Canadian feminist activist receives death threats and other abuse after being targeted by Men’s Rights Activists
And so the MRAs have found yet another woman to hate.
Earlier this month, as many of you no doubt know, a Men’s Rights group sponsored a lecture at the University of Toronto. The event drew protesters, and the protesters drew MRAs with video cameras. One of the MRAs filmed a confrontation between a red-haired feminist activist and a number of MRAs who continually interrupted her as she tried to read a brief statement.
Her crime? She wasn’t exactly polite in responding to the interrupters. And so, after video of the confrontation was uploaded to YouTube, and linked to on the Men’s Rights subreddit and elsewhere, she became a virtual punching bag for the angry misogynists of the internet.
A Voice for Men, naturally, led the charge, running an article by Canadian MRA Dan Perrins labeling her “Little red frothing fornication mouth” and commenting on her breasts. The Amazing Atheist weighed in with a video I couldn’t bring myself to even watch.
Since being targeted by angry YouTube misogynists and MRAs, the red-haired activist has received death threats, rape threats and literally hundreds of other hateful and harassing messages. She’s also been “doxxed” — that is, she’s had her personal information plastered all over the internet, including on A Voice for Men’s forum. Ten days after being uploaded to YouTube, the video of her faceoff against the MRAs has garnered more than 300,000 views, and YouTubers are still leaving threats and insults and crude sexual comments.
This, apparently, is what “Men’s Human Rights Activism” consists of: the doxxing and harassment of individual women.
Several days ago, she contacted me to tell me about the harassment she’s endured. Here’s some of what she wrote:
I’m the red-head. I’m sure by now, you’re one of the 260,000 people who have seen the video of me … .
Because I had the audacity to tell a dude to stfu, an MRA no less, I have since been the target of not only just online misogyny (as if that’s a surprise) but cyber stalking, rape and death threats. They somehow found my facebook, they found my tumblr, they found a twitter acct that I don’t even use, they even found an old [dating site] profile of mine with outdated info …
I also got an anonymous message on tumblr that specifically said “[name deleted] would be disappointed”. [Name deleted] is my dog that died 1.5 years ago, I don’t talk about him on tumblr, nor fb, so they would have had to reaaaaalllly dig to find this info. …
In about 12-24hours, I got about400-500 new messages on my blog, most of them hate, which included rape and death threats, also people wishing death upon me or the typical troll “kill yourself” message. They made a meme of me.
I dunno how many haters I have, and I don’t know where they are. I can’t be sure at any given second, if I’m ever outside my house … if anyone is going to recognize me and try to hurt me.
With her permission, I am reposting screenshots she sent me documenting some of the harassment she’s endured. Even though her personal information has already been widely disseminated online, I don’t want to contribute to that, so I’ve whited out any information that might reveal her identity.
TRIGGER WARNING for what follows, for threatening language and crude sexual remarks.
Here’s a death threat she received from someone claiming to represent the “Islamic Brotherhood.”
Here are some sample comments from her Tumblr inbox. I’ve whited out comments and parts of comments that consist of her contact info, which being sent to her in an attempt to intimidate and frighten her by letting her know they “know where she lives.”
Here’s another threatening comment sent to her via Tumblr:
Here are some comments sent to her via her YouTube account. You’ll notice that the second comment comes from AVFM’s Dan Perrins, who is clearly relishing the attacks on her.
And another glimpse into her YouTube inbox:
Here’s a screenshot from a Men’s Rights forum revealing her personal information.
Meanwhile, over on YouTube, the hateful comments continue to pile up. Here are some of the nastiest ones I’ve collected. I am deliberately posting a lot of them in an attempt to convey something of the relentless nature of the attacks on teh red-haired activist — though I should note I’ve only gone through a small portion of the total comments there and this doesn’t even reflect all of the awful ones I found. These are not in any particular order. I threw in a few non-threatening ones that struck me as a tad ironic or otherwise revealing.
Again, this is only a small fraction of the abuse she’s gotten on YouTube.
This is what happens when MRAs and other misogynists target a woman online. The only thing that’s surprising here is the sheer amount of the hateful comments.
I’ve seen no serious attempts from any MRAs to rein in this sort of hatred. A Voice for Men has tried to distance itself in a superficial way from some of the harassment it has played a central role in unleashing, with an official announcement asking readers to refrain from posting the personal information of the red-haired activist in the comments. Meanwhile, in the AVFM forum, comments linking to her defunct dating profiles remain up.
This is what MRA “activism” looks like.
Coming tomorrow: A more detailed look at AVFM’s role in the harassment.
Posted on April 15, 2013, in a voice for men, antifeminism, atheism minus, gloating, harassment, hate, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, not-quite-plausible deniability, penises, racism, rape culture, rape jokes, reddit, sexual harassment, taking pleasure in women's pain, the c-word, threats and tagged a voice for men, antifeminism, harassment, men's rights, misogyny, rape jokes, reddit, university of toronto. Bookmark the permalink. 2,101 Comments.
Why should we believe you Mark? And even if it’s true, your lack of ability to care about someone getting death threats doesn’t convince me you’d be good at working with at-risk children. I mean, what if the kid has done something bad? Then they totally deserve whatever they get, right? (Or is that only if they’re girls?)
Mark, that’s great, no snark. Now go get to it instead of boring us and condoning death threats/
CassandraSays,
I already told you, expecting men to actually help other men is MISANDRY.
The MRM needs their time and energy to concentrate on harassing obscure women at protests!
Because that is how there will be freedom!
I mean, my first response when I read this story was to think, that’s terrible! That man should be found and stopped.
But now of course I know the correct response is to say, “Well, maybe she once cut a dude off in traffic, or even told an offensive joke where a man was the punchline, so she totally deserves what she gets.”
Say this particular woman is scared so badly that she never attends a protest again, or says anything feminist in public again. Will that stop young men from committing suicide? I don’t think it will. And I think that reaching out to young men who might be at risk of committing suicide would be a more productive use of time and energy than trying to scare the woman with the red hair.
Marky, you say stuff that I don’t agree with and yet I STILL think that no one should put your personal details online and send you rape threats.
“Mark, that’s great, no snark. Now go get to it instead of boring us and condoning death threats”
Are you experiencing some kind of emotion driven cognitive dissonance? Where have I condoned a death threat?
You know, at first I thought that Big Red was an MRA-plant.
I really did. I mean, nobody sings “Cry me a river” when someone mentions male suicide and higher work fatality rates, right? Especially when moments before he/she is reading a list about how feminists already care and address male issues, right? RIGHT?
Apparently, I was wrong.
Seriously though, if you really want to protect this woman’s identity, REMOVE THE “CRIMES AGAINST FATHERS” SCREENSHOT/LINK/MENTION IMMEDIATELY. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out who she was from AVfM, but it took me about a couple of minutes of internet searching to find the link to the site with her personal data from your site and that link was the sole reason for it.
I found the Islamic Death Threat particularly disturbing and serious. She should really contact the police and electronic crimes unit about it. Nobody deserves what those maniacs said.
I didn’t find Dan Perrin’s response to be particularly threatening. It was more of a “nya nah nah nah nah – thanks for making us look good” type of response in order to rub the whole thing to her face. Immature and cruel, sure, but ultimately non-threatening.
As for the rest, it’s standard internet trolling, courtesy of 4chan, reddit, and whatever other place where your faith in humanity goes to die. As long as they don’t post fake pictures of her doing horses on image boards, or make a false porn account in her name (like they did with Thunderf00t) she will be fine.
The good news for Big Red is that the harrassment will cease in about a couple of weeks time, when the internet trolls find the next big thing to focus on -they have a REALLY low attention span- and she will have a whole bunch of victimhood screenshots/badges to show the world about how much men hate women. Everybody wins!
Frankly, I would like to learn HER side of the story. What exactly was she thinking when she did all this? Was she approached by the MRAs directly? Was she provoked? Did the MRAs accidentally hit a “trigger”? For some reason I don’t think anybody just decides to make a fool of themselves on Youtube.
The problem with the YouTube Reporting Era is that you can only get snipets of information, which consequently means that you will inevitably miss the big picture. I recall the time when Scientologists harassed the BBC reporter that made the Scientology documentary, captured the exact moment when he blew up and posted it on YouTube to “prove” that he was a lunatic who was biased against Scientology. As much as I find Big Red ludicrous and unlikeable, I can’t help but wonder if something similar happened.
Big Red should come up and share her story. Tell us what exactly happened. If she doesn’t trust her writing talents she should have someone like you ghost-write it for her. It’s the best she can do.
I’m sorry, I know it’s been thoroughly mocked already, but I can’t get over that first comment (emphasis mine):
Misandry: a word pretty much only MRAs use to describe the completely non-existent system of institutionalized discrimination against men that they somehow think is a real thing.
B-word (Great editing by the way! It’s not offensive now!): a term that can mean either “man who is like a woman in that he is weak and inferior” or (as in this case) “misbehaving woman.” Many feminists consider it a gendered slur.
White knighting: MRAs are essentially the only people who use this as a verb (although I have seen it in a few different contexts). It is used by MRAs to describe men defending women. It has negative connotations. Often, “white knighting” implies that the defender is standing up for the woman in the vain hope of receiving sexual or romantic attention from her in return — because why the hell else would you be nice to a woman, amirite??
Tell me more about how much of a feminist you are. I’m not quite convinced yet.
i’m not going to defend the woman in the video here, but nothing she said warrants the reaction she got. and wow, lmao, mras say feminists are overly sensitive harpies with perpetual PMS. look at this here. the only movement the MRM resembles is the collective bowel movement of the underachieving steers who populate the manosphere. keep doing what you do best, MRAs. don’t do anything to convince the people who matter that your movement has any value or point. don’t do anything that borders on constructive. don’t do anything to correct the issues you claim exist. just continue to be a hysterical reactionary movement to women making gains in the world. if this is what your brand of activism is, y’all will never be taken seriously. ever. no politicians will you play their reindeer games. stay obscure and pressed
Dude, you came in here and declared yourself indifferent to the death and rape threats she was getting.
Marky, you say stuff that I don’t agree with and yet I STILL think that no one should put your personal details online and send you rape threats.
Neither do I. What’s your point (other than trying to imply – without any evidence whatsoever – that I would condone such activities)?
Look up. Look at the original post of chronicled harassment she’s received. Just a fraction of the total.
And after all that, you think it’s vital, VITAL, to point out that she may have cavalierly dismissed an MRA’s concern about male suicide rates.
Because of that, you are either implying that this disproportionate level of abuse is justified or expected, or, most charitably, you are so wound up in your personal issue that you’ve lost all sense of proportion and empathy for the lives of other people outside that issue.
In case you forgot we can go back and read the first thing you posted, Marky.
How is that anything except “I don’t care she got death/rape threats from hundreds of people because she said “cry me a river” on male suicide”?
I’m serious, if he’s not lying, I don’t think Mark Jones has any business working with children. If a kid is being bullied, he’d likely scour their past to see what they did to deserve it. (But again, maybe that’s just for girls.)
Why is Mark so focused on hellkell?
What Fade said ^
There’s your zero evidence Mark =P
I hear you, cloudiah. Much like his master Elam, who should never have been in the counseling field.
Uh, Mark? Your whole attitude–your first comment, even–pretty much says you don’t give a shit what happens to her, therefore you condone the behavior towards her. Damn, you’re slow.
Mark: Are you experiencing some kind of emotion driven cognitive dissonance? Where have I condoned a death threat?
In this thread. Here, let me help you:
Above you said: I will respond to her concerns with the same words she used in response to the issue of male suicide; “cry me a river”.
That’s “accepting”, so too is I merely stated my indifference towards her predicament,
You arecondoning it.
Here’s the thing, Mark will tapdance around the word condoned, because he thinks swanning into this thread and declaring himself indifferent to the volume of rape and death threats is a completely rational response to the post.
That is what the MRM is all about.
Not helping domestic abuse victims by raising money and building shelters, but seeking to tear down shelters for women instead.
Not actually working to reduce prison rape, but only seeking to prevent women from reporting rape.
MRAs are not interested in improving anything, they just want to return to the fantasy version of the 1950’s.
Like an opposite day version of “a rising tide lifts all ships”.
Markie: Marky, you say stuff that I don’t agree with and yet I STILL think that no one should put your personal details online and send you rape threats.
Neither do I. What’s your point (other than trying to imply – without any evidence whatsoever – that I would condone such activities)?
But you don’t care that they are, because you think she’s a nasty person, she told a dude to STFU, and you condone it (you may not encourage it, but you certainly think it’s acceptable).
Boo hoo. I mean how terrible for him to be told to stop his gob. That totes means saying she ought to be choked, raped and eviscerated is no big deal; something to be “indifferent” too.
English, it’s so hard.
Seriously, how hard is it NOT to be wishy-washy and mealy-mouthed in not condoning rape and death threats? Very hard, for Mark.
Brain Bleach responds to trolls/mras:
Thanks to all for dealing with Li’l Markie Jones. For those who’ve been so bold as to try to refute him, despite the fact that he clearly has his head so firmly lodged between his asscheeks that he can ignore any words that he doesn’t like, I offer a restorative:
Red Panda:
A puppy:
A baby giraffe kiss:
I just watched the video David linked to and I did not hear anyone sing “cry me a river” at any point. Where is the evidence that this happened, Mark Jones?
And finally (I didn’t want to get held up in moderation, so I split my linkstorm–you folks are being so stalwart, you need all the support you can get, stat):
Is the brain bleach I posted big enough for all non trolls to see or should I repost?
@pecunium. I don’t think I’m out of line or something by posting a comment, or that there’s anything wrong with what I wrote. It seems like you are making an ad hominem criticism. If you’re telling me to stop commenting, I will do that.
I’m responsible for my own words.
I submitted two things to AVfM. One was about the Hanna Rosin book, ‘The End of Men.’ AVfM is a cool space for that book to be in (even if there’s some misogyny there). The other was about The Good Men Project, which I gave an explanation of on my WordPress page.
There’s a place on the site where it says what to do to submit writing, that’s how I submitted both of those.
Maybe you’re suggesting that I ask them to remove my stuff. Honestly, I’ve thought about that, but I keep hoping that they’ll improve their image. I don’t have to be a moral “crusader” (to borrow from Manboobz’s description of Erin Pizzey).
Dani: why don’t you read up on what an ad hom is before throwing that around? Thanks.
If you really think AVfM is going to improve it’s image, you have a hell of a long wait in front of you.
Thank you all for the brain bleach.
Here’s my contribution.
RE: Marky
This post was about the woman’s harassment. That’s what we are talking about. If you have no interest in talking about it, then… why are you here, exactly? What is your goal here? I mean, you don’t seem to like anyone here, you aren’t on topic… what are you trying to do?
Surely he wants to show the world how misandric Manboobz is.
This pseudo ad hom was brought to you by Aaliyah.
@hellkell
Did I misuse ad hominem? If I did, what would have been better usage? (I thought the commenter was saying because I posted on AVfM, that it’s hypocritical of me to comment on this… and that’s a personal attack, instead of talking about what I wrote.) Did I use it wrong?
I’m on the defense. I commented that it was “really terrible behavior”… and I said I’ve considered asking them to remove my stuff… but I hope they’ll improve their image… (I’m not AVfM, I’m just some guy who submitted two things.)
I’m not attacking anyone. I’m defending myself against two comments that were directed at me.
“I’m hoping that a political movement whose only apparent purpose is hate and advocating on behalf of abusers will improve its image.”
Good luck with that.
Haha yeah it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to not have an article with your name on it posted on a hate site.
@dani
Ad hominem means attacking irrelevant details, not relevant ones. The fact that you are contributing to a hate movement does actually make you a hypocrite.
Dani: Pecunium was asking you what you were doing about the situation, if you find it so overboard. He said nothing about your posting there.
I’m not seeing a lot of condemnation from you.
Oh. I didn’t see his longer comment to you. Still not ad hom, but you are a hypocrite.
An ad hominem is a personal attack intended as a counterargument. That’s how I understand it at least.
RE: Aaliyah
Surely he wants to show the world how misandric Manboobz is.
Well, could he do it somewhere else? THIS man who’s dealt with suicidality really wishes he’d get out of that fireplace; I wanna use it.
@ugh
Okay. I understand. “I’m hoping that… apparent purpose” (not my words)
“I just watched the video David linked to and I did not hear anyone sing “cry me a river” at any point. Where is the evidence that this happened, Mark Jones?”
Here
Such concern for the issue of male suicide.
I’ll save my empathy and concern for people with hearts, and not those who mock men and the families that are dealing with the shattering problems that depression and suicide cause.
Um, you said you hoped that they would improve their image.
“Apparent purpose” weren’t your words, but it’s just a basic fact of objective reality. Avfm exists to spread hate, and their only “activism” is aimed at 1. lying to men by saying that there is no help for male domestic violence victims and 2. advocating against any form of consequences for abusers.
So death threats and rape are an OK response from your buds in the MRM, Marky Mark? So if she were harmed, to bad, so sad, bitch had it coming?
@Mark
You know that male suicide is only a bigger problem because men choose more effective methods, right? There is no structural problem causing more suicides in men than in women.
So guess what, when a movement that is anti-LGBTQ, anti-domestic violence legislation, and anti-childhood-support decides to trot out male suicide victims to justify their hate, yes, they deserve to be mocked.
See, Mark is totally justified swanning into the thread! She did the above so, therefore it is totally ok to threaten her with murder and rape!
Completely in proportion with the offense!
(no, no it is not)
Hm, I’m actually capable of empathy even for someone who says something I disagree with — at least, I wouldn’t condone death & rape threats against them.
Add that to the list of ways that feminists are better at being human than MRAs are, I guess. It’s a pretty long list.
So, I get why this particular person would rub some people up the wrong way. What I’m not getting is how you go from that to sending the person death threats, or how you think the death threats are going to help the men who you claim to be trying to help.
So Mark, those young women who were threatened for reporting their rapes and later killed themselves… What did they do to deserve that? Since you’re totally fine with online threats and abuse and all, at least against women.
Also, Mark you might want to Wikipedia yourself up the phrase “Sex differences in suicide.”
Like, do people think that getting this one woman to shut up means that the way the courts handle custody cases will change? Because that’s really not how it works.
Cloudiah, he only has empathy for men, and only men who have already committed suicide. So he does not actually have to condemn anything else, and certainly not mere threats against girls.
EMPATHY FOR WOMEN IS MISANDRY
Empathizing with someone doesn’t imply agreeing with them on everything (or even liking them as people), so you really don’t have any reason to not feel bad about her receiving countless death threats and rape threats from misogynists.
Maybe you should look at your own empathy.
I support Just Dentention even though some of those prisoners have done bad things.
^Detention^
I would also support Just Dentition, but only for the truly deserving.
Even if I accepted that she was simply dismissing male suicide outright, which I don’t find to be clearly demonstrated by that video, I wouldn’t conclude from that video that she did not “have a heart” or whatever. I wouldn’t conclude that someone like Mark Jones doesn’t have a heart, either, just because he dismisses horrific threats of rape and murder, even though he seems to be trying his damndest to convince us of that.
Freemage: I love nudibranchs! They come in so many pretty colors.
I would not be OK with anyone sending death threats to Elam, even though I do not think he is a nice person. I would not be OK with people sending death threats to anyone, because that’s a shitty thing to do.
Actually, I’m pretty sure I know what Mark would think about those young women who committed suicide after being cyberbullied subsequent to being raped.
See, the young men in question might be made suicidal if they were held accountable for their actions. Ergo, in Mark’s world, he’s protecting the real victims, who are always men.
Okay, that actually made me ill. No more entering the minds of MRAs for me today!
Fuck! Guys, there were just two explosions here! Somebody set off explosives at the Boston Marathon! It was really close to my old workplace!
D: D: D:
Kirbywarp’s a Bostonite, isn’t he? Boston boobzers check in, are y’all okay?
LBT: I heard about that. Seems the Herald website is down, at least when I tried it about 15 minutes ago.
“I haven’t commented on what I think about the response to her, I stated that I don’t care about her predicament.”
And that, douchecanoe, is comment enough. You’re indifferent to a woman getting rape and death threats. You don’t need to say any more.
Could we maybe have one day where nobody is either trying to kill other people or threatening to kill other people? That would be nice.
“Are you experiencing some kind of emotion driven cognitive dissonance?”
Mark did what I have struggled to do: succinctly describe the MRM. I am giggling so much about this one.
This is good only in that it exposes how absurd and disgusting they are.
RE: CassandraSays
Yeah. I’m checking all my friends, since my friend’s boyfriend and his dad work in the same building of my old workplace, and it was common practice for folks to pause in work to watch the Marathon. I’m checking to make sure everyone’s okay.
Okay, three confirmed deaths and twelve injuries so far. Goddammit.
I remember this feeling from the attack on the tube in London. The waiting to hear from people part is hard.
Scary world. I hope your friends are all okay, LBT.
My best friend lived way too close to the towers on 9/11. I didn’t find out until hours later that she was actually in Boston on that day. It’s a frantic feeling.
Have they shut down the cell network? There was a friend of a friend who was in Sendai during the tsunami, and that was the hardest version of the waiting that I can remember, being completely unable to reach him because there was no phone or internet access at all for a while.