Preface: This is the first of three posts I've written about the very bad reaction to the two posts I wrote in regard to Sugar Ray Leonard's accusations of sexual abuse against an unnamed Olympic boxing coach, which resulted in my separation from the blog I have been writing for since 2006. I have agreed to not mention that blog or its owner, for whom I have the greatest respect and who is in no way responsible for what I wrote or the reaction to it. I have also not linked to the posts there in order to avoid her blog becoming the target of further attacks.
I will not be writing for that blog in the future, I wish it and its owner the best of fortune.
The furor at my former blog and in other places around my post about Sugar Ray Leonard's sexual assault accusation against an unnamed boxing coach was based in an essential difference between discrimination against women and discrimination against gay men. And, as in all things, that difference hinges on society and the law giving the benefit of the doubt to men who identify as straight. The difference in experience at the hands of the law and society is an important and inescapable difference between the struggle for women and gay men for our rights. It is something that will have to be addressed because it will both be the occasion of other misunderstandings and it will continue to feature in our treatment by the law and by society.
Mostly leaving aside my first, and what I considered the most important problem with Leonard's accusation, I will concentrate in this first post in three about it on the parts which most people objected to.
Women have the collective experience of having accusations of rape and assault summarily dismissed in ways that favor their attackers. That is known and documented past the possibility of rational denial.
Gay men, on the other hand, have the experience of knowing that any defense they make against an accusation of sexual predation is up against one of the predominant features of anti-gay invective and stereo-typing, the gay man as predator and recruiter. That stereotype is never far from the mouths of the opponents of gay men, it has been a feature of anti-gay culture for centuries, from before the modern period in which even the word “homosexual” first identified gay men as a distinct category. That is also documented, though, as I found to my surprise, it is either little known or is not considered important to most people who aren't gay men.
Gay men also have the experience of not being believed when they accuse their attackers. Gay men have often been assaulted and not infrequently killed due for nothing more than that they are believed to be gay. On rare occasions straight men have been the victims of anti-gay violence due to perception or rumor. As I will point out, again, for gay men that takes its most extreme form in the legally-claimed gay panic defense, where presumption of gay predation intersects the presumption of straight male justification and, so innocence.
This key cultural difference was, I am certain, the reason that my pointing out problems of plausibility in Leonard's accusation led to the odd situation in which closely examining an accusation of a sudden, unexpected and uninvited gay assault, made by a man in his late forties on a young boxing champion, in the context of a conversation in which the gay man was telling Leonard why it was so important that he knock out or damage another world champion boxer, was seen as an anti-feminist act.
So strong is the assumption of gay predation that even citing its most extreme and undeniable expression in murder cases, little to nothing I actually said was heard.
It is understandable that many of the assumptions that come from the experience of women might be mistakenly inserted into what I said. But I didn't foresee that. Those assumptions, though, don't transfer from the experience of women to what is being described as happening between two men in this accusation of a gay assault, not without clarification. In the wider culture that assumption is mixed in with the revulsion against even gay touching, which accounts for the widespread acceptance of what would be considered far differently if the identity of the accused was different.
The, almost uniform, denial of the possibility of a young boxer of Leonard's ability using his skill to more than fend off an attack by a man more than twice his age seemed to me to be a willful act of irrational stereotyping of gay men as preying on weaker men by straight liberals and I still do. I think any gay man of even somewhat less than average intelligence, at that time and today, who would make a sudden, unannounced, very likely unwelcome sexual assault on a boxer well, well on his way to amassing an amateur record of 145-5 75 KO, would have to be almost uniquely reckless. For a coach who had seen what he could do in the ring to do it would seem to be even more reckless.
If that isn't a scenario that requires more explanation, it is hard to imagine one that would. If it was accurate, it would tell a lot more about the boxing world than it would about any gay men I've ever known. I have never known a gay man so stupid or insane as to risk that.
Even demonstrating the fact that as the law stands today, it is possible for a judge to legally instruct a jury in a murder case that an alleged gay pass is sufficient mitigation to find lesser charges or even innocence didn't impress a usually reasonable audience that gay men, as a group, are not given the benefit of the doubt by society or even the law. Most outrageously absurd in all of the river of slogans that my post brought out were those asserting it was an expression of male privilege and that any defense against its distortion was "mansplaining". Which, in this context is a new and higher hurdle for gay men to have to jump in order to be heard.
Consider that. In a murder trial a judge can tell the jury that they can consider a pass made by a gay man is enough to hold the murdered man responsible, in part or in total, for his own murder. How is that any different from blaming women for attacks made on them? That is, except that there are not law articles written that judges should be allowed to instruct juries that they should consider negative stereotypes of women in their deliberations.
And that doesn't even consider the chances of an assault charge being brought if the victim is known to be gay, if his attacker can get the police to believe the victim made a pass at the straight man who was manfully defending his honor. That is the crux of the problem, the difference between the accuser having to defend their accusation and the accuser becoming the accused and the combination of the two which gay men can face.
How did it reach this point among people on comment threads, who would have known me, as a gay man, through years of reading my writing about sexism and whose entire, expressed point of view is that nothing is acceptable but complete legal and social equality, bodily autonomy and ownership? That women as all people must insist on being considered as more than objects, as the possessor of full, inherent rights in every context. How the people who have heard me say that over and over again and had heard me say nothing else could turn on me over this issue is something I will be considering.
Given that the accusation was of a gay assault, the only woman mentioned in my post was Leonard's first wife and the only thing I said about her was that the widespread exculpation of Leonard's behavior, including hitting her, was inexcusable even if every word of his accusation was true. That exculpation of his bad behavior as being in some way explained by his being gay-groped, once, was even contained in the long quote I provided from the New York Times, I said that it was something that was frequently said all over the internet. The charge of anti-feminism attributed to what I wrote has been the major shock I've received in putting my ideas in writing. I can't believe that it is unrelated to the gay issues in the subject and that I am a gay man. Apparently the penumbras of some interpretations of feminism extend to include Leonard, a straight man, but exclude me even as I refuse to accept this excuse, widely made in the wake of his accusation, for his wife beating.
That Leonard's accusation is deemed to be above question is due entirely to the identification of his alleged attacker as a gay man. If a male boxer was writing his memoir in his advancing middle age and he said he'd suffered a lifetime of torment, resulting in decades of bad behavior, because one of the women teaching in his high school did what this boxing coach is said to have done, nothing I have said would be seen as terrible. Every point I made about the necessity of his identifying the woman he was accusing so the half-dozen or more of other women teaching at his school would not be suspected would not only be allowed but would be demanded. The questions I raised testing the scenario in terms of age and presumable ability would be considered to be valid ones. All points in favor of exculpation of the accused woman would be acceptably raised. I am pretty confident in saying that every aspect of the story would be within acceptable limits of skeptical* consideration. The claims that one unwelcome heterosexual assault of this kind made on a young man explained decades of bad behavior would be considered absurd and ridiculous.
If it was a woman claiming the same thing about a woman teaching or coaching at her school, most if not all of the same questions would be allowable, perhaps, given that the charge would be of a rarely heard of lesbian attack, that fact would be given as why it was even more urgent to question the account. I am still confident that asking many of the questions I have would be quite acceptable, if not demanded by many of those who condemned me asking them in the accusations against a gay man.
As I have said, a straight man being accused by a woman would traditionally be given every possible benefit of the doubt. It is certain that his identity would also be demanded so other men would escape suspicion, their families not subjected to wondering if their husbands, fathers or grandfathers were sex criminals.
The view that gay men are presumed sexual predators is apparently so ingrained that in the several arguments I've gotten into at even very liberal blogs nothing I said about the problems with the scenario was even heard by the audience, including at least one defense lawyer who, variably, either denied that “gay panic defense” is currently allowed or that it was never used successfully. Even as he gave me one of the key citations proving that not only is it sometimes used successfully, but arguing that since lawyers will find some way to appeal to juries anti-gay prejudice that it should be allowable for a judge to tell those same juries it is a legal mitigation if not exculpation for the brutal murder of a gay man. When I asked him if he was the defending lawyer defending the coach against this charge, wouldn't he have brought up many of the points I raised about plausibility, he deflected the question instead of answering it.
I will admit that I wrote my post in shock that this was the state of the liberal blogosphere in 2011, that one of the major planks of anti-gay oppression is far from gone from the culture of liberals. Given the scenario that Leonard has given, it is clearly possible that a gay man can imagine the coach risking, at the least, a brutal and violent refusal whereas straight people see a young, adult, world class boxer in peak condition as “powerless” in the face of a pass made by a man in his late forties. I expect this is an issue that will increasingly become important for gay men to address, especially in light of the increasing announcements by male celebrities that they were sexually abused by gay men**.
Just as women have to always insist that their attackers not be allowed to escape punishment for their crimes based in the common practices of their subjugation and oppression, gay men will not be able to ignore the distinct mechanisms of our oppression. That the two different methods that straight men have used to oppress us inescapably bring addressing those into conflict won't do anything to lessen the facts of our oppression. Either will always be just under the surface in the thinking of many people, even those who believe themselves to be past it. Of those who might constitute a jury.
This is an accusation of a gay assault, the common practices and attitudes creating the scenario, the actions and reactions of two men involved in an alleged gay assault and the treatment of such a scenario by society are not those operating in the quite different experience of women in what would superficially appear to be a similar situation. The inequities and injustices society imposes on women are not the same as those it imposes on gay men, those differences result in the need to not apply the conclusions that are relevant in one kind of case, to the other kind.
That this issue involves legal conflicts over the presumption of innocence of the accused is an extremely important problem that will have to be dealt with because it's not going to go away. The right to the presumption of innocence is as important as that for equality and the right to vote. In this crime show and "24" addled society, it is under active attack. That society and the legal system have used the essential right of the presumption of innocence to benefit straight men can't be used as an attack on that essential right. Women and children as well as gay men are accused of crimes. We need that right as much as anyone else accused of a crime, no matter what their identity is, no matter how society has abused it to favor straight men. As seen in the cases where straight men are accused of assaulting or even murdering gay men, they are given more than their fair share of it.
Note: Mixed up in this is also the extremely complex recent history of the sexual abuse of young children and the mania of false accusations mixed in among the legitimate prosecutions. I have been struck at how much of the reaction to this has been conflated with that phenomenon. I won't go into that today.
Sugar Ray Leonard's assault accusation, though is an assault by one man on another man, it was not an allegation of child abuse. I don't know what the refusal by those who read my post to realize that fact could mean, though it is also something that will have to be addressed in the future.
* I will deal with issues of skepticism in the third part of this series. What that word has come to mean might be quite relevant to understanding what happened.
** Given that much if not most of the casual discussion has identified, not only this coach but most of the males who are accused of assaulting men or boys as being gay, the convenient distinction of denying what is assumed needs serious review. The distinction between pedophiles and gay men is one which seems to not have caught up with the majority of those I've read commenting on those. Leonard was an adult when he says he was assaulted, there is no reason to quibble over whether or not the man he is accusing is gay except to dishonestly deny how this issue is seen by most people.
That, after years of hearing that distinction between gay men and pedophiles made in the media, it has not gained that much traction in the culture highlights that the would-be liberal discussion of these matters isn't how it's usually talked about. And, quite often, I've found, the would-be liberal slips into the more typical language, exposing how it is really seen.
Note: This post is my analysis of why people had a hard time dealing with what I said, it isn't a full account of what I said. I will be dealing with Leonard's refusal to name the man he is accusing, which is the part of my post which was ignored by just about everyone who commented on it in my third post. I considered that point to be the most important thing I said.
As the subject of these posts is the very negative reaction to my blog posts dealing with Sugar Ray Leonard's accusation, I can hardly avoid talking about how this involves me. I anticipate being criticized for that. I don't apologize for defending myself, I don't know of anyone who is held to a rule that says they can't defend themselves or anyone who would agree to that rule being applied to them. I certainly don't.
Nor will I apologize for writing about this topic. An accusation like this, placed in front of the public is widely commented on, the way it is commented on is frequently in terms that impinge on the condition and position of gay men in society. If Leonard was making an accusation against a woman that was being commented on this way, there would be no one holding that it was off limits.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query sugar ray leonard. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query sugar ray leonard. Sort by date Show all posts
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
The Conditional Skepticism and Sometimes Journalistic Ethics of Lindsay Beyerstine
What she left out
If you read my piece about Sugar Ray Leonard's accusation of sexual
abuse which has made me something of a pariah in so many places, the
first substantial comment I made in it was about the problem of
Leonard refusing to name the coach he was accusing.
My reasons for that were, first, that there were more than one boxing
coach who he could have been the one he was accusing and any
speculation about which one he was accusing was bound to name men who
he wasn't accusing. There was, in fact, speculation about more than
one named Olympic coach when I checked out that point. That alone
should be a requirement in accusations of this kind that, when made
public, the individual who is accused should be named unless there was
an unusually good reason given not to do that. Second that if he
named a specific man his accusation wasn't left as a finger pointed at
all gay men. And, also, that if he named the man it was possible that
there were other accounts about the man being accused that would come
out. I said:
My first problem with what he's said is that Leonard has refused to
name the man he is accusing, even though he says that the man is dead.
Not naming the man carries a number of problems. This casts suspicion
on any boxing coach in his late forties who might have been in contact
with Leonard during the Olympics and who might have had some
connection with him five years earlier. I have no idea how many of
those there are but I do know that raising suspicions of this kind
should be avoided when possible. Leonard could clear up that much by
naming the man he's accusing and ending the possibility of innocent
people being hurt. Furthermore it reinforces the picture of all gay
men as sexual predators. "A gay man" doesn't assault someone a
specific man does. If that man can be named, he should be and he
should face the consequences of his actions, those shouldn't be left
hanging as a finger pointed at all gay men. Leonard could possibly
dispel any likely doubt by naming the man and seeing what other people
could say of him. It's possible that there were other, credible,
incidents. Or it could risk none of those coming forth and casting
doubt on what he said happened.
Notice these points in what I said:
--"Leonard could clear up that much by naming the man he's accusing
and ending the possibility of innocent people being hurt."
--"Leonard could possibly dispel any likely doubt by naming the man
and seeing what other people could say of him."
-- "It's possible there were other, credible, incidents."
Even before that, just before the paragraph I just quoted, I said:
"I am having a very hard time believing it as reported".
"As reported". I never, at any point in my post said that it was
impossible that something happened, I didn't even say that what was
reported wasn't possibly true, though I did give reasons that I had a
hard time believing it happened as it was reported. I never said that
no gay man would have done what was alleged, I said that in my
experience as a gay man who lived through the time it happened, I had
never known a gay man who would have done what that coach is alleged
to have done, I doubted the incident as reported.
The longest of the many attacks made against me was a post by Lindsay
Beyerstine at The Big Think. That attack was picked up by Mary
Elizabeth Williams at Salon magazine, exposing what Beyerstine said
about me to a national audience. Lindsay Beyerstine bills herself
professionally as an investigative journalist and a quasi-professional
skeptic. Mary Elizabeth Williams also is considered to be a
journalist.
You can read Lindsay Beyerstine's post and not find any mention of
what I said above. If she had led with what I did, including my point
that if he named the man he was accusing he might get other people to
corroborate his charge, she couldn't have continued to characterize
what I wrote as she did. Mary Ellen Williams, in the account she gave
at Salon, referred to my post but clearly relied on what Beyerstine
wrote about it. Her account contains several of Beyerstine's
assertions and a quote from my piece Beyerstine used. Needless to say,
she seems to have avoided reading the same points Beyerstine
unaccountably missed, though she managed to note that I said, "Leonard
has refused to name the man he is accusing, even though he says that
the man is dead." She ignored that I said he could be telling the
truth and naming the man could bring out corroboration for what he was
saying.
Having a lot of respect for good reporters I don't take someone
calling themselves one lightly. My first blog post, under my
previously used pseudonym, carried a disclaimer saying that I didn't
call myself a reporter and I made no pretense of being one. If someone
assumes that title and the enhanced credibility it carries, they have
an obligation to uphold standards of good reporting. They have a
professional obligation to accurately report the facts, supporting any
points they make about those. In writing a report about my piece, what
that piece said is the primary factual record. I don't think leaving
out the main point that disproves much of what she subsequently says
about it can be seen as anything but an obvious lapse in journalistic
practice. If she didn't promote herself as a reporter but called
herself a mere blogger I would have a lot less to say about that. I
will get to what her piece means in regard to her claim to skeptical
fame later.
What she claimed
Ignoring what I began with, Beyerstine continued with a string of
inaccurate characterizations of what I said, the replacement of
conditional statements I made with absolute statements, what looks
like inventions of quotations attributed to me and false claims about
what I said. Going through it point by point takes a long time but it
will prove what I have just said.
L.B. "McCarthy doubts Leonard's story because he thinks no coach would
be so reckless as to assault a dangerous boxer like Sugar Ray at a
pivotal moment in his career:"
Here is what I said about that, with bolding for emphisis:
His identification of a boxing coach who had been associated with him
for at least five years also gives me problems. For someone who had
been cultivating an athlete for five years, watching them climb up the
extremely steep hill to even get to the Olympics, knowing that any
upset could quash their hopes of even getting a bronze, I can't
imagine them taking the chance of coming on to their athlete during
the very weeks in which they could ruin years of investment of their
work and hopes, ruining any benefits that could be gotten from having
coached an Olympic champion. Especially if he had the chance to make
that advance for the five preceding years. I can't imagine an Olympic
coach making their first and only actual sexual advance on an athlete
in that context. I can't imagine him risking his professional
standing. In 1976 any credible rumor of an Olympic boxing coach coming
on to his unwilling athletes half his age would have been the end of
any career in sports. In the media atmosphere of the mid-70s,
especially the sports media, risking an athlete pressing charges would
have be enormous.
Three times I said "I can't imagine", not "no Olympic coach would be
so reckless as to". I’m skeptical of the idea that an Olympic coach
who had years in which to make their first, very aggressive, attempt
to have sex with Leonard would have chosen when he had attained the
level of training, the boxing skill, the record and the status for the
coach to be talking to Leonard in terms of gold medals at the upcoming
Olympics would have been likely to risk their stake in him in that
way. I wouldn’t think an Olympic coach that was in the habit of
risking that would keep their position very long, though that is
something that could become clearer if Leonard would name the man.
It’s possible he was that reckless and that the boxing world would
cover up for him. In that case, this is a far bigger story. I’m
surprised an investigative reporter wouldn’t wonder about that.
While I said I couldn’t imagine a coach risking that, I never said
that “no coach would be so reckless," I was expressing skepticism that
it was likely to have happened for the reasons I gave.
L. B. "When it comes to sex crimes, and sex in general, arguments from
the premise that "Nobody would be so reckless..." are highly suspect,
especially when the aggressor is a powerful man who is already
counting on his high status to deflect consequences."
I wasn’t addressing “sex crimes, and sex in general,” I was addressing
this specific accusation. Again, knowing who he is accusing and seeing
if other men had similar experiences with him could dispel any likely
questions. And, as seen, I didn’t say anything like “Nobody would be
so reckless...” I didn’t say that anywhere in what I wrote, why
Beyerstine would imply I had by making it appear to be a quote is
something she should address.
L. B. "The idea that Leonard is probably lying because "a gay man
would know better..." is at least as dubious as "nobody would be so
reckless."
Again, I never said “nobody would be so reckless”, a phrase which
Beyerstine seems to want people reading her to believe I said, but
that in this specific case the degree of recklessness would definitely
be far, far above the ordinary level. I said that you would have to be
incredibly reckless to choose to assault Leonard in the way he
described it. We have no idea of how the coach might have described an
incident if it happened. Unless we know who he is, we have no way of
knowing if that man had a record of that kind of unusual recklessness.
I'm surprised it took so many years for it to come out if he had one.
And, again, Beyerstine makes it seem as if she is quoting what I said
when that appears no where in the post. And, in no place did I say
that Leonard was lying, as you can read in my post I said, “I am
having a very hard time believing it as reported.” Unlike many
"skeptics" I've read, I have no problem with the idea that many things
I have a hard time believing might be true.
L.B. "Sexual orientation may be innate, but knowledge of U.S. criminal
law is culturally transmitted. There weren't any openly gay Olympic
boxing coaches in the seventies. If the coach was an outwardly
straight guy who focused his sexual energies on young athletes, why
would he know any more about the "gay panic" defense than the next
guy?"
In the several arguments I’ve had about this it would start with
everyone assuming, as I finally noted, that straight men aren’t prone
to reaching over, unzipping another man’s fly, groping him and
starting to put his head down in a way that would lead the man being
moved on to believe he was about to give him a blow job. Apparently,
believing that this kind of thing doesn't happen much is a huge
conclusion to jump to , but it’s one jump I’m ready to make. I’d have
to say that as the generally straight people arguing with me would the
resort to the claim that the coach was not really gay is among the
most bizarre aspects I've seen in this. Is Beyerstine saying that it’s
likely that this was the first time that the “straight” coach would
have done something like that?
I will note in passing that it is hardly unknown for straight men to
believe gay men are coming on to them, even quite repulsive men are
able to believe that. I have heard women talk about such men convinced
that women are coming on to them, at times laughing about its
improbability. My guess is that athletes might have more of a reason
to believe they're highly desirable when they might not be. But, that
would be a guess and just general speculation.
As to what a gay man approaching 50 - or even your average “straight
man with a yen for sex with men less than half his age” could have
been expected to know in the mid-70s, that would begin with knowing
that gay sex was, generally illegal and generally risky unless you
knew the man you were approaching might be open to the experience.
Most men, believing themselves to be straight, would be known would
not have welcomed having a gay pass made at them. A gay man with that
long to gain experience would know that a gay man could be assaulted
and the mere identification of the victim as a gay man would make a
prosecution of their attacker much less likely and his exposure as gay
could result in him being legally discriminated against. He could well
have heard about young men who cruised gay men and then attacked and
robbed them, he might have heard about young men who made their living
that way and others who did it for fun. What they knew could well very
go all the way to knowing that it was possible for a gay men to be
murdered and their murderers could get off by claiming an unwelcome
gay pass had been made at them. I was far younger than that and I knew
those things. I doubt I’d have been as worldly as an Olympic coach
about about twenty years older than I was.
That Beyerstine has trouble believing that level of common knowledge
among middle-aged gay men at that time could have more than a little
to do with the fact that she hadn’t been born yet. Being gay in 2011
is far different from what it was like in 1976, even in New York City
or San Francisco. Ignoring that is as willfully ignorant as pretending
Leonard being a boxer is irrelevant to evaluating what he is alleging.
L.B. "According to McCarthy's logic, no coach would ever abuse big,
strong boys as long as "gay panic" was recognized as a defense."
Again, characterizing my skepticism as saying “no coach would ever,”
as if she wanted her readers to believe I'd said that, Beyerstine
exaggerates what I said in order to put other words in my mouth. As a
point of common sense, though, any coach who knew that and did what is
described was being pretty reckless. I will take a second here to
remark that for a person in the young elite of organized “skepticism”,
Lindsay Beyerstine is mighty reluctant to apply the standards of her
ideology to this case. So far I'm supplying any skeptical analysis to
it.
L.B. "Yet there are scandals involving male coaches and male athletes
all the time. Male coach/female athlete abuse is much more common, but
male coach/male athlete cases are hardly unknown."
Ignoring that we’re talking about boxing, as just about all the other
people commenting on what I said did, she equates it with sports that
don’t involve the science of physical attack in order to do damage.
Does she think the relationship of boxing with fighting and very
possibly severe injury would not have been something that occurred to
the boxing coach or Leonard?
L.B. "McCarthy's argument ignores the psychology acquaintance rape.
Maybe boxers are more likely to react violently to unwanted same-sex
contact than your average person. I don't know of any studies. Or,
maybe when a beloved, trusted authority figure violates without
warning, a boxer can be just as flummoxed as anyone else. Physical
strength may not even be a factor. Victims often report feeling frozen
or detached from reality during the assault. There's no reason to
assume that how someone reacts to planned, consensual violence in a
boxing ring predicts how they're likely to react to unexpected
non-consensual sex."
I will unpack this piece by piece
L.B. "McCarthy's argument ignores the psychology acquaintance rape."
I have no idea if acquaintance rape would have anything to do with
this because we don’t have enough details to know the level of
acquaintance. Though I really doubt Leonard would want anyone to think
he had the mind set of a young man on a date. More on psychology in a
minute.
L.B. "Maybe boxers are more likely to react violently to unwanted
same-sex contact than your average person. I don't know of any
studies."
I didn’t find any. I didn’t find a single other case in which an elite
boxer has made an allegation of being sexually molested by a man twice
his age. What can be assumed is that an Olympic boxer would be able to
“react violently” in a more effective manner than “your average
person” or, as I noted somewhere, a track and field athlete or a
badminton player. Which is what I said would be more obvious to a
boxing coach than it would “your average person”.
L.B. "Or, maybe when a beloved, trusted authority figure violates
without warning, a boxer can be just as flummoxed as anyone else.
Physical strength may not even be a factor. Victims often report
feeling frozen or detached from reality during the assault."
Do we know that the coach was “a beloved, trusted authority figure”?
Maybe so, in which case it would be good to know who he was in order
to not suspect other “beloved, trusted authority figures” of being
sexual predators. Or, maybe not.
In light of what Beyerstine relied on up till now, the charge made
later that I was indulging in “psychobabble” is strange. This is the
invention of far, far more narrative than I’d feel comfortable with in
an investigative reporter. I didn’t follow boxing but I don’t think
Leonard knocked out so many other elite boxers because he was prone to
“feeling frozen or detached from reality during (an) assault”. For
crying out loud, he was a champion boxer who some argue is among the
best of all time.
And all of Beyerstine's narrative misses my point, which wasn’t what
Leonard would have thought, it was what any gay man who was thinking
of making a sudden, unannounced, very likely unwelcome physical
assault on him would have known. If that boxing coach who had seen
what he could do in the ring suddenly unzipped his fly with no
previous effort to find out if it would be OK with Leonard, he would
have had to be the stupidest gay man in town that day. If he was horny
there would have been far less dangerous young men around to try to
give an impromptu blow job to. Others who would go along with it.
L.B. " McCarthy thinks that Leonard is just using the story to excuse
a lifetime of bad behavior including violence against women, and
substance abuse. You can take his claim seriously without accepting
his psychobabble."
Here is what my post said about that:
Later in the Times piece, after citing the numerous incidences of his
violence - especially against his first wife - , adultery, drug and
alcohol abuse this is said:
Greenburg speculated that it was counseling that helped him finally
come to grips with the sexual-abuse episode of his youth.
“Having to hide a situation like that made it worse, I would think,”
he said. “You have these dirty little secrets, and you feel as a man,
and one in a tough-guy world like boxing, that you can’t share it with
anyone. I would think that would probably affect every aspect of his
life.”
And later:
It seems to me that a lot of the people who I've discussed this with
seem to believe that the problems Leonard had with violence, drugs,
alcohol and other things as an adult are attributable to this one
incidence he alleges. I don't buy that at all.
A far more obvious motivation for him hitting his first wife is in his
training in systematic violence, the brutality of boxing which he
practiced professionally and for which he was lauded and which made
him a hero to millions of people.
I can't imagine that not instilling a sense of permission in at least
some elite boxers. Boxing is permitted, systematic and intended
brutality. When a boxer practices brutality outside of the ring it
should be the first thing suspected as a motivation, not an incident
which could be as much an attempt at self-exoneration as it could be a
factual account of what would be considered quite differently, by
society and the media if it had been a man doing the equivalent to a
woman.
Even if every word Leonard said about this incidence is true, that
doesn't excuse anything else he's admitted he did.
I said, twice, that other people were using the story to excuse a
lifetime of bad behavior, including the one quoted from Ross Greenburg
in the New York Times. No place in my post attributes that to Leonard.
I said that I doubted that one instance of gay groping could be the
reason for his bad behavior, Even if every word Leonard said about
this incidence is true.
Though, reading it over later, I wished I had edited an awkward use of
a word in that, I kept it because it was what was posted and being
commented on.
Beyerstine’s charge of me spouting “psychobabble" is quite ironic in
view of her scenario above, as well as baseless. Anyone who has read
much of what I’ve written would know I’m very skeptical of the
scientific standing of psychology. Considering what I said about the
psychobabble of gay panic defense and the widespread spouting of
psychobabble in mitigation of bad behavior due to one instance of gay
groping, Beyerstine’s charge of that is contradicted even by what she
has accused me of. Much as I would like to go in matters psychological
concerning this “faculty” member and her "Toolbox" colleagues, I’ll
pass that up for now.
L.B. McCarthy also thinks that Leonard is being homophobic by making
the rape allegation the centerpiece of his book.
This is entirely false. I didn’t attribute homophobia to Leonard, the
only thing I said about homophobia was “ It (“gay panic defense”)
seems to be unknown to a considerable part of the straight, liberal,
self defined non-homophobic, blogosphere. " The only thing I said
about Leonard other than known biographical fact was that he made an
accusation against an Olympic coach and that he had admitted to bad
behavior. I have no idea if Leonard is homophobic and didn’t say he
was. I will say that my background research wouldn't lead me to
suspect he is.
I did imply that a number of people, specifically many liberals who up
till a couple of days before I figured would have known better, shared
the unexpressed assumption of gay men as predators. Though that’s more
your plain old gay stereotyping than it is homophobia. I dealt with
that in the first part of this series of posts.
L.B. It's disturbing how eager McCarthy is to debunk Leonard's story
based purely on stereotypes. At best this kind of reasoning could
establish that such an event was unlikely.
As just noted, the only things I said about Leonard were facts told
about a named person, Sugar Ray Leonard. I said that he was an elite
boxer in top shape and on his way to winning a gold medal in boxing at
the Olympics. That he was an adult, which he would have been based on
what Leonard said. He amassed an amateur record of 145-5 75 KO before
he went professional. Other than that I noted his record of subsequent
bad behavior, mentioning his having hit his wife, part of the record
of his divorce from her, things he admitted to. Facts about a
specific, named person are not stereotypes. Neither was noting the
skills and abilities he would have to have to be an elite, Olympic
boxer. I’ve been struck how odd it is for many of those who criticized
what I said have presented Leonard as a powerless wimp. I doubt the
young Leonard would have welcomed that depiction of him.
Since Leonard said the boxing coach was in his late forties I observed
that a man in his late forties is at a physical disadvantage to a
boxer on his way to the Olympic, less than half his age, is so obvious
that it hardly constitutes a sterotype. If the coach hadn’t been at a
disadvantage against Sugar Ray Leonard he should have been on the
American boxing team instead of coaching it. If Leonard named the man,
any other assumption I made could be dispelled, as I said in the first
part of my commentary which Beyerstine ignored.
Beyerstine’s characterization of Leonard as being under the thumb of
this unknown coach assumes more about Leonard and the coach than I
did. Without knowing who the coach is and what can be known about
whatever power he might have had over Leonard, what she says about
that is based in stereotype instead of fact. It’s quite possible that
one or more of the possible suspects was smaller than Leonard was as
well as more than twice his age.
L.B. "I'm not saying we should reflexively accept all claims of sexual
assault at face value, I'm saying that we should jettison the
stereotype that lying about sexual assault is so much more common than
lying about other things that these claims automatically deserve
heightened scrutiny."
I made no claim that “lying about sexual assault is so much more"
anything. I addressed this one accusation in terms of what could be
known about it in the absence of a known abuser and in the context of
the experience of being a gay man in the mid-1970s. As I said in the
second post that weekend all accusations deserve scrutiny because
that’s what you do when someone accuses someone of doing something
wrong. Why she thinks Leonard’s very undetailed, very open-ended
account shouldn’t be examined is downright bizarre in someone who
promotes herself as both a “skeptic” and an investigative reporter.
What she should have disclosed
Why would Lindsay Beyerstine characterize what I wrote in the way she
did? If she disagreed with what I said, why did she ignore a major
part of that and then distort what I said, putting words and ideas
into my mouth that weren't there? Why would she engage me on comment
threads without informing me that she had written about what I wrote?
I saw the piece at Salon the Monday after I posted my piece, when I
went there to look for a piece entirely unrelated to my post. I
followed that to Lindsay Beyerstine's blog where I read what she
wrote.
Now, the name "Beyerstine" related to this topic rang a bell with me.
I had read an article by Barry Beyerstine about the necessity of being
very careful when considering accusations of sexual abuse. I
remembered that article said that all accusations of sexual abuse
should be investigated. I also knew that the late Barry Beyerstine was
a prominent member of CSICOP and was well known in "skeptics" circles.
Needless to say, when I found out Lindsay Beyerstine was his daughter,
my curiosity was peaked.
I have written several posts critical of members of CSICOP and
"skeptics" which were blog mobbed, I have also been critical of them
in a number of arguments on other blogs. I did a search on Lindsay
Beyerstine's blog to see if she had written anything about what I
wrote, considering that her father was so prominent in those circles.
I found that my posts were known to her. On June 22, 2010, "Yoo Hoo
Yippie" was apparently calling out a blog mob to attack two of those
posts.
Defend yourself CSICOP fellow traveller!
I seem to be unable to locate the "e-mail Ms. Beyerstein" button, I apologize.
CSICOP is being trashed on a regular basis by Anthony McCarthy on the
"Echidne of the Snakes" blog.
The blog in question seems to reside in the
Eschaton-Pandagon-Majikthise universe, so I was hoping you could
reply. I would do it, but I am merely a poorly educated stocker of
shelves.
The relevant posts can be found:
http://tinyurl.com/25pc9s3
http://tinyurl.com/2eczqeu
Thank you for your attention and apologies for OT-ness.
to which Lindsay Beyerstine responded:
You got me, You got me, Echinde of the Snakes falls squarely in my
sector of Blog City. I haven't been patrolling vigilantly. Arguing
with Anthony McCarthy is like arguing with a wall. falls squarely in
my sector of Blog City. I haven't been patrolling vigilantly. Arguing
with Anthony McCarthy is like arguing with a wall.
It's rare to find such clear proof that there has, actually, been
organized blog mobbing of what you wrote. I wonder who else Woo hoo
may have called out by e-mail and if this is a typical practice of the
organized skeptics. And Beyerstine's apparently finding me persistent
in an argument is interesting, to me at least, but I'm going to leave
that aside.
Looking farther into this I found that Lindsay Beyerstine is active in
the same "skeptics" circles, a "faculty" member of a CSI sponsored
workshop "The Skeptics Toolbox 2011". Ray Hyman is another "faculty"
member of it who I have criticized, albeit mildly, in his case. I've
been much more critical of other members of those groups, though never
Barry Beyerstine, who did some valuable work in the area of false
accusations of sexual abuse.
What is clear is that Lindsay Beyerstine knows I've written critically
of groups she has a quasi-professional association with. That could
very possibly be a motive to do what she did in her post.
I'm not saying that Beyerstine couldn't have legitimately written
about what I said in as critical a manner as she could, though she did
have an obligation to write accurately about it. I'm saying that she
has a clear ethical obligation to disclose that she knows I've been
critical of CSICOP, it's offshoots and some of its members and so
might not be the most disinterested reader of what I have written.
I notified Lindsay Beyerstine almost as soon as I found out about her
post, asking her to correct many of the points I noted here. I tried
to let her know that I knew about her conflict of interest and that
Barry Beyerstine had written an article that supported what I had done
before I explicitly stated either of those. Not having had the best of
experiences of engaging people I was fighting with by e-mail, I posted
that those in comments on her blog and, when she ignored what my
request for the correction and disclosure, on the comment thread at
Salon magazine. I informed her of those comments at her blog and told
her that if she didn't correct what she had written about me and
disclose her conflict, I would write about it. I gave her a lot more
notice than she gave me.
I agree with many of the things Lindsay Beyerstine writes, we are on
the same side of many issues, though there are several we are far from
agreement about, organized "skepticism", religion, pornography and,
very recently, the wisdom of "slut walks". I don't agree that the way
she wrote about what I did with its omissions and false attributions,
her engaging me on a comment thread without disclosing her intentions
and her failure to note her possible conflict of interest. I don't
agree with someone doing that presenting themselves as an
investigative reporter.
I note that her brand of "skepticism" has always seemed like a highly
selective and enforcement of rigid ideology to me. Apparently it
doesn't hold with the many articles published in its journals in
recent years about the necessity of investigating sexual abuse
accusations. That's what I was doing, expressing skepticism about
Leonard's accusation as it was reported. That's all I did.
The experience of seeing how hard it was for people to read what I
said, of having them, once again, put things I've never said or
thought in my mouth has given me some insights about writing I hadn't
had before.
If you read my piece about Sugar Ray Leonard's accusation of sexual
abuse which has made me something of a pariah in so many places, the
first substantial comment I made in it was about the problem of
Leonard refusing to name the coach he was accusing.
My reasons for that were, first, that there were more than one boxing
coach who he could have been the one he was accusing and any
speculation about which one he was accusing was bound to name men who
he wasn't accusing. There was, in fact, speculation about more than
one named Olympic coach when I checked out that point. That alone
should be a requirement in accusations of this kind that, when made
public, the individual who is accused should be named unless there was
an unusually good reason given not to do that. Second that if he
named a specific man his accusation wasn't left as a finger pointed at
all gay men. And, also, that if he named the man it was possible that
there were other accounts about the man being accused that would come
out. I said:
My first problem with what he's said is that Leonard has refused to
name the man he is accusing, even though he says that the man is dead.
Not naming the man carries a number of problems. This casts suspicion
on any boxing coach in his late forties who might have been in contact
with Leonard during the Olympics and who might have had some
connection with him five years earlier. I have no idea how many of
those there are but I do know that raising suspicions of this kind
should be avoided when possible. Leonard could clear up that much by
naming the man he's accusing and ending the possibility of innocent
people being hurt. Furthermore it reinforces the picture of all gay
men as sexual predators. "A gay man" doesn't assault someone a
specific man does. If that man can be named, he should be and he
should face the consequences of his actions, those shouldn't be left
hanging as a finger pointed at all gay men. Leonard could possibly
dispel any likely doubt by naming the man and seeing what other people
could say of him. It's possible that there were other, credible,
incidents. Or it could risk none of those coming forth and casting
doubt on what he said happened.
Notice these points in what I said:
--"Leonard could clear up that much by naming the man he's accusing
and ending the possibility of innocent people being hurt."
--"Leonard could possibly dispel any likely doubt by naming the man
and seeing what other people could say of him."
-- "It's possible there were other, credible, incidents."
Even before that, just before the paragraph I just quoted, I said:
"I am having a very hard time believing it as reported".
"As reported". I never, at any point in my post said that it was
impossible that something happened, I didn't even say that what was
reported wasn't possibly true, though I did give reasons that I had a
hard time believing it happened as it was reported. I never said that
no gay man would have done what was alleged, I said that in my
experience as a gay man who lived through the time it happened, I had
never known a gay man who would have done what that coach is alleged
to have done, I doubted the incident as reported.
The longest of the many attacks made against me was a post by Lindsay
Beyerstine at The Big Think. That attack was picked up by Mary
Elizabeth Williams at Salon magazine, exposing what Beyerstine said
about me to a national audience. Lindsay Beyerstine bills herself
professionally as an investigative journalist and a quasi-professional
skeptic. Mary Elizabeth Williams also is considered to be a
journalist.
You can read Lindsay Beyerstine's post and not find any mention of
what I said above. If she had led with what I did, including my point
that if he named the man he was accusing he might get other people to
corroborate his charge, she couldn't have continued to characterize
what I wrote as she did. Mary Ellen Williams, in the account she gave
at Salon, referred to my post but clearly relied on what Beyerstine
wrote about it. Her account contains several of Beyerstine's
assertions and a quote from my piece Beyerstine used. Needless to say,
she seems to have avoided reading the same points Beyerstine
unaccountably missed, though she managed to note that I said, "Leonard
has refused to name the man he is accusing, even though he says that
the man is dead." She ignored that I said he could be telling the
truth and naming the man could bring out corroboration for what he was
saying.
Having a lot of respect for good reporters I don't take someone
calling themselves one lightly. My first blog post, under my
previously used pseudonym, carried a disclaimer saying that I didn't
call myself a reporter and I made no pretense of being one. If someone
assumes that title and the enhanced credibility it carries, they have
an obligation to uphold standards of good reporting. They have a
professional obligation to accurately report the facts, supporting any
points they make about those. In writing a report about my piece, what
that piece said is the primary factual record. I don't think leaving
out the main point that disproves much of what she subsequently says
about it can be seen as anything but an obvious lapse in journalistic
practice. If she didn't promote herself as a reporter but called
herself a mere blogger I would have a lot less to say about that. I
will get to what her piece means in regard to her claim to skeptical
fame later.
What she claimed
Ignoring what I began with, Beyerstine continued with a string of
inaccurate characterizations of what I said, the replacement of
conditional statements I made with absolute statements, what looks
like inventions of quotations attributed to me and false claims about
what I said. Going through it point by point takes a long time but it
will prove what I have just said.
L.B. "McCarthy doubts Leonard's story because he thinks no coach would
be so reckless as to assault a dangerous boxer like Sugar Ray at a
pivotal moment in his career:"
Here is what I said about that, with bolding for emphisis:
His identification of a boxing coach who had been associated with him
for at least five years also gives me problems. For someone who had
been cultivating an athlete for five years, watching them climb up the
extremely steep hill to even get to the Olympics, knowing that any
upset could quash their hopes of even getting a bronze, I can't
imagine them taking the chance of coming on to their athlete during
the very weeks in which they could ruin years of investment of their
work and hopes, ruining any benefits that could be gotten from having
coached an Olympic champion. Especially if he had the chance to make
that advance for the five preceding years. I can't imagine an Olympic
coach making their first and only actual sexual advance on an athlete
in that context. I can't imagine him risking his professional
standing. In 1976 any credible rumor of an Olympic boxing coach coming
on to his unwilling athletes half his age would have been the end of
any career in sports. In the media atmosphere of the mid-70s,
especially the sports media, risking an athlete pressing charges would
have be enormous.
Three times I said "I can't imagine", not "no Olympic coach would be
so reckless as to". I’m skeptical of the idea that an Olympic coach
who had years in which to make their first, very aggressive, attempt
to have sex with Leonard would have chosen when he had attained the
level of training, the boxing skill, the record and the status for the
coach to be talking to Leonard in terms of gold medals at the upcoming
Olympics would have been likely to risk their stake in him in that
way. I wouldn’t think an Olympic coach that was in the habit of
risking that would keep their position very long, though that is
something that could become clearer if Leonard would name the man.
It’s possible he was that reckless and that the boxing world would
cover up for him. In that case, this is a far bigger story. I’m
surprised an investigative reporter wouldn’t wonder about that.
While I said I couldn’t imagine a coach risking that, I never said
that “no coach would be so reckless," I was expressing skepticism that
it was likely to have happened for the reasons I gave.
L. B. "When it comes to sex crimes, and sex in general, arguments from
the premise that "Nobody would be so reckless..." are highly suspect,
especially when the aggressor is a powerful man who is already
counting on his high status to deflect consequences."
I wasn’t addressing “sex crimes, and sex in general,” I was addressing
this specific accusation. Again, knowing who he is accusing and seeing
if other men had similar experiences with him could dispel any likely
questions. And, as seen, I didn’t say anything like “Nobody would be
so reckless...” I didn’t say that anywhere in what I wrote, why
Beyerstine would imply I had by making it appear to be a quote is
something she should address.
L. B. "The idea that Leonard is probably lying because "a gay man
would know better..." is at least as dubious as "nobody would be so
reckless."
Again, I never said “nobody would be so reckless”, a phrase which
Beyerstine seems to want people reading her to believe I said, but
that in this specific case the degree of recklessness would definitely
be far, far above the ordinary level. I said that you would have to be
incredibly reckless to choose to assault Leonard in the way he
described it. We have no idea of how the coach might have described an
incident if it happened. Unless we know who he is, we have no way of
knowing if that man had a record of that kind of unusual recklessness.
I'm surprised it took so many years for it to come out if he had one.
And, again, Beyerstine makes it seem as if she is quoting what I said
when that appears no where in the post. And, in no place did I say
that Leonard was lying, as you can read in my post I said, “I am
having a very hard time believing it as reported.” Unlike many
"skeptics" I've read, I have no problem with the idea that many things
I have a hard time believing might be true.
L.B. "Sexual orientation may be innate, but knowledge of U.S. criminal
law is culturally transmitted. There weren't any openly gay Olympic
boxing coaches in the seventies. If the coach was an outwardly
straight guy who focused his sexual energies on young athletes, why
would he know any more about the "gay panic" defense than the next
guy?"
In the several arguments I’ve had about this it would start with
everyone assuming, as I finally noted, that straight men aren’t prone
to reaching over, unzipping another man’s fly, groping him and
starting to put his head down in a way that would lead the man being
moved on to believe he was about to give him a blow job. Apparently,
believing that this kind of thing doesn't happen much is a huge
conclusion to jump to , but it’s one jump I’m ready to make. I’d have
to say that as the generally straight people arguing with me would the
resort to the claim that the coach was not really gay is among the
most bizarre aspects I've seen in this. Is Beyerstine saying that it’s
likely that this was the first time that the “straight” coach would
have done something like that?
I will note in passing that it is hardly unknown for straight men to
believe gay men are coming on to them, even quite repulsive men are
able to believe that. I have heard women talk about such men convinced
that women are coming on to them, at times laughing about its
improbability. My guess is that athletes might have more of a reason
to believe they're highly desirable when they might not be. But, that
would be a guess and just general speculation.
As to what a gay man approaching 50 - or even your average “straight
man with a yen for sex with men less than half his age” could have
been expected to know in the mid-70s, that would begin with knowing
that gay sex was, generally illegal and generally risky unless you
knew the man you were approaching might be open to the experience.
Most men, believing themselves to be straight, would be known would
not have welcomed having a gay pass made at them. A gay man with that
long to gain experience would know that a gay man could be assaulted
and the mere identification of the victim as a gay man would make a
prosecution of their attacker much less likely and his exposure as gay
could result in him being legally discriminated against. He could well
have heard about young men who cruised gay men and then attacked and
robbed them, he might have heard about young men who made their living
that way and others who did it for fun. What they knew could well very
go all the way to knowing that it was possible for a gay men to be
murdered and their murderers could get off by claiming an unwelcome
gay pass had been made at them. I was far younger than that and I knew
those things. I doubt I’d have been as worldly as an Olympic coach
about about twenty years older than I was.
That Beyerstine has trouble believing that level of common knowledge
among middle-aged gay men at that time could have more than a little
to do with the fact that she hadn’t been born yet. Being gay in 2011
is far different from what it was like in 1976, even in New York City
or San Francisco. Ignoring that is as willfully ignorant as pretending
Leonard being a boxer is irrelevant to evaluating what he is alleging.
L.B. "According to McCarthy's logic, no coach would ever abuse big,
strong boys as long as "gay panic" was recognized as a defense."
Again, characterizing my skepticism as saying “no coach would ever,”
as if she wanted her readers to believe I'd said that, Beyerstine
exaggerates what I said in order to put other words in my mouth. As a
point of common sense, though, any coach who knew that and did what is
described was being pretty reckless. I will take a second here to
remark that for a person in the young elite of organized “skepticism”,
Lindsay Beyerstine is mighty reluctant to apply the standards of her
ideology to this case. So far I'm supplying any skeptical analysis to
it.
L.B. "Yet there are scandals involving male coaches and male athletes
all the time. Male coach/female athlete abuse is much more common, but
male coach/male athlete cases are hardly unknown."
Ignoring that we’re talking about boxing, as just about all the other
people commenting on what I said did, she equates it with sports that
don’t involve the science of physical attack in order to do damage.
Does she think the relationship of boxing with fighting and very
possibly severe injury would not have been something that occurred to
the boxing coach or Leonard?
L.B. "McCarthy's argument ignores the psychology acquaintance rape.
Maybe boxers are more likely to react violently to unwanted same-sex
contact than your average person. I don't know of any studies. Or,
maybe when a beloved, trusted authority figure violates without
warning, a boxer can be just as flummoxed as anyone else. Physical
strength may not even be a factor. Victims often report feeling frozen
or detached from reality during the assault. There's no reason to
assume that how someone reacts to planned, consensual violence in a
boxing ring predicts how they're likely to react to unexpected
non-consensual sex."
I will unpack this piece by piece
L.B. "McCarthy's argument ignores the psychology acquaintance rape."
I have no idea if acquaintance rape would have anything to do with
this because we don’t have enough details to know the level of
acquaintance. Though I really doubt Leonard would want anyone to think
he had the mind set of a young man on a date. More on psychology in a
minute.
L.B. "Maybe boxers are more likely to react violently to unwanted
same-sex contact than your average person. I don't know of any
studies."
I didn’t find any. I didn’t find a single other case in which an elite
boxer has made an allegation of being sexually molested by a man twice
his age. What can be assumed is that an Olympic boxer would be able to
“react violently” in a more effective manner than “your average
person” or, as I noted somewhere, a track and field athlete or a
badminton player. Which is what I said would be more obvious to a
boxing coach than it would “your average person”.
L.B. "Or, maybe when a beloved, trusted authority figure violates
without warning, a boxer can be just as flummoxed as anyone else.
Physical strength may not even be a factor. Victims often report
feeling frozen or detached from reality during the assault."
Do we know that the coach was “a beloved, trusted authority figure”?
Maybe so, in which case it would be good to know who he was in order
to not suspect other “beloved, trusted authority figures” of being
sexual predators. Or, maybe not.
In light of what Beyerstine relied on up till now, the charge made
later that I was indulging in “psychobabble” is strange. This is the
invention of far, far more narrative than I’d feel comfortable with in
an investigative reporter. I didn’t follow boxing but I don’t think
Leonard knocked out so many other elite boxers because he was prone to
“feeling frozen or detached from reality during (an) assault”. For
crying out loud, he was a champion boxer who some argue is among the
best of all time.
And all of Beyerstine's narrative misses my point, which wasn’t what
Leonard would have thought, it was what any gay man who was thinking
of making a sudden, unannounced, very likely unwelcome physical
assault on him would have known. If that boxing coach who had seen
what he could do in the ring suddenly unzipped his fly with no
previous effort to find out if it would be OK with Leonard, he would
have had to be the stupidest gay man in town that day. If he was horny
there would have been far less dangerous young men around to try to
give an impromptu blow job to. Others who would go along with it.
L.B. " McCarthy thinks that Leonard is just using the story to excuse
a lifetime of bad behavior including violence against women, and
substance abuse. You can take his claim seriously without accepting
his psychobabble."
Here is what my post said about that:
Later in the Times piece, after citing the numerous incidences of his
violence - especially against his first wife - , adultery, drug and
alcohol abuse this is said:
Greenburg speculated that it was counseling that helped him finally
come to grips with the sexual-abuse episode of his youth.
“Having to hide a situation like that made it worse, I would think,”
he said. “You have these dirty little secrets, and you feel as a man,
and one in a tough-guy world like boxing, that you can’t share it with
anyone. I would think that would probably affect every aspect of his
life.”
And later:
It seems to me that a lot of the people who I've discussed this with
seem to believe that the problems Leonard had with violence, drugs,
alcohol and other things as an adult are attributable to this one
incidence he alleges. I don't buy that at all.
A far more obvious motivation for him hitting his first wife is in his
training in systematic violence, the brutality of boxing which he
practiced professionally and for which he was lauded and which made
him a hero to millions of people.
I can't imagine that not instilling a sense of permission in at least
some elite boxers. Boxing is permitted, systematic and intended
brutality. When a boxer practices brutality outside of the ring it
should be the first thing suspected as a motivation, not an incident
which could be as much an attempt at self-exoneration as it could be a
factual account of what would be considered quite differently, by
society and the media if it had been a man doing the equivalent to a
woman.
Even if every word Leonard said about this incidence is true, that
doesn't excuse anything else he's admitted he did.
I said, twice, that other people were using the story to excuse a
lifetime of bad behavior, including the one quoted from Ross Greenburg
in the New York Times. No place in my post attributes that to Leonard.
I said that I doubted that one instance of gay groping could be the
reason for his bad behavior, Even if every word Leonard said about
this incidence is true.
Though, reading it over later, I wished I had edited an awkward use of
a word in that, I kept it because it was what was posted and being
commented on.
Beyerstine’s charge of me spouting “psychobabble" is quite ironic in
view of her scenario above, as well as baseless. Anyone who has read
much of what I’ve written would know I’m very skeptical of the
scientific standing of psychology. Considering what I said about the
psychobabble of gay panic defense and the widespread spouting of
psychobabble in mitigation of bad behavior due to one instance of gay
groping, Beyerstine’s charge of that is contradicted even by what she
has accused me of. Much as I would like to go in matters psychological
concerning this “faculty” member and her "Toolbox" colleagues, I’ll
pass that up for now.
L.B. McCarthy also thinks that Leonard is being homophobic by making
the rape allegation the centerpiece of his book.
This is entirely false. I didn’t attribute homophobia to Leonard, the
only thing I said about homophobia was “ It (“gay panic defense”)
seems to be unknown to a considerable part of the straight, liberal,
self defined non-homophobic, blogosphere. " The only thing I said
about Leonard other than known biographical fact was that he made an
accusation against an Olympic coach and that he had admitted to bad
behavior. I have no idea if Leonard is homophobic and didn’t say he
was. I will say that my background research wouldn't lead me to
suspect he is.
I did imply that a number of people, specifically many liberals who up
till a couple of days before I figured would have known better, shared
the unexpressed assumption of gay men as predators. Though that’s more
your plain old gay stereotyping than it is homophobia. I dealt with
that in the first part of this series of posts.
L.B. It's disturbing how eager McCarthy is to debunk Leonard's story
based purely on stereotypes. At best this kind of reasoning could
establish that such an event was unlikely.
As just noted, the only things I said about Leonard were facts told
about a named person, Sugar Ray Leonard. I said that he was an elite
boxer in top shape and on his way to winning a gold medal in boxing at
the Olympics. That he was an adult, which he would have been based on
what Leonard said. He amassed an amateur record of 145-5 75 KO before
he went professional. Other than that I noted his record of subsequent
bad behavior, mentioning his having hit his wife, part of the record
of his divorce from her, things he admitted to. Facts about a
specific, named person are not stereotypes. Neither was noting the
skills and abilities he would have to have to be an elite, Olympic
boxer. I’ve been struck how odd it is for many of those who criticized
what I said have presented Leonard as a powerless wimp. I doubt the
young Leonard would have welcomed that depiction of him.
Since Leonard said the boxing coach was in his late forties I observed
that a man in his late forties is at a physical disadvantage to a
boxer on his way to the Olympic, less than half his age, is so obvious
that it hardly constitutes a sterotype. If the coach hadn’t been at a
disadvantage against Sugar Ray Leonard he should have been on the
American boxing team instead of coaching it. If Leonard named the man,
any other assumption I made could be dispelled, as I said in the first
part of my commentary which Beyerstine ignored.
Beyerstine’s characterization of Leonard as being under the thumb of
this unknown coach assumes more about Leonard and the coach than I
did. Without knowing who the coach is and what can be known about
whatever power he might have had over Leonard, what she says about
that is based in stereotype instead of fact. It’s quite possible that
one or more of the possible suspects was smaller than Leonard was as
well as more than twice his age.
L.B. "I'm not saying we should reflexively accept all claims of sexual
assault at face value, I'm saying that we should jettison the
stereotype that lying about sexual assault is so much more common than
lying about other things that these claims automatically deserve
heightened scrutiny."
I made no claim that “lying about sexual assault is so much more"
anything. I addressed this one accusation in terms of what could be
known about it in the absence of a known abuser and in the context of
the experience of being a gay man in the mid-1970s. As I said in the
second post that weekend all accusations deserve scrutiny because
that’s what you do when someone accuses someone of doing something
wrong. Why she thinks Leonard’s very undetailed, very open-ended
account shouldn’t be examined is downright bizarre in someone who
promotes herself as both a “skeptic” and an investigative reporter.
What she should have disclosed
Why would Lindsay Beyerstine characterize what I wrote in the way she
did? If she disagreed with what I said, why did she ignore a major
part of that and then distort what I said, putting words and ideas
into my mouth that weren't there? Why would she engage me on comment
threads without informing me that she had written about what I wrote?
I saw the piece at Salon the Monday after I posted my piece, when I
went there to look for a piece entirely unrelated to my post. I
followed that to Lindsay Beyerstine's blog where I read what she
wrote.
Now, the name "Beyerstine" related to this topic rang a bell with me.
I had read an article by Barry Beyerstine about the necessity of being
very careful when considering accusations of sexual abuse. I
remembered that article said that all accusations of sexual abuse
should be investigated. I also knew that the late Barry Beyerstine was
a prominent member of CSICOP and was well known in "skeptics" circles.
Needless to say, when I found out Lindsay Beyerstine was his daughter,
my curiosity was peaked.
I have written several posts critical of members of CSICOP and
"skeptics" which were blog mobbed, I have also been critical of them
in a number of arguments on other blogs. I did a search on Lindsay
Beyerstine's blog to see if she had written anything about what I
wrote, considering that her father was so prominent in those circles.
I found that my posts were known to her. On June 22, 2010, "Yoo Hoo
Yippie" was apparently calling out a blog mob to attack two of those
posts.
Defend yourself CSICOP fellow traveller!
I seem to be unable to locate the "e-mail Ms. Beyerstein" button, I apologize.
CSICOP is being trashed on a regular basis by Anthony McCarthy on the
"Echidne of the Snakes" blog.
The blog in question seems to reside in the
Eschaton-Pandagon-Majikthise universe, so I was hoping you could
reply. I would do it, but I am merely a poorly educated stocker of
shelves.
The relevant posts can be found:
http://tinyurl.com/25pc9s3
http://tinyurl.com/2eczqeu
Thank you for your attention and apologies for OT-ness.
to which Lindsay Beyerstine responded:
You got me, You got me, Echinde of the Snakes falls squarely in my
sector of Blog City. I haven't been patrolling vigilantly. Arguing
with Anthony McCarthy is like arguing with a wall. falls squarely in
my sector of Blog City. I haven't been patrolling vigilantly. Arguing
with Anthony McCarthy is like arguing with a wall.
It's rare to find such clear proof that there has, actually, been
organized blog mobbing of what you wrote. I wonder who else Woo hoo
may have called out by e-mail and if this is a typical practice of the
organized skeptics. And Beyerstine's apparently finding me persistent
in an argument is interesting, to me at least, but I'm going to leave
that aside.
Looking farther into this I found that Lindsay Beyerstine is active in
the same "skeptics" circles, a "faculty" member of a CSI sponsored
workshop "The Skeptics Toolbox 2011". Ray Hyman is another "faculty"
member of it who I have criticized, albeit mildly, in his case. I've
been much more critical of other members of those groups, though never
Barry Beyerstine, who did some valuable work in the area of false
accusations of sexual abuse.
What is clear is that Lindsay Beyerstine knows I've written critically
of groups she has a quasi-professional association with. That could
very possibly be a motive to do what she did in her post.
I'm not saying that Beyerstine couldn't have legitimately written
about what I said in as critical a manner as she could, though she did
have an obligation to write accurately about it. I'm saying that she
has a clear ethical obligation to disclose that she knows I've been
critical of CSICOP, it's offshoots and some of its members and so
might not be the most disinterested reader of what I have written.
I notified Lindsay Beyerstine almost as soon as I found out about her
post, asking her to correct many of the points I noted here. I tried
to let her know that I knew about her conflict of interest and that
Barry Beyerstine had written an article that supported what I had done
before I explicitly stated either of those. Not having had the best of
experiences of engaging people I was fighting with by e-mail, I posted
that those in comments on her blog and, when she ignored what my
request for the correction and disclosure, on the comment thread at
Salon magazine. I informed her of those comments at her blog and told
her that if she didn't correct what she had written about me and
disclose her conflict, I would write about it. I gave her a lot more
notice than she gave me.
I agree with many of the things Lindsay Beyerstine writes, we are on
the same side of many issues, though there are several we are far from
agreement about, organized "skepticism", religion, pornography and,
very recently, the wisdom of "slut walks". I don't agree that the way
she wrote about what I did with its omissions and false attributions,
her engaging me on a comment thread without disclosing her intentions
and her failure to note her possible conflict of interest. I don't
agree with someone doing that presenting themselves as an
investigative reporter.
I note that her brand of "skepticism" has always seemed like a highly
selective and enforcement of rigid ideology to me. Apparently it
doesn't hold with the many articles published in its journals in
recent years about the necessity of investigating sexual abuse
accusations. That's what I was doing, expressing skepticism about
Leonard's accusation as it was reported. That's all I did.
The experience of seeing how hard it was for people to read what I
said, of having them, once again, put things I've never said or
thought in my mouth has given me some insights about writing I hadn't
had before.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Sugar Ray Leonard's Claim of Sexual Assault And Why I Have A Hard Time Believing It
| The Olympic gold medal winner and professional boxer, Sugar Ray Leonard has written a memoir in which he says he was the victim of a gay sexual assault when he was 20. Here is how the New York Times reported it: Two pages later, Leonard delivers the book's bombshell while indirectly addressing a growing concern in the sports industry at large. He reveals publicly for the first time that he was sexually abused as a young fighter by an unnamed “prominent Olympic boxing coach.” Leonard writes that when the coach accompanied him as a 15-year-old and another young fighter to a boxing event in Utica, N.Y., in 1971, he had the teenagers take a bath in a tub of hot water and Epsom salts while he sat on the other side of the bathroom. They suspected “something a bit inappropriate” was occurring but did not want to question a strong male authority figure. Several years later, Leonard describes sitting in a car in a deserted parking lot across from a recreation center, listening intently as the same coach, said to be in his late 40s, explained how much a gold medal at the 1976 Olympics would mean to his future. Leonard was flattered, filled with hope, as any young athlete would be. But he writes: “Before I knew it, he had unzipped my pants and put his hand, then mouth, on an area that has haunted me for life. I didn’t scream. I didn’t look at him. I just opened the door and ran.” He adds that when he first decided to discuss the incident in the book, which is written with Michael Arkush, he offered a version in which the abuser stopped before there was actual contact. Later in the Times piece, after citing the numerous incidences of his violence - especially against his first wife - , adultery, drug and alcohol abuse this is said: Greenburg speculated that it was counseling that helped him finally come to grips with the sexual-abuse episode of his youth. “Having to hide a situation like that made it worse, I would think,” he said. “You have these dirty little secrets, and you feel as a man, and one in a tough-guy world like boxing, that you can’t share it with anyone. I would think that would probably affect every aspect of his life.” I've had several discussions about this in the past couple of days with straight men and women who uniformly take what Leonard says at his word. One, a lawyer, said that it had a ring of truth to it. I'm afraid that as a gay man who is intimately familiar with what it's like to have been gay during the time in question and who remembers 1976 very well, I am having a very hard time believing it as reported. My first problem with what he's said is that Leonard has refused to name the man he is accusing, even though he says that the man is dead. Not naming the man carries a number of problems. This casts suspicion on any boxing coach in his late forties who might have been in contact with Leonard during the Olympics and who might have had some connection with him five years earlier. I have no idea how many of those there are but I do know that raising suspicions of this kind should be avoided when possible. Leonard could clear up that much by naming the man he's accusing and ending the possibility of innocent people being hurt*. Furthermore it reinforces the picture of all gay men as sexual predators. "A gay man" doesn't assault someone a specific man does. If that man can be named, he should be and he should face the consequences of his actions, those shouldn't be left hanging as a finger pointed at all gay men. Leonard could possibly dispel any likely doubt by naming the man and seeing what other people could say of him. It's possible that there were other, credible, incidents. Or it could risk none of those coming forth and casting doubt on what he said happened. But, unlike many, many of other stories of sexual abuse by older men on younger men and boys, Leonard's doesn't seem probable to me because of the facts he alleges. First, as things stand, he claims that the assault took place shortly before his all important match at the Montreal Olympics, in the context of a conversation in which the coach was telling him of the importance of winning gold. He says that he had suspected the coach had sexual interest in him since he was fifteen, so for about five years. I have a hard time imagining that a very middle aged gay man would have chosen Sugar Ray Leonard to make a sudden, un-negotiated, physical sexual assault against just as he was about to win a gold medal in BOXING. Boxing, repeatedly and skillfully and forcefully hitting an evenly matched opponent in the face and head in order to inflict damage up to and including knocking him unconscious. Boxing is not track and field, it's not gymnastics, it's the training and practice of how to do physical damage to someone. No matter how physically attractive Leonard was, the possibility that he might beat you to a bloody pulp if he didn't welcome your entirely unannounced, unapproved physical advance would have made him an unlikely man to choose to make one on. His identification of a boxing coach who had been associated with him for at least five years also gives me problems. For someone who had been cultivating an athlete for five years, watching them climb up the extremely steep hill to even get to the Olympics, knowing that any upset could quash their hopes of even getting a bronze, I can't imagine them taking the chance of coming on to their athlete during the very weeks in which they could ruin years of investment of their work and hopes, ruining any benefits that could be gotten from having coached an Olympic champion. Especially if he had the chance to make that advance for the five preceding years. I can't imagine an Olympic coach making their first and only actual sexual advance on an athlete in that context. I can't imagine him risking his professional standing. In 1976 any credible rumor of an Olympic boxing coach coming on to his unwilling athletes half his age would have been the end of any career in sports. In the media atmosphere of the mid-70s, especially the sports media, risking an athlete pressing charges would have be enormous. Several of those who objected to my doubts pointed out that the alleged attacker was a boxing coach. But he was a boxing coach in advancing middle age, hardly a match for a young man about to win Olympic gold, someone who had systematically fought and won against increasingly able and skilled opponents in peak condition to reach the stage when he was about to fight against another, super elite boxer. I'd guess that an experienced boxing coach who had seen what Leonard had done to other boxers might have had more reason than most to not want to risk provoking an attack by him in the summer of 1976. There were far less dangerous men to come on to in Montreal that week. The wider context of my having problems with the idea of a gay man doing that in 1976 is directly due to the fact that it was and remains possible for someone to beat or murder a gay man and to either get off without charges or to have a murder charge reduced to manslaughter by claiming a sexual assault. In many cases the mere allegation of an unwanted, gay sexual advance could get a man out of a charge of assault before it went to court. It was common knowledge that many gay bashers got away with it by telling that kind of story to the police and prosecutors. If you doubt that is the case, there are law review articles debating whether or not the use of the "Gay Panic Defense" should be allowed to be raised by the defense in murder cases** or if that practice should be abolished. Let me stop right here and repeat that. Today it is being debated whether or not to allow defendants in a MURDER CASE to claim they, usually brutally, killed a gay man because he made a pass at them. Today. Never mind in the mid-1970s. In the mean time, right now, it is quite possible to use a claim of gay assault to get off on a very brutal killing, in which the physical evidence doesn't support the defendant's story that a sexual assault took place. Not in the deep South, in Illinois. the first state to decriminalize gay sex. I will be writing about this apparently little known part of the law. Little known by straight folks, apparently, but very well known to gay men. Just as women can become the accused in a rape case, gay men murdered by straight men can be blamed for their own murders, qualified for unofficial capital punishment for doing something straight men do to women every day. I will be writing about that more, soon. It seems to be unknown to a considerable part of the straight, liberal, self defined non-homophobic, blogosphere. * When Scott Brown said that he had been abused at a much younger age I said, a number of times, that he should have named the man, who, as far as I know, he hasn't yet. I don't remember anyone who was critical of me making the same point at the time. ** As the law now stands, a nonviolent homosexual advance may constitute sufficient provocation to incite that legal fiction, the reasonable man, to lose his self-control and kill in the heat of passion, thus mitigating murder to manslaughter. The author argues that this homosexual-advance defense is a misguided application of provocation theory and a judicial institutionalization of homophobia. Provocation defenses have their origin and rationale in tangled theories of justification and excuse, both of which divert attention away from the killer and onto the behavior of the deceased victim. The homosexual-advance defense appeals to irrational fears, revulsion, and hatred prevalent in heterocentric society, focusing blame on the victim's real or imagined sexuality. In allowing the defense, the judiciary reinforces and institutionalizes violent prejudices at the expense of norms of self-control, tolerance, and compassion that ought to reign in society. The defense affirms homophobia and undermines the ability of courts to produce fair verdicts by creating a lower standard of protection against violence afforded to an identifiable class of victims. The author concludes that we ought to expect more from our courts: judges should hold as a matter of law that a homosexual advance is not sufficient provocation to incite a reasonable man to kill. Murderous homophobia should be considered an irrational and idiosyncratic characteristic of the killer rather than a normative social aspiration incorporated as the homosexual-advance defense into the standards that govern jury decision making. Note: It seems to me that a lot of the people who I've discussed this with seem to believe that the problems Leonard had with violence, drugs, alcohol and other things as an adult are attributable to this one incidence he alleges. I don't buy that at all. A far more obvious motivation for him hitting his first wife is in his training in systematic violence, the brutality of boxing which he practiced professionally and for which he was lauded and which made him a hero to millions of people. I can't imagine that not instilling a sense of permission in at least some elite boxers. Boxing is permitted, systematic and intended brutality. When a boxer practices brutality outside of the ring it should be the first thing suspected as a motivation, not an incident which could be as much an attempt at self-exoneration as it could be a factual account of what would be considered quite differently, by society and the media if it had been a man doing the equivalent to a woman. Even if every word Leonard said about this incidence is true, that doesn't excuse anything else he's admitted he did. Accusations [Anthony McCarthy]
Note: These are the two posts I wrote the weekend of June 11, 2011. |
Sunday, September 9, 2018
Old Business
I am asked what I was talking about the other day about my big blow up at the blog I used to write for. I wrote it up at the time in three pieces I posted here right after it happened. It's probably more complicated than anyone really wants to go through, but . . .
The incident I referred to was when the journalist Lindsay Beyerstein posted an inaccurate and seriously distorted piece about a post I wrote dealing with Sugar Ray Leonard's claim that his bad behavior was related to an alleged incident of someone making a gay pass at him when he was an adult. She misrepresented what I said in her piece which was then used by Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon who repreated distortions of what I said to get a column out of it. Lindsay Beyerstein is the daughter of Barry Beyerstein who, dead by that time, had been an active but minor figure in professional atheism ("skepticism") of the pre-Dawkins period, one of the CSICOP gang. His writing as a psychologist directly supported what I had said in the piece that his daughter misrepresented. Which I thought was entirely legitimate to point out. And still do.
Lindsay Beyerstein has had what I assume is a paid role in that kind of organized "skepticism" though I don't follow their antics much while I'm not writing about them I do know that much about her. It's how I figured out the connection to Barry Beyerstein who I knew about years before that.
In looking at her then "Big Think" blog to research that piece, to see if my name appeared on it before that incident, I found out that one fan of the CSICOP cult, maybe a member (they posted under a pseudonym) had earlier posted a comment on Beyerstein's blog calling out the flying monkey squad to attack me when I criticized Martin Gardner. Beyerstein answered the comment so she knew I'd written critically about CSICOP and Gardner, a, then, major figure in her family side-line of pseudo-skepticism. Which I found and do find relevant to what she said about me.
That incident did play a minor but crucial part in my developing thinking about the role that ideological atheism played in damaging a regard for the truth which, in turn, did serious damage to the real left instead of the secular (read "atheist") play-left, something I had written about a number of times before the piece about Sugar Ray Leonard's claim. To understand it you do have to read the post that started it all and the firestorm of comments (which I think are probably taken down - I haven't bothered to look) which led to me coming to some important conclusions about the uses of stereotypes and accusations and how what was used against gay men was different from what was used to advantage straight men and to damage women and similar issues.
It's complicated but lots of things are. Now, aren't you sorry you asked?
The incident I referred to was when the journalist Lindsay Beyerstein posted an inaccurate and seriously distorted piece about a post I wrote dealing with Sugar Ray Leonard's claim that his bad behavior was related to an alleged incident of someone making a gay pass at him when he was an adult. She misrepresented what I said in her piece which was then used by Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon who repreated distortions of what I said to get a column out of it. Lindsay Beyerstein is the daughter of Barry Beyerstein who, dead by that time, had been an active but minor figure in professional atheism ("skepticism") of the pre-Dawkins period, one of the CSICOP gang. His writing as a psychologist directly supported what I had said in the piece that his daughter misrepresented. Which I thought was entirely legitimate to point out. And still do.
Lindsay Beyerstein has had what I assume is a paid role in that kind of organized "skepticism" though I don't follow their antics much while I'm not writing about them I do know that much about her. It's how I figured out the connection to Barry Beyerstein who I knew about years before that.
In looking at her then "Big Think" blog to research that piece, to see if my name appeared on it before that incident, I found out that one fan of the CSICOP cult, maybe a member (they posted under a pseudonym) had earlier posted a comment on Beyerstein's blog calling out the flying monkey squad to attack me when I criticized Martin Gardner. Beyerstein answered the comment so she knew I'd written critically about CSICOP and Gardner, a, then, major figure in her family side-line of pseudo-skepticism. Which I found and do find relevant to what she said about me.
That incident did play a minor but crucial part in my developing thinking about the role that ideological atheism played in damaging a regard for the truth which, in turn, did serious damage to the real left instead of the secular (read "atheist") play-left, something I had written about a number of times before the piece about Sugar Ray Leonard's claim. To understand it you do have to read the post that started it all and the firestorm of comments (which I think are probably taken down - I haven't bothered to look) which led to me coming to some important conclusions about the uses of stereotypes and accusations and how what was used against gay men was different from what was used to advantage straight men and to damage women and similar issues.
It's complicated but lots of things are. Now, aren't you sorry you asked?
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Blaming The Victim (part 2)
Part 1
The accusation most easily disproved of those made last weekend is the constant refrain I "blamed the victim". That would be that I somehow blamed Sugar Ray Leonard for being abused . The proof against that is, I simply didn't.
Looking at what I said in both posts, in light of that, specific, accusation, it is entirely baseless. I didn't say anything that even approaches that by mistake.
The only thing I faulted Leonard for is his refusal to name the man he was accusing in order that others wouldn't be victimized by suspicion. As I pointed out, it was something I also had said when Scott Brown said that he had been abused, only no one ever to objected when I said that. Other than that, I mentioned that he had admitted to hitting his first wife something which was in the record from their divorce.
In nothing else is the thick blanket of attributed meanings and intentions so obviously seen to not be there. The people who saw "victim blaming" in what I said were putting that into what I wrote, something that wasn't there . That might have something to do with their thinking, it has nothing to do with what I said.
I will, though, be writing about victims of false accusations in the future, the Amirault family, the Fells Acre hysteria victims, and others. My experience of the past week has shown me those cases need to be reviewed because they can happen again.
The accusation most easily disproved of those made last weekend is the constant refrain I "blamed the victim". That would be that I somehow blamed Sugar Ray Leonard for being abused . The proof against that is, I simply didn't.
Looking at what I said in both posts, in light of that, specific, accusation, it is entirely baseless. I didn't say anything that even approaches that by mistake.
The only thing I faulted Leonard for is his refusal to name the man he was accusing in order that others wouldn't be victimized by suspicion. As I pointed out, it was something I also had said when Scott Brown said that he had been abused, only no one ever to objected when I said that. Other than that, I mentioned that he had admitted to hitting his first wife something which was in the record from their divorce.
In nothing else is the thick blanket of attributed meanings and intentions so obviously seen to not be there. The people who saw "victim blaming" in what I said were putting that into what I wrote, something that wasn't there . That might have something to do with their thinking, it has nothing to do with what I said.
I will, though, be writing about victims of false accusations in the future, the Amirault family, the Fells Acre hysteria victims, and others. My experience of the past week has shown me those cases need to be reviewed because they can happen again.
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