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my tumblr, they found a twitter acct that I don’t even use, they even found an old [dating site] profile of mine with outdated info …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.
Ah, thebionicmommy, I see your mistake. You think women have the right to speak.
“Your image consisted ENTIRELY of a bunch of ‘gotcha’ comments devoid of any context that didn’t even look particularly ‘hateful’ to me. It’s just people who are refusing to criticize privileged assholes in a ‘nice’ way, and instead just being blunt about it.”
Well, if you want context, you can visit SRSsucks Prime, which is devoted to picking out bad SRS comments and linking to them, in context. It’s just as bad.
Do I need to add the sarcasm tag?
Just a reminder from the real world that, when you’re speculating on what someone who isn’t you would have done in situation that didn’t happen, your conclusions are not going to be undeniable.
…can’t we just go to SRS for context? I don’t trust mra sites.
What a bizarre thing for someone styling themselves as MRA to say. You are already a member of a hate group.
also, citation needed.
Nekora’s right. This is like a creeper protesting creeper shame.
“Yeah, okay, Redhead is receiving death threats and rape threats, but could we have an important conversation? Like, did you know I was a misogynistic asshole one time and the people who called me out on it didn’t hold my hand and sing me lullabies?”
Hey, here’s an idea. If you want to know about SRS, you can just read SRS. I mean, I appreciate David’s fisking of misogynists, but I also periodically visit the sites myself. In the early days it was just because I wanted to make sure David wasn’t exaggerating; now it’s a kind of sick fascination with reading the spewings of a HATE GROUP.
OMG she’s protesting and disagreeing…MISANDRY!!!
Why don’t you MRAs get it through your thick skulls that people have the right to protest. Feminists protest MRAs because it’s been proven time and time again that helping men does not come first, but opposing feminism and undermining any attempt women make to help themselves does. WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HELP MEN? besides trolling and doxxing feminists. You assholes can’t even prove who pulled the fire alarm.
I don’t agree with Redhead’s singing cry me a river, but I sure as hell know the response towards her is 100x worse and way out of proportion. When are harassment and intimidation even appropriate? Never. But you know what? at the end of the day you can spout all the statistics you want, it’s the actions of MRAs that speak loudest. And those actions always seem to be doxxing, rape and death threats to silence feminists or anyone feminist sounding, purposely attracting trolls from the biggest troll spaces on the net who live for internet drama, and barging into feminist spaces demanding that we talk about men all the bloody time.
I personally don’t care if there’s a men’s movement. I even think it’s a good thing, men have their issues too, they deserve attention and resources and this has been stated here numerous times. What I do care about is women being intimidated into silence and having their own movement attacked. What I do care about is women being told their issues aren’t important, or being downplayed, or having their historical oppression being outright denied by you assholes. Constantly pushing this idea that women being denied rights and education was actually “protection” This is what I see MRAs doing 99% of the time. You know, when they aren’t calling women gold-digging sluts. That’s why people oppose you. That’s why people don’t want to give MRAs a “chance” because your actions don’t match your words. A man it Toronto was recently raped by 4 women and mocked for it in the media. What are MRAs doing to reach out to him? to join feminists against a rape culture for which contributes to these disgusting attitudes towards all rape victims. No, MRAs instead are more interested in saying it doesn’t exist.
“The idea that SRS is a ‘hate group’ is frankly HILARIOUS. SRSsucks sounds like a bunch of people who got their delicate fee-fees hurt when someone on SRS highlighted what privileged asshole they were being.”
SRSsucks is a great community… I feel very welcome there. People aren’t hated based on things beyond their control. I’d invite you to read the SRSsucks-sphere (there’s more than one sub) and see for yourself.
And yes, what’s his name didn’t link directly to SRS. It looked like an image he created by cutting and pasting.
…But that makes the MRM a hate group, not because they hate women, but because they hate SRS!
Oh my God.
How about linking some of these supposedly awful comments here? I have no desire to go wading through a place like that, honestly.
Even better, don’t. Even if individual people on SRS are wrong (And wrong they may be) that doesn’t make them a ‘hate group’. SRS just quotes shit other people on reddit say and mock it and talk about it.
I find it especially hilarious that you claim that SRS is somehow against straight, white, cis-gendered males, considering that A LARGE PROPORTION of the people who use SRS self-identify as such. I guess there’s a lot of self-hating straight, white, cis-gendered males there.
@PEMRA:
Urk… this is going nowhere. SRSsucks is a lens: that lens is that SRS sucks. Every direct quote or screenshot is surrounded by a community of people saying how terrible.
Alright. Comparison time.
SRS sucks:
The main gist; SRS believes that its fine for women to lead on men, “because patriarchy and rape, duh”, “because all male sexuality is rape”, etc. They can’t imagine how someone could take a quote so out of context, or how anyone could think that it’s good for women to lead men on.
SRS:
The main gist: the entitled attitude that men have where they feel entitled to sex from women and then get angry when they don’t get it is annoying as all fuck. Also, the constant narrative of women that lead men on, purposefully tricking them into believing they will get sex, then not delivering, is annoying as all fuck. Also, doubts as to whether the quoted story is real.
By the way, I find it hilarious that you think SRSsucks is a fine, upstanding little subreddit, but SRS is a hate group. When SRSsucks is literally titled “SRS Sucks”, and the subreddit is explicitely devoted to hating on another sub.
@pro not equality
Not taking your word for it, and I already said I don’t wanna go there. Also, is this just whining about poor oppressed white straight cis dudes? something tells me it will be.
‘and then I told this racist joke, and people were meeeeaaaaannn to me. This is only because I’m white!!!!!!eleventy!!!’
Hateception?
Hey fuckwit, do you actually read the hate speech on r/men’s rights? Or AVfM? What do you think about the noble MRAs who want baby girls’ voiceboxes removed? The ones who want women denied the vote? The ones who think women should be beaten, raped, murdered for anything at all, any whim of a man’s? The ones who think the gang-rape murders in India are no big deal and that men – a country recognised as one of the worst places to be born female – are the ones who are oppressed?
Go fuck yourself with legos, you’re defending men who want women silenced, brutalised or dead. You’re defending men who want rape to be not-a-crime, who want age of consent laws removed so they can force sex on teens and children and not be labeled pedophiles. You’re squealing on behalf of the abusers’ lobby. Go eat a cactus.
http://doccarnage.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/masculism-as-satanism/
Here’s some of those lovely comments from the fine community at SRS sucks
As a woman I feel so welcome. Oh wait, I don’t because slut and tease are misogynistic insults
And now I feel obligated to create an r/srssucksucks subreddit. I totally would if I didn’t avoid Reddit on principle.
@katz, No, because the MRM is made up of individuals, therefore is isn’t a group, therefore it can’t be a hate group. QED.
(Great graphic BTW.)
* “that men – in a country recognised as one of the worst places to be born female”
Second what kirbywarp posted.
Also, I’m serious, it’s like talking to a creeper who thinks creeper shame is bad.