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my tumblr, they found a twitter acct that I don’t even use, they even found an old [dating site] profile of mine with outdated info …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.
@thebionicmommy
that’s… awful. bleh.
@emilygoddess
you don’t have to. XD obviously
Dang I lost the long comment I typed up 🙁 ::cries forever::
And victory is accomplished! I have caught up! ::sticks tongue out at thread::
Hey, speaking of MRAs, what do you folks think about Toysoldier? Personally he’s one of my least favorite MRAs, mostly because his arguments are incredibly captious, pedantic, and just annoying in general. I also heard that he’s accused Cliff Pervocracy of lying about her rape.
Is there more you folks know about this dude? I’m just curious since I never hear about him these days.
Toysoldier is a challenging one because he’s so good at leveraging the actual bad things that have happened to him to get his way. It’s hard to argue against him without diminishing his experiences.
Aaaliya: look up older threads with TS. Please do not summon him.
Sorry, didn’t mean to mangle your name like that.
thebionicmommy: I read that earlier. Normally, I eschew gender-body insults in both directions, because it helps me hold the high ground in discussions, but seriously, if EVER there was a guy worthy of being referred to by one of the many terms for the penis….
I had a feeling someone would say that, given how much of an asshole he seems to be. Sorry.
@fade and freemage,
Well at least his terribleness was exposed to his constituents. If he ever tries to get reelected, that kind of thing could really hurt his chances. So it’s really a victory for voters, just like Akin’s notorious comment that ruined his senatorial ambitions.
Dear legislators,
If you are awful, please make public statements and share your emails to the press as often as possible. Thank you.
I guess that’s one way of looking at it. : P
He was “trying to get into the mind of the perpetrator”
Somehow I don’t think that was a difficult thing for Peter to do. Also, did anyone notice that the phrasing of his insult sounded far more like an MRA than just some random angry dude? Or was this just a not so clever way around the c word he REALLY wanted to use?
I think I’m going to stay out of this conversation on Civil Disobedience because my problem with it is the exact opposite of TomBCat’s. Just pointing out that not all opponents of MRAs and other reactionaries subscribe to liberalism.
Opposing a singular law but accepting the legitimacy of the authorities executing it is missing the forest for the trees. DA gets the goods, not CD.
(That’s “Direct Action”.)
I like the sound of that.
PE MRA: Are you saying you don’t hate SRS? I read all the things you said, and the takeaway is you hate them, and you have said that,”tacit” hatred is to be condemned.
So, your own words allow me to conclude you hate SRS.
Which is a group, not an individual. And I’d said, on that same criterion, SRSsucks is a hate group.
So you are willfully, even proudly, a member of a hate group.
p.s. there were other comments I linked to, I shall take your mute reply as admission of error.
@thebionicmommy –
hmmm…MRA? his response to his usage of the term:
“Despite the publicity, Hansen doesn’t regret the comment, he told The Telegraph of Nashua. “My point in the choice of words was two-fold, one was shock content and the other was to try to get into the mind of the perpetrator,” he said. “This is something that has been totally blown out of proportion.”
….said every MRA, ever.
Oh my God, he tried to shock people and then they made a big deal out of it? Almost as if they were shocked? Shocking!
@Fibinachi
yes, I loved Dark Eye! My Dad played it when he was a student, it’s nice to keep up the young traditions 🙂
I think there are many reasons to want moral to be absolute.
One is the recurring image that things are inherently good or bad. I can see it in my own desire to be able to always tell ‘which side I am on’. If we are the ones who decide what moral is then – well, that’s just pretty scary. We could be wrong. We could change our minds for the worse . Our beliefs might become valueless.
So if someone makes the wrong decision, we need them to be the bad ones. I think that’s one reason why people are arguing so vehemently about RedHeads shortcomings. They might think they’re trying to get the bigger picture, but in reality they want their side to be right and have something black and white.
I saw it in an argument with my mum yesterday( I think a good example of how we all do this in small ways). She read a story about workplace bullying, and when I pointed out that while a funny story, it would be cruel if it were real, she told me the guy deserved it for being annoying. She doesn’t think that way. She doesn’t treat people that way. But she didn’t want to be a person who laughs at something terrible.
To have absolute moral though, we at least would need some kind of god/creator, because the world would be unchangeable. And even then I doubt it would be possible.
This probably comes quite late and I’m not sure if I’m adding something new or If I’m just agreeing with you with an unnecessary use of vocabulary, but these are my thoughts on what you said.
@Freemage on ethical CD
it was more of a confusion with words. I was very tired, not thinking straight and ignoring the meaning of words (the trolls can!I wanted too!)
My fear is that it is easy to justify something in hindsight, and that disobeying the law can mean many things. I realize (as my brain is waking up now) that I don’t open the doors for crazy murderers when I say the law would have to be broken, and it is in the end what Socrates did(I used him as an example). He was accused of breaking the law, he told them their laws were wrong, but when getting a death sentence refused to flee but rather respect the law when he couldn’t change peoples minds.
It is more of a philosophical question anyway, not a practical one, as what I decide my morals should be doesn’t change the world for the better – arguing alone never has.
This is a bit muddled again, I had five thoughts at once and forgot 4 of them while trying to write down one. But your story is a great example as this person doesn’t try to hide any action and motivation and thus makes it easy to be judged accordingly, which I guess is the best possible way one can do it.
Pecunium, Kirbywarp, Fibinachi, bionicmommy, freemage (I hope I didn’t overlook anyone who participated)
This was nice. People don’t like to argue with me I get told I should just leave it be. I tried with my mum yesterday, she just gave up and told me something that sounded very much like ‘that’s nice, honey’. Maybe I’m taking things too seriously, but I can’t help that these things are important to me. But to many in my life, thinking about it is an inconvenience, I get only criticized for trying, so the insight of others is rare to me. I now know that I misunderstood Socrates entirely (never having a chance to debate this thought, I didn’t think about it much) and feel a little stupid, but learned a lot and now think differently. That’s a great feeling. I just wanted to point it out, I feel we rarely get to change opinions, let alone know about it.
@BlackBloc
I wonder if that just depends. I might have no problems with the authority in general but think they are wrong about certain laws (but their minds can be changed), or I might have an overall problem with the authorities and changing a few laws would be useless.
Freemages traffic sign example is a good one for the first, for the second colonialism is the first thing that comes to mind.
By giving MRA’s more attention, you are boosting their egos. Which harms the anti-mrm cause.
Oh look, yet another person who thinks we should just ignore the MRM because acknowledging them validates them. Didn’t we do this for like three pages of this thread?
Goddamnit. I fall behind on the news and Texas has a giant explosion. Hope our Texan posters/friends/families/etc are safe.
This fucking week, this thread is going to turn into the manboobz check-in after disaster thread isn’t it?
Wait, what’s going on in Texas?
(Off to Google we go.)
Doesn’t seem like anyone knows much yet, besides a fertiziler plant blew up, chaos, evacuations and the human toll is high. Seems accidental, as far as I’ve seen.
This fucking week.
Just getting this on the news now. Sounds like a fire caused the explosion. This is so horrible.
And some fuckshite from Missouri has sent envelopes full of poison to the White House.