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my tumblr, they found a twitter acct that I don’t even use, they even found an old [dating site] profile of mine with outdated info …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.
I wondered about that. Funniest line this year!
Michael, you have sand in your brain. Beach living has its drawbacks, eh?
“Because now a lot of this oppression exists on a systematic level for everyone.”
You don’t know what “systematic” means. I don’t remember the time or tradition of putting white men in chains, using the law to keep them from owning property, voting, having a career, obtaining higher education, and so on.
“Someone saying something to you on the streets isn’t them silencing you.”
Do you mean street harassment, sparky? If you ever had it directed at you, then you probably don’t know how scary and unnerving it can be. But thanks for showing you sensitive side. Empathy is defintely not your super power, huh?
“Someone calling you a name on the internet isn’t oppressing you.”
Well, if someone threatens to rape me because they disagree with me, I’m going to assume they have a deep seated hatred of women.
Oh, and look everyone! Michael’s about to use some inspirational talky talk!
“When you have the right and the freedom to protest against something you disagree with, shout very angrily and rudely at other people in the street and not get in trouble, and do what ever else it is she does, you don’t face the type of oppression that these feminists make you believe.”
Who are you addressing that to, Mikey? “These feminists,” that would be us — except you’re purposely misinterpeting us. Were you hoping for a shout-out from another fly-by MRA troll?
Translation: I read about it on Reddit and/or AVfM.
Also, no real activist is going to recoil in horror over a pulled fire alarm. I don’t think it was the right thing to do in that situation, but if you can’t handle that then stay away from all actual protests everywhere in world by real activists. Successful protests involve more than a few people standing around with goofball signs being mostly ignored by everyone (see: MRA Toronto “rally” for an example of a failed protest).
Good luck with MRAs’ comment board raging, shitty meme and doxxing “activism”, dude.
Real World Bulletin: Women’s issues aren’t focused on as much you think, if fact they rarely are even with feminism’s successes. Also, every single issue you listed id being addressed by experts, academics and other people with actually knowledge and experience in those fields. MRAs only have some basic, and often faulty, statistics and simplistic talking points, none of which actually help any men. The MRAs have glommed onto the “father’s movement” from the 1970s and adapted pre-existing anti-feminist rhetoric and misogynistic rage. The only thing new is it’s home, the internet.
I just think it’s kind of hilarious that David said,
And subsequently Michael arrives to demonstrate that David’s description of these comments was spot-on.
Apologies for the many typos in my last post, I didn’t proofread it so it’s more sloppy than usual. Sorry for that dear readers and the English language.
See here’s where you seem to be confused. You can come here and post whatever you like as long as it isn’t against the TOU.
But you seem to think that a blog pointing out how illogical & backwards what a good portion of the MRA say/post and mocking it = totes oppressing.
Threatening to rape, kill, hunt down, harass & try to get someone fired from their job/ruin their life because you don’t like what they are saying. Not that much worse am I right *nudge nudge*
Study up, come here and make your point. But don’t be surprised when the posters here expect you to back up your claims or mock you when you can’t. If you feel that you are being oppressed make you point & own it.
How the fuck would you know that? You’re not the one living it. WE are. I have, in fact, been threatened by fascist men of various stripes, over the internet. Including at least one shitfucker threatening to distribute my home address (which, luckily for me, the guy didn’t know). Twitter wouldn’t suspend his account even though “I know where this cunt lives, just ask me” is a death threat by any reasonable definition. My other great good luck was that the troll had only 30-odd followers, so no one asked.
And being called a cunt on the internet is SO oppressive. When your sex as a whole is being systematically oppressed, and an ugly term for its collective genitalia is the synecdoche for it, yes, it IS oppressive. You don’t get to decide what is and what is not because you’re not living it. You get paid a 30% surcharge just for HAVING a dick, never mind BEING one.
So until you know what the hell you’re babbling about, do us all a favor and fuck off.
Not well enough to know that the fire alarm incident was at a different event. Or well enough to know why the person who pulled the fire alarm did so (by your own admission upthread). I suspect that by “researched”, you mean “read lots of MRM whining about”.
Dear trolls still coming in two years later to complain about what a meaniepants this woman was, allow me to refer you to the comments policy:
*dawns robe
*grabs tome
* draws pentagram
*makes sacrifice of 4 and a 1/2 delicious chocolate chip cookies
* chants necromancy spell
Alright it’s time to ressurected this thread!
Feminists are not keen.
Dear trolls: spending four days complaining about being “censored” isn’t going to make me approve your comments. But it is pretty hilarious, so thanks for that 🙂
This calls for (little) Loki’s favorite summoning ritual (yes, I’m a fangirl)!
i just looked at the comment policy emilygoddess linked, it’s basically the swedish lawbook reformed into its ideal state for a feminist site with proactive moderators 😀
This is just a slander post for MRAs, I can EASILY find examples of Feminists doing the exact same thing. Additionally, this woman was extremely rude and bigoted (in the video). She constantly told other people “shut the fuck up” and constantly swore at the people she was talking to. This is not justifying what she’s had to face in the aftermath. But her behaviour was unacceptable and I have every right to say that.
Additionally, what she was saying was wrong. MRA’s concerns are completely legitimate, and are NOT a priority of the “third wave western” feminist movement. She ironically claimed that men where “whining and crying and playing the victims.” She also said that men were “too busy hating women” when I can say feminists do the exact same thing in reverse. She also said that these issues should make MRA’s the biggest allies of feminists. Well NEWSFLASH, that’s the point. The reason why they exist is because feminism doesn’t recognise these things as being important enough or worth their time. This particular strand of feminism is concerned about equality between genders by “empowering” and elevating the position of women. Because they see men as being “privileged” and cannot accept that men are “oppressed” as well.
It’s terrible that this woman has had to go through all this abuse, and disturbing how far internet trolls have taken it. But that still doesn’t mean MRA’s are wrong and have invalid concerns. This isn’t a comment which says “hey she deserved what she got.” This is a comment which says I disagree with what she had to say and how she said it.
Hey, Dan, point me to one discussion by MRAs about an issue that actually affects men and doesn’t devolve into “fucking c*nty b*tches won’t give me what I want”.
MRAs aren’t interested in actually doing anything to help men. They only want to punish women. You’d know if feminists were out to punish men, because there’d have been at least one feminism-motivated mass shooting by now.
Then link it, Dan. I dare ya. Show me where were threatening to rape and murder men en masse.
Tell us what MRAs are doing to stop prison rape, solitary confinement, child abuse, homelessness and police murdering black men and boys. What are you doing? Show us all your amazing activism.
Dan, as a fellow man I feel I must say this: Please stop fighting for my rights, especially my right to not have my fee-fees hurt by the mean nasty internet feminist women. I’m a grown man, I’ve got my own back, thanks very much.
She was incredibly rude and bigoted, you say? On the internet, you say? Well, that’s just terrible. However will I cope? It’s a good thing you’re here to courageously campaign for my right to use the internet without the risk of seeing anything rude and bigoted. Please let me know when you’re going to start cleaning up Reddit, 4chan and the Youtube comments; I want to see what your strategy is.
In fact, I’ll make you a promise. If you head over to Stormfront and start trying to get them to stop being bigoted, I’ll stand alongside you on that one. If you don’t feel like taking me up on this, then I’ll just have to assume that your dedication to preventing bigotry and rudeness runs no further than lip service, and I’ll take that as a reflection of the Men’s Rights movement as a whole.
Your call. We can go and talk to Nazis or you can admit that you’re not someone whose words should be taken seriously. Pick one.
@ EJ
One of my old clients is a computer shop called Stormfromt.
“Did you not even Google before you picked a name!!!!”
I’m an egalitarian, meaning that i fight for both men and women. I think “Big red” is a vile human being for some of her actions and statements that have been captured on camera. That being said, those who are making the threats against her are just as vile. If someone says or does something that you don’t like, you have every right to criticise or mock them. You don’t have a right to threaten them or worse and still claim the moral high ground.
The only time violence or the threat of violence is acceptable is in a scenario of self defense. Anything else is inexcusable.
I’ve of course seen this red haired woman in memes over time but had no idea who she was or what she did to become a meme. Then today I saw a video that mentioned her so I googled just this “red haired feminist” and boom, this article pops up. So here I am and I have something to say as it seems does every one and their pet bird. I’ll promise to be extremely respectful here but I’ve got something bad to say about both sides of feminist argument. MRA’s, feminists, and everyone in the comments, especially the comments actually, generally none of them are helping anyone at all, in any way.
So first off feminists or new wave feminists to be more precise. They have issues they want to raise but the way they do it. The red haired woman is not alone in tone and how they are handling discussion. They all by and large are not having any kind of real debate, they’re just demanding and then arguing and finally arguing because of the arguments until no one knows anymore what they’re arguing about, it’s just all insults or ad hominem as they say.
MRA’s and the like, they too have points they want to raise and I’ll hold my hand up that initially I found these rational, like points made by certain high profile MRA’s but again, the conversation around this just isn’t about the subject, it’s about winning arguments against the enemy. Huge groups of people banding together to battle against the evil feminists and their terrible ways.
The comments from both sides are truly awful a lot of the time and just terribly averagely drama driven the majority of the time. Note I mean really from both sides or if you want to split off into more groups, all sides.
Now if you take a step back, way back away from the subject. Men and Women are generally good people. This is not something we can argue about, we see it around us all day every day. Generally people are pretty decent to each other. When I go to buy my pint of milk, the store owner, whether they are male or female isn’t likely to swear at me, hurl abuse, threaten me and I’d certainly never even consider such action. So we all go about our day being pretty decent….until we need to debate our human rights? What is going so wrong that this causes such a huge breakdown in communication?
I feel like we need someone to step in that both sides can agree is worthy and have everything shared through them to filter out the badness and try and restoer some calm to the subject. Of course that’s not going to happen. Who am I to even suggest a way that people should or should not approach activism related to rights. I’m not even very well educated at all on all the talking points. I’m what you’d call a Google expert. I read things, see videos on Youtube and suddenly because I can Google about it, I’m an expert on it! I’ve caught myself many times starting to feel this way in conversations online and its tricky not to, when you can quickly answer something you don’t know by googling it. Still this is quite unrelated and I’m getting off point. Just really pointing out that I’m flawed, I’m no one to judge this but I am saddened and frustrated by it and I fear the whole subject is now lost to the drama and by that I mean, there are more people involved for the drama that is going on within the comments than there are genuine people who want to resolve what the original points were on both sides.
Oh lord. She was insanely aggressive both in her words and in her body language, and it’s really frightening and infuriating to be talked to the way she talked to the men at the rally. I’m sure she won over exactly zero people to her side. But I think I can see why she carried herself the way she did – she wants to be able to talk to a male stranger the same way male strangers sometimes think it’s okay to talk to women. No, the vast majority of men in daily interaction are nothing like her in their demeanor. But the small population of excessively rude and violent men we have to live in constant fear of, coupled with the large population of just subconsciously unfair men forcing us to work doubly hard for the same reward, has left some of us nearly ready to go out and mow down the next man we see. Doesn’t make it right, in fact it’s the behavior that she resorted to that’s exactly the problem, but I have totally felt her unbridled rage before.
If a man talked to me the way she talked to the men there, I’d get really mad, not respond a single word because I’d fear for my life, and drive home fuming, but by the time I finished all my domestic duties for the day, it would be out of my mind. This guy who rang me up at the store yesterday was so rude to me for no reason at all, said something that he’d never have said if I was there with my husband or brother. I racked my brain and the only thing I can imagine is it offended him that my shirt was a little low-cut. I got really mad about it for a few minutes and was grateful to the feminist movement for trying to get back some of what is lost by being a woman, but at the end of the day I didn’t do or say anything because behavior like that from a man is just so normal.
I love men, completely, and we as a society really do impose some very hurtful crap on men just because they’re men (like how coercive it is to cut off a part of a baby boy’s genitals before he’s too young to weigh the pros/cons himself or defend himself but we’d never dream of doing that to a girl) but to even place women’s grievances on equal footing with men’s is just … I can’t. If women were as “fair” to men as they wanted them to be, I swear, we’d all be living in Saudi Arabia, and forgive me for thinking those poor souls all have Stockholm Syndrome, but I’d die before I let myself get treated like a piece of cattle like them. I’m sure this woman simply believes that the only way to get a man to treat you decently is to frighten him. It’s sad that she hurt her own cause and it’s sad that she feels so cornered.
As for the Richard Dawkins stuff, I have a lot less sympathy. If he thinks someone is vile for being insulting, what’s that make him? He’s made an entire career out of insulting people. But I do think it’s a little telling that he didn’t get kicked out for being insulting towards Christians all those years but as soon as he comes out against Muslims and feminists on Twitter, it’s all over. Not only do I as a feminist not feel threatened by the likes of Richard Dawkins, I don’t think the feminist movement, or any for that matter, should be above scrutiny.
@Clay
You need to take the context into consideration. When there are men’s rights events on university campuses, it makes women both angry and afraid. From our perspective, it’s equivalent to a KKK event on a southern U.S. campus. It has no business being there!
The protesters were loud but non-violent and isn’t that really all that matters? Big Red didn’t disrupt the lecture; she did her thing outside. It hardly merits the harassment and threats she’s received for three years. It’s funny how MRAs poo-poo the harassment that feminists receive but, boy, yell at them in public and look how they freak out.
You’re painting a picture of false equivalence here. Big Red’s protest pales in comparison to the backlash. As far as comparing the tone of feminists and MRAs, MRAs are misogynists who will go to any length to prevent women from achieving true equality. Of course we’re pissed off about it. While MRAs have a few valid points, the lion’s share of their grievances are manufactured. They don’t care about them and only use them as talking points.
The “drama” is going to continue for a very long time. MRAs don’t take the loss of their male privilege lightly and feminists aren’t going to quit fighting for equality.