The Creepy Voicemail Message I got from A Voice for Men’s most active activist, KARMA MRA MGTOW

So a reporter from the Toronto Star recently contacted Paul Elam of A Voice for Men to ask him about the harassment and threats received by several student protesters at the University of Toronto after Elam and his associates identified and vilified them online, both on AVFM and on its bogus “offenders registry” called Register-Her . (You can read more about the harassment here, here and here; here’s the school’s official statement condemning the threats.)

In his response to the reporter, Elam made this laughable assertion:

I am 100% certain that no individual associated with AVFM would condone or tolerate any type of threat made against anyone. If I found out that anyone was, their connection with AVFM would be quickly severed.

Yeah, how dare anyone accuse anyone from AVFM of harassing or threatening anyone! It’s not like the site’s slogan is “Fuck Their Shit Up.” Oh, wait. It is.  It’s not like they set up an entire fake “offenders registry” in an attempt to smear feminists and other women they don’t like. Oh, wait. They did. It’s not like Elam told one of his feminist enemies that “the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.” Oh wait. He did.

And it’s not like anyone associated with the site has, oh, I dunno, called up someone on the AVFM enemies list in the middle of the night and left a creepy voicemail message predicting the imminent demise of feminism.

Oh, wait.

At 1:38 AM on December 15th of last year, I heard the phone ring. The caller ID showed that the call was coming from a fellow calling himself KARMA MRA MGTOW. I immediately recognized this as being the internet handle of an AVFM regular. Not particularly wanting to talk to him at 1:38 AM — or at any time, really – I let it go through to voicemail. Perhaps unaware that Caller ID had coughed up his name, KARMA  left this brief and cryptic message, which for some reason he delivered in falsetto.

In case you have trouble with the sound file, he said “Mm mm mmm! Feminism will die!”

Was this a threat? I would say so; despite the oddity of the message, I think it was intended to intimidate, to let me know that the AVFM regulars have my phone number — and perhaps my address? —  and have no hesitation about invading my privacy in the middle of the night. Calling someone up at 1:38 in the morning and leaving a weird, creepy, hostile message is pretty clearly an act of harassment. Even if you do it in falsetto. Perhaps especially if you do it in falsetto.

The call was made using Skype, and I contacted them to report it. (The number itself, I discovered after looking into it,  isn’t associated with any particular individual; it’s one that Skype assigns to various users making non-internet calls. It was Caller ID that identified who was calling.) Here’s a screenshot of the message in my voicemail inbox.

So who was my mysterious caller? Karma, otherwise known as Frank James Spencer, is one of AVFM’s most devoted activists, regularly posting videos to YouTube of his various postering runs for the site. He has also, on a number of occasions, encouraged AVFM regulars to flood the comment sections of other internet sites — by offering to donate a couple of bucks to AVFM for every comment posted. “Let’s flood this bitch with the message!” Elam wrote, announcing one such offer from Spencer/Karma.

Elam has regularly lavished praise on his star activist.“Thanks, KARMA, for helping us define ‘One Man Army.'” Elam wrote after Spencer/Karma set up a miniature FM radio station to broadcast the AVFM internet radio show 24 hours a day. “You, sir, are an MRA’s MRA. Keep up the amazing work.”

An “MRA’s MRA” he may be, but as his call to me made abundantly clear, Spencer/Karma has trouble telling the difference between “activism” and “harassment.”

Indeed, he has stated outright in the past that he is willing to break the law– and go off the Internet — in order to fight the purported evil of feminism. (I took this screenshot at the time of the harassment in December; since then AVFM has evidently changed its system of up and downvoting comments and the comment’s many upvotes have vanished.)

It’s comments like this that make it clear to me that Spencer/Karma’s phone call can’t be dismissed as a harmless prank.

I’m making all this public not only because it’s a good way to point out the comical hypocrisy of Elam’s comments above, but also because I’m curious to know if other people — and if so, how many — have gotten weird and threatening calls from Spencer/Karma in the middle of the night?

If you or anyone you know has gotten threatening or harassing phone calls from him or from any other MRA, associated with AVFM or not, please contact me. (My email is my last name at well.com.) I will keep your information confidential unless you want to go public with it.

NOTE: Before anyone accuses me of “doxxing” Spencer by using his real name, you should know that he makes no effort to hide his name, and that he does his internet activism as both Frank James Spencer and KARMA MRA MGTOW. His Facebook page lists him by both names, and it links back to AVFM. He has also posted comments here on Man Boobz under his real name on several occasions, like this one, with links to both his Facebook page and to several of his YouTube videos, all of which clearly identify him as being KARMA MRA MGTOW.

EDITED TO ADD: Originally, as I said, I was able to tell who was calling with Caller ID. But Comcast has now altered the way it displays old messages online, so now it shows his account name as well. So here’s a new pic so you don’t have to take my word for it that caller ID identified him. As I said before, the number is a Skype number — you can look it up — which is why it’s in California, not Australia. Click on the pic to see it full size.