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Not terribly long ago, our favorite Professor, Dan Peterson, stated that he would like it very much if I would track down proof of his harassment of some young woman. Well, I was feeling generous today, and so I went and found it. It turns out that this young woman's name is "Kristi," and she was the victim of a full-blown "L-Skinny" frontal assault. After she expressed her outrage over DCP's rude and uncouth treatment of James White, DCP proceeded to send her a series of what she describes as "stalkerish" emails. All of this has been memorialized in what is, admittedly, a rather puerile site:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/5938/index.html

Kristi notes, for example, that she views Gary Novak as a "idiotic WEENIE". But there is a more serious side to all of this. Here is Kristi's explanation for how the whole affair began:

Kristi wrote:It was this series of e-mails between Peterson and Dr. White that prompted me to contact Peterson; I was amazed at the amount of vindictiveness, immaturity, stupidity, and impolitnessness contained within Peterson’s e-mails to White. I was angered and disgusted by Peterson's demeanor, his snotty attitude.

In other words, DCP was dealt a bit of his own FARMS Review-style medicine. But this quickly turned grim for Kristi:

in utter frustration at being stalked by this nut case, I used an obscenity in an e-mail to him. For some reason that shut him up.

How interesting! (Not to mention disquieting....) Apparently, Kristi had labored to get DCP off her back:

I had entered Peterson’s name and e-mail address into my mail filter, which did catch some of his messages, but regrettably, not all. That method didn't prove to be too useful, though, since Mr. Psycho-son had his friends --people I did not even know-- send me e-mails to chew me out.

(emphasis added)

I have elsewhere suggested that "Skinny-L" is used as a kind of "staging ground" to launch attacks on critics. Well, Kristi's story definitely seems to corroborate this observation, as her "private" exchange with DCP was promptly passed around to Skinny List participants so that they could secretly ridicule and mock her, and so that they could participate in the group assault on her.

Here is Kristi's concluding remarks on the matter:

Things became even spookier and creepier when I began to get e-mail from LDS (Mormon) folks who I never even heard of before. What had happened was this: Peterson was sending out my e-mails (with my *e-mail address*, the Rude Jerk!) to his friends. Apparently Peterson cannot defend himself and has to enlist his friends to do that for him.

So, is L-Skinny the innocuous, friendly forum for discussing backpacking trips and the like, as DCP has said? Or, is it a place for TBM males to boast about harassing and stalking females via email? Let the reader be the judge!

Yikes... I don't know about this one Scratch. That website is awful. It isn't even worthy of a CARMS link.

I wonder what this lady considers stalking - and I hope DCP will be kind enough to share some of those emails to set the record straight.

I find it a little odd that she seemingly contacted him out of the blue, and then suddenly wanted him to "go away."
She sounds like a hysterical Christian to me.

Ok, so where is the email?

How do you know that this came from the "L-Skinny" list? It seems to me that it could have very well come from the FAIR list instead.

Mike Reed wrote:How do you know that this came from the "L-Skinny" list? It seems to me that it could have very well come from the FAIR list instead.

Because skinny-l is sinister.

The emails can all be found here, at Gary Novak's "Worst of the Anti-Mormon Web" section of SHIELDS:

http://www.shields-research.org/Novak/m ... index.html

Here, for example, The Good Professor fesses up to maintaining "files" on Church critics:

Daniel Peterson wrote:Anyway, I am enjoying your messages, and encourage you to continue sending them. I keep a file that I call "America's Funniest Anti-Mormons," and all of your posts are going into that file as well as to my appreciative friends.

Ho, ho, ho! What a joker The Good Professor is! And to think, all this time he has been trying to deny that he has such files! Will he ever keep his story straight??

Later, Kristi names one of the "harassing" people, thus "outing" another member of L-skinny:

Kristi wrote:Now you have one of your little friends--someone named "D Charles Pyle" sending me messages. I don't even KNOW him; I don't recall seeing his name on the webpage where your e-mails to White are listed-- I sent a message to YOU, not him. You don't see *me* getting my internet friends to send *you* e-mails...

I wonder what Pyle said to her?

Anyways: Mike, one of the links states that the messages were also being forwarded to LDS_Apologetics.

GoodK: If she was a "crazy Christian," then why didn't DCP ignore her, rather than baiting her over the course of multiple emails, and inviting his friends to jump on her? Kristi herself made clear what her intentions were: she was defending James White.... Sort of like how Lou Midgley, DCP, and various other apologists (LoaP, too) randomly show up on numerous blogs unannounced in order to bash critics. I very much doubt that the owners of such blogs respond with the same gang-like mentality of the "L-skinny" crew.

Mister Scratch wrote:
GoodK: If she was a "crazy Christian," then why didn't DCP ignore her, rather than baiting her over the course of multiple emails, and inviting his friends to jump on her? Kristi herself made clear what her intentions were: she was defending James White.... Sort of like how Lou Midgley, DCP, and various other apologists (LoaP, too) randomly show up on numerous blogs unannounced in order to bash critics. I very much doubt that the owners of such blogs respond with the same gang-like mentality of the "L-skinny" crew.

There is obviously a difference in responding in a combative, antagonistic, and even meanspirited manner - and "stalking" women on the internet via the skinny list.

I wouldn't put bashing a critic, especially a "hysterical Christian" critic, past DCP - or any other of the FARMS boys, really. I just don't see many reasons to feel bad for this woman in this particular circumstance. I know better than to give Christian critics of Mormonism the benefit of the doubt when it comes to kindness and respectful, civilized debate.

GoodK wrote:There is obviously a difference in responding in a combative, antagonistic, and even meanspirited manner - and "stalking" women on the internet via the skinny list.

I wouldn't put bashing a critic, especially a "hysterical Christian" critic, past DCP - or any other of the FARMS boys, really. I just don't see many reasons to feel bad for this woman in this particular circumstance. I know better than to give Christian critics of Mormonism the benefit of the doubt when it comes to kindness and respectful, civilized debate.

I agree.

The behavior of the apologists in this instance is deplorable. I am actually quite shocked to learn of it. I have never in the many years of being a critic had another fellow critic request me to send an email to an opponent. I have never offered to do so nor have I done so.

It just isn't right.

"Let the reader be the judge" of what exactly?