This comment thread is the “No Hostility” thread. Please read this and this for the ground rules. The “Regular Parallel” thread can be found here.
The identity of Roissy, author of a blog about “gaming” women, was recently outed. His outing set off a firestorm in the blogosphere about the merits of “game” and the “seduction community.”
According to Lady Raine, she outed him for publishing insulting posts about her, reposting photos of her and her young son from her Myspace page (now taken down), posting a porno video falsely joking that she was in it, being abusive and violent towards women, and advocating abuse. Lady Raine eventually retaliated by posting information on Roissy’s identity, occupation, and names of his family members that were dug up by readers (some of this information was already available online, while some was not).
A while ago, I had criticized Roissy for writing a post where he described slapping a girlfriend of his, said it was deserved, and argued that hitting women can turn them on in some circumstances. I asked him to clarify whether he really believed that hitting women was acceptable or not, but he has never responded. During this whole affair, that post has been deleted.
I made the same points more recently on his blog, here and here. The commenters are calling me a “gender traitor” and insisting that Roissy was being tongue-in-cheek. Are statements like this tongue-in-cheek:
be her authority, lead, slap her when necessary, playfully dismiss her juvenile provocations, and always be prepared to lay down the law
That sounds pretty literal, unless Roissy wants to clarify otherwise. I think his defenders are white-washing the fact that he has committed, justified, and suggested partner violence (yes, slapping is violence). Just because Roissy has correctly identified many of the problems men experience in the dating world, there is no need to turn him into some sort of figurehead who can do no wrong.
Roissy sent an apology through an intermediary through Lady Raine:
[...] I have received emails directly from “friends of Roissy” who would rather not be named. I have no problem with that. According to those people, Roissy is “sorry” for the many posts he has used my name in and has admitted to “using Lady Raine to get more blog hits” and “posting slander” simply to make his blog more popular.
[...]
Anyway, Roissy offered to take down his posts about me and never post anything about me again if I agree to remove MY post about him.
For Lady Raine, an indirect apology is not enough, and she kept her post up. She and Denise Romano, an anti-violence counselor, have reported him to the authorities.
Personally, I find the entire affair distasteful. I was no stranger to Roissy’s misogyny and condoning of slapping women, which I had criticized. I condemn his reposting of Lady Raine’s photos, particularly of her son. Furthermore, as someone who has gotten value from the teachings of the seduction community (even while having certain problems with it), I don’t like how people first exposed to writings on “game,” “pickup,” and “seduction” through Roissy’s blog will attain a skewed perception of what those things are all about.
At the same time, I can’t quite get on board with Lady Raine exposing his identity (even though it was publicly available with a little digging), or his employer, mailing address, and the names of his relatives (who have nothing to do with this). She refers to him with anti-Semitic insults, and has trouble understanding why readers find them offensive. Lady Raine sums up her plan for Roissy:
He deserves to be treated like a criminal and I intend to continue to make it that way until he either kills himself or disappears….whichever happens first.
Ah, but she’s just being tongue-in-cheek about trying to drive the guy to suicide, right? Just like Roissy’s remarks about women were tongue-in-cheek.
Roissy indeed advocates and excuses behavior that has no place in a civilized society. Yet if Lady Raine and Denise Romano believe that he is breaking the law, then the appropriate venue to raise that grievance is with the authorities.
Even though Roissy seems to recommend slapping women, his speech is probably constitutionally protected because he never advocated imminent lawless action. I don’t like seeing anonymous bloggers on the internet being maliciously exposed for exercising their freedom of speech, even when that freedom is being used for reprehensible speech.
The solution to reprehensible speech is more speech. Not outing a speaker who is trying to remain anonymous, and exposing his workplace, mailing address, and names of family members. Two wrongs do not make a right. Lady Raine describes protesting what she calls “revenge feminists,” certainly a laudatory pursuit. Yet her behavior towards Roissy places revenge over justice, and exemplifies the “revenge feminism” she supposedly condemns.
Update: Lady Raine took down some of Roissy’s personal info, like the names of his family members. While I would like to give her credit for such grace, I can’t, because WordPress made her do it due to Roissy’s complaints.
Note: In the comments of this post, disclosing people’s private information without consent is prohibited. That means that there should be no mention of Roissy’s personal details in this thread, though you may link to other blogs that do include this information, since I’ve had to do so to discuss this subject.
Oh, outing in that case meant something completely different….never mind.
Changed wording to clarify
Lady Raine did not “out” Roissy; he outed himself in an interview he gave to a newspaper.
I’ve done a great deal of counseling work in the past, but currently, I am primarily a writer with a strong interest in identity issues that deal with EI and how personal/cultural/relative power is experienced and handled.
Thanks
Denise
EI, as in… Emotional Intelligence?
Yes, EI as in Emotional Intelligence. (I looked up her web page about her life coaching/counseling business.)
MENS REA
Please see “recklessly and negligently” below to see how most Game materials do encourage men to sexually assault women by teaching them that No means Yes and using concepts such as ASD and LMR.
Furthermore, the many doublespeak emails in the threads on Lady Raine’s blog and on other blogs (from most but not all men posting there) *prove* that – in many of their own words – these men believe they have the right to do whatever they can to get laid when that is their goal. See “willful blindness and deliberate ignorance” below.
See also “Malice” – and then review the many comments on Lady Raine’s blog and others in this discussion (e.g. spearhead) that do two things:
1. insist that men dating women have no ethical obligations to anyone and
2. Wilfully ignore the definitions of sexual assault and rape we’ve repeatedly given for everyone’s good.
§ 5.01 Common Law Principle and Definition
“Simply put, “mens rea” refers to the mental component of a criminal act. However, there is much ambiguity inherent in this term. The doctrine has been defined in two basic ways:
[A] “Culpability” Definition of “Mens rea” – In the early development of the doctrine, many common law offenses failed to specify any mens rea. Mens rea was defined broadly in terms of moral blameworthiness or culpability. Thus, at common law and in jurisdictions that still define the doctrine broadly, it was and is sufficient to prove that the defendant acted with a general culpable state of mind, without the need to demonstrate a specific state of mind such as “intentionally,” “knowingly,” or “recklessly.”
[B] “Elemental” Definition of “Mens rea” – Much more prevalent today is a narrow definition of mens rea which refers to the particular mental state set out in the definition of an offense. In this sense, the specific mens rea is an element of the crime. Note that a person can be culpable in that he was morally blameworthy yet lack the requisite elemental mens rea.
§ 5.02 Specific Mens rea Requirements
[A] “Intentionally” – A person “intentionally” causes the social harm of an offense if: (1) it is his desire (i.e., his conscious object) to cause the social harm; or (2) he acts with knowledge that the social harm is virtually certain to occur as a result of his conduct.
The doctrine of “transferred intent” attributes liability to a defendant who, intending to kill (or injure) one person, accidentally kills (or injures) another person instead. The law “transfers” the defendant’s state of mind regarding the intended victim to the unintended one.
[B] “Knowingly” or “With Knowledge” – Sometimes, knowledge of a material fact – an attendant circumstance – is a required element of an offense. A person has “knowledge” of a material fact if he is aware of the fact or he correctly believes that it exists. Most jurisdictions also permit a finding of knowledge of an attendant circumstance when the defendant is said to be guilty of “wilful blindness” or “deliberate ignorance,” i.e., if the defendant is aware of a high probability of the existence of the fact in question, and he deliberately fails to investigate in order to avoid confirmation of the fact. An instruction in this regard is sometimes called an “ostrich instruction.”
[C] “Wilfully” – “Wilful” has been held in different jurisdictions to be synonymous with other terms, e.g., “intentional,” “an act done with a bad purpose,” “an evil motive,” or “a purpose to disobey the law.”
[D] “Negligence” – Criminal negligence (as opposed to civil negligence) ordinarily requires a showing of a gross deviation from the standard of reasonable care. A person is criminally negligent if he takes a substantial, unjustifiable risk of causing the social harm that constitutes the offense charged.
Three factors come into play when determining whether a reasonable person would have acted as the defendant did:
1.) the gravity of harm that foreseeably would result from the defendant’s conduct;
2.) the probability of such harm occurring; and
3.) the burden to the defendant of desisting from the risky conduct.
[E] “Recklessness” – A finding of recklessness requires proof that the defendant disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk of which he was aware.
[F] Distinction Between Negligence and Recklessness – The line between “criminal negligence” and “recklessness” is not drawn on the basis of the extent of the defendant’s deviation from the standard of reasonable care — the deviation is gross in both cases — but rather is founded on the defendant’s state of mind. Criminal negligence involves an objective standard – the defendant, as a reasonable person, should have been aware of the substantial and unjustifiable risk he was taking); recklessness implicates subjective fault, in that the defendant was in fact aware of the substantial and unjustifiable risk he was taking but disregarded the risk.
[G] “Malice” – A person acts with “malice” if he intentionally or recklessly causes the social harm prohibited by the offense.
§ 5.03 Statutory Interpretation of Mens rea Terms
It is sometimes necessary to determine the precise elements that the mens rea term is intended to modify. For example, in United States v. X-Citement Video, Inc., [513 U.S. 64 (1994)] the defendant was convicted of violating a federal statute that made it a felony to knowingly transport, receive, or distribute in interstate or foreign commerce any visual depiction “involv[ing] the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct.” Although the defendant admitting to trading in sexually explicit materials, he claimed that he was unaware that such materials depicted a minor. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the term “knowingly” modified the attendant circumstance element (relating to the age of the person depicted in the video) in addition to the obvious modification of the conduct elements (“transport, receive, or distribute”).
The Supreme Court determined that the legislature intended to require knowledge of the age of the person in the video since distribution of sexually explicit, but non-obscene, videos of adults was lawful. It was therefore the knowledge that the video depicted child pornography that was criminal.
§ 5.04 “Specific Intent” and “General Intent”
The common law distinguished between general intent and specific intent crimes. Today, most criminal statutes expressly include a mens rea term, or a particular state of mind is judicially implied.
[A] Specific Intent – Generally speaking, a “specific intent” offense is one in which the definition of the crime:
1.) includes an intent or purpose to do some future act, or to achieve some further consequence (i.e., a special motive for the conduct), beyond the conduct or result that constitutes the actus reus of the offense, e.g., “breaking and entering of the dwelling of another in the nighttime with intent to commit a felony”; or
2.) provides that the defendant must be aware of a statutory attendant circumstance, e.g., “receiving stolen property with knowledge that it is stolen.”
[B] General Intent – An offense that does not contain one of the above features is termed “general intent,” e.g., battery, often defined statutorily as “intentional application of unlawful force upon another.” This is a general-intent crime, for the simple reason that the definition does not contain any specific intent beyond that which relates to the actus reus itself. The only mental state required in its definition is the intent to “apply unlawful force upon another,” the actus reus of the crime.
§ 5.05 Model Penal Code
[A] General Principle – Model Penal Code § 2.02(1) provides that, except in the case of offenses characterized as “violations,” a person may not be convicted of an offense unless “he acted purposely, knowingly, recklessly or negligently, as the law may require, with respect to each material element of the offense.” The Code requires the prosecution to prove that the defendant committed the actus reus of the offense—in fact, each ingredient of the offense—with a culpable state of mind, as set out in the specific statute.
Thus the Code:
· eschews the “culpability” meaning of “mens rea”;
· discards the common law distinction between “general intent” and “specific intent”;
· limits mens rea to four terms: “purposely”; “knowingly”; “recklessly”; and “negligently”;
· requires application of mens rea to every material element of a crime, including affirmative defenses.
[B] Mens Rea Terms
[1] “Purposely” – In the context of a result or conduct, a person acts “purposely” if it is his “conscious object to engage in conduct of that nature or to cause such a result.” [MPC § 2.02(2)(a)(i)] A person acts “purposely” with respect to attendant circumstances if he “is aware of the existence of such circumstances or he believes or hopes that they exist.”
[2] “Knowingly” – A result is “knowingly” caused if the defendant “is aware that it is practically certain that his conduct will cause such a result.” [MPC § 2.02(2)(b)(ii)] With “attendant circumstances” and “conduct” elements, one acts “knowingly” if he is “aware that his conduct is of that nature or that such [attendant] circumstances exist. Furthermore, the Code states that knowledge is established, if “a person is aware of a high probability of . . . [the attendant circumstance’s] existence, unless he actually believes that it does not exist.” [MPC § 2.02(7)]
[3] “Recklessly” and “Negligently” – The Code provides that a person acts “recklessly” if he “consciously disregards a substantial and unjustified risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct.” A risk is “substantial and unjustifiable” if “considering the nature and purpose of the defendant’s conduct and the circumstances known to him, its disregard involves a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a law-abiding person would observe in the actor’s situation.” [MPC § 2.02(2)(c)]
A person’s conduct is “negligent” if the defendant “should be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct.” [MPC § 2.02(d)] The definition of “substantial and unjustifiable” is the same as that provided for in the definition of “recklessness,” except that the term “reasonable person” is substituted for “law-abiding person.”
As in common law, “negligence” and “recklessness,” therefore, require the same degree of risk-taking: “substantial and unjustifiable,” and the difference between them lies in the fact that the reckless defendant “consciously disregards” the risk, whereas the negligent defendant’s risk-taking is inadvertent.
[C] Principles of Statutory Interpretation – A single mens rea term — of whatever specific type — modifies each actus reus element of the offense, absent a plainly contrary purpose of the legislature.”
None of us is trying to harm men in doing this; these are important consent issues which affect both women and men.
Thanks
Denise
Hi Denise, thanks for dropping by.
True, but he removed the link from his blog, indicating that he didn’t want people to know. I heard he had gotten his name removed from the article, but when I just looked at it, his name is still there. The article only reveals his last name, while Lady Raine revealed his first name for the first time.
Other pieces of information that Lady Raine revealed were not public record, such as the names of Roissy’s family members (now removed due to his protests to WordPress). Surely you agree that her display of that information was petty and uncalled for?
I will be doing some new posts soon on the controversy over “game” soon, don’t worry.
Everyone, let’s hold off on discussion of the merits of “game” for now, and leave this thread for discussion of the Roissy affair.
I would agree that LR went too far in posting his family members’ names *if* he had not done all that he did to her – which included posting a porn video of a woman who looked like her but was not her and saying that it was her in that video and the other things he did with her son’s photos on his site.
I would not have responded that way, and LR and I are very different in many ways.
However, roissy really want after her in a very aggressive manner. I know that she did not react to all that he did to her for many months until more than one of roissy’s ex-girlfriends emailed her out of the blue (completely unsolicited) with all of his personal info (most of which she chose *not* to publish).
I agree that just as it was unfair of roissy to go after her son, it was unfair of her to involve his family members, and I personally would not have done so.
I will acknowledge that I am new to blogging (which may be obvious), and I’ve been pretty shocked by the amount of rage in the blogoshere.
I’m not judging it – obviously the web is a necessary venting ground – and I’ve observed myself being sucked into it as well, which is not surprising since EI research has taught us that emotions, like a virus, can be contagious.
I am impressed that your site has these non-hostility threads, and I thank you for it.
For other readers of this blog, I will say that Hugh and Daran have been extremely gracious in their communications with me – even when disagreeing – and I have appreciated that.
I’m not a man-hating feminist and I honestly never even knew there were such things or that there was such hatred between genders at all, for that matter. I have just not been exposed to any of this at all.
I do want to be intellectually and otherwise honest, and I am very eager to learn more about the MRA issues (from those who are not full of hatred for women) so that I can understand them and integrate them into my work and writing around issues of power-over, shared power, authority, and other aspects of autonomy vs. control-by-other(s) (persons, laws, cultures, religions, group dynamics, etc.).
I do think it’s unfortuante that these blog wars happen in these ways – at the same time – they seem to fit this incredible world that is full of so much anger, expressed anonymously and honestly – so for now I’m just observing it all and trying to learn what I can from it.
Thanks.
Denise
Hugh, I just re-read your post and I wanted to also say that I did email LR privately and told her that I would not have posted the anti-semitic comments – even though I understood she was parodying the anti-semitic and racist comments often found on roissy’s blog.
To her credit, she did remove those (without having been forced to do so).
I guess I still have a very hard time finding anything of value for men or women in roissy’s blog and I do have a huge visceral reaction when I see him praised as a genius or having value in his blog.
At the same time, I have a larger desire to learn what exactly is so magnetic for his audience and why there are so many angry men who feel so harmed by women, feminism, marriage, current laws, etc.
I’ve been swamped but I am still in the process of reading the good info that you and Daran have left for me in comments on my blog. So Thanks.
Denise
I fail to see how Raine’s actions, including “outting a speaker who is trying” not particularly hard or effectively “to remain anonymous”, do not qualify as “more speech”.
If what Roissy said is true that he works as a fraud investigator at [name of Roissy's supposed employer] (though [name of Roissy's supposed employer] says he does not work there), then I do think it’s relevant as he is encouraging men and bragging himself about defrauding women in any way possible.
Also, [name of Roissy's supposed employer] does a great deal of business with the federal government and usually that means that “external employment activiites” need to be disclosed to and approved by the employer.
Sidenote to the thread:
J Michael Bailey wrote a book called “The Man who would be Queen: The Science of Gender-bending and Transgenderism” in which he qualified many transsexual people as ‘essentially gay’, ‘especially suited for prostitution’ and ‘not seeking any serious relationships’ any young transsexual he would meet (and the ones he met during the book’s writing). Basically, he said that young transsexual women were homosexual men posing as women who had a libido “like that of men” (which he personally considers higher than that of women). He also said older trans women were basically men with a fetish based on their images of themselves as women.
He based much of that book on a discredited (but still funded!) psychologist, Ray Blanchard, of the CAMH. He added his own personal remarks, qualified them as scientific observations and printed a book meant for lay people to inform them about trans people.
Now what happened after:
A transgender activist used pictures of J Michael Bailey’s children (from his own personal site) and posted captions on them saying things like “this child is especially suited for prostitution” and basically the same thing Bailey said about all trans women. He didn’t take it well.
I do think that if r’s blog was saying all the things he says about women about people who are of a certain race, that he would be shut down as inciting violence and for hate speech.
Hate speech is legal in the United States. The company hosting his blog might have a policy against it and take it down, but it’s not illegal to publish.
I do think that if r’s blog was saying all the things he says about women about people who are of a certain race, that he would be shut down as inciting violence and for hate speech.
Considering that such sites do exists I have to disagree with this statement. Its not like he is getting a pass from his hosting service because he’s talking about women instead of people of color.
Hugh–
I just want to clarify something: In the original email containing the info from “The Globe” article that Roissy interviewed for, it DID include his OWN admission of where and whom he works for in plain words.
I did not “add” that to my post about him. It seems that he must have contacted “The Globe” and asked them to remove those parts about his work or his employer perhaps (I don’t really know I’m just speculating).
However, in my and Denise’s contacts with Roissy’s Employer, they state that he DOES NOT work for them.
Which means he may have been lying in the original Globe interview and realized he’s in huge trouble now that the “said company” (I’m trying to follow your rules and not name names, Hugh) knows he claimed to work for them.
Either that, or his “said employer” didn’t want THEIR name in HIS interview or on public domain.
Whatever the case, the article that I received from “Miss X” and used in the “Exposed!” article I did was NOT changed or added to. That IS how the original interview was sent to me…..and was when I checked the interview info myself back in November.
His name, age, description of what he does for a living, and specific NAME of his Employer WAS clearly stated in that article.
It has since been removed (and obviously I don’t know by who/whom).
I just wanted to make it clear that I did NOT “add” the stuff about who his Employer is or anything else regarding the portion I posted from The Globe interview.
As I said, Roissy’s named Employer claims they have NO employee by that name….and around the time they said that, the info in “The Globe” Article using their name suddenly disappeared as well.
I have no idea what that mystery is all about.
OH!
And I forgot:
Word Press did NOT make me remove most of that info. They ONLY told me I had to at least leave out ONE number in his “residential address” and things like that.
They also told me I did NOT have to remove ANY of the info that was provided by him in The Globe Interview because Word Press also considers it “public domain” and thus NOT against their rules.
I removed far more than what Word Press required me to do. If I’d have removed only what they wanted me to, there would just be a blank spot in the apartment number.
I also removed the “Roissy in DC Update” post which was not even MENTIONED by Word Press, nor was I asked to edit THAT one in any way at all. I removed that post also voluntarily even though it was NOT under question for some reason.
I didn’t do it to be nice, I just removed all the extra stuff so that I wouldn’t have to deal with any other “word press moderator” interceptions.
Especially since I linked the originals containing all his info under my “pages” section now and Word Press doesn’t have a prob with that either
How can Doug NOT know that “hate speech” is NOT covered under the First Amendment?
Why do you think there’s SWAT teams that hose down and use tear gas on groups who are spewing hate speech and inciting riots/violence from their speech? Because they are only allowed “peaceable assembly” and are NOT allowed to use their “speech” to infringe on the rights, freedoms, and safety of any other group of people or person.
Denise said:
Yup. And two wrongs don’t make a right.
Since we are accustomed to hostile pileups on feminist blogs, we try to have spaces on the blog where multiple types of discussions can happen.
Sometimes humor doesn’t translate very well via the web. Furthermore, she really had trouble understanding why some people were finding the comments offensive.
For a great introduction to men’s issues from someone who isn’t a misogynist, check out Why Men Are The Way They Are by Warren Farrell.
Welcome to the blog, Lady Raine.
Thanks for clarifying. I thought you had received that info from Miss X.
So where did the names of his family members come from?
Hateful speech is protected by the First Amendment, except for defamation and imminent lawless action (like a riot). From this NYT article:
Hugh – i’m sorry if I wasn’t supposed to say the name of an employer. sorry. Feel free to delete it or X-it out or whatever, if you want.
I will check out that book, thanks.
I also think it’s possible that r did work there and now doesn’t.
I do think that bc of r’s large and loyal following and his own self-appointed “leadership” that he is in a position to incite violence and that would not protect him under free speech laws, I don’t think.
Denise Romano said:
If I understand the law correctly, even if he is in a position of leadership, his speech would be protected unless he was inciting imminent violence.
If the comments of his following can be believed, he’s already incited violence. Ofcourse, we have no way of knowing if those are true comments.
Nice to see that people do believe in the Old Testament rule: “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth”…
I don’t see it as “eye for an eye”.
I see it as *understandable* that LR was extremely patient for many months while r attacked her by posting photos of her young son, posting a porn video on his blog and saying it was her (it wasn’t), libeled her by saying she was a hooker and a drug addict, and otherwise libeled her.
I see it as understandable – given that LR did attempt to communicate with r and he was unreasonable.
When someone who did what r did to LR is given a reasonable chance and refuses to be reasonable, I have very little sympathy for him.
It’s not as simple as you describe in your comment above.
Denise
Eye for an eye can be understandable. But it’s still eye for an eye.
I suppose that is true.
I try to think of what I would have done, and it’s hard to say, b/c I’m not really in the situation.
I think I would have called the police and filed every formal legal complaint against him that I could have.
As for whether I would have published personal info that he himself had not already revealed, I think I would have been hesitant to do that for a number of reasons.
I probably would not have done so, but I would have most definitely covertly notified his employer of his blog and its contents and I would have enlisted others who were so motivated to also do so and complain to the police about his blog and about his attacks upon me.
I am pretty sure I would not have published family names, but I might have tried to contact them so they would know what he is writing.
Denise
[...] counselor and anti-violence activist, discovered the seduction community during the controversy Lady Raine and Roissy. The seduction community is a network of men (pickup artists) worldwide who study how to [...]
[...] counselor and anti-violence activist, discovered the seduction community during the controversy Lady Raine and Roissy. The seduction community is a network of men (pickup artists) worldwide who study how to [...]
[...] to delete his evil posts even if he recognized that they’re evil. On the other hand, “Darth Vader” once deleted a post in which he acknowledged that he had committed partner vio…, so perhaps even he has limits on what he is willing to admit in public. Or perhaps he was merely [...]