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my tumblr, they found a twitter acct that I don’t even use, they even found an old [dating site] profile of mine with outdated info …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.
Clint: I watched your video.
1: It’s pretty clear she did not pull the fire alarm.
2: The protestors are NOT blocking access to the room. Rather, they are obstructing one hallway by virtue of being in it, but as the video demonstrates, there is a clear path from the door to the lecture room to the outside. Furthermore, the lecture had already begun, meaning that they weren’t preventing anyone from getting inside.
3: The one being targeted was also not the one using the bullhorn, so even if your ‘argument’ is that there are bad actors on both sides, you’re full of fail, because your own fucking video shows that the vitriol being directed at her, even if it were in proportion to the alleged offenses, is STILL being targeted at the wrong person.
4: The reason your desire for ‘balanced reporting’ is falling on deaf ears here is because the reporting IS balanced, by proportion of the offense. Not one thing in the video–even if it had all been done by the person being discussed–would rise to the level of the vitriol being produced by the MRA sites.
Now, this is the big point, the one you don’t get: This site? It’s not for you, or about you. We don’t give a shit about you, except insofar as you obstruct our goals of establishing a more equal society. Understand? So, if you want to go complain about… I dunno, women with bullhorns, you’re welcome to go start your own blog to do so. But don’t expect us to give you anything but shit for showing up here and trying to make this about what you care about, because we don’t care about you.
also this is what it was like inside
clintiskeen,
it may be worth noting that Canada does not have “free speech” in the way the States does. we’re not necessarily the “disagree, but will defend to the death” types when it comes to speech. our laws are different since we’re, you know, a different country. Canada’s speech laws are very much “some free speech” and not “all speech free speech!”.
and currently that’s in you and yours’ favour since our PM doesn’t think Internet harassment and threats count as hate speech/illegal. so hey! points for you, right? asshole.
OK fine, then there are some speech types that are legally actionable. That doesn’t excuse mob justice
for fuck’s sake I already said the blocking of doors was from the year before. Try to keep up
If she had done this to any group who wanted to peaceably discuss issues important to them because she didn’t agree, I would find it equally disgusting
Really? Any group? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure non-hate-group counter protests are a thing.
@becausescience: This is near how I wanted to phrase my response. The point of this article is basically: same shit, different day. Same shit, different setting. Same shit, different lady. Same shit, different justification.
Aw,look at Clint getting pissy. Go away, Clint.
for fuck’s sake I already said the blocking of doors was from the year before. Try to keep up
A feminist did a thing one time, and then did a different thing another time, and then I squished all the times together and implied it was the same time, because that’s legit!
Mob justice? Lord. You are not the Starks, everyone else are not the Baratheons.
You are not the Starks
WinterFeminists are coming!None of what any of you have said about your experiences with the men’s rights people in any way changes two facts:
1) I said they were wrong. That was the first thing I said was I don’t agree with the people who are threatening her. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
2) The way this was portrayed was a woman is trying to give an interview and then later gets harassed because she said fuck a lot. This is not what happened. She went out of her way to infringe on the rights of others through harassment. It’s not morally consistent to say that one has a 0 tolerance for harassment without condemning this woman as well.
LIke the harassment is in any way proportional, dipshit? Get a clue, Clint.
I know it’s not exactly on topic, but with the Farrell thing and now this it makes me snakey to read all the “FREE SPEECH” stuff from American MRAs. I realize that if they don’t understand the 1st Amendment in their own country asking then to understand that all government everywhere doesn’t work the same is a stretch, but sheesh. Our speech laws are the reason we don’t have a Canadian equivalent to Fox News. not that it’s all totally better (see my above comment about Harper), but seeing these idiots complain about a right they don’t even HAVE in Canada is just ridiculous.
@clinty
…lack of perspective time. People acting up at one meeting= freedom of speech taken away? no.
ffs, the harassment is targetting her not the whole mob.
@katz
Yay! 😀
Just as tedious as a Stark mans ennui. Sorry Clint.
Nicely put.
Clintshit
The way you phrased it made it sound like the blocking the exits happened at the same thing.
It doesn’t fucking matter if the harassment was proportional. You can’t just omit that it happened and change history to say, and I quote for the 15th time “Her crime? She wasn’t exactly polite in responding to the interrupters.”
Is there some kind of dark matter field around your head that absorbs simple concepts and prevents them from penetrating?
“It doesn’t fucking matter if the harassment was proportional.”
“It doesn’t fucking matter if the harassment was proportional.”
“It doesn’t fucking matter if the harassment was proportional.”
You’re fucking showing your asshole flag, again and again.
Dies from irony
“You’re fucking showing your asshole flag, again and again”.
If being against lying to build a narrative on top of something that didn’t happen is being an asshole in your book, then I am fine with being an asshole in your book
Change history? History? Are those the words you really want to use?
Well I take that back. You are all so irritating that it’s making me start to be a reactionary ass like the rest of you. I don’t know for a fact that David didn’t know that the one video wasn’t the be all end all story. For all I know, that was the whole story as far as he knew, but it wasn’t. It’s not right that she has received harassment online. It’s not right that she harassed people in real life. Harassment is wrong, and this woman is terrible and the people threatening to rape her are proportionately worse by how much worse rape threats are to ruining someone’s party, but that doesn’t change the fact that she ruined someone’s party just to be ignorant and intolerant.
Maybe you think there are valid reasons to dislike the people she was being intolerant too, but either you are against harassment and intolerance or you are for it when it serves you. Check your head.
to, not too, god damn it