[TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE THREATS]
The Men’s Rights movement has been described by some as “the abusers’ lobby.” I don’t think that’s fair, but there are certainly those within the movement that fit the bill – not necessarily because they themselves are abusers, but because, among other things, they lionize abusers and advocate on their behalf.
In the case of hate site A Voice for Men, there is another way in which the term applies: the “activism” of the site and its followers, insofar as it consists of anything more than self-promotion, often mirrors the actions of abusers – AVFM is known for harassing individuals, usually women, and exposing (or threatening to expose) personal information that could be used to stalk and harm them, in an attempt to intimidate them and other feminists and shut them up. Indeed, the site on several occasions has offered $1000 “bounties” on the personal information of its foes.
Now AVFM has another individual in its sights: a young woman, presumably a student, who participated in a recent demonstration against Men’s Rights author Warren Farrell at the University of Toronto. Men’s Rights activists have been promoting a video depicting the protest, in which a group of feminist activists blockaded the building at which Farrell was speaking, until they were forcibly removed by police. The carefully-edited video pays particular attention to one of the activists, the woman in question, as she confronts supporters of Farrell, calling one of them “fucking scum.” (See here for an even-more-manipulatively propagandistic video that focuses even more intently on the woman; and here for one that more clearly depicts the police pulling, shoving, and knocking non-violent protestors to the ground.)
I don’t personally support blocking speeches by opponents; I think it’s bad both in principle and as a political tactic. But Warren Farrell certainly deserves criticism; demonstrators certainly have the right to demonstrate; and as anyone who has ever been to a demonstration knows, sometimes people on opposite sides shout at another.
Apparently the politically inexperienced “activists” at AVFM are unaware of this. And so the site has responded to the demonstration with a campaign to uncover and publicize this woman’s personal information – for the “crime” of using angry language at a protest. In one of the several posts on the subject now up on AVFM, the MRA known as JohnTheOther describes her as, among other things
her own generation’s brown shirt, and she knows it. …
She is clearly sadistic, unable and unwilling to recognize the humanity of anyone who does not slavishly and blindly agree with her own religion of hate.
There is more, much more; if you have the stomach for it, I suggest you read the full post to see JtO’s extended attack on the woman. As is often the case with MRA writings, the full quotes in context are worse than the excerpts I quote here.
A later post from site founder and head Paul Elam includes a picture of the woman, with the caption “Seeking this undesirable’s identity.”
Elam warns that
We have her image and know her general location. We will identify her and profile her activity and name for public view.
We will not stop there, or just with her. And while we will not publish our complete intent, we are dogged in our efforts.
Again, this quote is if anything worse in context; see the entire post here, filled with vituperative, thuggish, threatening language and illustrated with a picture of a violent storm, evidently intended to represent what AVFM is threatening to rain down upon its opponents.
In still another post, with the inflammatory title “Yanking Off the Hood,” Elam defends his site’s “doxxing” policy, writing
AVfM is conducting outreach and investigation into the identities of the persons involved in the violent protest against the rights of men and boys orchestrated and conducted by the University of Toronto Student Union and other antisocial elements within that institution.
To that end, one individual has already been identified, and you will be seeing a story on her here in the near future. Our search for the woman highlighted in the video of the protest continues, with some leads. …
Gender ideologues absolutely hate the light of day. They hate it shining on their ideas and on their lies. Many of them also don’t want it shining on their identities. They seek anonymity for the same reason Klansmen wear hoods.
Even beyond the vicious nature of AVFM’s language and tactics, the hypocrisy here is off the charts: most of AVFM’s writers – gender ideologues all – hide their identities behind pseudonyms, including of course JohnTheOther, who launched AVFM’s campaign against the still-unknown protester.
JtO, who now wishes to conceal his identity, used to write under his own name, and has linked his name with his pseudonym on YouTube and on Men’s Rights sites he has written for. Though his real name is fairly widely known, and can be uncovered with the simplest of web searches, JtO has now decided to try to get that cat back in the bag, and at one point demanded that I remove all mentions of his real name on this site so that he would not – irony alert — face harassment. As much as I don’t respect John, I respected this wish of his, and did so; he may want to take this issue up with his friend Elam, as a post by the AVFM head still up on the site identifies JohnTheOther by both name and pseudonym.
There is no question that the student activist targeted by JtO and AVFM will face harassment when and if her personal information is exposed. Indeed, she is already being singled out for abuse now. On YouTube, videos featuring her have inspired numerous threatening comments. Here are a sampling of comments I’ve found there:
Here you can find even more, sent to me by someone who was at the protest.
If AVFM releases the personal information of the student now being attacked online they are giving a green light for this sort of harassment online and off. They are aiding and abetting those who wish this woman to come to real physical harm.
That’s why I think it is fair to call AVFM a hate site, and a member of the abusers’ lobby.
(Meanwhile, JohnTheOther seems to be undergoing some sort of meltdown on Reddit; more on this in my next post.)
Unless the car owner is a woman, of course. Because women drivers, dood, amirite?
That’s right. Any uppity bitch who drives instead of letting a man drive deserves to get carjacked AND raped.
But she shouldn’t be
askingwhining for a man to drive her around! It’s like those gold-digging whores in Saudi Arabia, innit?Tulgey, thanks for that. I forgot I banned, not just moderated, him. He’s banned agian.
Gateman, consider this thread off limits.
Uh. Why?
Well, I guess since you asserted it, it’s true.
Yeah, you’re right. I mean, it’s not like there’s some kind of systematic effort to go after the identities of small-fry feminists—oh, wait.
Oh, darn. Now pitchguest isn’t going to be able to regale me with tales of how feminists regularly talk about getting off on fucking MRAs’ shit up and that we are therefore hypocrites.
I’m just gonna leave this here…
gateman: Pecunium, there’s a world of difference between someone posting comments online and those conducting criminal activity which is what the blockade was.
Non-responsive. JtO says he has to hide his name to prevent being attacked. AvFM wants to, “fuck their shit up”, has Thomas Ball’s appeal to violence on it’s front page and is saying, “here is her name, she goes to school here, and she is evil”.
That’s more than just, “here’s her twitter stream”.
And harassment, online; as well as off, is criminal.
Again, your “moral high ground” is well below sea-level.
Moreover, your claim of, “criminal activity” suffers from several problems. 1: You have yet to show that she actively attempted to commit a crime.
2: You haven’t told me what crime you believe to have been committed (that will require the statute in question).
3: The presumptive condition is that she committed no crime(s) as there was a police presence, and arrests were made. A reasonable person would have to assume that had she been committing a crime, she would (as others were) have been arrested.
Pitchguest: Err. Yeah. I’m pretty sure that with the right determination, anyone could find the personal information of whomever their chagrin lies with at that moment. However, there is no evidence that AVfM is looking to reveal the home address of this woman, nor threaten her
They are threatening her. They have people in there fora who are calling for her to be raped: threats at least as plausible as her “desire to kill all men”.
AvFM has made it much easier for those people to find her.
That is a threat. Not, perhaps, overt; but actual nonetheless. One that their members admit to being a threat; as they go all sorts of rage-filled at the merest hint that one of them might get doxxed (see anti-manboobz for a ridiculous example of this).
And,.. I see pitchguest can’t reply. Crushed am I to be deprived of his response.
You know how you hold someone to account for their actions and choices (and oft times their words?)
If it is illegal, you contact the authorities and report on it.
If it is not illegal, you outline what it is and you explain why it is wrong. “Saying that incest is good because people do like it is wrong because the person who said that ignores the very real pain that it has caused. Here is a study that shows this.”
You do not publish the person’s personal info and say “oh I hope no one hurts them…wink wink”
Shit suz posted:
““I have no refutation of your arguments,”
If anybody here were making arguments instead of squawking out spastic leaps of ‘logic,’ I’d be all in. Instead all you can offer is some weird variations on:
“Give some examples of misandry.”
So I make a short list and get responses like:
“That’s not an argument, it’s a list” {duhhhh}
“Some of that stuff is real, but the most important thing is the fact that Suz is creepy, hates women, has issues with her son, is a man…..”
“Divorce theft is not a ‘thing.’”
“You don’t agree with me, therefore you must be “fill-in-the-blank.”
“Like I said, sixth grade girls. Drunk sixth grade girls playing house with stuffed animals. Boobzie is a joke and Booblets are the punchline. No wonder his readership is falling off; what “serious” feminist who wants to be taken seriously, can afford to be allied with this crowd? You grrrlz aren’t the only ones who come here for laughs.”
OK.
Boobzie is a joke? Then it’s a joke you take very seriously. Otherwise, why the hell do you keep showing up here? Because Man Boobz is a joke, dude? Where the hell did you get “his readership is falling off.” ?
Also, You called us “grrrlz.” Gee, that’s not signifigant, is it, fella? Or referring to our replies as “squawking.”
Your bullshit list of misandry was WEAK. A fifth grader could have shot holes through it. Ladies Night? Bumbling sitcom dads? Mean t-shirts? Rape reports being taken seriously is misandry? Complaining about the draft, when there is no active draft, at a time women are fighting to be equals in the armed forces? Oh, and you didn’t call it “divorce theft,” you called it “divorce rape.”
Somewhere around the level of the Mariana Trench, like the rest of that cohort.
Hello David and MBz, long time, no see! I gather you’ve had a visitation from Pitchguest, who’s one of the fulminating misogynist Rebecca Watson haters from the aptly-named ‘Slymepit’ forum. He shouldn’t be too cocky, seeing as the trollish commentariat there are well-known for ‘doxxing’ people when it suits them. Like the MRA douchebag and sometime AVfM contributor Justin Vacula publishing a feminist skeptic’s home address and even putting up a picture of her apartment building on there.
TL,DR: Nothing of value will be lost by banning him, or any of his ilk.
That explains quite a bit.
The sitcom dad: Why, when looking for misandry do they only look at sitcoms or jokey commercials? There are dramas, shows with actions and I have not seen the bumbling husband in those shows, yet some of them do have the nagging wife or hysterical woman. I always thought you only see that in comedies because the thought of a husband being dumber than his wife is so absurd it’s funny. At any rate there are plenty of depictions of great men doing great things in shows that are not comedies.
Not all the comments are talking about raping her, so it’s unfair to talk about the ones that are!
@SSAE and the bumbling husband is still able to hold onto his hot and doting mother-wife, who does all the housework and child-rearing and forgives him for forgetting their anniversary again *laughtrack*, and loves him in spite of it all, because….well, we’re never shown why she loves him, but we’re told she does, and that’s good enough! Right?
Cherrypicking the “rape” comments?
The point isn’t that ALL the comments are rape comments. It’s that THERE ARE rape comments.
If someone threatens the president and gets arrested, he can’t say, “well, you’e cherrypicking my comments. Most of my comments aren’t threats against the president.”
Psh, nobody ever talks about the 40-something presidents Oswald didn’t shoot. And yet he gets shot and killed for just one?
I call misandry.
@ princessbonbon
Why not?
If you Feminist are so damn sure that what you say is so moral and great you would have no qualm about people finding out who you are. Unless of course you are cowards hiding under anonymity.
If you are so proud of what you write/say why not have yourself known?
Aren’t Feminist proud of what they stand for?
Or if anyone actually met you in person you would be horrified and ashamed?
This is going mainstream. Toronto is a start. Interesting.
I find doxxing to be highly hypocritical. If you listen to them they assert if a woman tells her friend she was raped and that friend goes and does violence to the alleged rapist then the woman herself is culpable for this action. Men are helpless but to obey primal urges delivered from the lizard brain to protect women and every woman knows this!
Here however if their actions lead to violence they are not to blame, violence by proxy only applies if you are a woman, particularly if you have been victimised.
It is just a continuation of the trope that women are responsible for mens actions as seen in most victim blaming and rape apologism.
Time for a poster run…
http://youtu.be/uuS0DcJiIMY
If you JohntheOther is so damn sure that what he says is so moral and great he would have no qualm about people finding out who he is. Unless of course he’s a coward hiding under anonymity.
I don’t agree with that; I like the interwebs being anonymous; I do, however, think you’re being Way Inconsistent there, Loser.
Oh, and the other reason to want to be anonymous is that while we’re sure we’re morally right, we also know there are deeply unpleasant and odious people out there who’d harass us if they had our email or meatspace addresses, so there’s a practicality to it.