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my tumblr, they found a twitter acct that I don’t even use, they even found an old [dating site] profile of mine with outdated info …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.
Fade — iirc, he said he’d get pizzas and such. But yeah, pretty much. And I think the pizza and beer thing is a frat boy type thing, trying to stick your buddy with the bill basically.
On other topics, wtf is with Jonathan’s inability to quote?!
Argenti, none of our trolls seem to be able to master the quote function. It’s a good way to spot them.
Ehh, yes, but no? We’re having a case of all A’s fail at B, but not all who fail at B are A’s. Newbs also fail blockquotes, and so do we when the monster is out in force 🙂
Now, an inability to handle these “” is impressively trolly.
i can’t think of something that more clearly illustrates why i’m a male feminist than the responses received by the red-headed-feminist. the most positive diagnostic criterion indicating privilege is a profound sense of outrage when privilege is challenged in the slightest. here we have a woman speaking her mind, and the logical conclusion is to rape and kill her– though not necessarily in that order.
i find it entertaining that mra’s can bemoan the lack of appreciation women have for me and their contributions to (patriarchal) society– namely dying in wars, saving people, building shit, being a general captain of industry– but they aren’t tough enough to deal with a woman speaking her mind. how is that? tough enough for bullets and rabid weasels and the board room– but not tough enough for the compression and rarefaction of air molecules emanating from a totally rape-able punch-able gob of girl flesh.
really?
But I do have another example of no awareness of personal boundaries. RavenLaight decided that five days dormancy (and why did zie wait so long to make reply?) and so posting to my most recent blogpost (which is completely non-related) was the thing to do.
I put it in the correct thread, but it’s in moderation for too many links.
You realize youtube isn’t “MRA” right? It’s any random person… it’s not any specific group.
Ah, but take a look:
http://manboobz.com/2013/04/17/so-who-exactly-has-been-harassing-that-red-haired-canadian-feminist-a-not-quite-scientific-survey/
@Marie
There’s the video showing you they have no problem with protests.
>>Oh god, go get stuck in a field of cacti. They are the ones threatening her, you shitstain. Also, have you ever had your person information revealed over the internet? Because I’m guessing that helps making one feel a fuck a lot less comfy, also adding that no one should have to deal with death threats and harassment.
— Yes, I have had my personal information revealed on the internet. There were two different occasions that my Church and I made public on our website being opposed to Gay Marriage. Our site was hacked, death threats, rape threats to me AND MY CHILDREN. My residence and pictures of my wife and children were also published on the internet.
Then you go on to offer this statement, “you need to raise your expectation on the internet….”. It’s the internet, you are expected to have these kind of people. It would be nice if death threats and harassment stopped, but those do not translate into actions. Many people are going for shock value, all validated by the anonymity of the internet.
I never took the threats leveled at me seriously, was I concerned for my children? Yes, but those feelings were misplaced and I eventually broke into the normal stride of things. It’s been 8 years since that event and neither my family nor I have been harmed.
If someone means to harm you, they will – “privilege” won’t save me.
Dear Penicum,
Thank you for the reply.
>>No, they haven’t. Thomas Ball’s Manifesto is praised by them. That’s not being opposed to violence. They said that Breivik had good points. They praise Marc Lepine.
–Could you kindly point to where I can find these?
>>You admit it. It didn’t happen. The purported justification for this campaign of targeted hate is bogus; but you pretend it’s not.
Being critical of feminism is not hate. I am aware that this campaign is anti-feminist, I simply do not see how you make the connection between anti-feminism and hate. Calling Christians stupid and offering reasons why its stupid is not hate. I cannot make this any clearer.
>>And when there is protest, they do shit like this (or the furor about the year old blog which David Duke saw through, but your guys still don’t).
–Could you elaborate on that point, I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.
>>This why you are said to be a proto-hate movement. Campaigns of terrorism are just fine with you, just like burning a cross in the lot facing a black church. No one was killed, or even touched, so it’s harmless fun, right?
Swastikas on the synagogue… no problem. It’s not like neo-nazis ever carried through on anything.
–I am not part of Men’s Rights Activism, first off. I do find many things I disagree with them on, and things I agree with. That is more common ground that I’ve seen in feminism, which I am quite opposed to.
It baffles me how you’ve made the link between campaigns of terrorism and this. I simply do not get it. People mock and burn pictures of Jesus, I’ve seen one where they piss on a picture of the holy trinity. Is that behaviour something we should encourage? Certainly not, but that is not terrorism – that individual is expressing their right to freedom of speech.
Kind regards,
Jonathan
@Maried – My sincerest of apologies, I got the wrong video.
Here is the one I was referring to.
Did any of the people who burned pictures of Jesus also send messages to Christians suggesting that they would love to rape them and would come at the sight of their throats being cut? If not, your analogy doesn’t work.
@CassandraSays – Yes.
And you think it was OK then and thus it’s OK now? What a sad attitude.
@ Johnothan- The terrorist bit is the doxxing. They target individual women and ‘make examples’ of them, try and publicly humiliate them, open them up to thousands of threats of death and rape, share their home address with people who may do them harm- that makes people afraid to speak out. That’s what terrorists do. Currently they are holding a woman virtual hostage with this kind of doxxing- a completely innocent woman with no connection to their complaint- until Georgetown U complies with their demands. Frig, they have a terrorist manifesto on one of their sites!
Johnny boy has broken my “trolling or just stupid?” meter. I hope he’s planning to offer to pay the repair costs.
Maybe I’m cynical, but I’m not exactly buying Johnathan’s story.;
My money has Johnathan as a Nice Guy.
If it appears that I am taking him at face value…not really. On the matter of “trolling or just stupid” I’m currently leaning towards “both”.
Oh, I wasn’t thinking you were taking him at face value. I just hate his shtick. “My homophobic church organization caused my AND MY CHILDREN to receive these threats and I think it’s freedom of speech so there fore everyone who calls it terrorism is LYING”. It feels like he’s trying to say “well this happened to me and I don’t see what the big deal is so neither should you”. It’s just too convenient to fit into his warped MRA denial thingie.
Oh wow, did he just dismiss cross burning terror acts by kkk members that pecunium used as an example?
Ah, you’re still less cynical than me. My reaction to his last “yes that totally happened in my case too” comment was “sure it did, buddy”.
I mean, if it actually did then that’s horrible and it shouldn’t have happened and the people who did it should be ashamed of themselves. But in this context, given what he’s trying to do, do I take that statement at face value? Not so much, no.
@cassandrasays
Yeah, that’s my initial reaction too. I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one though, because if it did happen it’s horrible, but…idk he just keeps adding to it. oh well. Either way he needs to raise his standards for people not receiving death threats all the time.
@CassandraSays; @Fade –
Why are you putting words in my mouth? I have made it explicitly clear that such things are not to be encouraged. All I’m pointing out is this; such behaviour is expected and many of them do it for shock value. That is certainly not the same as condoning such behaviour. Additionally, why do you resort to ad hominem attacks? I’ve remained polite in all of my conversations with people here. I am here for genuine discourse, but you attempt to derail it.
if you’re not interested in polite discourse you may as well tell me now.
Lastly, Fade, you’ve drawn up a false dichotomy with regards to MRAs and Feminism. Being opposed to feminism is not to be pro-MRA. I’ve stated that there are MANY things I disagree with in the MRA sphere.
Jonathan, here is something that lots of straight guys, men, dominant groups w/e do not understand.
You can say you bigotry without any curse words and claim it’s polite. That doesn’t make it not bigotry
@jonathan
I’ll bite. What do you disagree with in the mra sphere.
Also, don’t know how many times this has been said on this thread, (quite a lot) but everytime someone goes ‘well, death threats are bad, but it is the internet it’s not really helping.