While anonymous reporting will always be in existence in one guise or another, some formal, others less so, I am opposed to an institution's systemized allowance for anonymous reporting. Because history. Pretty much all of it. Not to waste too much energy on this, because Salon is the laughable equivalent of Fox for the other end of the political spectrum, but your article is every bit as childish and lacking in intelligence as the actions of the spammers. Rather than addressing the criticisms of Occidental's anonymous sexual assault reporting (which it must be said that the spammers, for all their idiocy, laid to bare) you instead took the easiest road possible by focusing on ridiculing the policy's dumbest detractors. I hope you're at least reading the comment section and grappling, in your own time, with the very cogent, not to mention historicized, opposition to the policy.

Er, doesn't "Because history. Pretty much all of it" qualify as fairly "childish and lacking in intelligence," as arguments go?

It kind of makes you feel like that men's activist group has first child syndrome. They think mommy doesn't love the best anymore instead of realizing everyone wants mommy's love equally.

I'm sorry. Did you say "men's" rights?

Men don't need rights. We're good.

Maybe you meant mama's boys rights...?

Amazing!

Dr. Wade, I'm a long time reader of sociological images, but this approach seems to me to do a huge disservice to anti-rape activism. Your analysis may indeed be correct, but it ignores many of the more reasonable arguments that MRAs make (never thought I'd type that sentence). Among them: that most statistical approaches to measuring sexual violence don't qualify "forced envelopment" (envelopment of a penis with a mouth, anus, or vagina without consent) as "rape" therefore biasing the data against AMAB rape victims, that societal conceptions of masculinity create a stigma against male victims which inhibit reporting rates, that radical feminist messaging in which "men=perps, women=victims") reinforce this stigma, that false reporting rates are too high and that the consequences of being accused of rape are too great (you do briefly address this), and that many universities and criminal justice are adopting "preponderance of evidence standards" which are inherently unfair. Of course, many of these issues are discussed among feminist theorists and legal scholars, but these discussions have no visibility in mainstream new media, and many of us young feminists look to your blog as a resource when engaging with MRAs who use these arguments to criticize feminist activism.

It should go without stating that the most effective response to these particular MRA trolls is that: a) it is hypocritical to oppose false reporting by filing false rape reports, and b) if MRAs genuinely believe that men are victimized as frequently as women, they should have no problem with making these crimes easier to report.

"It hurts when privileges are taken away, no matter how unearned."

Probably, but it's an argument that is potentially orthogonal to the entire debate, because there is no way to prove whether said thing ever existed in the first place. It is an invented unit that is now allegedly taken away which is supposed to cause all the problems. That is not a very scientific approach to anything. Privilege, as used in common and potentially academic feminism, is something that defies definition and hence is impossible to opertationlise. It may work on an individual level, it may even be useful to check one's privilege, but as an explanation for something like the case at hand it entirely useless. There is simply no privilege-based way to determine if opposition to any change is a result of actual discrimination or a result of perceived discrimination. Sometimes, as feminism explains, those can even be the same.

IF feminism listened more to men's concerns instead of mocking them as forth-graders there would probably be less reason to be as concerned as some appear to be about the fact that feminism is the thought leader in the gender debate. When fear of false alligations is described as paranoia while most feminists will claim that a woman's fear to walk in the dark in front of a man is entirely reasonable, there's simply not a lot, I think, to convince men to trust feminists.

I'll start trusting feminists in this respect when they treat alleged perpetrators fairly, and I'll start trusting MRAs when they start treating alleged victims fairly. And of course, the usual disclaimer - it's not all about men allegedly raping women.

spray on dick cheese

I don't see what this has to do with male privilege, as you surely can't be implying that men have some kind of freedom from sexual harassment.

I really don't see what this has to do with maleness and femaleness at all.

It's frankly depressing that "haha, male tears" is a message that actual people want to hear. What are you, twelve?

This woman is truly a pathetic sexist. I would compare this argument with the arguments made by republicans after nine eleven. You know how people tended to sympathize with the U.S after seeing people jump from buildings to escape an inferno... and then a few years later most people seemed very critical of the U.S as they had milked the sympathy to the last drop and used it as a shield even from very relevant critisizm? That's how this woman and a lot of her peers strike me in their use of rape as a phenomenon.

I start out reading the article sympathizing, even though i am often sympathetic to MRAs, with the writer as this group seems to have made a very bad choice in their mode of protest. I think, like most people with hearts and brains would think that there may very well be reason for them to protest, rape is one of the oldest political weapons in use (see: racism in the south or pretty much anywhere or recent campaigns to deny great numbers of men custody of their children or acces to traditionally female jobs), but i imagine the possible actual victim of rape who tries to acces a helpline and can't get through and get a very bad taste in my mouth.

After having established this initial sympathy the writer then quickly demolishes it by turning her reflection in to ansympathetic and rather stereotypical rant putting her self on exactly the same level as the more idiotic MRAs.

A few years ago on a Swedish television debate (i'm swedish) a member of the "feminist initiative" party stood up and said men who claimed to be victims of physical abuse in relationships (a very well documented phenomena which is not unusual) were just pathetic assholes who tried to take even the suffering role away from women. The sadest part of this was that noone reacted, my usually eloquent feminist friends didn't see any need to rebuke her, i didn't see her normally very verbal partycomrades issue any apology to the men who are beaten and in some instances killed by their spouses every year....

Perhaps princess Phd here would have stood up for those victims of abuse in a similar fashion to how she stands up against MRAs, my prejudice based on long experience tells me she would just have found a way of "understanding the feminist correctly".

mhmm..agreed- i wrote about the idiocy of the men's rights movement here: http://melissafong.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/the-idiocy-of-the-mens-rights-movement/