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my tumblr, they found a twitter acct that I don’t even use, they even found an old [dating site] profile of mine with outdated info …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.
I’ve had countless arguments telling him how eating more smaller meals would be better for me, but he never listens. He acts like he does, but at the end of the day my words are usually meaningless unless he happens to agree with me. He’s too absorbed in this idea that he’s the most altruistic parent alive and that I have no idea how to take care of myself. And when I’m pushy with him he just uses that as an opportunity to tell me how disrespectful, hateful, etc. I am.
@Aaliyah
I’m so sorry, that sounds like a shitty situation.
Just a question, can you talk with your dad about stomach problems without making it about anxieties(since that was what you didn’t want to address?)
Also maybe you could try to eat a little slower, so he doesn’t notice if you don’t eat that much? Yeah, sounds pretty much like a survival tactic, but if you have no choice for the moment
@freemage
thanks, that made me laugh and feel much better about a subject that I very much do not like. 🙂
Marie: The two main ones (in Western society) pertain to prison (men get sent down for longer, and more frequently) and cosmetic infant circumcision*, which is still being performed fairly frequently in the U.S., at least (the rate’s dropping, though). As I was saying, of course, in a more feminist society, we’d treat male and female criminals more equally, and the right to bodily autonomy would be drastically enhanced, so… yup. Solution to ‘male-only’ problems is… MOAR FEMINISM.
*: On CIC: I hate this issue, because it’s a classic case of stopped clocks being right twice a day. Honestly, I’d equate it to douching as an issue–the harms done are fairly minor, but real, for most cases, and extreme in a vanishingly small number of cases, and there’s no corroborating benefit outside of specific instances that can be identified individually, and can often be achieved without such measures. But MRAs like to compare CIC to FGM, which of course is seven shades of fucked up–so they’re on the ‘right side’ of the issue, but horribly wrong in how it should be approached. And then you run into the anti-Semites who start talking about conspiracies by “Jewish doctors” (nevermind that the primary proponent of ‘default’ CIC in the U.S. was Dr. Kellogg [yes, the cereal guy] who was a devout Christian). By that time, you just want to throw up your hands and walk away, even though it really is an ‘easy call’ about whether or not this is a good idea.
@freemage
ah. thanks for info/ reminder.
RE: esmnmb
Until it can survive on it’s own, it isn’t a human and has no rights.
Yes, but a paper abortion would presumably keep going while the child exists. Denying a child a financial way to stay alive and keeping a child from existing in the first place is a completely false comparison.
exactly. qft
I’m still curious if edude thinks women should be allowed to have paper abortions.
i mean, money is’t gendered. women can pay child support too
Oh yeah, and my job before becoming a mom was at a daycare. It paid $6 an hour with no benefits. No 401K, no health insurance, no paid maternity leave, nothing. It was taking care of 8 babies all day. That’s the kind of job I could get with a college degree. Now a man can get paid 3 or 4 times that and usually get benefits at a factory. During any of the time we were hiring for extra workers, not one man ever applied. I wonder why? For one, most men would consider it degrading to do “women’s work” and for another, they could get much more money at a job that only requires a high school diploma. So I don’t think the pink collar professions are shutting men out. It’s that men look at them and say “No way”.
Esmnmb, I’m not going to argue with you about paper abortions because I’ve heard it all before, but here’s what you need to understand:
Paper abortions are a bullshit MRA talking point.
So is “I need masculism because…”
You spout talking points and sound like every other MRA troll we ever talk to. You are not moderate. You are not pro-feminist. You are not “totally different than them.” You are them. You’re the asshole MRAs that make everyone think men’s rights is a joke.
And if you want to change, you’ll need to learn to listen (to something other than my wordpress advice).
I’ve tried to make it sound like it’s not a result of anxiety, but that doesn’t really help me in the long run at all. He doesn’t listen to any explanation – he always says that it’s just because I don’t care about myself and I’m rebellious. I must say that I probably need to take better care of myself in general and that I am quite rebellious in general, but still…he has no idea what he’s talking about. I think he just wants to have control over me so that I won’t “go astray” like my siblings, who have openly disobeyed my father in pretty “bad” ways (e.g. having non-marital partners, not dressing modestly (especially in the case of my sister), etc.).
I do eat slower when I can. That’s not too hard as he doesn’t care if I eat slowly.
The top two reasons I can find are:
1. I can’t afford to have a child.
2. Having a baby would dramatically change my life.
So these reasons have little to do with the body. So a persons right to have an abortion isn’t just one that can be made on it’s my body, my rights. It can also be argued that because it’s my life, it’s my right as the top reasons all related to changing a person’s life.
When it comes to male abortions, I don’t think anyone should be allowed to just up and decide one day that they don’t want to do pay anymore. If this was ever to become a real thing, the only way it would be justifiable is if the male had the same amount of time the female has to decide to have an abortion.
Let me clarify, if the child is born neither parent should be allowed to stop financially supporting the child.
Hey, it’s only fair. If one is allowed to walk away from supporting a child, anyone should be allowed to.
And no bullshit about “you’re not allowed to if you allow the child to be born,” because a dude could very well have prevented the child from being born. By preventing it from being conceived.
So you don’t want an already born child to go without child support, but you don’t mind if a child loses child support while still unborn and then is deprived of that support if/when that child is born?
lol whut
Too lazy to block quote so
Edude: “Let me clarify, if the child is born neither parent should be allowed to stop financially supporting the child.”
So…. are you saying that a paper abortion is just a guy saying he won’t financially support or be in the child’s life?
@esmnmb
Dude, if you can’t afford to have a child you probably wouldn’t be paying child support unless the mom was dead broke, and also couldn’t afford it. Kids have needs.
Second one, you aren’t actually raising the baby from the sounds, so don’t see it.
Thirdly, you’re a cis dude, right? (assuming that from your posts, correct me if I’m wrong). And you aren’t thinking about reasons to do with your body cuz it’s not happening in your body. People don’t have a ‘right’ to make sure their kids don’t get food, but they do have a right to bodily autonomy. You sound like you have an extreme case of lack of perspective, since we’re talking about something that can kill people.
@Katz,
“You spout talking points and sound like every other MRA troll we ever talk to. You are not moderate. You are not pro-feminist. You are not “totally different than them.” You are them. You’re the asshole MRAs that make everyone think men’s rights is a joke.”
How am I not pro-feminism? Have I bashed any feminist, woman or mad any misogynistic comments? Have I not made it clear that I find the MRA’s that sparked this blog post to be scum? They respond to anyone who has a differing opinion with illogical and emotionally fueled comments, much like I am starting to get from some on here. Please, I have been civil and kind with you, all I ask is you do the same.
We are being kind. Veeeerrrry kind, considering the day I’ve had.
But.
Marie said earlier, you keeping trying to accuse us of being illogical and emotional. That is often a silencing tactics used by misogynists who use the common perception that women are more emotional than men to invalidate their statements.
Edude. The number one reason for abortion? A married couple deciding that they aren’t ready for another child.
Sixty percent of abortions performed are for married women, because they and their partner do not want an unplanned child.
re: edude
fucking implications, what are they? You mean you guys don’t translate every single word of my mouth literally? and that my arguments do not match up with my supposed vies? get outta here.
I feel like these arguments just assume that abortion is a decision just like whether to wear a condom or take the pill…for women it is mostly not only whether they can afford the child, but if a child will ruin their life(which would basically ruin the child’s life as well). Paper abortions seem to be about whether you can just ignore your responsibilities, about ignoring the child’s existence, something the mother simply cannot do. You can’t just even out biological differences.
Did my last comment make any sense? My brain is kinda frazzled.
@Marie
I get the feeling, I don’t understand my last one either.
^^ That. TomBcat summarized it perfectly.
And no, lack of paper abortions will not ruin men’s lives financially because the child support is based on income.
Reminds me of someone talking about a friend’s wife’s child support. She got more than my dad’s monthly take home salary.
Dad was like “she must not have to work”
All I think of is: And how much does the freaking dad make that she gets that much!?!
Back when my dad had a job, just for the record.
Huh, apparently I did make sense!
Marie, if it is soley a bodily issue explain to me why the top reasons for abortions pertain to either unwanted life change or lack of financial stability? I’m all for abortion. Not sure on the male abortions thing. But I don’t just toss ideas out the window without seriously looking into them.
Also, my sexual orientation plays no part in this. You can assume what you want.
Aaliyah, would you agree that a child has the right to life? Would you deny that right before the child was born?