Yesterday, a woman named Mara wrote an article for xojane.com It Happened To Me: My Online Dating Profile Insipired A Whole Forum Thread Dedicated To What A Whore I Am about MGTOWs who tore apart her okcupid profile. They called her a twat & made flimsy claims-- that she's an example of what's wrong with young women.

Something very similar once happened to me. I came across an internet post-- a woman telling a story about an encounter she had with a handful of creeps. I realized that I knew the woman, that I was in the room during the incident she described, that I was one of the men she was talking about.

Except my recollection didn't match hers. And I was over a month late to discover her version: it had already inspired blog posts, forum discussions, podcast mentions. Feminists were rallying around her story as proof of male misbehavior, privilege, and the need for things like harassment policies at conventions to protect women. When people-who-weren't-there repeated her story, their versions grew increasingly fanciful.

Much like Mara's reaction upon discovering that MGTOWs had smeared her, I felt vulnerable and worried about my reputation. I didn't sleep well. And then I suddenly remembered: I had a surveillance recording of the incident.

Reviewing the 'instant replay', the other men & I were vindicated. Instead of the racist/sexist/homophobic/nonconsentual cretins she described... our words were inclusive of Trans People, gay marriage, and non-traditional roles for women-- and we had explicitly obtained everyone's consent to treat sensitive topics in such a joking manner. We had even set explicit rules for stopping the conversation if anyone felt uncomfortable. The woman listed 'no stabbing of puppies' as her only limit. And she told a puppy-killing joke. She never employed the boundary rules we had established.

In her retelling, the accuser omitted that she had set the tone with politically-incorrect jokes. The men made similar comments, but nothing more extreme than, say, Mara's snarky tone in her xojane article.

Like Mara, I decided to speak out. I transcribed the recording & posted it with my thoughts in a relevant place online.

The accuser did not back down from claiming to have been victimized. Her supporters used my response as further proof of The Patriarchy, etc. Mutual acquaintances treated me as a troublemaker whose reply probably-was motivated by a subconscious hatred of women. I was called obsessive for making a precise transcription. Moderators of the forum where I posted my reply-- privately expressed agreement with me-- but publicly moderated the thread to deflect heat from feminists I had angered. A male feminist approached me privately & told me the same woman had made his social life unbearable by spreading similar rumors about him, until he eventually moved to another town. But even he was careful to not to break ranks with the feminists in public.

TLDR: the mgtows who said awful shit about a woman are marginalized, anonymous 'dregs of society'; but the feminists caught spreading false shit about me were able to use their real names-- remained honored guests at speaking engagements, with grants from philanthropists and corporate consulting gigs.