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.
Re: the sexuality discussion
I identify as sexual, but I certainly wouldn’t go fuck any random guy I found attractive. For me, sexual attraction pretty much involves a lot of imagining. I’ve never related to the idea of “butterflies” or feeling flustered or tongue-tied or just incapacitated by someone I’m attracted to. Pretty much I see a person who I find attractive, and I start to imagine what their body looks like, feels like, tastes like, and I imagine having the kind of sex I enjoy with them. I imagine their pleasure-face and pleasure-noises. For me it’s never all-consuming imaginings, just daydreaming.
But to actually have sex with someone, I want to feel safe, respected, and that they are attracted to me. So, for instance, Tom Mison is pretty attractive and he could probably star in any number of interesting day dreams, but if he was a horrible kisser, or called me “baby” or started doing dirty talk, or said something really bigoted and horrible, or acted like he was more interested in getting off than giving me a good time, I would absolutely not want to have sex with him, no matter how nice it is to imagine touching his butt. He would also have to do some positive things besides being cute and not-awful, like express interest in me, express positive feelings towards social justice topics, etc. And I’d probably want to hang out with him for at least several positive hours before jumping in bed.
I’m excited as heck about the rise of the SAHD, partly ’cause it tickles me to note that they often tend to suffer some of the usual downsides of the SAH role: isolation, boredom, depression, frustration with kids, subtle loss of respect within their romantic relationship, loss of previous professional/social identities, finding it harder to break into those cozy neighborhood cliques than it looks, (and then being weirded out that even it matters to you. lol)
The “red pill” world cracks me up when they point out those things as serious, serious downsides FOR MEN, as if they do not really exist for women. ha!!!!!! (but those things are such Serious Business that it makes sense to shell out for regular childcare if a guy is staying home, so that he can still be a man, not a mere domestic drudge (!!!!)
It’s good advice in general but it is funny how so many people traveling in the very same circles will insist a SAHM needs to be a sex-dispensing, gourmet-dinner-fixing, dust-busting supermom with never a word of complaint– heaven forbid her breadwinning spouse find her lack of gratitude grating!
On the up side, I think guys do bring a lot to traditionally feminine roles, and one of the biggest things they wind up bringing back out of it is… understanding.
Anyway, sexual attraction for me is probably about half physical attractiveness and half personality/chemistry. I’ve met guys who are sufficiently good looking and quite good company that I didn’t click with at all; guys I thought were gorgeous but turned out to be obnoxious or very stupid or otherwise unsuitable and who thus ruined my enjoyment of their charms, (MISOGYNY!) 😉 and guys who didn’t make that much of a physical impression at first but who wound up making me feel like we were the only two people in the room, as if everyone and everything else around us faded and all that was left was the shy, flushed smile he offered as he sat down across the table.
That said, if there is one thing I do agree with the manophere about, it’s that physical attractiveness in men does actually matter: no matter how great or funny or well-off a guy is, if he is not up to some minimum level of physical attractiveness… it just isn’t going to happen. I can wish for it to happen, I can think “he really deserves to be happy…” but at some point, the physical side of it really matters to me.
It never even occurred to me that I should be attracted to men just because they had great personalities if they weren’t my type, not even when I was a teenager. I guess I can think my mum for that? Apparently she taught me to misander nice and early in life.
Or thank her, even.
@cassandra: I don’t know, I’ve had mixed thoughts about it over the years. My family tended to seem to think all things physical were sort of… I dunno, worldly or frivolous, that one should not get into sexual relationships with anyone you would be unwilling to marry, and further that looks are not important in marriage past the initial honeymoon stage. (They also did a shit job of articulating what, beyone sheer economic survival, IS important in marriage, but they got married when they were nineteen and twenty-one, so they probably had only the vaguest ideas themselves. lol)
Anyway, I’m also sympathetic to the fat-acceptance and HAES arguments that people’s weights, for instance, aren’t under their conscious control and they do face discrimination from every quarter over it, much of which derives from totally unrealistic media standards.
Really, pretty much every aspect of a person’s physical looks is only under a limited amount of their personal conscious control. Even super baseline stuff like being clean can be limited by circumstances beyond a person’s own control.
that said, no sense in starting a sexual relationship as a weird…. personal-improvement project. “TBH, your physical appearance and smell kind of gross me out, but I want to move past my narrow view of what’s attractive and make a better society soooo…. LETS DO THIS THING!”
(oddly, some of the MRisters might at least be ok with that last bit.)
Attraction is one of the only areas in which I’m not open to any argument that people are required to examine their feelings, with the implication being that examining will cause those feelings to change (and if it doesn’t you’re probably a horrible person). More generalized arguments about how society constructs beauty ideals, sure, but on a personal level? Nope, people get to be attracted/not attracted to whoever they want, and nobody owes it to anyone else to consider dating them.
The thing about sexuality and the labelling of it is that human sexuality tends to be incredibly complicated and fluid. There’s a ton of different factors that go into each person’s preferences and it can definitely evolve over time. It can be incredibly difficult to pin one’s sexuality to rigidly defined labels, especially when it comes to asexuality because it’s more of a spectrum than anything.
And then there’s the romantic spectrum to consider too, which describes romantic attraction instead of sexual attraction and jeez labels are more trouble than they’re worth, aren’t they?
The power in labels, however, comes from the sense of community that they can bring about.
As a teen, I never once felt sexual attraction (still haven’t). You know how when 10-year-olds first hear the sex talk and go “You do WHAT with your WHAT? Eewwwwwwww!”? I thought there was something wrong with me because I never left that mindset. There was absolutely no appeal in sex at all, and I had no idea why. When my church group brought out the chastity talks I was ecstatic because my first thoughts were “YES I CAN TELL EVERYONE THAT I’M NOT HAVING SEX BECAUSE I’M WAITING FOR MARRIAGE. AND THEN I CAN JUST NEVER GET MARRIED! THE PERFECT PLAN.”
Learning about asexuality for the first time was an incredible relief because there was the sense that I was not alone, not broken, and that my preferences (or lack thereof) were okay. That I was part of a community. And even though not everything that I might do lines up perfectly with what might be considered ‘ideal asexuality’,I still take comfort in the label. Adopting a label, instead of having it thrust upon you, is a way of asserting your identity and your power, and what people choose to identify themselves as is as varied as they themselves are.
@Octo- Regarding demisexuality, I’ve tried to explain this concept to allosexual (non-asexual) people before and had issues with it. There’s a difference between being asexual and being attracted to no one, and being allosexual but having no one who you are attracted to, even if it is in practice the same thing. And there is a difference between being a demisexual and forming an emotional connection with someone and then a sexual attraction, and being allosexual and becoming sexually attracted to someone as you emotionally connect to them. Even if the difference only comes in how the individual decides to define themselves, if that makes any sense?
For me personally at least, I think the difference comes in that allosexual people can generally conceptualize there being people who they would like to have sex with, wherein demisexuals have no concept of someone they would be sexually attracted to until they in fact do bond with someone. This idea might be erroneous, though, because I am neither allosexual or demisexual and I can’t really speak from experience about their outlooks.
@cassandrakitty
I agree completely. There is an additional consequence for us trans women; not only does a trans woman risk being treated like dirt by a man – cis or trans – after having sex with him, but she also faces the risk of being reduced to an object of pornography. Any expression of her sexuality is often reduced to transmisogynistic stereotypes. If not that, then it is attacked and ridiculed for being artificial and “disgusting.”
And that’s why I’m wary of any man who claims to want to have sex with me (this has actually happened, unfortunately) because I’m a trans woman. They literally get as explicit as “Once you get a pussy, let me know and I’ll fuck you.” Funny how my identity as a trans woman is only visible to those men when they are capable of relating to me as a sex object.
Ew. If straight men ever wonder why they can’t have nice things, sexually speaking, the answer is “because of other straight men”.
Sexuality is COMPLICATED, yo. Like, I find the term ‘man’ to be completely meaningless except as a self-identifier, and yet I’m only attracted to men. Go figure. (Though seriously, a lot of the time I wish I weren’t, since that’s the gender I have a lot of bad history with.)
RE: Cerberus
That one becomes “dirty or bad” by being open and forthright about sex.
Well, there’s also privacy. What I do with my husband is far from dirty or bad, but I’m also not really comfortable talking about the gritty details in public on the Internet, especially since… well, this is Manboobz, I’m an educator, last thing I want is to have my sex life splashed all over the freakin’ web.
It’s also tricky for me because, well, for me there’s romantic attraction (which has yet to come on its own), sexual attraction, and a weird kind of kink attraction which can mingle with either of the prior but can come all on its own. I CAN deconstruct this shit, but not really in language or detail that I’m comfortable with speaking on a public forum, you get me?
RE: Fibinachi
when other people talk about being in love, I don’t follow entirely. It sounds lovely and fun and beautiful, but… no, sorry, I am unacquainted with your butterflies.
This is hilarious to me, because I’ve only been in love once, with my now-husband, and I found the experience utterly horrifying. It was like uncontrollably barfing rainbows whenever he came near me and I was like, “No! NO! STOP BARFING RAINBOWS DAMN YOU GODDAMN FUCK SHIT ASS!” because it was terrifying to feel that level of trust and attraction to someone, and sure it was bright and shiny but OH GOD I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO BE BARFING RAINBOWS I NEED A DOCTOR SOMEONE FIX THIS.
My mastery of English is why people pay me to write stories. (Which reminds me, there’s a free story poll up now! Come join the party! Even if you don’t have an LJ, you can leave an anon comment!)
@cassandra: I think it’s good for people to examine their feelings, just ’cause it doesn’t hurt to sit down and think about things from time to time, instead of blindly stumbling up the same alleyways all one’s life, but I definitely think it’s presumptuous and weird to *expect* other people to change, and totally counterproductive to hammer away at them ’til they do (at least, while you are looking…)
Asexuals so intrigue me! I envy y’all sometimes. It sounds so peaceful from the outside. I think I waste a lot of energy thinking about sex– the *ahem* ins and outs and issues and yearnings and jealousies and revulsions and plotting and scheming and bickering and drama of it all! Sometimes it is enjoyable but it is also SO exhausting sometimes that I just want to turn off the spigot for awhile. But of course it doesn’t work like that.
I like to imagine I’d have mastered calculus by now if not for the pointless daydreaming about sex. (Or maybe I’d just waste all that freed up time with some equally pointless alternate obsession.
Yeah, probably. ha)
You know the old joke about the feeling of being in love being chemically identical to the one you get from eating large quantities of chocolate, right?
I think it’s pretty presumptuous to assume that people are stumbling up alleyways from an emotional perspective too. Granted that for some people this stuff is really complicated to figure out, but for others it can be pretty straighforward, and I’ve never seen “examine!” deployed in a way that doesn’t feel like an attempt at emotional manipulation when it comes to sexual or romantic situations. If someone is thinking “hey, this is a new feeling, didn’t know I could experience this, seems like it’s worth exploring” then sure, explore away, but “you do not appear to want to date me/that person who likes you, and I think you really ought to examine that”? Nope, nope, nope.
@cassandrakitty
I don’t know if I’ve asked you this before, but have you read Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin? Because she elaborates on that (bolded part) in great detail via the analysis of several male author’s works, and it’s very well done.
@ trans_commie
Yep, though it was years ago. I remember it feeling less like discovering new ideas and more like having someone spell out things that you’d always known but never seen put into words before. It’s a great book.
It’s not much after such a long wait, but it does answer the immortal question: What did Pierre look like in high school?
I’ve always been ok with the fact that women have preferences that they many want bad boys, guys with bulging muscles (Henry Cavil, Hugh Jackman) or guys who can play guitar. Women aren’t under any obligation to find me attractive just for existing, not every woman I meet is going to want to jump on me that’s just the way it goes. It was all a bit bizarre when I found this sub group of guys who are like “Women have preferences this some how oppresses me” (oh like you don’t?)
When it comes to sexual attraction with me for the longest time I thought I was ace but there are times when I’m like well maybe a hook up or an FWB situation would be cool I just don’t know how to seek it out and the few times women have been approached or I’ve made a connection something’s gotten in the way be I’ve ether frozen up or there’s been some convenient excuse not to continue, I’m perfectly fine with not having sex but sometimes I wonder if I’m missing out on something great.
Again, before the inevitable accusations of misandering, I don’t expect all straight men or all lesbians to find me attractive, because that would be silly. I do not feel that someone with a preference for tall blondes is oppressing me by not wanting to have sex with my short dark-haired self.
RE: ceebarks
I envy y’all sometimes. It sounds so peaceful from the outside.
I admit, my knee-jerk, bitter reaction is, “Don’t be, I was correctively raped to raise my libido.” (Spoiler: it didn’t work.)
RE: xfire
many want bad boys, guys with bulging muscles (Henry Cavil, Hugh Jackman) or guys who can play guitar.
Guitar? Really? Fuck that shit man, I’m all about the double reeds. BASSOON FOR LIFE. Also, bulging muscles? Cavil and Jackman? No way man, I want bulging muscles, I go to Gregory Kieth. That guy’s got bulging muscles.
Also, speaking as someone mostly ace — with the right person, it can be fantastic, but with the wrong person, it can be ungodly hellish awful. Celibacy is way better.
Bass players have more finger strength than guitar players AND a better sense of rhythm. I’m just saying.
RE: Cassandrakitty
And double reeds can do all sorts of stuff with their lips and tongue! 😀 We’re accustomed to the slightest change in embouchure making a big difference!
Not gonna lie, that was a selling point when I met Mr. HK.
Also less likely to spend the entire date talking about themselves than guitar players.
(Oh hey there, least favorite ex.)
Octo, totally agree. It reads to me like an attempt to pigeonhole behaviour, possibly from the same source as what cassandra described upthread – ace people talking about sexual people in a way that just didn’t sound familiar at all. My reaction to the term “demisexual”, apart from feeling like it’s a glass-half-empty term, is that it seems to assume that “sexual” means “jump into bed at any opportunity with anyone who takes your fancy”. And that, as you said, doesn’t seem to describe normal (as in, majority) sexual/romantic behaviour at all, to me.
And very little chance of a dude suffering from LSS, Lead Singer syndrome.