Unitewomen.org, with the obligatory but disingenuous subtitle “Equality for all,” is still in the middle of a hysterical fit on Facebook over an A Voice for Men meme that targets false rape allegations.
To clarify, no one to my knowledge associated directly with A Voice for Men created the meme, but it is a fine piece of work and I wholly support the message it carries. Whoever did it has my thanks:
This image recently came under attack by the Facebook group affiliated with unitewomen.org. Over the past 24 hours there has been a veritable conniption fit of collective outrage by feminists there who see the meme as victim blaming. How they actually decided that speaking out against falsely accusing men of sexual assault was blaming the actual victims of rape is never explained. I put in an inquiry to that effect and my question was deleted and I was banned from the page.
Subsequently I witnessed many, many individuals show up to the page and pose similar questions, only to see those questions also disappear as the orgy of irrational anger and emotional reasoning from the women continued.
Their comments in reaction to the meme run a progression from mild delusion to, well, false allegations. There was some initial anger from members there directed at the pages admin, because they apparently did not bother to read the “trigger warning” and figure out that the meme was posted in order to condemn A Voice for Men.
“Why would UniteWomen share this??? We all know that false rape claims rarely happen,” asked Debi Boggs.
Lauren Sullivan asked, “[A]nd…what’s the point? Why is this out there-sponsored by UNITE WOMEN?”
“I really don’t think this is the problem we need to focus on. I thought this campaign was about empowering woman, this is NOT a positive message,” lamented Karen Tyler Boelts.
The admin to the page had to do a lot of corrective work to get their members to actually read the page’s message that was posted with the meme. Once they made sure everyone knew who to be mad at, comments replete with neurotic energy amped up quite a bit.
Diane Blake Harper harrumphed, “”A voice for men” as if they don’t already control nearly all of the voices we ever hear. Sick,” generated 95 “likes”. Inspired by Harper’s razor wit and cultural acumen, others joined the fray.
Opportunistic sycophant Brian Exclamation Marx Duff, drew 65 likes and initiated a 44 comment sub-thread with the rhetorical slam dunk,” If it was “advoiceformen”[sic] why doesn’t the voice ever say “don’t rape”?
Ba da da bump!
Not to be outdone in obsequiousness by his male competition on the page, Phil DeKane wanted to establish himself as senior servile by proclaiming, “Sorry, ladies. Many of my fellow men are dumb. (But you probably knew that already)”
Oh Phil, you silver tongued devil. I bet you get all the girls.
From there, things continued to escalate, as those who were allowed to express an opinion escalated themselves up the histrionic ladder all the way to the top rung.
Heather Lewis decried, “”Don’t be THAT girl.” Word choice makes it clear this is misogynistic bullshit.”
The message from Tanya Hadlock-Piltz was even more ominous. “Don’t be that girl = a message of silence. This as is slap in the face to all the women who have dared to speak out against the men who assaulted them.”
Not only is the meme victim blaming, it slaps women in the face! It commands the silence of (female) rape victims! That is what being concerned about false allegations really is!
Nelli Korzhenkova added another stinger at AVFM. “The people on avoiceformen.com really hate women, feminism isn’t about hating or putting men down.”
Whoa Nelli!
And then it got really toxic. Jen Larkin said, in response to a woman who actually offered a bit of a challenge that was allowed to remain up,” Not only are you pretending that the number of false reports is significant because “it happens,” you use misogynist dog whistles to gaslight anyone who says otherwise. How much energy do you typically spend protecting rapists from their victims?”
Who can beat logic like that? After all, just because something “happens” doesn’t mean you should try to do anything about it. Right, Jen? Surely anyone who wants to do anything about something that happens must be a protector of rapists.
Kari Briggs even found a way to blame victims of false allegations. “Here’s some advice for men; if you are so worried about being falsely accused of rape, don’t invite women that are “drunk, wearing very little clothing, and slathered in pheromones” into your bedroom.”
Guess that rules out your girlfriend after drinking a glass of wine and putting on a negligee.
There are several hundred comments on the thread, and dealing with any more of them would only risk a case of rage redundancy, but I do want to address one more comment in particular. It comes from Rachel Jonitis, who has the following to say:
This is ridiculous. I 100% acknowledge that there are women out there that have consensual sex and then cry rape. However, in the military, this is the exact kind of thing men say to shut women up, and for those that know, rape and sexual assault is a HUGE issue in the military, but very well covered up and swept under the rug.
Oh yes, Rachel. Rape and sexual assault are huge issues in the military. MASSIVE. In fact, the Washington Times just did an article on it. The headline reads, “False reports outpace sex assaults in the military.”
Before the fur (and accusations) start to fly, let me state for the record that we used up all of our misogynistic, gas lighting dog whistles over on Facebook. And we do not have the resources to implant women hating, silencing rapist protectors in the mainstream media.
The problem here though is actually the same problem that unitewomen.org has with the meme. It addresses something that is “happening.” And it is supported, not with fits of pearl clutching and endless OMGs, but with this other little pesky set of items. Around here we call them facts.
From the Washington Times article:
From 2009 to 2012, the number of sexual abuse reports rose from 3,244 to 3,374 — a 4 percent increase.
During the same period, the number of what the Pentagon calls “unfounded allegations” based on completed investigations of those reports rose from 331 to 444 — a 35 percent increase.
It doesn’t stop there. “In the course of conducting interviews with commanders, I heard time and again complaints about female service members making sex-related allegations which proved unfounded,” said Robert Maginnis, a retired military analyst at the Family Research Council. “Not only do some women abuse the truth, but it also robs their commanders from more important, mission-related tasks.
The Times quoted him even more extensively. “Female service members told me that some women invite problems which lead men on and then result in advances the woman can’t turn off. Too often, such female culpability leads to allegations of sexual contact, assault and then the women feign innocence.”
And how is the military handling this? Well, just like our new best friend Rachel Jonitis said they were; by the problems being “very well covered up and swept under the rug.” Only we are talking about rape lies here, not rapes.
Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness came out and pointed a finger directly at the Pentagon.
“Unsubstantiated accusations remain a significant problem, but the SAPRO (Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Office) is doing nothing about it,” she said. “I went through both volumes and found no evidence of concern about the significant 17 percent of ‘unfounded accusations.’ Something should be done to reduce the numbers of false accusations, the first step being an admission that the problem exists.”
Don’t count on unitewomen.org to help you, Ms. Donnelly. Or anyone else for that matter except A Voice for Men and Pierce Harlan.
And therein lies the problem. The dialogue about sex crimes in western culture is still controlled by gender ideologues with absolutely no investment in ameliorating the problem of sexual assault. In fact, a sensible examination of their tactics bears out the reality that they are invested more in perpetuating rape than ending it.
With the use of social hysterics, misandry, denial and demonization of those who attempt to address the false rape problem, they maintain a paradigm that defines any concerns about false allegations as misogyny and rape culture apologia.
And this presents a problem significant enough that it mandates I refrain from any snarky shots at the type of individuals we are talking about, no matter how tempting. These people are a serious social malignancy.
Assuming (erroneously) for a moment that rape is something that only happens to women at the hands of men, false allegations present one of the biggest obstacles to efforts to serve victims. False allegations squander investigative and other police resources on wild goose chases, both in military and civilian life. In another event that the ideologues at womeunite.org would dismiss as irrelevant at best, rape support at worst, the Orlando, Florida Police Department had to issue a public plea for women in that community to stop the false reporting of sexual assaults. It was becoming such a drain on police services that the police force took their concerns directly to the public.
False allegations undermine the credibility of real victims. In an age where ideological advocates for addressing the problem of rape can be counted on chant incessantly about the issue of women failing to come forward for fear of not being believed, the most certain way to perpetuate that problem is by forcing society’s head in the sand about the problem of rape liars.
The fear of not being believed is a rational one when people are forced to act like they believe all victims whether they do or not; and whether the alleged victim is credible or not. Anyone who has ever acquainted themselves with the details of the Vladek Filler case, or any one of hundreds, perhaps thousands of others, and who knows just how bad the systemic handling of false allegations really is, is going to be more likely to take the next “victim” they hear about with a grain of salt.
The only way to prevent these lies is to provide consequences for telling them. But all the threats to punish in the world are meaningless in a society that cannot acknowledge that the lies are being told in the first place. We can’t fix problems that are being swept under the rug in order to appease the irrational squeaky wheels that infest the rape advocacy movement.
Accepting the narrative of organizations like womenunite.org and a host of other groups is like accepting the narrative of a flat earth or a moon made of cheese. They are failing the victims they purport to serve, and failing them miserably, because they have reduced a complex social issue, one that demands sound analytical skills and matured reasoning, reducing the matter to a grab bag of emotional sound bites that are force fed with bullying and censorship.
As I alluded to briefly before, we have not even begun to address the largely ignored problem of male victims and children that are the targets of female pedophiles.
There is a great deal yet to do in order to address the problem of sexual assault and abuse in this culture. We will likely never end all of it, but we certainly could make much greater strides than we have so far.
The sad reality, however, is that if we want to address the problem of rape the first thing we need to do is get the rape advocates out of the way.
