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Ethanol-fueled and darkfeline wrote in with an Ars Technica article on a demonstration of how promoted tweets can be easily abused:
Promoted tweets have been part of the Twitter service since 2010, and they've allowed advertisers to pick and choose who sees specific ads based on "what a user chooses to follow, how they interact with a Tweet, what they retweet, and more." But users have found how loosely those ads are monitored or filtered before they reach users' eyeballs—and how cheap, fast, and easy the system can be exploited to annoy users as opposed to "engaging" them.
"I decided to spend a few pennies on Twitter ads today," [Weev's] post started, and he asserted that the platform's pricing structures "don't seem to take into account that one might want only to generate negative reactions to ad campaigns." Though Auernheimer didn't say exactly which users/groups he chose to target in his trolling campaign, he listed examples that appeared to jive with the sample of angry responses that followed: people who are active in Democratic political campaigns or animal rights groups; women who shop for fine jewelry; followers of known feminist sites like Jezebel and Feministing.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 07 2015, @05:44PM
I was required to attend a presentation and sign a form to the effect that I was a rapist that merely hadn't been caught in the act yet before I would be allowed to attend classes. Their proof? I was assigned the male gender at birth.
University harassment policies are publicly published. If this is a factual recount, instead of a hyperbolic one, perhaps you could tell us the name of the University and show us the policy. I'm sure the rape-admittal form letter is easily accessed online as well.
In other words: Citation Desperately Needed
(Score: 2, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday May 07 2015, @10:42PM
Grand Valley State University [wikipedia.org]. I realized I might be misremembering and it could have been a pre-requisite to move into the dorm. This is not documented anywhere, so I'm not sure how enforceable it is. (It probably isn't due to fair housing and other antidiscrimination laws—hell, Michigan struck down affirmitive action a few years ago at U of M iirc—, but there's still the hurdle of lawyering up.) I went along with it since it didn't seem like a big deal at the time and would have been more degrading to me anyway to prove why the gender on my record wasn't entirely accurate. Waste an hour or two being called a rapist, and then you're done. Now apparently that crap's infesting my profession and hobbies.
However, it looks like the GVPD has created a program that might actually help [gvsu.edu]. I was never quite certain exactly how calling a room full of guys rapists who haven't been caught yet was helping women protect themselves from date rape, but hey.
More universities are also implementing similar date rape awareness efforts [thinkprogress.org] although those at least have the virtue of not being overtly sexist. I imagine a cisgendered woman would be able to claim “triggers” and get out of it (or at least I should hope so…). I believe that “triggers” were why the presentation at Grand Valley was optional for women.
It's interesting to follow the links on the thinkprogress.org article and marvel at the number of times that the lack of shock and outrage from the audience (as in the ones with live plays as though the audience is supposed to react like it's real and not a play) is used as evidence that even more intrusive awareness is needed. I'm guessing these things are like XML and violence: if it's not working, you're not using enough of it.
Now imagine what kind of effect those presentations might have for men and trans women who were sexually assaulted as children or teenagers. (Maybe something similar is the origin story of M—gaaaaadontfeedthetrolls. It does fit the bill.)
Overall, I think the number one thing feminism needs to do is take its own advice and get some sensitivity training. No, that's no excuse to justify shitposts and threats of violence from misogynist trolls. However, feminism could use a bit more self-awareness. There are certain neighborhoods I've been in where I can guarantee you that I would wind up either in the hospital or dead if I started calling people “niggers.” Do I have the right to offend? Do I have the right not to be assaulted over my words? Yes and yes, absolutely. It's not a perfect analogy. I guess what I'm saying is that if I annoy the piss out of someone, I shouldn't be surprised if I face some kind of retaliation.
(Perhaps more to the point is that I'd never do that anyway just because I'm a decent person, not because I'm afraid of getting beat up. Feminists are peculiar in that they go around verbally assaulting and sexually harassing an entire demographic and yet the threat that they might get beat up legitimizes their reason for the verbal assaults and sexual harassment in the first place!)
That's the kind of self-awareness feminism is missing. Maybe some kind of open apology letter or better yet I can see four: 1 for cisgendered men (sorry about blaming all the ills of the world on you), 1 for transgendered men (sorry for calling you a traitor to a gender you're not), 1 for homosexual men (sorry about accusing you of an act you have no interest in), and 1 for transgendered women (sorry for convincing the world that we were somehow rooting for you while being as transphobic as a Southern Baptist preacher). Oh, I'm forgetting. 1 more for cisgendered women who don't buy into feminist lunacy (sorry about accusing you of having a dick or having some kind of internalized misogyny and being too stupid to realize it).
(Disclaimer: I say feminism, but I might mean SJW or female supremacist or some other term I've not encountered yet. I am thankful for the work feminism did right up until about the 70s so that I can have a career instead of being an OL, and there are plenty of people who do believe in gender equality who call themselves feminists. I guess it's a PR problem for feminism when I'm honestly not certain if these reasonable people are calling themselves feminists incorrectly.)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @12:01AM
How are these programs not wholly discriminatory based on sex? It would be trivial to file a lawsuit for this.
If they are teaching that program to women only, shouldn't there be a similar program for men to warn them and teach them self-defense techniques of female sexual predators that go out of their way to become pregnant or extract money and gifts from men? Yeah I know that makes for nearly the entire female population in the United States. That is the point.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday May 08 2015, @12:54AM
Eh, that's a thing for sure, no argument here. One of my male friends received an invitation to be a “sperm donor” in that style, but fortunately he saw straight through to the true intentions of the woman making the request. It does make me wonder how many men she had made that offer to and if some poor sap ever accepted.
I would worry more about male victims of domestic violence. According to these [ncadv.org] pages [safehorizon.org] the numbers are pretty close for men and women as far as being a victim of domestic violence, and according to MRAs, it's about 50/50. However, if a man attempts to defend himself against a violent cisgendered woman, especially if he ends up injuring her in even the smallest way (bruise), he will pretty much be held 100% responsible for the incident, get thrown behind bars, and find himself labeled a wife/girlfriend beater.
(On the other hand, premediated cold-blooded murder of a trans woman is merely manslaughter [wikipedia.org]. The silence of the feminists was deafening, although to be fair, reading my own link, I guess there's been a movie and documentary produced about it, so I should probably do more research into the individuals behind those productions to see if my accusation holds weight.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @03:52PM
I agree with everything you have posted. Last I checked the overall "non-reciprocal domestic violence" was perpetrated 70% of the time by women, but it is not even wort finding a source for considering crimes are rarely recorded when it is a woman against a man, thus really muddying up the waters and hard to find anything resembling facts. Another even less fun one is that, in psychology anyway, the majority of people being treated for sexual abuse as children claim that their own mother was the perpetrator. This holds true for both sexes. Yet mothers being sexually predatory to their own children being charged is impressively rare, and often are let off as being the lesser of two evils, the greater being the child having to do without their mother. At least that hits the news every so often, but the stats on sexual abuse never make it out of the journals.