A Voice for Men, one of the most influential and popular Men’s Rights websites, is now offering a $1000 “bounty” for anyone able to track down the personal information of several Swedish women involved in a tasteless video advertising a theater production based on Valarie Solanas’ SCUM manifesto. As the anonymous poster calling himself John the Other – the second-in-command at AVfM – put it in a posting yesterday (emphasis in original):
We are asking for the full legal names, home addresses, places of employment, email addresses and contact phone numbers of the women and man who produced and starred in the video described above. We will pay 1000 dollars to any individual who provides and confirms this information, to be paid either directly to themselves or to a charity of their choice.
John explains that this information will be posted on the AVfM-affiliated site Register-Her.com, an “offenders database” that is being used to vilify individual feminists and “Fuck Their Shit Up,” as AVfM head honcho Paul Elam likes to put it. John notes that Regsiter-Her.com also intends to post the “government identification numbers [and] drivers licences” of the women they are able to identify.
John admits plainly that posting such information may put the physical safety of these women at risk from vigilante violence. As he puts it (emphasis mine):
Some individuals may criticize the intent to publish not only names, but also addresses, phone numbers, employers and other personal information – on the grounds that such exposure create a risk of retributive violence against individuals who openly advocate murder based on sex. It is the considered position of the editorial board of AVfM that any such risks are out-weighed by the ongoing hazard to the public of these individuals continuing to operate in anonymity.
The comments posted on the article at AVfM suggest that such “retributive” violence is a real possibility. Indeed, here’s the very first comment (which currently has 17 upvotes from readers of the site):
A commenter called Xnomolos, in another upvoted comment, adds:
i would love to hunt down these women myself.
JinnBottle responds to this comment by advising “all men to start carrying guns.”
The commenters on AVfM have already uncovered the identities of all of the women involved in the video. The blogger Fidelbogen has been the most active internet detective so far.
There is no question that the video itself is offensive, and designed to provoke. You can see it here; I’m not going to embed it on this site. If you don’t want to watch it: it depicts a young woman shooting a man in the head for no reason. Afterwards the woman and her gleeful, giggling accomplices do a victory dance, then lick the blood from the dead man’s head. A message at the end urges viewers to “Do Your Part.”
Every feminist I know who has seen the video has been appalled by it. I’m appalled by it. It’s hateful, and it’s wrong.
But John the Other, and the other commenters on AVfM, claim that it is more than this: that that the video of the staged murder, intended to provide publicity for a theater production based on Solanas’ notorious SCUM manifesto, is quite literally an open call for the murder of men. As John the Other puts it:
Open advocation of murder cannot be allowed in a civil society, without that society devolving into a culture of brutal violence.
Evidently he has no problem with, or has somehow not noticed, the comments on AVfM fantasizing about shooting and killing the women involved in the video.
Is the video a literal call to murder? Is it, as one AVfM commenter puts it, evidence of a “conspiracy to commit mass murder?” No. Violence and murder have been dramatized in the theater since its beginnings. No one accuses Sophocles of advocating fratricide and incest, though both are dealt with in his play Oedipus Rex. No one accuses Shakespeare of advocating mass murder, though many of his most famous plays have body counts that put many horror films to shame.
Does the tag line at the end of the video – “do your part” – transform the video from a depiction of murder into an open call for it? No. The “threat,” such as it is, is vague; it’s not aimed at any specific individuals. It might be seen as akin to someone wearing a t-shirt that says “kill ‘em all, let God sort them out” – tasteless and offensive, but not a literal threat. “Kill ‘Em All” is actually the name of Metallica’s first album. While a lot of people see James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich et al as pompous idiots, they have not been jailed for conspiracy to commit mass murder. That would be ridiculous.
Someone claiming to have been involved in the SCUM-inspired theatrical production in question has posted several detailed comments on AVfM, explaining that those involved in the production are “not out to get you” and that the video itself was “meant as a viral “wtf?!” to give attention to both the questions that it raises and the play itself.”
By contrast, AVfM is targeting specific individuals, and intends to offer information that would allow anyone intent on doing them harm to quite literally track them to their homes and workplaces. Those fantasizing about killing these woman are not simply making a joke along the lines of “women, can’t live with ‘em; can’t kill ‘em.” They are fantasizing about killing real people, and providing would-be evil-doers maps to their doors.
AVfM is an American site, in English; these specific women live in Sweden. While it is a real possibility, it seems unlikely that anyone reading the site will literally find and murder any of those involved in the SCUM production. At least I hope that this does not come to pass.
I don’t believe that either Paul Elam or John the Other literally wants any feminist to be killed. The real intent behind AVfM’s publishing people’s personal information, it seems clear, is to intimidate feminist writers and activists into shutting up, to make clear that if they post something that offends the internet vigilantes at AVfM they will face the possibility of some deranged individual quite literally showing up at their door intent on doing them harm.
Paul Elam and John the Other claim that they’re not advocating violence. But they are playing a dangerous game here. If some deranged individual, inspired by the hyperbolic anti-feminist rhetoric on AVfM, and armed with information provided by “Register-Her.com,” murders or otherwise harms a feminist blogger or activist or video maker, Elam and his enablers will have blood on their hands. As will those MRAs who continue to publicly support and/or link to AVfM and/or Register-Her.com.
This is not the way a legitimate rights group deals with those who disagree with them. This is what hate groups do.
@Kirby: There is a difference between someone communicating in lolspeak and someone using its instead of it’s. One is willingly being difficult while the later is a slip of the finger.
Also, I think people are smart enough to parse text and fix minor mistakes in their head. And if they still are unsure, then they have the capacity to ask for clarification.
Also, the Internet would be filled with even more useless comments and posts “fixing” misspellings (like all those FIRST!!! comments)
Brandon: @Cassandra: Ya, I just spent the last two days handing out turkeys to low income families so they can have a thanksgiving meal…ya…I am evil!
The one does not preclude the other.
@Hellkell: I don’t have a criminal record. Never went to prison. Never committed a violent crime. I know, shocker!!
Diversion is a swell program, innit?
Which is to say that one can have no record, and still have been given some retributive/restititutional requirements so as to avoid a record.
And again, the one (not being arrested/convicted) doesn’t preclude one being evil.
Did Brandon just pick up a sock puppet?
Follow along, idiot:
The MRM outs people’s anonymity, calls them cowards.
The MRM is predominantly pseudonymous.
This is actually mockery of hypocrisy, for people who can handle setup more complex than color-by-numbers.
@Brandon:
Su, wat u our seyin iz vat mizdelled wards r juzt ab glear abz narmul wards? Goot do no.
VoiPI imagine your subconscious to have the same flat clarity of a Normal Rockwell painting,
That’s not fair to Rockwell. He did a fair bit of subtle, and more than few things which were moderately subversive.
@kirby: Your response is predicable. You miss the point and go right into mockery.
Stop mocking Brandon, you guys. Feminists aren’t allowed to mock people – mockery reserved for Brandon, as are many other things.
@Brandon:
Nah, I’m directly on point. I’m just being pedantic. The mockery is just a fun little benefit. ^_^
Oy. When I was five Laugh-In was still on the air.
I am old, old, old.
Anyway, I am seriously thinking of putting the word “brandon” in the moderation filter, to at least slow the flood of comments by and about Brandon to a trickle.
Please, people, move on, or I will actually do that.
Oh, so it’s a terrible, terrible problem when men try to make people glorifying violence against them accountable?
Let me ask you something, David: do you think it’s a problem when girls at Brown University scribble the names of alleged date rapists on bathroom stalls?
No, of course not, because they’re women. I mean, who cares that men are more likely to be murdered than women are to be raped?
Could we just ban He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?
I just realized my estimate of age five was massively off. It would have been more like eleven.
@Lauralot:
Then we could call him… Bandon! *trollface*
@Phil:
There’s a bit of a difference in scale between bathroom stalls and a website viewed by potentially violent people.
yeah…
Didn’t that Brown thing happen quite a while ago? Yeah, that kind of sucks, but can the MRAs please pick something from this decade to snit over? Besides the SCUM video. I’m sure that bone will picked for years.
@Kirby: So violent people don’t use restrooms?
You do realize that they are actors, working on a play, right? They’re putting on a performance of the SCUM Manifesto? And because this is the planet Earth, they are probably doing it at Solanas’ expense, not as a celebration of the manuscript? Because as an advertisement, that video is, in a very real sense, no worse than anything Hollywood cinema has put out for violent movies.
That and again, this logic does permit the outing of more or less the entire MRM.
In the Brown case were the names accompanied by comments like I HOPE SOMEONE DOES SOMETHING ABOUT HIM (nudge nudge, wink wink, btw here’s his address)?
@Brandon:
Pretty sure everybody poops. I think that was a book or something.
Oh good, there’s someone new who wants to share his stupid, stupid thoughts with us.
I will tell you what I think. I think there are better (i.e., more official) ways to handle rapists, as well as better (i.e., more personal) ways to warn the people you like that someone in your circle is a predator and a criminal. I find it somewhat telling, though, that you are equating a person who has (even “allegedly”) committed a crime and a group of supposed feminists who have not.
When the SCUM actresses date rape someone, I will support their victim’s right to tell people that zie was victimized, and by who, in whatever appropriate way makes the most sense.
@Rutee: Ya, they were just joking…that’s it. All that jumping around and laughing was because they were denouncing Solanas views that men are scum.
@Bee: So you support people to just make shit up and say “he did it”…gotcha!
This, exactly. I’m sure the video was intended to be so over the top that it crossed the line twice. I can’t possibly take that seriously as advocating violence against men because I’m pretty sure that if women were trying to convince us that men are evil and need to die, they’d focus on those evils, and not a choreographed murder dance number.
@Brandon
“Ya, they were just joking…that’s it. All that jumping around and laughing was because they were denouncing Solanas views that men are scum.”
Exactly! And the makers of these signs were actually advocating extreme speciesist positions!
The video was in poor taste and hateful. Bigots of any gender should be exposed. So they have offered a reward to find the names of those involved so they can expose them. I don’t find that to be unreasonable, nor would I find it unreasonable to seek out any men who advocated killing women for no reason other than being born.
Bigots will stick their fingers in their ears and not listen to the other side no matter how genuine the concern or how real the problem.
Many if not most MRA’s are probably not radical and have some issues they would like to address. If the world judged feminism by the radical man haters who advocate male culling, then I dare say most feminists would take offence.
Men say crap and women say crap, it’s when that crap turns to advocation of murder that the individuals should be treated as such and not used as pawns for one side to expose the greater workings of the other.
In some ways it would appear that is what this site appears to be about, completely dismissing the men’s movement based on what a small percentage of mouthy idiots say. It would be a shame if there’d be no real problems any men could convince you they actually have, no matter how many good those men were or how much these problems made them suffer.
All this anger can not be good.
They were advertising for the play. Whether they were joking or serious would probably require a working knowledge of swedish and actually seeing the play, because why would you give it away in the trailer if you were hoping for viral advertising?
But I really don’t expect sense out of you.