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my tumblr, they found a twitter acct that I don’t even use, they even found an old [dating site] profile of mine with outdated info …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.
Reported Blah’s threats to David.
Blah is now banned. I redacted his threatening comment, and quotations of it.
It’s really kind of amazing how many trolls here end up resorting to threats.
Hooray for the banhammer.
Woo-hoo!
It is frightening, the number of people who seem to think that threats of violence are legitimate responses to people thy disagree with. Obviously, they don’t have an actual argument, but still, who thinks that way?
Reblogged this on balarick and commented:
There is just no analogue to this in the feminist movement. None. MRAs will consistently state that they need to be this awful, this cruel, this inhuman as a response to the “cruelty” and “inhumanity” of feminism, but this simply has no correlate in feminism.
TRIGGER WARNING!
Whaaa!! Whaa! Is the gist of the article. Its pathetic, but ah the delicious crocodile tears. Come back when feminism isn’t about trumping issues like child custody, religious persecution of women, genital mutilation, etc. With whiny campaigns about the terrible ‘nice guy’ culture and how the word bossy is now the new buzz word for misogyny.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to Tumblr to cry about my entitlements and the PATRIARCHY.
Oh wow, agrres! You sure told us! Like, no one in the history of anything anywhere has ever tried to make fun of trigger warnings by suggesting that they’re “pathetic” and “whiny!” No one has eve tried to minimize something a feminist says! I have literally never heard this before! The devastating wit! The piercing insights!
Yeah, sarcasm. Only pathetic one here is you, kiddo.
Try to come up with something original next time.
Agrres, you might have wanted to post that comment on the “Ban Bossy” thread. It still would have been stupid, but not as stupid as whining about what feminists choose to prioritize on a thread about a woman receiving death and rape threats.
Wow.. Is this a satire? Oh wait .. Its a feminist website. LOL. She had good points and it would have been heard through if she did not feel the need to call him fuckface every 5 seconds when he didnt even cuss during the entire conversation. CAFE is not affliated with avfm .. Paul elam has nothing to do with cafe. Get your facts straight.
Birds of a feather shit together. Also, boring necrotroll is boring, puritanical, and uses two-dot ellipses, and doesn’t know what an apostrophe is. Where have I seen all this before?
Dude, if you want any respect, learn to write. Also think. You’re piss-poor at both.
aj,
Are you supposed to use school computers for trolling?
I only ask because I can’t imagine you’d write that badly if you’d completed high school.
ajhitman: Wow, you didn’t even read the post, did you?
She called a man “fuckface.” And we all know, the penalty for calling a man “fuckface” is rape and death, right? Because that’s what the OP was about. The ridiculous, horrible avalanche of rape and death threats the red-haired woman got after that video was posted. She was doxxed. People posted her personal information and address online. All this because she called a man “fuckface.”
Nowhere in this article does David say that CAFE is affiliated with AVFM or Elam. Nowhere. This is not a claim that is made in this post. At all. I really don’t even know where you got that from. Try reading for comprehension next time.
DEATH THREATS.
RAPE THREATS.
I swear to god, if one more troll comes through here focused on what this woman did wrong (or “did wrong”, depending on their focus) and ignoring the DISPROPORTIONATE AND UNACCEPTABLE response she’s received, I’m gonna fucking lose it.
She got death threats and rape threats for calling a spade a spade. Oh sorry, FUCKFACE.
Sorry to yell. WHY, OH WHY CAN THESE FUCKFACE TROLLS NEVER USE THE ELLIPSIS PROPERLY!?!?
Seriously. Is misogyny a degenerative disease that also causes the brain to forget proper punctuation, capitalization and grammar?
Good lord, not this thread again. It’s been years, guys.
It’s exactly one year since David made this post. I still see these assholes whining about her and posting the video of her on Belle Jar and the Queen’s University Journal site. One even has her as his avatar.
I’m very uncomfortable with the insult “fuckface”, but even that insult is nearly nothing compared to all of the abuse the woman has received. It’s been a year and people are still probably sending her rape threats, death threats, revenge porn, etc. Cussing pales in comparison to threats of harm.
It’s certainly a degenerate way of thinking, but I don’t think it rises to the level of a disease. More like some little kid saying “Nyah, nyah, fuck your grammar NYAAAAAH!”
Wow. This is so incredibly foul.
It’s really ugly behaviour, and entirely unwarranted, but it does reflect an aspect of the internet that is all too predictable. She’s managed to ignite the very thing that she’s raging against by being pretty obnoxious about it, which I can’t help but see as a backfire in terms of trying to be progressive on the issue of equal rights. The whole MRA thing even as a basic concept is inherently flawed, but nothing comes from nothing, and neither did the notion of ‘men’s rights’ advocacy. Positive discrimination in some areas of women’s rights has meant that as a consequence of trying to find equality, there is now unfortunately a perception of feminists as wanting special treatment, which is wholly misrepresentative. It’s virtually the same argument that some racists resort to in defence of idiotic concepts such as ‘white pride’, which is entirely disingenuous and contemptible. The scale is tipping all over the place and everybody needs to calm down and listen to each other – and as it is, the vast majority of feminists are entirely interested in doing so but the very vocal minority cloud the discourse by shouting obscenities at the people who need to be persuaded, not bullied. This woman being an example of that mistake in action. All the same, I feel sorry for her being in this position, being targeted in this way by a load of angry keyboard warriors with inferiority complexes, using this as an excuse to make themselves feel big and tough. It’s utterly pathetic.
Dave, all those disclaimers and perfectly reasonable statements didn’t manage to hide the fact that you’re still saying she brought it on herself.
You feel free to “pursuade” the angry extremists who are probably unpursuadable, but women are under no obligation to try, and suggesting that we are is more of the same “women should always be nice” bullshit. At what point are we allowed to be angry about our oppression?
Stopped reading there.
Sorry, not buying this. Nobody, let alone “everybody” needs to listen to misogynistic assholes. It helps no one, not even the misogynistic assholes themselves.
Oh right. That sounds like the perfect way to deal with bullies and abusers. /sarcasm
No, you are an example of a mistake in action.
This thread again?
But the thing is, she didn’t “ignite” anything. The rage and hate is already there, and if not her, it would have been some other woman. And it has nothing to do with what a woman does. Remember Caroline Criado-Perez? She received rape and death threats for campaigning to get Jane Austen on a British currency note.
The problem is focusing on the red-haired activists behavior rather than the infinitely more disturbing behavior of all those peoe who sent her rape and death threats. That, right there, is misogyny in action. It’s saying that a woman swearing at men and telling them to shut up while she is talking is on the same level as violent threats.