So the self-described “human rights activists” at A Voice for Men have found three more women to harass. Here’s the story, which for many of you will have a depressingly familiar ring:
Members of Men’s Rights Edmonton, a small group that is for all intents and purposes a local chapter of A Voice for Men, has been putting up pictures targeting Lise Gotell, the chair of women’s and gender studies at the University of Alberta. The pictures, which seem inspired by “Wanted” posters of yore, feature a large portrait of Gotell and the caption:
Theft isn’t black. Bank fraud isn’t Jewish. And rape isn’t male.
“Just because you’re paid to demonize men doesn’t mean rape is gendered. Don’t be that bigot.
Gotell’s crime? She was involved in what appears to have been a remarkably effective rape awareness campaign focusing on date rape and featuring the slogan “Don’t Be That Guy.”
A Voice for Men took exception to the campaign because, even thought it did deal with the male victims of rape, it didn’t devote equal time to the problem of evil, false-accusing “girls.” No, really. Men’s Rights Edmonton Activists put up “satirical” versions of the campaign’s posters with the slogan “Don’t Be that Girl.” Now, MR-E and AVFM, at least according to the “argument” advanced on their new poster, seem to be upset that the campaign didn’t devote equal time to the problem of female rapists. [Note: this paragraph has been corrected; see note at end of piece.]
Gotell spoke out against the posters, and now Men’s Rights Edmonton and AVFM are doing their best to smear her as a “bigot.” Because she doesn’t believe that women are responsible for half of all rapes.
Since this is not actually true — more on this in a later post — it’s hard to see how this makes her a bigot.
As a rule, I don’t support tearing down the posters of one’s ideological enemies. Free speech and all that. But these posters are different: they’re slanderous personal attacks designed to harass an individual. Were they posted in my neighborhood I would tear them down.
And evidently that’s what some people in Edmonton have been doing.
Indeed, one recent night, several members of Men’s Rights Edmonton claim to have caught two women doing just that. While they don’t seem to have video footage of the women tearing down the posters, the MRAs filmed themselves following the women down the street and angrily confronting them for this alleged crime.
They posted the video to YouTube, and AVFM posted it as well, under the typically overheated title “Men’s Rights Edmonton confronts fascists.” They screencapped images of both women from the video and announced their intention to uncover their personal information:
MR-E would like to know the names of these two women so that charges of destruction of property can be laid against them. Also, the world should know the identities of those who seek to silence and censor messages advocating for human rights.
Of course, this is ridiculous. Tearing down a poster that was almost certainly posted illegally in the first place isn’t “destruction of property.” No one is going to be prosecuted for this. The police have better things to do.
But of course that’s not the real intent here. The real intent here is to scare the shit out of these women and other feminists by exposing them to harassment online — like the woman labeled “Big Red” and countless other women who have been targeted by AVFM and other MRAs (sometimes completely erroneously).
AVFM’s Paul Elam gave the game away with an “editor’s note” added to the post:
[A] woman who vandalizes man’s property and then flips him off when he confronts her about it on a dark street at night only acts in this manner because she is certain she has absolutely nothing to fear. Feminists terrified of MHRAs? My ass.
Elam could not have made it any clearer: the main point of this kind of “activism” — which has become AVFM’s bread and butter — is all about intimidating women, not helping men.
AVFM, where terrifying individual women is “human rights activism.”
Here’s the appropriate response to that:
CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION: I rewrote the paragraph starting with “A Voice for Men took exception,” which confused AVRM/MR-E’s current objection to Gotell’s views with its original “argument” against the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign.
I am totally anti-doxxing. If you are willing to do the wrong thing for the right reason, you are one step closer to being willing to do the wrong thing for the wrong reason. It’s not worth it.
I haven’t read all the comments but I reported the video. I hope you guys do the same. It’s definitely defamation of character and bullying, and should go against youtube’s tos.
I’m just dying over the commenters calling the women’s acts vandalism of private property. I didn’t realize the MRM owned all telephone poles.
One guy said they should’ve called the police. The video of the police laughing at them would be much more interesting than this.
And I am ok with doxxing in the event that the person is committing a criminal act, or is a danger to themselves or other people.
Note: that comes from someone who has been maliciously doxxed in an attempt to silence my discussion of someone’s very public behavior (that didn’t include doxxing him as his full name was associated with what he was doing online by his choice) in a way he didn’t like (criticism). He definitely did it with the intention of having people do something to me (or at least make me so scared of that possibility so I would stop calling him out).
I do not condone following doxxing with threats, harassment, or violence, and only see it as a way to give information to the police if what was happening was illegal, warn other people of a predator in their area, and hold people accountable for criminal behavior.
Obviously tearing down a poster isn’t criminal behavior and so doxxing these women would be completely ridiculous.
I definitely don’t condone publishing people’s home addresses because the only thing to really do with that is to harass or physically hurt a person or their property. However, I believe linking people’s names and areas to their behavior is the only justice there is for most of the horrible shit that happens on the internet because police can’t be bothered most of the time, nobody in power seems to want to update laws to prevent things that absolutely should be illegal, and major social media sites don’t take anything seriously when they should be reporting ips and other identifying information to police for criminal behavior.
I don’t think there is such a thing as the “right” to anonymity on the internet, especially when you’re committing a crime or admitting to criminal behavior.
You can make a slippery slope argument all you want but to me there is a very clear difference between attaching a person’s name to a criminal act when they thought they could freely do that anonymously and posting someone’s name, address, workplace, phone number, etc, and telling people to stalk them, just because they said something you don’t like.
That Frederick Coombs link was interesting. As was the related story it led me to, of Bummer and Lazarus the dogs.
“AVFM, where terrifying individual women is ‘human rights activism.'”
Do those bitches really look terrified to you?
And do you have any evidence whatsoever that these posters were “almost certainly posted illegally”?
@Jason,
I think they probably were scared but trying to put on a brave face. If a woman shows fear, then she’s called a drama queen, but if she acts stoic, then people minimize the danger she is in, like you just did. Oh yeah, and they are not “bitches”, they are women, courageous women.
I don’t see any bitches, Jason. I do see a petulant troll. 😀
Jason,
Do you believe the MRA’s got any permit to post their crap everywhere? It’s one thing to post a lost pet sign up on phone poles, but another to post up their pseudo wanted posters of a professor they hate. Anyone who tears down those signs is doing a great service to their community.
Jason, You’re probably a drive-by, but are you really arguing that posting this video with an explicit call to try to identify these women is not an attempt to intimidate them? Bonus question: Once you paste a poster up in public, do you still think that it’s your property, such that it is a crime for another person to remove or deface it (e.g. by covering it up with another poster)?
Hmmm, gendered slur, ignoring that terrorism is about the desired outcome, not necessarily the actual outcome… implicitly calling for more of the same…
I think this is our drive-by troll of the day!
@cloudiah: jinx.
Wait, did I just call jinx on a comment posted 30 minutes before I posted?
I thought I hit refresh before I started typing! (runs away screaming in terror as the time-space continuum collapses around self)
You made me spit out my tea.
“Our terror tactics aren’t working, so we’re obviously not terrorists!!!”
@Howard
How do you know you aren’t just sprinting in one spot?!!!
Yes, such courage. It takes a lot of courage to try and silence your opposition, and then try and justify that in any way possible. What bold heroes, standing up to da paytreearkee!
We’ve got an edgy one here, folks. Watch out!
@jason
dude, they were putting up the posters in public space. You’re allowed to take down posters in public space. Get used to it.
Dude, are you forgetting that the MRAs were trying to harass someone? If i saw posters encouraging the harassment of an individual in my neighborhood, I would tear them down
If some young MRA courageously tore down Don’t Be That Guy posters, it would be a different story… you’d all be up in arms about evil MRAs trying to silence you. But we don’t do that. We actually respect the rights of those we disagree with.
There was no harassment. They have every right to call a public figure a bigot,
LOL
whut
wait, did the don’t be that girl (stupid but not really harmful as far as i can tell?) posters get torn down or the ones trying to encourage harassment against the person who spoke out of against it. Either way..
So much that you send them rape and death threats and dox them! So respectful!
@Jason
Citation needed.
Also, you came in late to the conversation, but there is a difference between posters against rape and posters that strengthen the narrative that anyone who says they were raped is lying. The mra is nothing but a bunch of rape-apologists masquerading under the banner of men’s rights. They don’t even want to support male rape victims, they just want to make raping women more acceptable.