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my tumblr, they found a twitter acct that I don’t even use, they even found an old [dating site] profile of mine with outdated info …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.
Now I’m craving palak paneer.
And oh my god I have the ingredients.
Marie & Fade, do you make it with only feta? The friend I learned it from mixes the feta with a little cottage cheese.
This party is coming together nicely.
Even more OT, I have a funny mansplaining (followed by a cool man-not-splaining) story. One of the librarians I work with works in our IT unit. She has a background in programming, and uses it regularly. Last year she worked on a coding project that took her about 8 weeks to complete, at which point the powers-that-be suddenly decided not to implement it. A month ago she attended a meeting at which the powers-that-be decided to resurrect that project, and she pointed out that the related software had gone through two major updates since then and so her code would need to be extensively reviewed and re-written to make it compatible with what was in effect a new product. Her guess was that it would take someone 5-6 weeks. An IT project manager, who has never respected her, said in the meeting, “It took you 8 weeks to code that? It will take ___ 2 weeks to fix it.” (Yes, he said “fix it” like her code had been faulty.) She said she didn’t think that was realistic, and he kind of hand-waved her away and said 2 weeks would do it.
Today she was in another meeting with the PM, the powers-that-be, and the programmer who took over, where the new programmer explained very carefully that a project that took her 8 weeks to code initially, and which now had to be thoroughly reviewed, would take him about 5 weeks to complete — and the only reason it would only take 5 weeks was because she had done such a thorough job of documenting her work. The PM said, “My estimate was 2 weeks!” The programmer just looked at him and said, “Well that wasn’t very realistic, was it?” I saw her right after that meeting, and she was still basking in the afterglow of seeing the PM get his comeuppance in front of his higher-ups.
I won’t tell you her name, because Clint would probably think this would make sending her death threats — well, not okay exactly, but understandable.
OMG omelettes …
LOUIS ARE YOU READING THIS???
“I am commanded by my lady to make spinach and feta omelettes for our breakfast!”
(That was him, laughing.)
Don’t get married girls is written by Leon Rosselson, who is one of my favorite British songwriters. Love that song.
@Fade:
Fair enough. That does make me feel like the original was a better show, though I am excited about seeing a female avatar where the focus is being an avatar and not being female. And hell, she actually looks like a powerfully built fighter! I also like the modern setting too, despite the grimmer colors of the city.
Again, though, the last episode of the season was really disappointing for me. Kinda made the whole thing feel like a cash-in on the original rather than a true continuation… I guess we’ll see with future seasons.
Yeah, I do love Korra’s body time. I do love a female avatar. I just kind of… wish it lived up to the first. XD Said everyone about a sequel ever.
If I’m not mistaken, I think they got rid of some of the writers. I blame it on that.
I haven’t really seen Legend of Korra, maybe a spare episode. I just love the title character’s DESIGN! Oh man does she look fantastic.
So gad you’re okay, kirbywarp.
@cloudiah
I do only feta, but it’s w/ cows milk I think cuz it’s cheaper, and it’s not worth the extra money for goat or sheep cheese. Normally use the cow milk for things like spanakopita or things that aren’t just plain feta or feta on a salad. Really rambly, but I hope you got it 😉
So that’s how you spell it. /bad at spelling.
Thanks, LBT. You should watch the first episode at least, where she’s introduced as a baby. So. Frikken. Adorable. And it sets up her whole character perfectly.
@kirbywarp
D’awww yes. Baby Korra is so perfect <3
“From my point of view they came out winning. They wanted to put out a message to other men, and had they been ignored I would never have known about it. Channity gave their message wings, and out of the millions of people who saw it some people were so outraged at her behavior they sent her nasty messages.”
So this situation, which culminated in people harassing this woman online with death/rape threats, is considered “winning” to you? I know you said you believe what happened to her was wrong but when you say stuff like this it’s almost like you’re saying that it was all worth it since the “message” got out. Also, you make it sound like the people who were “outraged” were reasonable in their spiteful responses. So basically, the response to her was justified because who could help it with the way she acted, am I right?
Are these the kind of people you want in your movement (I’d wager it’s a little too late for that)? There are a ton of ways to criticize someone’s behavior without resorting to threats. This site is a great example. Something is wrong here if every time a woman “behaves badly” (including this not because I necessarily agree, but let’s say she was) this is the result.
I don’t think the MRM is winning, btw. I think it’s losing in a lot of ways when people see the kinds of assholes that “defend” it. At best, it attracts more hateful people to your movement because they feel welcome there, which is great…except that everyone else (which is most people) probably won’t take you seriously.
Can I come and bring cupcakes with little tiaras?
TTF:It’s OK, we’re good.
cloudiah: that is an excellent story.
Hey, what has two thumbs and finally got an office at work? *points at self* This chick!
@nitram
Sure, one can never have enough cupcakes 😀
Anyway, the more cupcakes the better, because behind those cupcakes are MONSTERS!
@Hellkell
Yay for new office! Is this a congrats occasion, as in it was a reward? Or a… some other occasion Fade can’t think about atm
@hellkell
yay for your office! 😀
Yay, hellkell, this is also the first time I’ve had my own office with a door that closes and everything. I am really enjoying it, even though I don’t close the door that often.
I think that the way this woman acted was unacceptable and horrible. She was shouting abuse at these guys, and the men in question who were at the scene have publicly stated they do not condone violence at all and disagree with it. The real response to all these immature comments is best summed up by the amazing atheist:
6:11 till the end is the point I’m trying to make. Idiot kids on the internet versus actual people with real horrible views.
On top of all this, there has been horrible mistreatment of any people who want to discuss/give lectures on men’s rights issues on campus including great people like Warren Farrell (who was misquoted as saying date rape was exciting, I’ll put the actual quote at the bottom of this comment [1]) and there has been a tonne of silencing of free speech and violence against them for even attending a lecture.
I really hope the feminists back off and let the free exchange of ideas continue for the people fighting to help men and boys live better lives than they currently are due to misandry and sexism.
[1]
“If a man ignoring a woman’s verbal ‘no’ is committing date rape, then a woman who says `no’ with her verbal language but ‘yes’ with her body language is committing date fraud. And a woman who continues to be sexual even after she says ‘no’ is committing date lying…
We have forgotten that before we began calling this date rape and date fraud, we called it exciting.”
Fade, Marie: this is a “yay” thing, because most of us are in cubes, and now I HAVE A DOOR.
cloudiah: congrats on your door. I don’t think I’ll close mine all that much, but it’s nice to have the option.
Yay Hellkell! I have an “office” tucked in behind the boilers and a ton of useless crap, and if I had my way that door would be closed All The Time. But that’s because people only come to see me when there’s a problem, and problems usually mean that either someone is being a complete vitamin enriched idiot or my building is falling apart.
“Are these the kind of people you want in your movement”
I’m not in their movement. That’s the thing from the beginning. People here have been doing some false dichotomy thing.
Because I am in favor of their rights to speak, y’all have decided I agree with their message.
My point saying they are winning, is saying they wanted to put a message out and because of the people who attempted to stop their message, their message has gained wings and made it around the whole internet.
The group has plausible deniability with the harassment of the woman who harassed them.
it’s a win win for them and a lose lose for Chanity.
Yes, Clint, the MRM is winning.
No, they’re not, but keep fucking that chicken.
pillow in hell:
Can I steal this?
I’m wondering how long it will be before clint accuses the young woman of having a boxcutter . . .