Interesting Links for 5-11-2011

[andrewducker]

• "You should have your tongue ripped out": the reality of sexist abuse online
  (tags: feminism blogging misogyny women violence )
• The secret of ancient Viking navigation was transparent crystals. No, really.
  (tags: crystals navigation history viking )

Comments

That brings back memories

[thejeopardymaze]

A psychopathic ex-friend of mine (long story, maybe I'll get in to it in another DW handle that will be exclusively f-locked) threatened to rape me with a broom handle in an internet board message after some drama where it turns out he's really a creepy misogynist asshole stalking at least one woman in a local subculture. Unsurprisingly, we haven't spoke since, but also it's one of the main reasons I don't bother anymore with singles ads via OKStupid and so on, I don't want to have to deal with threats again.

I regret not printing out that thing, especially after finding out about his past behavior in highschool. And the message board brand name is dead, presumably bought out by some company. My only reassurance is that he'll no doubt either end up in prison or die young due his inability to control his own behavior, but I'm not overjoyed by the fact that a violent incident will be what it takes to get him locked up. I'm sure his family might be protecting him somehow.

Note, this is just the tip of the iceberg, he's worse than it sounds, and I regret going against my instincts and being his friend over some ludicrous guilt induced feeling of disability solidarity way back then-which he no doubt manipulated in a lot of people before the net drama finally exploded. It was every level of fail and stupid, and I refuse to make the same mistake twice.

Re: That brings back memories

[andrewducker]

The Geek Social Fallacies have a _lot_ to answer for. I've known people who stayed friends with people they really shouldn't have, because ostracizing anyone felt wrong to them.

Re: That brings back memories

[thejeopardymaze]

I think Geek Social Fallacies is misnamed, there are plenty of geeks out there with excellent people skills, and there are a lot of naive people or assholes outside of the geek world. Subculture/Outsider Social Fallacy might be a better term, IMHO, and I include the social justice and disability crowd in it.

The drama had nothing to do with geeks, but a habit I've noticed of a few too many disabled men blaming everything bad in their lives on their disability, accusations of women with it have it better as though there is some bias towards them, and using it as an excuse to be pretty nasty to women. They just can't help themselves.

While I agree with many of the SJ types who mention double standards about violence and mental illness or developmental disorders, and I won't argue mentally ill or developmentally disabled women are often on the receiving end of abuse, but I still haven't seen much examination of men with these types of disabilities never bothering to take meds or responsibilities, & I've already seen a few too many examples involving people in real life who get involved with some guy who turns out to be selfish and abusive and refusing to get help for their mental illness or addiction or whatever. Certainly having a disability or addiction doesn't make one evil, but it's like there is sense of playing down problems that come with disability combined with sexism in our culture in the disability rights blogsphere these days, or so I've noticed.

Anyway, what I know about this psycho (and I mean this in the full sense of the word before anyone takes offense at this) is that he was a lot more manipulative than I realized, and I have a feeling he knew the right buttons to push. I had my own sense of guilt due to an other ex-friend I was a complete asshole to years ago before that time, and somehow we all shared similar neurological problems. Lesson learned, never let a guilt complex influence decision making, especially if a guy is looking at you like a predator observing prey.

Re: That brings back memories

[andrewducker]

Yeah, they seem to crop up anywhere there's an out-group - people that have been ostracized growing up and then find a place they feel at home tend to not want to ostracize others. It was certainly something I found difficult to get past.

I also let guilt mess up my decision-making a few years back. It left me in a relationship longer than I should have been and hurting numerous people around me until I got it sorted. Never again...

Re: That brings back memories

[thejeopardymaze]

Yeah, they seem to crop up anywhere there's an out-group - people that have been ostracized growing up and then find a place they feel at home tend to not want to ostracize others.

Like the Kynn/Keeva rape case?. I'm not a role model, and made incorrect judgements of character before, so in a way some of the Social Justice internet community responses was a real let down for me. Maybe I shouldn't of been surprised, we're all human and we all have our own blind spots and make huge mistakes, but I had higher expectations of so many people, so it was like a huge disappointment that not enough people defriended this person at once, amongst other things.

Re: That brings back memories

[andrewducker]

I don't know anything about that case - fill me in?

Re: That brings back memories

[thejeopardymaze]

http://www.journalfen.net/community/unfunny_fandom/14383.html

http://www.journalfen.net/users/pyratejenni/126562.html

Re: That brings back memories

[andrewducker]

Wow, that's a giant cluster-fuck all round.

I am baffled by the chat-log post, which seems to contain semi-coherent ramblings that admit that something happened, surrounded by more coherent statements that nothing did.

Did anything conclusive ever come out of the situation?

Re: That brings back memories

[thejeopardymaze]

Not that I'm aware of.

-

Personally, judging from the victim's blog posts about it and Kynn's emails I'm pretty sure Kynn is guilty. I can understand why someone who has been sexually assaulted wouldn't want to get in to to every detail about the incident/s in public online, even books written by rape survivors tend to avoid divulging everything about what happened that they remember.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

What a man has to do to get that level of abuse and threats.