Bill Price, who operates the website I criticized in the post “Unethical Website—and Readers— of the Month: The Spearhead,” offers this response in the Comment of the Day. Among other things, he mentions some new revelations about Victoria Liss (whose story I wrote about here) , the Seattle bartender whose inept and excessive web-shaming brought infamy and abuse down on the head of the wrong man. It seems that she has wrongly accused men before. It’s not exactly a surprise. Bill post raises many issues, and I’ll have some responses at the end. Here is his Comment of the Day:

“Hi Jack, noticed the post, and have to say I’m a little disappointed.

“Your article on Amanpour was indeed quite good, and much appreciated. But I’d like to point out that The Spearhead is very lightly moderated, and therefore many of the comments are indeed very radical. Additionally, those who comment and rate the comments are the most radical of all — less than 5% of readers are regular commenters. This always happens on any politically oriented board with a large readership, so it should be no surprise.

“Feminist sites, on the other hand, are very heavily moderated, so of course the site will look bad by that criterion. Perhaps I should give in and start manipulating the comments, but for some reason it simply doesn’t seem any more “ethical” to do so, and might even be a bit deceptive.

“When you quote me, you suggest that I am simply impugning women relative to men and miss the real point: women and men are held to different ethical standards in our society, and that is why Liss felt that she could get away with her over-the-top vengeance. Would men do the same if similarly privileged? I’m sure some of them would, but they aren’t.

“Finally, it has emerged that Liss previously erroneously accused two innocent men of felony malicious harassment — Washington state’s version of a hate crime. The two men did time in Jail and were charged by the prosecutor before she recanted and admitted that they were not “the same guys” (if indeed the original story was true at all).

“With that kind of casual abuse of innocent men, I wonder why it surprises you and your commenters to see such angry men out there. Personally, I think there’s a serious ethical problem with the contemporary state of affairs, in which innocent men can be destroyed on a whim, and, actually, I think to sweep it under the rug and moderate the very real outrage out there may well be unethical in itself.

“But if you have suggestions as to how one could effectively balance propriety with urgency, I’d be happy to hear them, and I mean that sincerely.”

I am grateful to Bill, both for the taking the time to respond and doing so in the spirit of the blog. He has a tough job. The mission of The Spearhead is a good one, because there is a strong strain of anti-male bias and bigotry in the media, in the culture, and in the law….not always, not everywhere, but it’s there. Just as many women’s rights advocates, addressing real societal abuses and discrimination against women, are drawn to anti-male bigotry; and just as civil rights advocates for African-Americans often gravitate to anti-white racism, so it is natural, though not inevitable, for men opposing unfair standards, treatment and attitudes regarding their gender to develop toxic antipathy to the other one. The Spearhead, to accomplish its goals, has to be an advocate for respect and fairness to men and a critic of anti-male discrimination and bias without feeding misogyny, and even more important, without appearing to encourage it.

I’m not sure that the Victoria Liss story was even an appropriate one for The Spearhead to cover, just as I would question the wisdom of the site focusing on female serial killer Aileen Wuonos. Liss isn’t typical of women any more than Wuornos is typical, and the very act of featuring her bad conduct says, in effect,  “See? This is what we’re up against.” That’s a misrepresentation, and an incendiary one. Liss is an unusually reckless and irresponsible person, insulted by an unusually boorish customer. I don’t see the basis for any generalities at all. I suppose women tend to be more sensitive about comments regarding their appearance than men, and that was what the insulting customer was relying on. I think there are guys who, receiving an equivalent insult on a receipt, say, a slur on their masculinity, might track the customer down and punch him in the nose rather than putting his name and picture up on Facebook…but what does that prove? Presumably Liss will be fired, just as that hot-head male bartender would be fired.

Thus the section of Bill’s Liss article that I quoted—

“How many men would be so petty, so vindictive, and so morally depraved that they would launch a personal vendetta over a minor slight suffered in the course of a day’s work? Very few, obviously — such men would be instantly fired, and likely castigated by the courts (if not jailed) for harassment.”

—is as I described it: bigotry. How many men would be so petty? Some, not many. How many women would be so petty? Well, just one that we know of—Liss. A man would be fired who harassed a customer, and so would a woman, unless the bar wants a reputation of employing individuals who stalk and punish customers they don’t like. Point?

If Bill’s post was all there was, I would certainly never have chided The Spearhead for that alone. I over-reach sometimes too. The comments on the piece, and their disturbingly misogynist and angry tone, were what prompted my critique. Bill says that the comments are lightly moderated, but that can’t explain the overwhelming predominance of hateful and uncivil ones. Something is seriously wrong with the message The Spearhead is delivering or the manner in which it is delivering it, if this is the audience it attracts.

In addition, the prominence of commenters who lack respect and empathy for women limits the effectiveness of The Spearhead and its message. Those who want to marginalize and discredit the legitimate positions the site takes can easily do so by dismissing it as a nest of women-denigrating, female-hating jerks. Based on the comments (and the number of “likes” for the worst of them), I couldn’t disagree. The Spearhead is handicapping its own mission to oppose unfair discrimination against men if its readership’s attitudes seem to embody the worst male stereotypes.

I run an ethics blog, and while this site is also lightly moderated, I have to make sure that the comments as well as the content embody and advance the Ethics Alarms mission. Bill runs a website dedicated to fairness and respect towards men in American society, and that means that he needs to make sure that the image of men projected by his readers is respectable.