About
The Metafilter "Ask" on AskMe (short for Ask Metafilter) titled Resources for Husbands of Rape Survivors is dated November 13, 2014. At the time that it was posted I was an active member of Metafilter and homeless.
I posted a reply and the mods deleted it. I wrote them to ask why and was blown off with their typical hatred and disrespect of me and told it didn't provide resources which I felt was objectively untrue.
What it didn't provide was enthusiastic agreement with the Metafilter party line that ALL men deserve hate, that sex crimes only get committed by men against women and there are no male victims of sex crimes and a man cannot possibly have a legitimate need for support in the aftermath of something ugly touching his life and this man's request for help coping with the trauma so he could do a better job supporting his wife was somehow offensive and making her trauma about him like the selfish bastards all men clearly are.
My experience of Metafilter was pretty negative. I frequently had my comments removed for what I felt were BULLSHIT reasons and I guess I kept a copy of the reply and reposted it to a personal blog hoping that the Asker would find it because it's an anonymous question, so I had no other means to try to reach out.
I think he contacted me the next day to graciously thank me. He saw my reply before it was deleted and remembered my handle and checked my blog because the top reply had him "losing his SHIT" over the enormous hostility he got for being a man daring to ask for help and more than seventy people favorited it, which is the closest thing to upvotes Metafilter has. It has a mere sixteen replies total, one of which is him thanking people and one of which is staff noting the deletion and making stuff up about why it was deleted.
In our private exchange, the man in question said at one point that I was right, there's simply a lack of resources and the lack of replies is evidence they just don't exist. If there had been a ton of resources, there would have been more replies listing them out or some reply cataloguing the big book of Internet links for men in need of such resources.
Here is an edited repost of my blog post that contained my deleted reply to him: Sadly.
And here is a more recent piece by me again commenting on the lack of resources for men: Room for Improvement.
We live in a world where only "bad" people know anything about sex and it actively aids and abets child molesters and rapists and serves as a road block to recovery for their victims. Taking ANY interest in sex, even merely to cure something gone awry, makes me a "bad" woman in the eyes of a lot of people and that often means they think I'm "loose" and LA LA LA NOT listening to all evidence to the contrary. So there's a LOT of extremely basic stuff not really being covered by anyone.
I'm a woman and recovered from childhood sexual abuse, specifically incest. I never tried to start a resource for male survivors of sexual trauma because I don't really feel I'm the right person for it.
But I have a long-standing policy of trying to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. I try to bring solutions, not complaints. I try to light one candle rather than curse the darkness.
At one time, I was a regular participant on Hacker News, an overwhelmingly male forum, and spoke somewhat frequently on topics like sexual assault. I sometimes got shockingly high praise on Hacker News for doing that, such as in this discussion where I was thanked by at least two people, one of whom describes my story as "unique and uplifting."
Stupid is as Stupid does outlines my opinion that it's inherently problematic to try to say something like "Only women survivors can help women survivors." which is in fact a current standard expectation holding up progress.
I'm sorry if you have baggage. Please don't take it out on me for trying to provide resources in an underserved area.
14 June 2026
I posted a reply and the mods deleted it. I wrote them to ask why and was blown off with their typical hatred and disrespect of me and told it didn't provide resources which I felt was objectively untrue.
What it didn't provide was enthusiastic agreement with the Metafilter party line that ALL men deserve hate, that sex crimes only get committed by men against women and there are no male victims of sex crimes and a man cannot possibly have a legitimate need for support in the aftermath of something ugly touching his life and this man's request for help coping with the trauma so he could do a better job supporting his wife was somehow offensive and making her trauma about him like the selfish bastards all men clearly are.
My experience of Metafilter was pretty negative. I frequently had my comments removed for what I felt were BULLSHIT reasons and I guess I kept a copy of the reply and reposted it to a personal blog hoping that the Asker would find it because it's an anonymous question, so I had no other means to try to reach out.
I think he contacted me the next day to graciously thank me. He saw my reply before it was deleted and remembered my handle and checked my blog because the top reply had him "losing his SHIT" over the enormous hostility he got for being a man daring to ask for help and more than seventy people favorited it, which is the closest thing to upvotes Metafilter has. It has a mere sixteen replies total, one of which is him thanking people and one of which is staff noting the deletion and making stuff up about why it was deleted.
In our private exchange, the man in question said at one point that I was right, there's simply a lack of resources and the lack of replies is evidence they just don't exist. If there had been a ton of resources, there would have been more replies listing them out or some reply cataloguing the big book of Internet links for men in need of such resources.
Here is an edited repost of my blog post that contained my deleted reply to him: Sadly.
And here is a more recent piece by me again commenting on the lack of resources for men: Room for Improvement.
We live in a world where only "bad" people know anything about sex and it actively aids and abets child molesters and rapists and serves as a road block to recovery for their victims. Taking ANY interest in sex, even merely to cure something gone awry, makes me a "bad" woman in the eyes of a lot of people and that often means they think I'm "loose" and LA LA LA NOT listening to all evidence to the contrary. So there's a LOT of extremely basic stuff not really being covered by anyone.
I'm a woman and recovered from childhood sexual abuse, specifically incest. I never tried to start a resource for male survivors of sexual trauma because I don't really feel I'm the right person for it.
But I have a long-standing policy of trying to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. I try to bring solutions, not complaints. I try to light one candle rather than curse the darkness.
At one time, I was a regular participant on Hacker News, an overwhelmingly male forum, and spoke somewhat frequently on topics like sexual assault. I sometimes got shockingly high praise on Hacker News for doing that, such as in this discussion where I was thanked by at least two people, one of whom describes my story as "unique and uplifting."
Stupid is as Stupid does outlines my opinion that it's inherently problematic to try to say something like "Only women survivors can help women survivors." which is in fact a current standard expectation holding up progress.
I'm sorry if you have baggage. Please don't take it out on me for trying to provide resources in an underserved area.
14 June 2026