here. Walk with me through the fallacies, if you dare.
Problem 1: Deliberately ignoring long-term data
Fallacy: Cherry-picking
This one becomes apparent if you turn your eyes like two inches to the left in the very table she presented. You can see that the lifetime prevalence numbers show that rape is very, very gendered and women are disproportionately the victims of sexual violence. Tieman's reasons for this statistical cherry-picking is a sight to behold. According to her, the 12-month stats are by definition more accurate because:
What?!
Text version: How much evidence would you require to question your woman-hating narrative?
If you have a choice between dismissing the CDC's 12 month stats and the lifetime stats, by definition the 12 month stats are more accurate because of uncontroversial realities about memory recall over time.
Yes, because with time--nay, with 13 months! 12 months and a day!--people start to forget they were raped, or start imagining rapes that never happened. Tieman cites no statistics or studies for this stunning assertion. Who needs things like "evidence" when you have truthiness on your side? Also, holy loaded question there, Batman.
Aside from the unsupported nature of this assertion, her avowed disdain for lifetime prevalence data breaks down just in the limited context of her own arguments. In her original post she cited at least one other study which also relied on self-reports of lifetime data.
In other words, she doesn't have a problem with the lifetime prevalence methodology so long as she likes the results. If she doesn't like the conclusion, as with the CDC's lifetime data, she'll claim that the methodology is flawed.
I can smell the cherries from here! Or is that bullshit?
Problem 2: Not understanding the difference between long-term and short-term data
Fallacy: Personal incredulity
Evidently Alison Tieman has no concept of the difference between short-term events and long-term trends. In her quest to discredit the CDC's lifetime prevalence numbers in favor of the 12-month numbers, she kept demanding that I explain the discrepancy between the two. And I attempted to do so, not once but twice:
Internal narration: WHY AM I EXPLAINING THIS TO A GROWNUP WHY
Text version for first attempt:
"How is it possible that two years in a row they've found equal or greater numbers of male victims yet the lifetime stats are so low for male victims?"
Uh... is that a real question? If you really need an answer, the average human lifespan is much longer than two years. It is possible for any of us to experience something we haven't experienced in a two-year span. Two years ago I had not experienced married life. Between then and now I have. See how that works?
Text version for second attempt:
"You have to explain why in the last year just as many or more men report rape than women."
I have already explained this very basic fact of life to you, that short-term events and long-term trends might point in different directions. If you are incapable of understanding the difference you should take that up with the education system that failed you.
Also notice how she incorrectly states that the lifetime prevalence numbers of men being raped are lower than the 12-month numbers. This is not only false from just looking at her pet table, it's impossible: People can experience sexual violence throughout their lives, but they don't all experience it in the same year.
I think rather she was saying that lifetime prevalence numbers were low for men in comparison to women, in contradiction to what the 12-month numbers show. This is symptomatic of a larger problem with MRAs, that male victimization and suffering don't matter to them unless it's somehow worse than women's and they can somehow work feminists into it. As many MRA critics have pointed out, men face legitimate problems but MRAs are not interested in addressing them. This is a movement built around hating feminists, not helping men.
Problem 3: Deliberately ignoring other forms of sexual violence
Fallacy: More cherry-picking
Another big problem was that Tieman excluded other forms of sexual violence and focused solely on a very narrow definition of rape, i.e. physically forcing penetration to happen. Notice that she left out the "other forms of sexual violence" that don't involve physically forced penetration, such as sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and unwanted non-contact.
This is probably because women still suffer more from other forms of sexual assault, even in the short-term numbers that Tieman argues are the only accurate ones. The long-term numbers are even starker. This is inconvenient for Tieman's conclusions, so she left out non-rape sexual violence.
Yet she has no problem citing non-rape sexual violence when it suits her purposes. Remember that study she cited that used lifetime prevalence data, which she claims to distrust? It also finds that the vast majority of sexual violence against the men in the study consisted of verbal pressure (31%), unwanted seduction (26%), and kissing/fondling (18%). Only 9% of the men who experienced sexual coercion reported physical force, which is Tieman's definition of rape.
Still, she happily cites these non-rape (according to her) forms of sexual violence to show men are sexually victimized at a high rate, but carefully excludes these numbers from the CDC stats when they show that women are victimized at higher rates than men. Those are some serious mental gymnastics right there.
Problem 4: Throwing male rape victims under the bus
Fallacy: I don't even know if there's a name for this. Consequences of mental contortions? Rank incompetence?
Yet a fourth problem is that the 12-month CDC numbers, Tieman's Holy Grail, don't find statistically significant numbers of men being raped by penetration. So even if she's somehow magically right that lifetime numbers should be disregarded in favor of 12-month numbers, then shouldn't that mean that men aren't being raped by forced penetration? One has to wonder why Alison Tieman, who supposedly wants to call attention to the suffering of men, is trying to erase an entire class of male rape victims with her selective reading of statistics.
When faced with facts, throw out false rape accusations!
Warning: Crude language invoking sexually violent imagery quoted below.
So how did Tieman respond to my pointing out these problems with her reading of statistics? By accusing me of raping women. No, really. She said I was pushing a woman-hating narrative to terrify women:
Text version:
How much evidence do you need to stop shoving a narrative of terror down women's throats?
[Lee:] "Rape is not gendered only if you ignore all the numbers you don't like and cherry-pick the ones you do."
Rape is gendered only if you insist on forcing women to swallow your propaganda.
Anyone who doesn't want women to live in submissive, shivering terror would long ago had enough evidence to question the validity of cramming women full of inflated, toxic statistics and letting them leak their poison into women's lives.
And ended with this bit of rhetorical turd:
Text version:
I have a final question for you: Is raping fear into women via questionable assertions about rape being "gendered" exciting for you?
So talking about rape statistics evidently makes me a rapist. Take note, anyone who's ever spoken on this subject with me: I may have committed this heinous crime against you without either of us realizing it.
Instead of laughing my head off I chose to tell her what exactly she was doing wrong. Besides, y'know, life in general. Okay, I laughed a little, because it's either that or barf.
Text version:
"Is raping fear into women via questionable assertions about rape being "gendered" exciting for you?"
LOL, now who's redefining rape? It excites me to point out how wrong you are. Do you get your fix from lying about statistics and making false rape accusations against people who trounce you in debate?
One hilarious/creepy thing about MRAs is the unintended revelations they make about their psychosexual insecurities. I counted four references in this one post to stuffing things into women's bodies: "Forcing women to swallow," "shoving a narrative of terror down women's throats," "cramming women full," and of course, "raping fear into women."
Someone should tell Ms. Tieman that there are plenty of ways (links NSFW) she can safely and ethically indulge her preoccupation of inserting objects into women's bodily orifices. As opposed to inundating random strangers with sexually explicit language, because seriously ick.
To her small credit Tieman did stop with the violent imagery when I called her out on her inappropriate use of the word "rape." Instead she continued to push her wildly speculative and selective brand of statistics, with all the problems I pointed out above.
My last reply to her is playing some annoying peekaboo on the GQ site, so I'll put it here:
Text version:
"You answer the question. How much evidence would you require to question your woman-hating narrative?"
And how much evidence do you require to face the reality that I'm talking facts, not a narrative?
"If the CDC's 12 month stats--the most accurate and comprehensive stats on sexual violence"
Those same "accurate and comprehensive stats show no statistically significant rates of men being raped by forcible penetration. Why are you trying to erase male rape victims, Alison?
"how about the NCVIS finding that 38% of sexual assault victims were male in the last year?"
...Which would mean 62% of sexual assault victims in the last year were female. Are you secretly a woman-hater yourself, to be quoting numbers like that?
"Or that the stats finding high rates of sexual abuse among male college and high school students?"
Show me where I denied that sexual assault is happening against men. Show me where I said it's not a problem. I said that the NUMBERED [sic] SHOWED that it's predominantly happening to women, and I objected to your ignoring and cherry-picking the numbers.
"of course it's justified to terrify women by presenting rape as gendered?"
I'm sorry that you're so terrified about this, but I would suggest seeking help to manage your anxieties rather than distorting statistics as a way to cope. Just a thought.
Remember, that was just one set of statistics. This is just a tiny look into the contortions MRAs use to bolster their vision of reality. And when you point out the ways they're wrong, they throw out wild speculation as fact and/or engage in distraction and bullying tactics. Or they accuse you of rape because, well, why not? After all the point for them is not the facts but maintaining their worldview at all costs. I feel almost sorry for them, that they have to resort to these tactics to have any peace of mind.
Dreamwidth entry URL: http://ljlee.dreamwidth.org/60555.html