Burning Words

I’m a bit late to this one, as a result of being offline for a few days, but this one’s too horrifying not to add to the chorus.

Short version: “male radfem” blogger gets outed as sex offender.

Here’s the long version: Kyle Payne is an American guy who puts himself forward as a feminist anti-pornography activist, researcher into rape culture, and advocate for rape victims. He travels around making presentations about the evils of pornography, purporting to educate folks about violence against women. His blog is a bit creepy to begin with, with his way of writing about issues of violence against women coming across as rather self-flagellating and ever so slightly masturbatory. For someone who purports to spend every day reflecting upon the legacy of Andrea Dworkin, the truth is drastically different.

Reading his blog, with posts right up until the last few days, you’d never know that this is the same guy who, last week, pled guilty to one count of felony attempted burglary in the second degree and two counts of invasion of privacy, as part of a plea bargain, after he sexually assaulted and photographed a female student that he’d been tasked to look after in his role as a campus resident advisor. There’s also reports going around that he had a prior conviction for possessing child pornography (see comments here). This from the guy who purports to believe like this, and managed to take in people to the extent where he, chillingly, seems to have been trusted to do rape crisis counselling. The creep even writes about wanting to produce a book of the things people have confided in him.

He’s due to be sentenced on August 11, facing a sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $7,500. I suspect the odds of him getting off without prison time are fairly high, which is bad enough, but it’s horrifying that he seems to be able to have kept up the facade of being a crusader against violence against women even after the charges against him were filed in February. He certainly seems to have tried to plow on with his blog anyway, apart from something about people saying mean things about him in February. Hell, it looks like he’s still trying to keep it up even today. This man is a predator, and needs to be prevented from getting anywhere assault victims ever again.

There’s more at many places: Renegade Evolution has a full list in her sidebar. Ugh.