Hi, I'm Philip the Foole.
I'm on Fetlife as Philip_the_Foole, and on Facebook as Philip Foole.
I've been a prolific writer and workshop presenter on alternative sexuality topics for more than twenty years.
I recently wrote an article that criticized a program written by Meitar "maymay" Moscovitz.
In retaliation, Meitar outed my real-life work identity and linked my work resume to my writings on alternate sexuality on Fetlife.
I am far less widely known by my work identity, an obscure and highly-underpaid college teacher who lives in Wichita Falls, Texas. If you're curious, the connection is very easy to Google, thanks to Meitar.
However, this post is not about me. It's about Meitar Moscovitz. That's why, as you can see, I mention his name at every opportunity, to give him proper recognition when Google decides how high a rank this story deserves.
Meitar Moscovitz taught me all about this technique. I would never have known about it without his help.
By outing me, he greatly increased my social status among my fellow faculty members.
I am certain they regarded me a drab, boring, academic dweeb. (This is much closer to the truth than I prefer to admit.)
Professional academics don't agree on much, but if there is one core value they share, it is freedom to publish.
By attempting to blackmail me to force me to censor my critical article about his program, Meitar has made me a hero on campus.
It would be ungracious for me to fail to return the favor, don't you think?
Meitar posted an open criminal threat of blackmail against me on his Facebook page. He demanded that I censor my critical article by removing his name as the author of the program I was criticizing. He lists himself as the author on his own program download page.
This is similar to Quentin Tarantino demanding that a movie critic delete any mention of the fact that he is the director of "Django."
When I stopped laughing long enough to reject his ridiculous demand, he outed me.
He claims he is fighting for freedom of speech and victim's rights.
However, he is not too crazy about freedom of speech for his own critics, or the rights of his own victims.
He claims he does not want his scene name, "maymay" connected to his real name on Fetlife.
Google "maymay."
The first sentence that pops up is --
Hi, my name is Meitar Moscovitz, though friends often call me “maymay.”
It is the first sentence, in a large, bold headline, on top of his own web page.
Apparently, he objects to that fact being stated on Fetlife. If he sent me a note stating that objection, rather than posting it on Facebook along with his threat to out me if I refused to comply, I might have thought about deleting his name as a matter of polite courtesy.
I generally treat everyone with polite courtesy unless they give me a reason not to.
Meitar Moscovitz has given me ample reason not to treat him with polite courtesy.
The two claims Meitar published (for the first time anywhere on the Internet) on his list are both clearly written by the same author, in the same highly distinctive writing style.
One of the two claims was recently exposed as a forgery. The implied author, a prominent Dallas leather woman, sent me a note to tell me she did not write it. The author of both of Meitar's claims forged her identity.
Meitar published, and continues to publish, these defamatory statements despite the fact that he is well aware they are false, and are both written by the same now-exposed forger.
Meitar Moscovitz aka "maymay" was called out by his ex-partner, victim's rights activist Maggie Mayhem, for threats, creepy stalking, outing, and hatred for female sex workers as a group.
When Maggie Mayhem refused to give him permission to attend an event she organized, he recruited a spy to report back to him. He falsely pretended that he had been banned for his political views rather than for his abusive personal behavior toward his ex-partner.
http://missmaggiemayhem.com/2012/08/17/beware-of-self-appointed-saviors/
In case Maggie's website mysteriously vanishes, I have taken the precaution of archiving it in several safe locations, including http://freze.it/1ot
Meitar believes in making all personal information Google searchable. He has demonstrated his commitment to this cause by outing the real-life work information of victim rights activists, Fetlife users, and female sex workers, as well as anyone who has criticized his poorly-written, trojan-laden, low security computer software.
He boasted that he had "crippled" his Fetlife Age-Sex-Location search program to prevent it from being used to harass female Fetlife users.
I have a friend who, for reasons that still completely baffle me, views Meitar as a champion of free speech.
She believed his story when he boasted that he had really "crippled" the "female search" feature with his super-hacker mad skilz.
I restored the "crippled" feature with less than five minutes of very light effort.
The critical line is actually present in the original script. It is very obvious, even to a completely untrained person like myself. The only thing that stops it from running is a comment code (#) in front of the line. This is also very obvious to an untrained person.
The only other step needed is to add a "Female" check box to the user interface by copying and pasting the "Male" checkbox and changing "M" to "F."
At the time I had never written a single line of Greasemonkey script.
If a 64-year old non-programmer can remove Meitar's "top security feature" that easily, there are two possible explanations --
1. Meitar Moscovitz is an incredibly incompetent programmer or
2. Meitar Moscovitz is lying when he claims he intended to protect Fetlife's female users from harassment.
August 17, 2012 · 3:21 pm
===============
Here is the article by Meitar's ex-partner --
Beware Of Self-Appointed Saviors
[Maggie Mayhem begins with criticism of Fetlife owner John Baku, before calling out her ex-partner, Meitar Moscovitz, aka "maymay." Her mention of "our knky Bane (Meitar) is a reference to a Batman villain who pretends to be the savior of Gotham City, while he secretely plans to destroy the city with a nuclear bomb.]
In the name of transparency, I want to do something awkward here and say that I have had a personal relationship with our kinky Bane, Maymay [ Meitar Moscovitz ]. It goes back a couple of years when I called them out on a blatant whorephobic stance in their writing and did so in person. Given their preference for digital encounters, I can see that my error was looking them in the eye with my criticisms. Before that moment, we could drop hours exploring ideas. We hooked up. I think we had a lot of fun. I was deeply hurt and devastated by the end of that relationship and I thought I was the only one. Turns out, as these stories of charismatic dudes often do, that I was not the first and nowhere near the last. If they’re an activist, they are one of the “slash and burn” variety with absolutely no qualms about co-opting the words and work of others to their own ends.
That exchange (screen shot from December 2011, close to the 25th) had not been the first time my words had been used by them [ Meitar Moscovitz ]. I have email records going back to August asking that our personal exchanges not be used (often word-for-word) in their writing without citations. Having my request turned around in a weird sort of victim blaming (I should have known better than to parade those juicy words around where they might be a temptation…) was bizarre.
Farther back, I received an email from them [ Meitar Moscovitz ] stating that I was “emotionally dangerous to them” and that they would have to “keep their distance.” Several weeks later, they emailed me asking to attend a kinky party I hosted at Mission Control. When I declined, I did so with this entry of theirs [ Meitar Moscovitz ] in mind, with these words ringing out in my head,
“You have a choice: look within yourself and excise that which is toxic, or watch me tear it out of you. I have already begun. I will not stop. I will not play nice. I will not be quiet. I will not mourn you. And, be warned, I am no longer alone.“
Right off the bat, the guy [ Meitar Moscovitz ] I hooked up with who told me under no uncertain terms that they found me personally “unsafe” over email was asking to attend a party I was hosting and I’ve read those words on their blog. You’re goddamn right I told them [ Meitar Moscovitz ] that they would not be admitted. I watched them twist the story into their hard work as an activist.
This individual [ Meitar Moscovitz ] then sent people to report back on the party in detail.
This is first and foremost, creepy. Given that there was no concrete attack on me or my hosting abilities, it only served as surveillance of someone they dated and an invasion of the privacy of the attendees and a violation of the venue rules.
Moreover, it is frightening to have someone boast of their prowess as an activist with success being gauged by making a party host
To this individual, [ Meitar Moscovitz ] there is only anger and there is no analysis of the context and in their mind there is no such thing as collateral damage.
In this instance, you can see that triggering or harming an abuse survivor in a social space would be totally appropriate to this individual [ Meitar Moscovitz ]. That’s because they aren’t fighting back against abuse, they are fighting in the name of blind rage that isn’t looking at a nuanced context any more. This individual loves to proclaim themselves as dangerous and as someone who worked in social services for a long time, I think it’s important to take that claim seriously. When someone is using heavily violent language and practicing strategy, there is sound reason to be alarmed.
I think that Molly Ren’s piece hit on a lot of important points, even if the blogger in question disagrees with the tech analysis. “What really blows my mind about Maymay’s [ Meitar Moscovitz ] actions last week is the anger he displays at not being listened to…” This quote matters. This quote matters a lot.
The [HEX] that the blogger [ Meitar Moscovitz ] cast upon Fetlife probably won’t do much but the blogger is kidding themselves when they try to act as if it were done with love. It was done very specifically when an abuse claim came up and now this conversation has become what everyone is talking about. It was a practical joke done for attention and the person behind it [ Meitar Moscovitz ] had been waiting for the right chance and took it, on the backs of a serious topic to be discussed. Moreover, they [ Meitar Moscovitz ] continue to fan the discussion, eager to have their tech observations take center stage and likely basking in every piece of negative attention.
All of that negative attention “proves” that everyone is out to “get” them [ Meitar Moscovitz ] for “no good reason.”
It’s trolling but it’s been escalating and it has been for several years. There is undeniable malice attached to these actions [ of Meitar Moscovitz ] and playing with tech jargon is a distraction from the motivation behind it.
I am also a little unnerved by the fact that the blogger in question [ Meitar Moscovitz ] calls Molly Ren’s writing an attempt to be popular, and then links to a tweet of hers announcing surprise that she was RT’ed by me for writing.
Be angry, if you’re angry—cast me as Bane if it makes you feel better, or if it makes you popular. No one’s saying feelings are invalid, or recognition isn’t valuable. But at least take responsibility for knowing shit. Because many things many people are saying right now are just that: shit.
It makes me wonder what I should expect from this individual. I have happily shared my email exchanges with this blogger with others and I have kept them off of my blog for far longer than I should have. In retrospect, I probably should have spoken up but it’s been far from the worst kind of harassment I’ve received. But when you add it up: plagiarism, fixation, and party spies it doesn’t make for a very pretty picture.
I avoided the tech conversation but what kills me about the circles that this blogger is trying to spin in their description of how and what they did is tantamount to playing the “I’m not touching you” game. Anyone with a sibling or anyone who has driven a pair of small children in the back seat of the car knows what I’m talking about here. It’s when you’re not technically in their space, you’re just harassing them at the technical “border.”
It’s amazing how isolating it feels to blog about a very negative personal experience with someone. For a year and a half, I’ve been overwhelming patient with this individual’s attacks on my parties and my writing. I don’t know how long it would be professional of me to wait but when this person is making it clear that they don’t believe in collateral damage and when their behavior is escalating, well, here it is I guess. I think a lot of people would suggest I continue being quiet but I’m not willing to put up with it any more. Obviously being quiet and patient with this individual did not make them go away and stop attacking me. Maybe speaking up will.
Spread the Word!
16 Responses to Beware Of Self-Appointed Saviors
Chris
August 17, 2012 at 5:00 pm
There are numerous things that piss me off about this guy, and it’s hard to know where to start. Even when I disagreed with him, I defended him in general for a long time on the general principle that he was bringing up some points that needed to be made, like the privileging of the Dom male/sub female dynamic in the BDSM communities. But while he can be articulate and charismatic, once you peel down his so-called activism to its core, you find a single theme: himself. That is, his tirades always come down to how he’s not getting laid the way he’d like, or how he’s a weary prophet in the wilderness, and all would be better if only people would listen to him. Again and again, I see a highly abusive dynamic in his treatment of individuals and the community at large. As can be seen in your Twitter excerpt, he has a pattern of saying, “You’re beautiful and talented and intelligent, but you’re an oppressive asshole and dangerous to me.” (Again, note how it comes back to him.) I hear this again and again and again: build an individual or group up, then abruptly tear them down. And that pattern is really symbolic of why I find him dangerous. Whether I like him or not is irrelevant: I don’t trust him.
In this particular instance, what really pisses me off is that he’s functioning as John Baku’s best pal while posing as his devoted enemy. We were just starting a really interesting and substantial conversation about Baku and Fetlife’s record with consent and abuse, and…. BAM! We’ve had that conversation completely derailed and abandoned in favor of a discussion about M2 and his petty antics. We really need to talk more about Fetlife, and the issues of consent and abuse in the community, but instead we’re being distracted by the clownish antics of an abuser who’s saying that he loves us.
I have a lot more to say, but there’s just too much to fit into one comment.
Reply
Sunshine Love (@SinshineLove)
August 17, 2012 at 5:05 pm
I didn’t know you were the host of that party. Thanks for sharing this additional context.
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Thaniel
August 17, 2012 at 5:12 pm
I’ve watched this person lurch around the scene & the internet for a few years now. Even w/o personal interaction it’s obvious that he’s damaged goods & that damaging others is the only thing that makes him happy. Avoiding him, & helping others do so, is the only healthy course of action. He’ll either dig himself a hole deep enough to disappear in, or his desperation will push him to finally do something that makes it possible to get him arrested.
I’m sorry he’s causing you grief. Hopefully exposing him to the light like this will cause him to scuttle away & bother you no more.
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Chris
August 17, 2012 at 5:16 pm
I doubt it. He does seem to thrive on the light, even to seek it. Negative attention only makes him more convinced of his own virtue. And yet, it’s no less important to be critical, because he is so very very vocal in the community, and can be quite charismatic.
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Kendra Holliday (@TBK365)
August 17, 2012 at 5:18 pm
This post is super cryptic, but best I can tell, you are the good guy and a couple other people are not? I can dig it. Focus on the positive, discard the drama.
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Maggie Mayhem
August 17, 2012 at 5:22 pm
Dude has enough Google hits, his name is in the images, his story is well linked up with other folks. I’m dodging more than usual but it’s BTS issues. I’m also worried that it was more than drama. The repeated times this individual has attacked makes it a pattern of harassment.
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Chris
August 17, 2012 at 5:25 pm
I don’t think that it’s hyperbolic at this point to class him as being abusive.
kinkylittlegirl
August 18, 2012 at 1:23 am
Hoo, boy, I’m sorry to hear this, Maggie! Boy, he has had some seriously choice things to say about unnamed people he has encountered in the scene, but no wonder he’s been shunned if this is how he himself has behaved.
Sadly, I had to come to the same conclusion about him several months back. He’s whip-smart, and he does have a lot of interesting things to say (if you can slog through the unbelievably long and rambling posts), and for a time, we were sharing links and ideas about how to combat abuse. He’s really hard to read, though, because of how massively long and rambling his posts are with all the links to elsewhere, and it didn’t take long before I had to give up even trying on a regular basis.
Back in April, however, he had really started to escalate badly, and *without even reading it in full*, decided not to publish a reply I had made to a post of his, saying that it was “…so obviously so far off-base that it doesn’t warrant a response other than a sad shake of the head.”
Then he decided to publish it after all – even after I asked him to delete it – and then he and a friend then proceeded to *out me with my real name* as they quipped at my expense.
I won’t give him the satisfaction of yet another link, not to mention that I don’t want my name spread around any further, of course.
Besides the outting, the real moment of clarity came just before in another private email in which he informed me that “…you’ve not shown yourself valuable enough to me to warrant any more time”!
Then he got really nasty and refused to delete the post in question when I asked him to do so, saying that “Keeping the record of such absurdity there *is* useful for me”.
Me me me me me, like Chris said. He clearly can’t tolerate dissent at all, but even for him this was pretty out there. I was totally shocked at the attitude that really came down to the fact that if you aren’t with him you’re against him – and of no use to him at all. I had realized the former long ago, but this was pretty cold-blooded.
As to the Fetlife stunt, he’s made no secret for several years now that he thinks that Fetlife is dangerous because it’s not searchable by Google, or indeed, even within its own walls. I can’t speak to the timing, but I’m only surprised that it took him this long to hack the place; I think he’s been planning it for a long time. I can’t even begin to imagine there was any love in that act at all. At best it was a bid for attention; at worst (and this is my guess), an attempt at real damage filled with malice aforethought.
That said, based on everything I’ve read about the subject, I really do not think his hack has endangered anyone in and of itself. The site was already vulnerable to anyone that wanted to hack it, and it’s not like there’s been any way to keep your information private or to keep people out.
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lunargirl
August 18, 2012 at 4:42 pm
Although i am a very little fish in a very big pond, i have seen firsthand how difficult it is to stand up to those who are well known or at least well read. In the instance i am thinking of, the person who mounted attacks and ran an all out “smear campaign” was the person that, sadly, most people listened to.
You are correct in assuming that keeping your quiet will do nothing to solve the
problem.
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SomeFetlifeRubberneckerOrOther
August 18, 2012 at 11:13 pm
Yeah, as I see it, basically what he did was this (from about 3:25)
He is a twatmongler. He does come off more charming/plausible in person, or at least he did about a year and a half ago. Then again, his writings didn’t always look quite this cross between cartoon villain and Time Cube, either, iirc. I wonder how that cyberbusking thing is really going for him, and if it includes remembering to take his meds. (not a snark: he’s identified as bipolar and on meds in the past at least)
Regardless of how he got there: he is still a twatmongler, and needs a good kick in the arse.
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Sleekimager
August 19, 2012 at 12:41 am
It seems clear that this individual is an extremist, and therefore dangerous. Yes, that’s a generalization, but it seems not unreasonable to recognize the poor little dweeb’s dangerousness, and the correlation between extremism and danger is too great to ignore.
What makes it hard is that the dweeb is an extremist along an axis (or along several axes) along which you self-identify.
What I find interesting is the parallels among extremists along all axis. For instance, we all have run across individuals who argue that because they have convinced themselves that they need an personal arsenal of guns for self protection, and no other solution will do, then everybody needs their own arsenal, and observations like “I’m bipolar, so having even one gun would be bad” fall on deaf ears. Compare that with someone who argues that privacy in the not-in-Google sense is a Bad thing, and therefore any act to index private stuff is good, and if anyone happens to have genuine privacy issues that are annihilated by this, well, too bad.
Of course, the reality is that in both cases the extensive rationalization in favor of their position (pro gun or pro Google) is pure bullshit created to justify a preference or a desire: they want to have lots of guns and shoot at people they don’t like or rummage through reams of informations if it pleases them, so they construct the rationalization and away they go.
Pah!
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Mario Vilas
August 19, 2012 at 6:59 am
From your description, this person would fit the profile of a psychopath.
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S.R. Jacobs
August 19, 2012 at 12:58 pm
I have mixed feelings about a lot of the players in this whole consent discussion phenomenon, including myself.
But I do know that I pretty uniformly despise maymay’s actions, here, because I acted, in some ways, the way he acted at a certain stretch of the dialectic or whatever you want to call it, and I had no stomach for continuing, because some part of me knew I was wrong to act the way I was acting.
I don’t think he feels that way. I honestly think he believes he’s doing a service for the world at large. Which is terrifying, because if he has the stomach for this sort of accusation (“You’re not listening to me. My Golem is doing good. I shall not have it destroyed by jealous sheeple!”) and boundary violation (what else would you call outing all the people on FetLife without also making some sort of script that informs all of us of his “public service” via PM or big red header bar or something?), he’s not going to stop until he burns out. And his followers will carry on once he does, because Information Wants To Be Free.
I finally chose my side when I saw what the other side was — a heat sink for virtual Bell Tower Snipers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman.
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Boymeat
August 20, 2012 at 12:44 pm
I fully believe that isolationism is the only way to deal with him. Comments or responses to him only work to make yourself a greater target. Identifying and ignoring is the only option.
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S.R. Jacobs
August 21, 2012 at 7:51 pm
Quite so, Boymeat.
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NJ
November 21, 2012 at 3:33 am
You are not alone. This and other reporting on Meitar’s activities (primarily self-reports, ironically) have convinced me they are a thoroughly manipulative, dishonest, dangerous, and perhaps even evil person. I try to warn every close friend with a public or professional presence to run like hell if they try to strike up a “friendly” conversation, and have warned them to never reveal any identifying information to this person. They’ve got an ax to grind with the entire world and don’t care who gets hurt.
Meitar, we’ve never met, and I even agree and empathize with a lot of your opinions, but given your total lack of shame – nay, pride – about how you manipulate and try to destroy any imperfect* person, I say this: it’s YOU who can burn. It’s a funny thing. If I was arguing in favor of males subs, as I have in the past, and anyone I was arguing with knew who you were, and they don’t, I would say: “Please don’t take Meitar as a representative example. Yes he is one of the biggest activists for male submissives, but he’s a special, special, horrible little flower. He is the worst imaginable envoy for male subs and I’d be distraught if he was the most public face for MY cause.”
*AKA anyone who doesn’t support you completely or publicly, as well as random kinky passerby, as well as anyone whose power makes you jealous, as well as anyone who’s ever signed up for FLAdd a code snippet to your website: www.paste.org