On Harassment: Don’t Do It
UPDATE: I have no reason to believe that the harassment alleged by Kyle Lovett — which I discuss below — involved anyone even tangentially connected to this site, or indeed that it ever happened. The “evidence” he provided only showed that he got traffic from a link on this site. He never provided any evidence that the alleged harassment occurred or that, if if did, it was perpetrated by anyone who found his site through my site. The rest of my piece still stands.
The other day, a commenter here linked to the blog published by one of the moderators of the Men’s Rights subreddit. Kyle Lovett, the mod in question, says that not long afterwards, someone contacted his workplace saying that he was a member of a “hate group.” Claiming to be concerned about his safety, he temporarily hid his blog. And stepped down as mod.
Lovett says he suspects that this person who he says contacted his work is a Man Boobz reader, and has now provided evidence that seems to back up this suspicion. If Kyle is indeed telling the truth about the harassment, it was a Man Boobz reader who contacted his workplace. (There is no evidence it was one of the regulars here, merely someone who was reading the comments in that one thread. Nor am I completely convinced that the alleged harassment happened; Lovett has lied about things in the past.)
But if the harassment happened let me be blunt: That’s not cool. I don’t like that sort of harassment when it’s directed at feminists, and I don’t like it when it’s directed at MRAs. As Rebecca Watson once said, in a different context, “guys, don’t do that.” Seriously, DON’T DO THAT.
All this said, Lovett and other MRAs are acting as if the link to his blog here was in some way equivalent to “doxing” – that is, tracking down the personal information of someone posting anonymously, and posting it online, for purposes of harassment..
It isn’t. Kyle publishes his blog under his own name, and he regularly posted links to it on Reddit. It was no secret that he posted on Reddit as Qanan, just as my real name Is no secret.
I’m not sure why it’s necessary to point this out, but I will anyway: If you publish things on the internet under your own name, people will indeed connect your name to these things. There is absolutely nothing wrong with posting a link to someone’s blog. No one here advocated harassment in any way.
Needless to say, the indignation on the Men’s Rights about this is hypocritical, to say the least. MRAs harass feminists all the time.
A Voice for Men, the worst offender in this regard, has published the personal information of feminists, and once put out a thousand dollar bounty in an attempt to find out the identity of one feminist who had been posting anonymously online. AVFM head Paul Elam talks about “stalking” feminists and on his radio show gleefully discussed the prospect of not only revealing the names and addresses of women he considers evil, but also their routes home from work. He orchestrated a harassment campaign against one commenter here, which led to people contacting her workplace in an attempt to get her fired. There are many more examples.
Meanwhile, today on the Men’s Rights subreddit, one commenter’s call to harass a woman got two dozen upvotes from the regulars:
Guys, don’t do that.
EDIT: I have added a few comments in the post above to highlight my concerns that the alleged harassment may be a fabrication; I will remove these comments of Lovett provides proof, publicly or privately, that the harassment occurred.
Like this:
Posted on March 16, 2012, in a voice for men, announcements, bullying, hypocrisy, MRA. Bookmark the permalink. 178 Comments.
NWO, how much time are you going to have to spend with your family if you are spending 80 hours a week at work? Srsly, on a schedule like that, you’re basically just gonna commute, eat, and fall into bed. You’re not going to be able to tuck your kids in at night, help them with their homework, or pick them up from school. You may bring them money, but you and them will be strangers to each other.
In NWO’s scenario, women never work, of course.
Two points.
Circumstantial evidence doesnt hold up. Someone clicking on a link here and then someone reporting him at work are not necessarily related. If a bunch of blog reads were from one IP address that does not mean they are the same one who called his work. Maybe they liked his writing.Theres no causal link. Theres only timing and some overlap in subject matter. Everything else is some kind of projection.
He has called other MRA guys crackpots and quacks, that they wanted to live in 1800 or whatever, said he thought women should have equal opportunities and other stuff. We all know how well that goes down with some people. How does he know its not one of his own crew feeling betrayed?
@ozymandias42
As always, Ozy, You miss the point completely. Father isn’t just some made up legal statute. It is as an inailenable right. It isn’t a right that can be taken away. Child custody is not something that can be negotiated like a bargaining chip. I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed by your godstate.
Do name the conditions by which the State allows a man to retain custody of his children.
To be fair, that depends on the job. I burned out of a job working 54 hours a week and they let me cut back to 40.
But whatever. The bigger issue here is that NWO doesn’t know the difference between “Dad sees the the kids several times a week and they stay with him on the weekends, but Mom has primary custody” and “Dad has no visitation and a restraining order.”
Holly: Fair enough, I shouldn’t have overgeneralized. But for at least a very significant proportion of sixty-hour-a-week jobs, the hours are to a certain degree out of your control.
Re: work hours.
Here’s a fascinating piece on what counts as work when it’s the CEOs who do it:
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/03/13/wheres-the-boss-and-what-counts-as-work/
Oh gods please no. No one deserves that.
CHILREN ARE PEOPLE! HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS?
when friends of mine were going through a bad patch, he told me he was going for full custody because he knew it would hurt her. and he was the one who had cheated on her, by the way.
his wife, during their separation, went out of her way to ensure the kids saw their dad, didn’t involve the kids in their fights and maintained to everyone that he may be not such a great husband but he was a great dad.
i listened to both of them (complicated situation) through the whole episode and i know she always put the kids first. He consistently referred to them as ways to inflict pain on her. whilst he had other legitimate grievances (i felt) about the relationship, as did she, i still remember him telling me about his custody plans and the look of spite on his face.
They have since reconciled but if they had divorced and if for some reason he had got the kids full time, they would have gone into full time daycare Mon-Fri. a regular working week, including travel time would have mandated this. so he wouldn’t have any more time with the kids than before, they would be in formal daycare which costs a helluva lot and her quality of life would have been trashed for the sake of him inflicting revenge on her.
Yeah, she was such a misandrist.
I thought the only rights were life, autonomy, property, and vote. Is it now life, autonomy, property, the vote, and fatherhood? Who’s making up rights now?
Hey NWO! My biological dad worked the mythical 80-to-90 hour work week. Not because he had to, mind; because he loved it. He sure did ascend the ladder faster than my mom with her 40 hours a week, if that means something. It’s pretty silly to pretend he did it for me and my brother, though. Hell, if I didn’t have his eyes and Brother didn’t have his incredible stubborness, he probably wouldn’t have even recognized us as his children. My memories of my father pre-divorce are few, and mostly involve yelling. If my mother hadn’t insisted that they go to counseling so that he learn to deal with kids, he probably couldn’t have handled his 2 weekends a month — when he was in town, of course; business travel, you understand.
Now we have a pretty decent relationship, better than when my parents were married for sure, but we both know he’s not the man that comes to mind when I think “dad”. He’s more like a beloved uncle. I didn’t care how much money he brought into the household, I didn’t care if he was the primary income earner, I didn’t care if the long hours shot him up through the ranks, because I was a fucking kid. I cared who spent time with me. My dad barely knew me. My stepdad gained a wife and kids overnight, and he made the decision to be there — physically be there — for us. Who do you think knows my favourite foods? Who do you think hugged me the first time my heart got broken? NWO, who do you think my dad is?
Of course it is. If you don’t feed you children, no matter your gender or marital status, you might lose the custody of your kids. Do you realize that we must not only respect the rights of the father, but also, and firstly, the rights of the child? Which include not being abused in general.
@darksidecat
“CHILREN ARE PEOPLE! HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS?”
Save your false righteousness, princess. Women slaughter 1.5 million unborn “people” every year in this country. And if they’re people, how can women dictate who they can or can’t see? Sounds like property to me. Or is when women want custody they’re caretakers, when men want custody they’re property? So which is it, oh righteous one?
————-
@ozymandias42
“I thought the only rights were life, autonomy, property, and vote. Is it now life, autonomy, property, the vote, and fatherhood? Who’s making up rights now?”
Since women like you insist on using chidren as a weapon, why not hand over the children to your godstate whenever custody is contested? In the interest of fairness and equality, since parents don’t own their children, why not your godstate?
—————
@Kyrie
“Do you realize that we must not only respect the rights of the father, but also, and firstly, the rights of the child? Which include not being abused in general.”
If that’s the case, women commit the vast majority of child abuse. Statistically, the safest place for a child is with their biological father. Don’t you care about the children?
—————
So which is it enlightened ones, are children property or aren’t they? When fatherhood is mentioned you scream men consider children property, when it’s motherhood you scream primary caretaker. Ya can’t have it both ways. Equality means equality for all, even men.
Does the state give you the right to have children? If not, they can’t take that right away.
@NWO: you might have not noticed that, but I didn’t specified the gender of the parent. My only point was that parent don’t have an absolute right to their children.
Statistic means nothing for a case by case. That’s why we don’t put all men in prison just because the majority of rapists are men.
But tell me, how many parents, or fathers if you prefer, fought and were denied any right of visitation without abuse?
Because I don’t see that happening much. Of all the kids with divorced parents that I know, all but one family had mutual custody. The last one, the father sexually assaulted the elder sister and beat his wife (who is now severely disabled as a result of it) and he still have visitation rights.
Easy, I just told you: THEY’RE NOT.
Because some do. Hopefully, most don’t.
You’re mistaking two things: man/woman equality, and the traditional household caretaker/breadwinner. You want equality between the caretaker and breadwinner, we want equality for all genders. That’s completely different, because it’s obvious to everybody but you that men can an are sometimes, the primary caretaker. In which case, it’s normal for the judge to have a ‘bias’ in his favor. But it’s not about what the caretaker deserve for their hard work, or punishing the breadwinner for not being there enough. It’s about what’s best for the child, about who proved themselve more capable of taking care of them.
a quick google gave me a whole list of stats that disagreed with NWO’s assertion that women abuse more. i found this interesting: http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/statistics.html
but really,i believe that children need to be placed where they can receive the most stability and love. i believe it’s a misogynistic notion that posits women as natural and angelic carers. As a mother, i can speak from the heart on that one.
i don’t think anyone here believes that a loving and caring father should be excluded from his children’s lives. However, the reality is that, for many reasons, women are still the primary care givers and to disrupt the children from this for a political agenda is wrong. i’m all for shared care and equal parenting, we need to find the social mechanisms to enable this.
in the case of my friends, i’m not clear on the net gain for their children if he took on full custody simply to place them into full time day care. Can you explain the overall gain for me NWO?
Also for the millionth time “not primary custody” usually does NOT mean “can’t see his kids.”
Unless there’s been abuse the dad will almost certainly get SOME days with the kid if he wants them, and unless there’s been absolutely horrific abuse he’ll get visitation. You have to fuck up BIG to not even get supervised visitation.
So unless you’re willing to really own the “abusers’ lobby” niche, it’s ridiculous to present every case of a father not getting primary custody as a man who will never see his children again.
I’m also remembering several custody cases friends of mine have been involved in where the father’s plan was to have his MOTHER raise the child. I don’t think any of them succeeded, but in one case my wiccan friend had to give up her religion and attend a church the asshat judge approved of (and in that case, they weren’t even married, and he had never done any childcare at all).
For real?!!! That happens?!! I didn’t know judges were given that kind of power, that’s fucked up!
Louisiana. She kept custudy, but it cut her off from her religion and from a lot of her scholarship (which was about wiccan and pagan feminst elements in fantasy novels).
I’m a lot more open here in rural Texas telling people at my university that I’m queer than telling them I’m an animistic pagan.
That’s probably unconstitutional, but in that nasty place of “safer to let them violate the Constitution than to risk your child over a principle.”
@Holly: Probably, but english teacher single parent certainly did not have enough money to try to push it into higher court system. Amazing how many people in this country subscribe to Raygun’s definition of freedom of religion: “we’re free to be CHRISTIAN.”
I forgot that the Land of the Free, is the Land of the Free WASP Man. That’s fuckin disgusting. But if it’s unconstitutional, isn’t it true that the judge can’t uphold the decision should she go back to her research or religion? Or is that just hopelessly naive of me?
I’m not sure-this all happened back in the hmmmmm late 90s? Early 2000s?(I date by conference-we became friends at the first national conference I attended, but then I stopped going to that conference and started another….probably around 2003). We’ve sort of dropped out of touch in recent years, so I’m not sure what has been happening recently (except omg her little girl must be….teenager now yikes). (These kids grow up so fast). I honestly don’t know what would have happened…I should drop her a line!
Falconer: NWO’s favorite books are Star Wars novels. He usually reads books without ever learning the author’s name.
@ithiliana
Here’s hoping she found a way around that bullshit
Ithiliana: That’s awful! How is that legal?
NWO: That’s… not actually an answer. I don’t like the state either, I just think it’s better than any of the other options we have right now (although zhinxy and BlackBloc disagree
). I certainly don’t worship it like a god. It is a flawed, imperfect institution that needs to be kept strictly in line so it does not interfere with people doing things that make them happy.
Someone else already gave a link explaining this, but I’ll reiterate it in case NWO chooses not to read it. As a general rule, women spend a lot more time caring for children than men do. Moms are more likely to be primary caregivers, and hired caregivers are more likely to be women. If you actually factor this time variable in, you would find that women in general are less likely to commit child abuse.
Children are more likely to be abused by parents than by strangers. If you use NWO’s logic, ignore all other variables, and look at the gross statistics, you would come to the false conclusion that it is best to take all children away from their parents and give them to strangers. Children are also more likely to get injured in the home than at zoos. Using NWO’s logic, children should live in zoos instead of houses. Logic fail.
I don’t recall declaring motherhood an “inalienable right” either…in fact, I did not gender the primary caretaker at all in my post. You are the one reading in an assumption that the primary caretaker who would be favored would automatically be a woman and a biological mother.
Not all men view children as property, or discuss them as property. You were the one asserting men had “inalienable rights” over other people, hence treating them as property. You do not get rights over other human being’s bodies, NWO.
@ithiliana, yeah, I have heard similar stories from atheists and minority religious groups as well, mostly from mothers. @ozy, yeah, it is unconstitutional, it is also damned common.
I suspect some of the judge’s thinking is “wiccan=satanic=childabuse and sacrifice” crap.
So unless you’re willing to really own the “abusers’ lobby” niche, it’s ridiculous to present every case of a father not getting primary custody as a man who will never see his children again.
+1,000,000
Well, you did the right thing David.
I’m not categorically opposed to violence (I’d've been in the wrong line of work if I was). I am opposed to violence which has no justifiable purpose, and no useful; obtainable goal.
As a practical matter that means I am opposed to more pro-active, as opposed to reactive violence.
Same for outing people. If they are merely being assholes, then they are entitled to be assholes. If they are being a threat to someone; or causing an actual harm, things may be different.
It’s the problems of jus ad bella and jus in bella
Not that he - or anybody - deserves to get stalked and targeted, but Kyle Lovett is a raging douchecock in my judgment.
The fetishization of homeless men and prison rape victims is more than a little creepy to me.
That’s a disturbing way of putting it.
Disturbing how?
I’ve just been verbally pummeled by the guy all morning and needed to blow off some steam. I could have just called him a douche, didn’t want to leave the impression that I supported the idea of tracking someone online.
My bad, I misread.