No long post today. Instead, I urge you to go over to the AgainstMensRights subreddit to read about how several long time Men’s Rights Redditors have doxxed and harassed a college student, with one of the regulars gleefully setting forth a plan to stalk her and ruin her life and another seeming to suggest he might want to pay her a visit to “debate” her.
Some screenshots from the original Men’s Rights subreddit discussion:
The thread (which remained up for many hours) has now been scrubbed by the Men’s Rights mods — I got these screenshots from u/Aceyjuan and u/TraceyMorganFreeman’s respective timelines — but as of right now none of the doxxers have been banned from the subreddit, or from Reddit itself.
The “crimes” of the woman in question? According to her main stalker — who has apparently been harassing her for months — she’s tweeted comments like “white men are like the gum on the bottom of my shoe” and “Jared Leto looks like the kind if guy that gives you herpes.”
Yep. Apparently the second-worst evil misandrist comment she made was … a joke about Jared Leto. For these comments, apparently she deserves to have her life ruined.
Here’s the thing: If you don’t like someone’s comments online, you are certainly well within your rights to quote them and point out why you don’t like what they said. That’s kind of the point of this blog. But it’s one thing to point out these comments, and another thing entirely to track down their identity and stalk them in real life. It’s another thing to whip up a virtual mob against them.
Doxxing by Men’s Rights Activists isn’t an accident; it’s the inevitable result of the peculiar style of Men’s Rights Activism.
MRAs, you see, seem utterly incapable of engaging in any kind of activism that might actually benefit men in the real world in any concrete manner. What they as a group specialize in is demonizing women, and in the case of too many MRAS, nothing gets their activist juices flowing faster than the opportunity to attack an individual woman.
That’s why A Voice for Men “activists” put up “wanted” style posters featuring their favorite feminist villains of the day; it’s why they started Register-Her.com. That’s why a certain red-haired Canadian activist who yelled at some MRAs once at a protest now finds her image splashed everywhere online as a visual representation of an evil feminist. That’s why MRAs show up at protests with cameras and threaten to expose the women they film — even if they’ve done nothing more than stand there with a sign.
And that’s why they doxx.
The Men’s Rights movement isn’t a civil rights movement. As it stands right now, it’s a union of abusers, and their enablers.
EDITED TO ADD: Lest anyone claim that the OP didn’t “really” dox the woman in question because he didn’t literally post all her personal details, he provided enough to allow anyone with even rudimentary Google skills to find out her real name and a great deal of other personal identifying information in less time than it would take to order a pizza online.
Has this been reported to the police?
Are they under the impression that this woman is the first to point out Leto’s rather sleazy persona? Because if so, LOL.
IF YOU ARE STILL ANGRY IN TWO YEARS?!
I don’t think I’ve ever been angry about something for two years. Isn’t that kind of tiring?
Ah.
“Be sure not to identify yourself as the author”
So, they are aware that this is messed up……..
C’mon Caitlin, you know he’s still gonna be angry in 2 years. Maybe not at the same things, but he’s gonna be an angry person.
@cassandrakitty
I was once in first grade math class, and I was talking to my friends about cartoons when the teacher told my table to be quiet and pay attention. It was my first experience with blatant misandry, and it has never left my dreams or my mind in all that time. My anger boners give me strength and also a way to press elevator buttons when my hands are full. So yes,being angry about something for years can be tiring, it is also well worth it.
Required posting: this is how creepy this shithead is.
They posted the following screed in AMR. I have since removed the post, but obviously, as a moderator, I still have access to the post. Here’s the text:
All emphasis are mine.
Damn, I got stuck in moderation. D:
You know how you can predict whether or not on any specific day the misters will be doxxing, harassing, or otherwise trying to make sure people with opinions that are different than theirs are getting bullied and intimidated?
There’s a very simple formula.
Is it a day of the week ending in -day? Then it’s a day when the misters are going on a rampage as described above.
You’re welcome.
I guess this plan could work if in two years she’s working for Jared Leto.
Live by the dox, die by the dox, dudes. They’re just lucky that most people–unlike them–are decent.
Okay, fine, the ‘white guys’ thing was racist/inappropriate. I don’t know what the context was, but fine. The appropriate response to that would have been to tweet ‘That’s racist/rude/etc.’
The other thing is a joke. (It also happens to be funny, ’cause Jared Leto is kinda sketchy looking.)
And this is supposed to be a human rights movement. Is this even legal? This is harassment; if you followed someone around and told strangers about them and posted posters with their name and face, the person would be within their rights to report you for harassment/stalking. And the internet is, in this day and age, just as public, why is it okay for people to get away with this?
And these people are nothing but cowards. If they were so righteous they would be plastering their own name everywhere, but they know they’re doing something wrong. Pathetic. How are these people not banned?
If they keep doing things like this and there aren’t any consequences for it, that just gives them leeway to keep pushing the rules until they break, or they hurt someone.
She could sue technically, but I doubt she has those funds.
The claims about her that were used to whip up this angry mob appear to be largely fabricated. It is unlikely this MRA is in her class, and seems she is not a leader of feminist groups, and so on.
Also, this same MRA admits he went on Omegle and posed as a “feminist” with comments like “isn’t circumcision great?” and then linked back to this women’s social media profile. In other words they impersonated her to encourage more harassment.
MensRights subreddit was eating out of his hands of course. All the skepticism they show whenever (for example) a feminist claims anything or a woman was raped suddenly disappears when an unverified and unlikely story encourages them to harass someone online.
How pathetic do you have to be to not only dox someone who pissed you off on the internet, but keep information about her in your computer to deploy for life ruining purposes two years later? Seriously?
Funny how women, POC, LGBTQ and other marginalized people are told to get over it and ignore bigotry. They’re told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and succeed anyway. But then, as soon as straight white men are the targets of some prejudicial tweets, the world comes to the end for them. They sit and stew about it for years! Ridiculous.
As someone who has been doxxed and smeared (as most of you may already be aware), I have looked into all the possible legal remedies. In the U.S., we are very limited because of our liberal protection of free speech. Rebecca Watson (among others) has received direct death threats, and has not been able to get much help from law enforcement so far. Some of the things that were said in my attacker’s post were factually untrue, but the harm comes from the “opinion” or subjective characterization of my behavior which is protected. Even if I had $20,000+ to throw at a lawyer, it wouldn’t help. Once this stuff is thrown out there, and picked up by aggregating blogs, the damage can’t be undone. As David has pointed out, they go after people like myself who are obscure and have no online presence to mitigate or bury the smears. In some ways I’m fortunate because I am at the tail end of my professional career, and I work in a field (academia) in which being the target of hate groups is not necessarily a career-wrecker, but for these young women who are just starting out, it could be an effective means of sabotaging them. It really, really sucks and I don’t know what anyone can do at this point beyond building awareness that this is happening more and more (and almost exclusively to women).
I wasn’t even angry at my ex-husband for two years.
Oh sure, I see this guy existing as a ball of rage until the day he expires. I was more remarking on the idea that he’s going to be angry at the same girl two years later for some tweets she posted when she was a teenager. It’s psychotic, and I don’t use that word lightly.
I just let through a comment from Alice that you should all read.
Also, adding to what Cinzia said, when people complain about the doxxing, or even object to lies about them being spread, this only serves to embolden the MRAs. It’s blood in the water to them. If someone demands that a libelous MRA video be taken down, 20 other MRAs put it on their own Youtube channels.
This is the only kind of “Activism” they’s any good at. The only silver lining is that most of the time they move on.
BUT the flip side is that the more they do this shit, and the more they get exposed for doing this shit, the more people are likely to discount what they say, and the less of an effect it will have on the targeted people.
RE: Cassandrakitty
I don’t think I’ve ever been angry about something for two years. Isn’t that kind of tiring?
I have been, and yes, it is tiring. I kinda needed it to get the fuck away from them, though, after being under their influence for a year plus.
Also, seeing what I read on tumblr on a daily basis, I’m still kinda boggled that apparently this sets them off so mad. Aren’t these the assholes who constantly claim that people should grow a thicker skin?
I think the other silver lining is that they’re making themselves look stupid because they seem to be making stuff up-this is one person, not a hate group.
But this is abusive behavior, and even if there aren’t a lot of legal ramifications, that doesn’t mean sites like Reddit and Facebook and Twitter should tolerate it. I really do appreciate free speech, but there are limits. We have laws against libel and slander for a reason.
Okay, so a Jared Leto joke is sexist and racist, but rape jokes are all in good fun. Yeah. Okay. …this is ridiculous. And he brings up his Asperger’s like it’s an excuse. He can, as someone on AMR said, step on all of the Legos.
So, today we have learned that not wanting to fuck Jared Leto means that you think white men shouldn’t be allowed to vote. When 30 Seconds to Mars fanboys attack?
Who can argue with that? o_O