Misogyny, victim-blaming, and the board culture (yet again)

About This Message Board
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I think the board has made positive progress over the last few years with regards to being a welcoming place for women and survivors of rape and sexual assault. Misogynistic comments are generally moderated when outside of the Pit, especially when they’re brought up out of the blue in a thread having nothing to do with women’s rights or allegations of sexual assault and rape. I thank the mods for their progress on this, and I thank many, many Dopers for speaking up about this to try and make the board a better place.

With this in mind, and because this is about the most important issue in the world to me (i.e. making our society better WRT sexual assault and rape), I reported a comment that, out of the blue, and in a thread that had nothing to do with any allegations of sexual assault or rape, denigrated and blamed a woman for purposefully instigating death threats because she spoke out publicly about her experiences with a prominent political appointee.

If we want this board to be a welcoming place for women and girls, and especially for survivors of rape and sexual assault, then blaming and denigrating women (much less assigning blame for purposefully instigating death threats) for nothing more than talking about their experiences should be verboten in GD/Elections, at least when it’s not a thread specifically about evaluating such allegations. In fact, I was pretty sure that this was made clear as part of the rules before, in the other discussions that we’ve had on this topic relating to the board culture – that misogynistic or victim-blaming comments, especially when in unrelated threads outside of the Pit, would be moddable, with warnings or more. This particular comment was an out-of-the-blue victim-blaming – a snippet of the kind of language that, when widely accepted, enables rape and sexual assault, in a thread having nothing to do with the topic of allegations of rape or sexual assault. Just an utterly irrelevant misogynistic and victim-blaming post with no value to the discussion.

If my memory is right, I’ve received mod notes for bringing up Trump’s sexual abuse in threads that weren’t specifically about this. Those were probably reasonable notes – it’s certainly one of the issues that I feel most strongly about, and my feelings probably bled into some unrelated threads. But this is much, much worse, IMO – the poster didn’t criticize an admitted sexual abuser in some unrelated thread like I probably did (and was reasonably instructed to stop), he denigrated and blamed an alleged survivor, for purposefully instigating death threats, for nothing more than speaking out, in a totally unrelated thread.

I PM’d a mod about this particular issue, and the mod didn’t believe that the comment was misogynistic and thus not moddable. I very strongly disagree with this characterization – how is assigning the blame for purposefully instigating death threats to a woman for simply speaking about her experiences not inherently misogynistic? It’s hard to think of a more clearly misogynistic comment, when it comes to characterizing someone who makes an allegation of sexual assault, IMO.

Am I wrong about the rules – is misogyny less harshly sanctioned than I had presumed? Or am I just wrong about this specific post – that it’s not misogynistic to blame an alleged survivor for purposefully instigating death threats for speaking about her experiences?

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PLEASE say this is not about HD again???

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…is exactly what women, rape survivors, and people with an ounce of class say every time they see him post.

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Of course it is. I’ll reproduce the entire exchange here so that people have it at in front of them when deciding how “denigrating” towards women they think my comment was:

I, obviously, disagree with iiandyiii’s characterization of my post.

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what the fuck dude

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I don’t agree that it’s misogynistic, rape-enabling, denigrating bullshit. However, it was a pretty shitty thing to say.

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Ive decided. It’s “extremely fucking” denigrating. And you, yet again, exposing yourself for what you are.

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Sorry, iiandyiiii. I just don’t see mysogyny or victim-blaming in the linked post or context it was made in.

It was a fallacious argument on HurricaneDitka’s part, specifically tu quoque. But we can’t sanction members for merely advancing fallacious arguments, or how would we ever fight ignorance?

~Max

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I think you’re wrong about that specific post. I’m excerpting some things I sent via PM:

The statement HD was responding to was, “Exposing someone to death threats because you think it might help your side in a political squabble is a pretty shitty thing to do. Can we agree on that?”

That question opens up the line of discussion about any action that exposed someone to death threats because of political matters. It wasn’t about Ford or Kavanaugh specifically, but if any received death threats then it would be relevant. So the construction of the questions to determine relevance is, were there death threats? Then if so, were they the result of political activities?

This doesn’t speak to the validity of Ford’s position or Kavanaugh’s. For me, I think bringing up Ford and Kavanaugh in that context is a colossally bad argument. There are so many dissimilarities that it’s a very poor example. But bad arguments are not moddable.

I disagree with your assessment that it is misogynistic. Disagreeing with Ford, supporting Kavanaugh, seeing the confirmation process as a purely political one, etc. is not misogynistic. The post was in direct response to a question, could both sides agree that a certain action is bad. A response in the vein of bothsiderism is directly on point, hardly trolling.

I think HD’s introduction of Ford and Kavanaugh was primarily super weak, irrelevant, and not conducive to discussion. But if people are engaging him, and he responds on point, that’s not moddable. There are several posters whose contributions I find are generally pretty terrible and add no value. That doesn’t make it moddable, it just means I don’t engage with them. We don’t tend to mod the quality of arguments.

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I agree that disagreeing with Ford or supporting Kavanaugh are not inherently misogynistic. But that’s not what I object to. What I’m characterizing as misogynistic is the direct and purposeful blame that post assigned to Ford for instigating death threats. Do you disagree that asserting that Ford purposefully instigated death threats by speaking out about her experiences is misogynistic?

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Max, can you explain how blaming the victim of a sexual assault for death threats received by the perpetrator does not meet your definition of “victim blaming”?

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What you say above is true. However, HD was not merely disagreeing with Ford. He stated that the reason Ford raised the issue of her assault was “because they thought it might help their side in a political squabble.” This is extremely dismissive of sexual assault, and I have trouble undestanding how you could not see any misogyny in it.

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I think you read this sentence as showing victim-blaming:

I have to guess that you think saying “Dr. Blasey Ford and her allies exposed Justice Kavanaugh’s family to death threats” constitutes victim-blaming. In your own words, you characterize that as “assigning the blame for purposefully instigating death threats” to Dr. Blasey Ford.

But I think you are jumping the gun here. HurricaneDitka did not actually imply that Dr. Blasey Ford is to blame for purposefully instigated death threats; rather, it is asserted that she and her allies are to blame for exposing Justice Kavanaugh’s family to those threats. Certainly Dr. Blasey Ford did not send death threats Justice Kavanaugh’s family, and neither is it implied that her motivation for coming forward was to expose Justice Kavanaugh’s family to death threats. There is simply a cause and effect here, had Dr. Blasey Ford kept her mouth shut, Justice Kavanaugh’s family would not be exposed to death threats because of Dr. Blasey Ford’s actions.

Obviously if HurricaneDitka had argued that Dr. Blasey Ford should have kept her mouth shut, or that the purpose of her allegations against Kavanaugh was to incite death threats, that’s a totally different situation. But neither of those are implied and the resulting tu quoque argument does not require such a judgement to be made, only the cause and effect. The cause was Dr. Blasey Ford’s allegations, the effect was exposing Kavanaugh’s family to death threats.

A separate but related issue is where HurricaneDitka writes “…because they thought it might help their side in a political squabble”. Perhaps you think the word “they” includes Dr. Blasey Ford, and that “because” means “primarily because”. If that were true, it would appear that HurricaneDitka accuses Dr. Blasey Ford of alleging rape in bad faith: not because she was actually raped and wants justice, but because she wants to win a “political squabble”. I’m not sure if I would call that misogyny or victim-blaming (“denigrating” is appropriate), but it’s pretty low.

I believe this is just an accident of composition. Based on surrounding context and later posts in the thread, I think HurricaneDitka meant the Democrats when writing “they”. If I recall correctly, Dr. Blasey Ford didn’t even make the accusations in public, and didn’t want to put herself out there for public ridicule. The accusations were leaked against her will, and surely HurricaneDitka knows that.

~Max

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Looks like some people use the report feature simply because they disagree with a poster, and then, what’s that saying? “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks”?

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I have no doubt iiandyiiii sincerely believes the post showed misogynistic victim-blaming. It is good that he reported based on that belief, good that he asked the mods what they thought about it, and even good that he made a thread where we can discuss it.

I just think he is wrong.

~Max

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All posters can have bias, including against other posters, and I am not exempt from that – I have made it very clear (in the appropriate forum!) that I have very negative feelings for a very small number of posters, including the one that made the post in question. And I don’t think it’s possible to be certain that I’m entirely avoiding bias and making an argument that’s purely based on facts and objective analysis, rather than being influenced by my own feelings about the poster. So that’s why I reached out to a mod. I found the mod’s argument unconvincing (specifically because it hasn’t addressed the real reason I object to the post), and so I started an ATMB thread, to see if others feel similarly or feel that I’m wrong.

Thanks for the responses so far. Especially from Max S., who is the only one so far who disagrees with me who actually attempted to address what I’ve pointed to as objectionable. I think the structure of the sentence clearly ties Ford to the blame for deliberately causing death threats (and doesn’t need a “primarily” to mean this). And apparently we have a disagreement on what qualifies as “misogynistic” and “victim-blaming” (you characterize it as “pretty low”). But I appreciate that good faith effort at trying to break down the argument.

I appreciate Bone’s serious response as well, but he doesn’t seem to address what I’m focusing on – the assignment of blame for death threats on Ford, and that this was purposeful (for the “political squabble”). So I’m hopeful that Bone will take another look at the post I’m objecting to and how I’m characterizing it – once again, it’s not about disagreeing with Ford and supporting Kavanaugh, it’s about the specific language used to characterize and blame Ford for speaking out.

I don’t make a habit of starting ATMB threads about specific posts, and I’ve done so here because of how important the issue is to me (and how important this board’s culture is to me).

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Could be, Max S. But he seems to hated/despise HD so who knows? Mods in other threads have talked about folks simply using the report button because they disagree with someone.

I personally hate “report” buttons as they can be abused.

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I don’t think you understand what “victim blaming” means in the context of sexual harassment. “She wouldn’t have been raped if she didn’t walk down that alley” could be classified as “simple cause and effect” with no judgement to be made. But I hope that you would have no trouble seeing that as victim blaming.

Given zero context, I could possibly agree. But HD has been modded for multiple misogynistic comments. This is the poster who, in the very first response to an ATMB thread about misogyny and objectification of women, thought it would be funny to use “abreast” in his post. He starts to lose the benefit of the doubt when he is so often in the position of arguing that his comment was perfectly innocent, it was just an accident of composition.

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No comment here, no comment at all. We only wanted to introduce you to one of our very special citizens.

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I don’t agree with your interpretation that Ford is being blamed for instigating death threats. Ford took action which lead to a chain of events, one of those included death threats. That’s not blaming Ford for those threats.

I get the impression that you view things that are critical of people who happen to be women to be misogynistic more than I do. Even if you have characterized the sentiment correctly which I don’t think you have, I think character assassination politics is a more likely basis than misogyny.