Mormon Apologetics & Misogyny: The Case of William Schryver

[_Kevin Graham]

Dubious evidence Eric?

We have multiple eye witness testimonies. We have Will's convoluted version which makes no sense. The argument about the software automatically editing out the word, therefore nobody could have seen it, doesn't seem credible anymore. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out, especially given the context, what a four lettered curse word beginning with C and directed towards a woman, referred to. And of course, if it wasn't the C-word, then what else could it have been?

I see no reason to give a proven liar the benefit of the doubt, especially when up against several witnesses who do not have a history of lying. But even if they are lying, Will still hasn't provided a reasonable alternative explanation why his post was censored. Obviously it was something horrendous, and the pissed off reactions from the crowd suggest it was something that was extraordinarily offensive. Will's claim that he merely called her a "hypocrite" and an "embarrassment" doesn't hold water.

Yes, it is a serious charge to accuse Will of this. So what? Will takes pride in his ability to offend and denigrate others. He deserves whatever backlash he has coming to him.

[_Eric]

Dubious evidence Eric?

We have multiple eye witness testimonies.

Multiple conflicting eye witness testimonies, and Rollo saying he didn't see it.

I see no reason to give a proven liar the benefit of the doubt, especially when up against several witnesses who do not have a history of lying. But even if they are lying, Will still hasn't provided a reasonable alternative explanation why his post was censored. Obviously it was something horrendous, and the pissed off reactions from the crowd suggest this. Yes, it is a serious charge to accuse Will of this. So what? Will takes pride in his ability to offend and denigrate others. He deserves whatever backlash he has coming to him.

I'm not saying that Will hasn't said other things to or about women that are reminiscent of a Mac Dre song. I just really don't believe that he used the C-word towards harmony. That's all I've been saying. I don't mean to take away from the rest of the "case" against him, or be a distraction, but using the C-word towards a female poster is a very serious accusation and I think it needs better evidence before we all subscribe to it. I think it is - by far - the worst of the behaviors/incidents listed in the OP.

[_stemelbow]

I'm not sure that is worth sorting out either, stem. I have made my position on Jack's post clear. I think it was worth having a concerned, LDS sympathetic person voice their opinion on apologetic decorum. Unfortunately the discussion has devolved into a discussion of the precise extent to which one apologist may have transgressed a particular sense of decorum. The latter is a distraction, in my view.

If the course of this thread has taught me one thing, it is that for every legitimate point that is made, there is a whole mess of crap that clings to it and almost buries it. That crap comes from participants representing all points of view. My own experience of correcting Simon's blatant falsehood, followed by Wade's inexplicable inability to read, has largely been a waste of my good time.

yeah, I haven't really followed this thread much at all. I skimmed the opening posts and after that saw it explode into silliness (silliness in a bad way not so much a funny way).

For some reason I've clicked into here a time or two the past couple of days to see an update or four, but I haven't paid too much attention. In other places I've expressed my disdain for some of the things Will has said. Some of it is highly concerning. Other parts of it are pretty much nothing, from what I can see. The disputed c-word incident I don't even care to consider.

The good news? It seems most of this stuff is from quite some time ago. Perhaps Will has gotten tamer, matured a little. That's always a good sign.

As far as the c-word. I have one story to relay that has to do with that word. In junior high I found myself reveling in the applause of my fellow young neighbors by hurling snowballs at the high school kids cars as we all made our way home from school. Sometimes I got caught and they roughed me up, or bawled me out, but it was never anything too serious. I kept hitting this "tough" kid's car for a week long streak or so. I found some pretty convenient escape routes each time. I was high atop a hill once as he let out some expletives. I hung him the birdie, to the delight of my watching buddies. We went our merry ways. Some time later he identified me and caught me in his vice grips. I feared greatly. He told me, in front of my fawning friends, if you call yourself the c-word I won't beat you up. I meekly looked down, got a pretty humble look on my face, as my friends reported and uttered, "I"m the c-word". His gaggle of gals, i think there were two high school girls in his car with him, giggled as he hopped in the car and drove off. And thus sums up my experience with that word.

[_Trevor]

Hey, stem-

My policy for the time being is not to get involved in discussions concerning Will, because I generally agree with LOaP. I entered the thread to address the arrival of Silver Hammer, and got caught up in Simon-Wade nonsense. Now I am done.

[_Morley]

My two cents. I appreciate your sentiments toward Harmony and all of womankind here, but I don't think using the term "elderly" is called for anymore than saying, for example, "a tall woman" or "a skinny woman." It essentializes the person based on some irrelevant quality.

I know we're all in a hurry to get back to discussing misogyny, but where I come from elderly women typically warrant more respect, especially in the way you speak to them. While I might use foul language in front of my girlfriend, for example, I would never curse in front of my grandmother. Ever. That's the distinction I was making. I appreciate your hyper vigilance, though.

It wasn't hyper vigilance.

But point taken.

[_Kevin Graham]

Multiple conflicting eye witness testimonies, and Rollo saying he didn't see it.

I haven't seen testimonies that contradicted one another. Several remember the word C-word but it is understandable that they wouldn't all necessarily remember exactly how it was spelled out. What Rollo didn't see doesn't necessarily discredit what others say they saw. He appeared to be too wrapped up in the Hoffman debate to pay much attention to the barbs that were being thrown about between Will and others. I'm just not prepared to call these people liars just to save a proven liar from a rather irrelevant anecdote that wouldn't really vindicate him of much anyway. I know I saw what he said, as I was engaged in the thread as much as anyone, but I simply cannot remember what it was he said. So I can understand how others can't remember either. The C-word sounds about right though. I know it was enough to piss me off to the point that Dr.Cam and I challenged him to an in real life brawl. I know myself well enough to know it would take something like that for that to happen.

Moreover, for Harmony to lie about this is unreasonable because obviously she knew several others saw what was said. So why would she lie about what was said, knowing perfectly well there are numerous posters here to call her out for it? But that isn't what happened. Instead, we get everyone involved either agreeing with her, or saying they cannot remember. In a court of law Will would be found guilty in a heartbeat.

[_MsJack]

Harmony ~ I don't blame you in the least for taking the course of action that you did (in light of your account) and I think that only a complete cad would fail to show a little empathy for your situation.

Trevor ~ When accused of misbehavior on our forums, William and his defenders have inevitably reached for one of the following approaches:

[1] - "propaganda"
[2] - out-of-context
[3] - Misquoted / Misattributed / Didn't say it
[4] - Accurate, but those "bitches" deserved it

My post circumvented the effectiveness of [1] and [2] and [3] by citing carefully and providing links to the source material. They've responded by focusing in on the one quote out of the dozens I provided where [3] can possibly be disputed. It's a disappointing move, but it was predictable to the core.

[4], of course, never was an effective defense in the slightest, but I imagine William and his defenders will continue to not realize this.

Liz3564 ~ I'm curious about the time stamp on that edit as well.

The time stamps that display on someone's screen change based on the settings in their User Control Panel. I live in Chicago, so my UCP is set to UTC - 6. This means that William's offending comment that was edited shows as being posted at 11:10 am, MrStakhanovite's "u mad willard?" reply has an 11:12 am display, etc. So I'm wondering what time zone the moderator time stamps are set to.

On the day in question, Harmony was making posts on the forums between 9:43 AM and 10:44 AM (what my screen displays). She began commenting again on threads in the Terrestrial Forum at 4:22 PM---including a new post in the thread where she edited William's comment at 4:55 PM. So if she failed to edit William's comment until several hours after she began participating in the thread again, then I'm really surprised.

What I would really like to know are the time stamps for all of the red edits that took place on that thread, including yours. If you have any way of checking that, please let me know. If it's too tedious, I understand.

However, I think there's another explanation for why memories of this particular incident may not be lining up. This all happened right around the time that a participant named j-bug had registered here and was posting OUTRAGEOUSLY vulgar and misogynist stuff. His posts made William look like a card-carrying member of WAVE by comparison.

On that very same morning (10/22/10), at 10:16 AM (54 minutes before William posted his comment that was later edited), j-bug created this post positing that a woman may suffer from female genital mutilation in this life as a penalty for having failed to make "honorable use of [her] clitoris" in the pre-existence. No really; go and read it for yourself.

In light of the misogyny parade that j-bug was setting out elsewhere in the Terrestrial forum during his stay here, it's pretty understandable that some people failed to notice William's comment nestled down at the bottom of page 5 of the Mark Hoffman thread. Contrary to what William seems to believe, there are plenty of things in this world more interesting and attention-grabbing than even his most wanton displays of misogyny.

Eric ~ You and I seem to have very different opinions on what constitutes "dubious evidence." I don't know harmony very well, nor do I know Spurven Ten Sing. I do, however, know MrStakhanovite quite well for an online acquaintance. I know his real-life identity and I know his sense of humor, and replying to someone who had just used the c-word with "u mad bro?" is exactly the sort of understatement he relishes. So I consider his testimony in this matter and the time stamp on his post to be very strong evidence.

I don't know Rollo Tomasi from Adam other than knowing that he has been critical of William, and I agree that his seeming failure to have noticed the c-word statement in spite of having possibly quoted and replied to it represents the best conflicting evidence that anyone has marshaled onto this thread.

Once all of the evidence has come to light, I will be happy to update my original post as needed.

Being accused of calling an elderly woman a c-word is a serious allegation, and whatever side of the fence you're on, I don't think it should be taken lightly.

Out of curiosity, how lightly should we take calling an "elderly woman" a bitch, a wench, a repulsive example of womanhood, poking fun at her sex life, and expressing surprise that her husband hasn't committed suicide by now in addition to asserting that he deserves 72 virgins in heaven for putting up with her?

I have further replies to make on this thread. I hope I can get to them later tonight.

[_wenglund]

For the Will-haters who can't bear to see even the least pretense of evidence against him go the way of the world, and who may be discouraged by the waning credence, and even growing decent, over the "C" word controversy, never fear, Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau Graham is still on the case. Rest assured that this windmill will invariably be tilted.

Seriously, though, I have to take my hat off to Eric and Ceeboo and DadofMormon and Rollo and others for their fair and reasoned examination of this issue. Your collective actions are a credit to this board. [thumbs up]

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_Morley]

Multiple conflicting eye witness testimonies, and Rollo saying he didn't see it.

In a court of law Will would be found guilty in a heartbeat.

Or not. The evidence on this one thing seems a little ambiguous.

[_harmony]

I've said what I'm going to say.

Believe me or not.

I'll be back on this thread when the discussion turns to the other 99.5% of Will's misbehavior.