Tory Shepherd is back on the attack. As usual, without plausible deniability of possible misunderstanding.
Earlier this week, Dr Greg Canning emailed several of the principals of AVfM, including myself, informing us of his upcoming interview with Australian blogger Tori Shepherd. He requested that what she wrote following that interview be addressed with a degree of decorum, acknowledging the effort at understanding made by Shepherd in taking the time to conduct an interview.
However, after publication of her article[1], he sent another email, which included “Let her rip gents , sorry I was naive to suggest remaining polite to her.”
Certainly, Shepherd’s article is an example of yellow journalism, but rather than impugn the author’s character, I will simply examine what seems clear in the article’s purpose.
Lets start with the title. “’Carnivorous men’ versus ‘lying bitches’ in sex war.” The term “sex war” is certainly flashy, lurid and sensational, but not informative.
Shepherd refers to an established, moneyed and politically powerful ideology of gender, subscribed to by Betty McLellan, who wrote that men are carnivorous and necrophiliac. Surprising, since as an academic she should know humans are not carnivores, but omnivores. The necrophiliac claim might just be projection.
Mclellan also appears quite confused about the nature of violence, indicating concern over it’s gender in a remark about “male violence.” She appears to lack some basic understanding. Violence and rape don’t have a gender, just as infanticide doesn’t have a gender. Also, robbery doesn’t have a race, and fraud doesn’t have a religion. Of course, if one were attempting to cultivate public hatred, crimes might be rhetorically associated with characteristics of human identity to considerable effect.
As example, today’s reporting on news.com.au from 18 July referred, correctly to violence by women, and not “female violence” which might have irresponsibly suggested that something about stomping on a teenager’s head was innately feminine.
Referring back to Shepherd’s mischaracterization of Dr Canning’s views, “lying bitches” might have be pulled from from a reader’s comment on one of more than 1200 articles on AVfM. But that phrase forms no part of this human rights movement’s standard rhetoric, which if Shepherd were a journalist, she would know.
Shepherd’s article includes a sub-heading imputing hate, and further implying a reliance on rather uninformative invective:
“Hate site’s motto is ‘F***king their s**t up’ “Linked to site to name, shame “bitches”
The site’s motto, which is printed directly under A Voice for Men is “take the red pill.” This is a metaphor for preferring a possibly uncomfortable reality over comforting illusion.
But motto or not, Shepherd doesn’t even get the verb tense right. It’s not the transitive, Tory, it’s the imperative. Not fucking, just fuck, you see? (Sigh, must I do everything for you?)
In addition, she makes a reference to a registry of criminals, aggregated from online news reportage. Unfortunately, Shepherd insists on referring to these individuals as “bitches”. By contrast, the registry lists them by category of criminal offense.
Shepherd also notes that Betty McLellan is a contributing author on a site called Radfem Hub, apparently unaware of the indictment of Mclennan in that admission. RadFem Hub is the online collective whose members, a collection of lawyers, authors, teachers, child care workers and social workers cheered and lionized fellow contributor Pam O’Shaughnessy’s published desire to eugenically exterminate the male half of the human race. In the comments threads – there was also advocacy for child murder, sex targeted infanticide and the murder of women who failed to see the rightness of these violent intentions.
Shepherd refers to AVfM – which exposed, and opposes this murder advocacy as a “hate site”. It is a peculiar form of journalistic integrity which can paint opposition to mass murder as hate. Is it possible that Shepherd herself sees merit in the plans of radical gender ideologues to murder children and plan for long term eugenic extermination of humans based on their sex? I wouldn’t bet on no. I dislike the idea of murder, particularly of children, and so I don’t defend advocates of murder and child abuse in my writing.
The Australian blogger does manage to get a few things right, areas of concern of human rights activists in the MRM include the incentivized rise of false rape allegations, so easy and consequence free a hotel maid ended the career of the former chairman of the IMF, based on an accusation now proven false.
“She lied about sex. She lied about money. She even lied about lying. That’s the conclusion of Manhattan Prosecutors”[2]
A practice in the grievance industry of perpetuating a factually false picture of domestic violence is another area of concern, serving the dual purposes of vilifying men, and tugging the right emotional note to access everybody’s wallet for donations – the standard Duluthian story of violent men beating innocent female victims has the further problem that it is guaranteed to perpetuate domestic violence. Addressing a social problem from a dysfunctional, broken model is guaranteed to fail. Something the DV services agencies almost certainly know. But it keeps them funded, so who cares right?
It is apparently too difficult to grasp that men – including MRAs would like to see a more effective model for reducing and eliminating domestic violence.
In 2010 Christina Hoff Sommers described the persistence of the grievance industry’s mythology in the following terms:
“We’re not talking about a few errors. We’re not talking about occasional lapses. We’re talking about a body of egregiously false information at the heart of the domestic violence movement. False claims are pervasive. False claims are not the exception, they are the rule.”
Shepherd also says in her article that Dr Canning “does, however, talk about false rape allegations on the site, a topic that is a core issue to AVFM.” , by “talk” , she implies “writes”. But Dr Canning has not written about false rape allegations, only about false accusations of DV. Obviously though, rape has much more emotive potential than ordinary violence for the purpose of selling advertising on news.com.au. Also, if you’re accustomed to tossing empty accusations around freely, blurring one category of crime into another is no big deal.
I have a question though, aren’t the editors of “news” publications supposed to fact-check before they publish? Also, isn’t rhetorical discipline something taught at journalism school?
Speaking of which, the term used by Shepherd to describe human rights activists she apparently disagrees with as “extremists”. Obviously, opinion journalism laden with empty invective, accusation and characterization, and lacking substance to justify such prevalent ad-hominem does betray the lack of a legitimate counter argument. However, “extremist” is of another character, it is a clear imputation of violent capacity. Recall as well that RadFem hub – where the eugenic extermination of male human beings is promoted and cheered – that’s not a hate site, but AVfM, where violence is explicitly rejected – in Tory’s world – we’re a hate site.
I’m going to borrow from my own recent writing to draw an informative parallel with the foreign policy of the United States of America. Every 3 to 8 years, the US positions itself to invade, bomb, and strangle another country through trade embargo. In essence, the US is making a new war on somebody, somewhere a couple times each decade. However, before any of the poor and working class kids get shipped off to foreign climes to shoot a bunch of the locals, an information war emerges through America’s information/entertainment networks. Colloquially called news, the infotainment machine churns out a stream of characterization, vilification, straw man arguments painting the country about to be invaded as an imminent, and dangerous threat. And thus, public support for ensuing military aggression is fabricated.
That’s the likely reason for Tory’s use of “extremists” to describe bloggers in a human rights movement. The word carries all the imagery of AK-48 armed Shiites and suicide bombers in the the most violently inflamed parts of the world, and this Australian columnist uses it to describe a human rights movement for whom aggressive activism amounts to putting up posters which include the phrase “had enough of this shit yet?”
How better to facilitate a climate in which violence becomes acceptable, than by painting the intended targets of that violence with an inflammatory label like “extremists.”
If Tory Shepherd had done the research being an actual journalist entails – she would know that violence by proxy is identifiable by the tactics she is pleased to employ in her squalid opinion-reporting.
To the question of, does Tory Shepherd support eugenic extermination of humans by sex, I will add a new question. Does Tory Shepherd acknowledge that when her ideological beliefs are challenged, her preferred solution is violence through proxy?
But returning to claims from Shepherd again, in citing her, I’ve replaced her most dishonest and irresponsible use of “extremest” with “activist”, for obvious reasons, and replaced her use of “men” with “human”, because it is not clear she understands that one group is a subset of the other.
Human rights activists “claim women often invent rape, either because they regret sex or because they want to frame men.”
They are not the only ones making such a claim.
A longitudinal study[3] conducted by Professor Eugene Kanin concluded that over a period of nine years, 41% of rape allegations studied were fraudulent, concocted by the alleged victim to either create an alibi, seek attention and sympathy, or to seek revenge.
There is also the McDowell Study cited by Warren Farrell inThe Myth of Male Power, which concluded that of 1,218 reported rapes on Air Force Bases around the world, 45% were discovered to be fraudulent.
Of course, if Tory Shepherd were a journalist, I would not be required to do her research for her. I will be sending my invoice to Tory’s publishers, since I appear to be stuck doing her job for her.
“The Baltimore Police Department has for the past four years recorded the highest percentage of rape cases that officers conclude are false or baseless of any city in the country, according to The Baltimore Sun’s review of FBI data”[4]
“Dundee woman to await sentence for false claim of rape”[5]
“Woman jailed for 15 days for false rape accusation.”[6]
“A 23-year-old Washington woman who admitted she lied when she said her father raped her won’t be facing any charges.”[7]
“A teenage girl whose false rape allegation led to an innocent man being beaten up and another man sent to jail was let off by police with just an £80 fixed penalty notice.”[8]
Tory also apparently doubts a statement made by Dr Canning in her interview with him: “Women, literally, get away with murder”[1]
Do I need to actually paste another list of news clippings into the body of this article? Really?
Casey Anthony, and Crystal Dawn Mckenzie, for starters. Register-her also has a category for murderers, although in observance of lack of conviction, it is listed “killers”. In many cases the victims are children. That site, however, does not have a category for “lying bitches”, since mainstream media doesn’t publish reporting on that particular social faux pas.
To my previous two questions:
Does Shepherd see merit in the plans of radical gender ideologues to murder children and plan for long term eugenic extermination of humans based on their sex?
Is Tory Shepherd’s preferred solution to cognitive dissonance cultivation of violence through proxy?
Now I will add a third question:
Is Tory Shepherd capable of separating reality from her own fantasies? I’ll hazard a guess the answer to this is no, which throws doubt on the choice to pursue a career in -ahem- journalism.
Of course , The Australian blogger also mentions past disagreement between the gender ideologue Dr Micheal Flood and Dr Canning.
Floods take on the problem of false rape accusation is that it dis-empowers victims and protecting perpetrators. When accusations are false, and they often are – the claim of “perpetrators” is completely specious – since excluding the accusers, there are none in a false accusation. However, this rhetoric is the standard politically correct line of police departments whenever they request the public to not make false accusations, because it dis-empowers the real victims of rape. No mention is ever made of the destroyed lives of the falsely accused. No mention of families torn apart, children denied access to their parents, and the outward spreading splash damage which reverberates through the lives of relatives and friends for decades after a false accusation. No, just that it dis-empowers actual rape victims.
According to Shepherd, “Flood also said the internet could be a dangerous place for women, particularly feminist women.”[1]
In other words, the internet is where bad ideas come to die.
Flood’s words: “The internet has provided a forum for more extreme and vitriolic beliefs” were of course, not referring to the calls for mass murder of men and boys by feminists, nor of enforced castration. No, he also didn’t mean the long-term feminist goal of reversing the burden of proof in criminal trials to a pre-magna-carta: – assumed guilty, and must prove innocence.
Nope, when Flood talks about “extreme and vitriolic beliefs” he’s referring to human rights activists who rigidly and strictly reject violence.
Although, flood almost manages to separate women – a group of people, from feminism, an ideology formed from bad ideas, when he says:
“..anti-feminist men can voice the most hostile and toxic kinds of attacks, particularly against feminist women.”
With just a little more thinking, Dr Flood might manage to separate the gender ideology built on hate and violence – from people identifiable by their sex as women. It’s an easy distinction to make. One is a group of people, many of whom are entirely lovely. The other is an ideology. They can even be told apart by their different spellings.
But this leaves me with one more question to add to my list of three.
Does Tory Shepherd think that women; a group of people, and spelled starting with a W, and feminism; an ideology built from hate and violence- which starts with F, are actually the same thing?
If so, this might explain why opposition to an ideology of gender is categorized by her as “hate”.
This will be added to the previous three questions, which are:
Is Tory Shepherd capable of separating reality from her own fantasies?
Is Tory Shepherd’s preferred solution to cognitive dissonance cultivation of violence through proxy?
Does Shepherd see merit in the plans of radical gender ideologues to murder children and plan for long term eugenic extermination of humans based on their sex?
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Addendum: Readers of this article who share the author’s disagreement with the stated views of Australian blogger Tory Shepherd are encouraged to contact her by email or through comments on her articles, sharing the specifics of that disagreement.
Kindly do not extend that sharing of views to include threats of violence, or damage to property. Behaviour which falls squarely into the category of rad-fem idiot-fuckery. Let’s not become what we’re opposing.
But seriously, she didn’t even get the site’s moto right. It’s: Take the red pill, Tory.
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[1] http://www.news.com.au/top-stories/carnivorous-men-v-lying-bitches-in-sex-war/story-e6frfkp9-1226427879838
[2] http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/new_lies_by_dsk_maid_ocxrjolISrS5wP3XwC0UeL
[3] http://falserapearchives.blogspot.ca/2009/06/archives-of-sexual-behavior-feb-1994.html
[4] http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2011/08/21/more-than-30-percent-of-the-cases-investigated-by-detectives-each-year-are-deemed-unfounded-five-times-the-national-average/
[5] http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Dundee/article/23659/dundee-woman-to-await-sentence-for-false-claim-of-rape.html
[6] http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/sydney-tourist-jailed-for-false-rape-claim-20120616-20gq7.html
[7] http://www.wwltv.com/around-the-web/Man-released-after-11-years-in-jail-after-daughter-admits-rape-claim-was-a-lie-145871615.html
