'Men's Rights' Activists Spam A College's Rape Reporting System With False Accusations

The Men's Rights subreddit was a flutter of activity last night when one Redditor pointed out that Occidental College has an online form where students can anonymously report sexual assault.

"Feminists at Occidental College created an online form to anonymously report rape/sexual assault. You just fill out a form and the person is called into the office on a rape charge. The 'victim' never has to prove anything or reveal their identity," wrote Sh-tlordDon, an active member of the subreddit.

But Dave Futrelle, who runs ManBoobz.com, a site that monitors this stuff, writes that this description is misleading:

"This headline is not only inflammatory but untrue: Yes, Occidental College has an online form that allows victims of or witnesses to sexual assault to report the incidents to the school. But, as a statement at the top of the form makes clear, the point is to collect data on how much sexual violence there is at the school, who the victims are, and so on."

Simply put: no one will be (or was ever going to be) charged with anything as a result of information entered into the form. Nonetheless, overzealous "men's rights" activists flooded the form with false reports of sexual assault, rendering it useless to those gathering data. If you look through the thread, a few people point out that the effort is in vain, but they are silenced by the wave of Redditors giddily sharing descriptions of their false reports.

Writes Futrelle: "The moderators of Men's Rights have done nothing to stop their subreddit being used to interfere with a school's attempt to assist rape survivors - including men."