The story, or rather stories, as the whole thing is a major, cascading muddle, caught my interest. I posted about it over on my Psi Shrinkers blog here and here (yes, two posts). I need a meal and a nap after wading through all that. I'm looking forward to the movie version. (I make light of it, because that is my way, but the situation is serious, as is the unfortunate fall out.)
Here's an excerpt of what Carter-Madhu had to say about MacMaster on SLU:
"I am so filled with rage at this guy that I can't even fully articulate why this news makes me so angry.
I guess I just feel like there are so few brave female voices, and vanishingly few gay voices at all, from the middle east, I find it incredibly condescending and insulting for any man (especially a white? western? man) to presume to speak with that voice.
Bad enough that he played the character at all - to manipulate readership and media throughout the world with that story of being kidnapped and detained is just beyond the fucking pale. It's utterly disgusting.
Fuck off and die, you festering choad."
From what I've read, and I have read a lot, Carter-Madhu is not alone in that assessment and sentiment.
Here's what Asher Bertrand had to say about Graber on SLU:
"I was fascinated with all this so I went digging. The guy behind the lesbian website hoax seems like a real piece of work. He regularly bullied and tried to strong-arm contributing writers, even locking one blogger out of her own personal website by changing its password when the two had a falling out, and only giving it back when she caved in to his demands. He concocted a story of a life partner who died of cancer (Munchausen by Internets again!) and twin daughters, the whole nine yards. He hurt a lot of people along the way, and they're speaking out."
I was fascinated too, Asher!
*Men in the title refers to Tom MacMaster (Amina Arraf) and Bill Graber (Paula Brooks).
I saw the stories and imediately thought: "Those hyper-sensitive forumites are going to have a field day with this, especially the lesbians; who may or may not overlap with the sanctimonious ladies who lunch with pretentions towards universal political correctness which hide a deep and concerning lack of understanding of the real world which is nothing in comparison with their naivety regarding the way in which their version of the real world is manipulated to make absolute and complete fools of them by those (almost invariably straight men, of course) who take full advantage of the gullability - don't look it up in a good dictionary, the word doesn't exist - of those who think all worlds, phyical and virtual, should accord with their ignorant misconceptions."
ReplyDeletePep (was right!)
PS As usual.