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my tumblr, they found a twitter acct that I don’t even use, they even found an old [dating site] profile of mine with outdated info …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.
RE: cloudiah
Uh, let’s see. Uh, things. And stuff. I’m trying to be on tumblr and look at pretty pictures of kittens and crap but my brain keeps going THERE IS NO KITTENS ONLY DO.
Um, I joined a new multi forum, for the first time since the pluralanon fiasco of 2010? And it seems nice? And I seem to be a little famous there, because I haven’t even posted anything and I’ve already gotten a PM from one of the founders that was pretty much, “I’m so glad you’re here, we’ve read your comic tons of times,” so that feels kind of good and semi-calmly.
Soothing music. Anyone got any soothing music?
maybe doing something you like to do, like drawing? I’ll look for soothing music.
[citation needed]
Sillypasta aside, I hope all you Boston Boobzers are all right. My cousin’s husband was in the Boston Marathon. Frightening stuff. (He’s okay, though.) Also, Peter Sagal of Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me was about one hundred yards away from the explosion; I heard him talking about it on the radio. Now that’s surreal.
LBT, I find Erik Satie very soothing; your mileage may vary:
Another:
I normally either self-medicate with food (probably a bad idea, because it makes my tummy hurt), hug my fluffy norwegian elkhound, or watch TV shows I find cozy (one’s I have good memories from earlier, like Batman Beyond, buffy or angel).
CURSE YOU BLOCKQUOTE MONSTER!!
RE: Fade and cloudiah
Thanks. That music is helping. Also I am now talking with a fellow comics-maker about a mutual friend’s work in diabetes info comics and how I might one day be able to help her with a diabetic foot comic. (Which was my sector in my last job.)
I’m starting to unclench now. Thanks.
Also Batman Beyond is awesome. It’s in the queue for my household’s cartoon night.
Just got back from shopping. Shit.
Disasters bring out the best in people (and this is, from the first person accounts I just saw, pretty bad. Blast trauma is serious shit).
Joy cometh in the morning, as the scripture says. Maybe not tomorrow morning, but it will come. I was going to be lighting a yartzeit tonight, I guess it’s going to be a bit more than that now.
Hugs to those what need them.
@LBT http://marley-heart.tumblr.com/ is a good cute-animal tumblr.
Gotta run for a while, LBT, but try searching for Ali Farka Toure videos on YouTube — I find his stuff calming as well.
Okay, I have a nice cup of peppermint tea in the microwave now, and a little food, and quiet music, and I’m calming down a little now–or at least, I can focus on something besides DODODO.
Thanks Boobzers. I’m glad everyone seems to be okay so far, and I hope we hear from kirbywarp soon.
And the only person I had real concerns about didn’t go to the finish line today.
Sigh of relief.
But it’s going to be a stressy night. Perhaps it’s a rum-drink sort of night.
I’m going to talk about a different thing. Is that okay with everyone if I talk about a different thing? I’ve pretty much checked on everybody I can, and done everything I can, so I’m trying to distract myself for calming purposes.
I’m thinking of going more public on the web, to try and gain a fanbase and market myself better. Since the big crash of June, I feel like I really need to rethink my life and how I’m going about it. Since faking cis and singlet and single is getting harder and harder, and I no longer have the sanity points to spare for it, I’m trying to remake it so my status can be useful, rather than a setback.
Since Manboobz was hands-down the greatest contributor to my financial well-being aside from my patron himself, I’m thinking of trying to branch out and be more available, web-wise. Maybe even get myself one of them fancy Facebooks I hear the hep kids use.
I’d avoid facebook. The ToS is a huge rights grab. It probably isn’t legal, nor enforceable, but you can’t afford to beat them back. I do know that when the Norway Shootings happened they sold an image of the shooter from their database; because the ToS says anything on their servers is theirs.
Then they do some dodgy things with links to feeds, which moves things which were never posted to FB to their servers. Yes, it makes things faster, but it muddies the waters of copyright.
Also, safety. How easy do you want to make it for people to find you? If you want to make it easy for people to find artist-you but not person-you then Facebook is not the way to go, imo.
RE: pecunium
Duly noted. Since I’d be primarily working in intellectual property, it sounds like FB is definitely not my way to go.
RE: CassandraSays
At this point, unfortunately, it’s pretty much impossible to split my personal from my professional life, since about all my comics involve us outright coming out and saying we’re multi. The name we go by as an artist is different than what is on our birth certificate, but the fact is, I can’t really market myself without spilling a bunch of info. (I mean, our webcomic alone would let someone know we’re going through the disabilities process, have a history of rape and dissociation, etc.) Much to my frustration, I don’t really have any comics work that wouldn’t out us except for maybe our first, which we made six years ago! I mean, it’s still what we’re most known for… but our technical skills have improved a lot.
How scary. I cannot believe there are people out there that get so mad they threaten to kill, just because a woman dared to curse at people interrupting her.
Makes me sick.
Just heads up for all reading this, I’m feeling kinda pissed about the article, and I didn’t even read most of the comments David screen capped. (skimmed for sake of decent head space). Anyway.
@Bagryanova
Pro tip: you are neither a feminist (well, you may ID as one, but you suck at it) or a decent human being. Some gets death threats and doxxed and you’re response it to call them a priviledged bitch. Also, misandry is not a thing. Also also, there are not enough legos on earth for you to step on.
@fade
I’d take you up on that offer.
@annoy
Not in the mood for your shit today. Explain to me how the hell rape and death threats are justified (they aren’t I just want to see how your pathetic brain works).
@Mary
Yes. All this.
@princessbonbon
Internet hugs for you and friend if wanted. 🙁
@aworldanonymous
Gah, like how! does common sense not apply here >:( grrr.
@dougspoonwookd, worthless shitstain of humanity
Go fuck yourself. I see now everyone has to avoid being videotaped to avoid getting death threats. LETS BAN ALL CAMERAS THAT SHALL FIX THINGS!!!!eleven You are a worthless shitstain of a human being trying to justify your hate, but failing miserably. May one day you get hit with enough self awareness to realize how terrible you are.
I don’t like it, I just think it’s inevitable and I’m telling like it is guys I am so earnest. This is all horrible, but she was being out there, as a woman at a protest and stuff, so what did she think would happen? /sarcasm.
I don’t know if you noticed, shitstain, but he was showing everyone what happened to bring attention to it.
@mark jones
Go fuck yourself asshole. Try to get some fucking perspective, you shit stain. And while you’re at it, go hug a cactus for me. Or two. Or two hundred.
Learn2implications. Learn2humaninteractions. Learn2bacishumandecency. That is all.
Pell?
Seriously?
@cloudiah
Seconding. He shouldn’t be trying to ‘help’ anyone.
I hope everyone finds their family members safe and sound. I also hope red headed feminist is OK.
@ LBT
I meant more in the sense that it might make it easy for someone to pinpoint your geographical location and thus find you. Also, photo tagging – I do not like that aspect of Facebook at all.
RE: CassandraSays
*snrk* That won’t be a concern. I plan to become a migrant in a couple months and wander the US. Trying to track me down would be… uh… difficult, seeing as I won’t have a real permanent address or even the same temporary one month to month.
Admittedly, people could already find out I’m in the greater Boston area. Fortunately, it’s a huge city–and I don’t know how I could attract employers WITHOUT giving a general region I’m in.
My advice here is to take long, deep breaths. Try to stop the negative thoughts of “I’m in danger” or “What do I do? I don’t know what’s going on!” and replace them with “I will handle each moment as they come to the best of my ability. There is no way to predict the future or prevent all harm that can happen to me or other people. It’s okay to not be able to control the situation”. These are the cognitive behavior things I learned from a therapist.
I agree that not knowing your loved ones’ status and whereabouts is the scariest. But try to fight that feeling of panic and remain optimistic. Sorry, I know that’s easier said than done.
I want to give hugs to anyone in Boston. It is very traumatizing to see blood, bodies, and injured people. You never forget something like that. And if you think you need extra help, and can’t eat or sleep because of it, don’t hesitate to get some crisis counseling or see a doctor who can prescribe medications to help. That helped me a lot, and counseling even helped my older son with his stuttering.
Totally OT, but this response to a “fake geek girl” accusation totally MMD.
Also OT – I’ve been following a trail of links to the fallout from the harassment at Readercon (and remembering the open source boob project fiasco – my boobs are entirely proprietary code, thanks) and feeling torn between a. yep, this is why I tend to avoid geek spaces and b. it pisses me off that I have to.