Today I’d like to share with you two quotations. One is from Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader whose legacy we honor today. The other is from someone who considers himself the leader of a human rights movement that follows in the footsteps of King.
The first quote:
Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
The second:
[Name redacted], I hope you are looking forward to our date. I certainly am. … [I]t is clear that you have gone to great lengths to keep your image off the internet.
Nice try.
Is that a threat? No, it is a promise. Big difference.
As we have been saying here for years, the time for collegial, polite discussion and negotiation with these piles of refuse is over. …
We have people working on securing her image. Meantime, $100.00 to the first person who gets us a clear image of her which we can verify. Something large and clear enough to be used as a feature image is preferred.
As you have probably gathered, the first quote comes from Dr. King. It’s from his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, in which he sets forth a powerful argument for the transformative power of nonviolence, which, as he notes, “nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.”
The second quote comes from Paul Elam of A Voice for Men. I’ve taken the liberty of redacting the name of his target.
Yes, this self-described “humanitarian” is launching yet another campaign of doxxing and intimidation aimed at an ideological enemy who just happens to be female. And once again, as he so notoriously did several years ago, Elam is offering a bounty for the personal information of one of his targets – in this case a clear photograph of her face.
It’s a strategy that draws not on the tactics of Martin Luther King but on those of his enemies – in particular the Ku Klux Klan, which in the 1960s posted “wanted posters” featuring the faces of civil rights activists, including King himself. Some of those whose faces appeared on these “wanted posters,” most famously King himself, were later murdered.
In more recent years, anti-abortion activists have posted similar “wanted posters” featuring the pictures and addresses of doctors who perform abortions – some of whom were themselves later murdered.
Now AVFM has taken up this classic technique of intimidation.
Last year, AVFM activists – including the site’s “activism director” Attila Vinczer — posted hundreds of wanted-style posters of feminist philosophy professor Adele Mercier on and around the campus of Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario. The year before, a Men’s Rights group in Edmonton closely associated with A Voice for Men put up similar posters targeting Lise Gotell, the chair of women’s and gender studies at the University of Alberta.
We can only assume that Elam has a similar campaign in mind for his latest target.
So what are Elam’s charges against this new woman to hate?
According to him, the woman, a professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, accused AVFM activist Sage Gerard (aka Victor Zen) of “demonstrat[ing] a desire to kill women” in a complaint she filed with the KSU administration.
Elam has posted the complaint on his website. Her name appears nowhere in the complaint, nor does anything about Gerard wanting to kill women.
[ Clarification: Elam has now posted a separate campus police report about an incident in which Gerard came to the office of the Interdisciplinary Studies department requesting to see the professor; the police report contains her name as well as notes from the officer saying that “she has seen the cartoons, videos and blogs online and believes Gerard demonstrates having violent fantasies about hurting and murdering women.” ]
This anonymous complaint, along with another complaint about Gerard, were evidently triggered by a video Gerard posted last year of a late-night “sticker run” he made on the KSU campus.
The video, which Gerard filmed and narrated on the fly, is more than a little creepy. In it, Gerard describes his preparations for his “activism” as if he were launching some sort of covert operation; at one point he talks about hiding his stickers in the sleeves of his jacket. As he heads out the door to start his stickering, he announces “let’s go fuck with people.”
Gerard clearly sees what he’s doing as a deliberately provocative act. He talks about putting AVFM stickers in places “where they cannot be ignored” and about his desires to “push the boundaries” by plastering them in places they’re really not supposed to be put – most notably in a women’s bathroom where, thankfully, no women were present.
Weirdly, given that he later posted the video on his YouTube channel, Gerard also took steps in the video to conceal his identity and cover his tracks, wiping his fingerprints off of some of the stickers after pasting them in a bathroom. Later, apparently wanting to look as much like a serial killer as possible, he dons latex gloves.
At one point, Gerard jokes about how he’d like to paste one of the stickers over the mouth of a feminist to shut her up.
His behavior in the video and in his interactions with others on campus, as well as his affiliation with AVFM, clearly rattled some on the KSU campus. The anonymous complainant to the KSU administration suggested that Gerard’s actions were creating a “hostile work environment” for some faculty and staff and making students fear for their safety.
Elam has posted the actual complaints, which, in what seems to be a pretty clear violation of privacy, were sent to Gerard with the identity of one of the accusers laid bare. Here’s the anonymous complaint that Elam has attributed to his current target:
Among other similar offenses by the same individual, a KSU student (Sage Gerard) posed as a custodian and entered the women’s bathrooms on campus, placing stickers intended to intimidate women. … Gerard’s behavior indicates contemplation of violence against women (he posts art depicting guns pointed at women’s symbols, as well as other violently anti-feminist themes). His behavior has created a hostile work environment for multiple KSU employees who do not only fear intimidation and harassment, but actual physical violence against themselves and their families. KSU students have also expressed real fears for their own physical safety on campus . . . I do not feel safe on this campus. As an advocate of women, I feel strongly that I am at real risk of becoming the target of violent retaliatory actions perpetrated by Sage Gerard and the organization sponsoring him, A Voice For Men.
Emphasis mine.
The KSU administration investigated these complaints, and concluded that Gerard was not responsible for creating a hostile work environment, and that his speech was protected under the first amendment. The complaints were dismissed; no charges against Gerard were even filed.
He was asked to stay out of women’s bathrooms in the future. And the KSU counsel who prepared the report also had this suggestion:
We do recommend that Mr. Gerard continue to refrain from further contact with the persons who made the hotline reports (or those who Mr. Gerard believes may have made them), to avoid any real or perceived retaliation. In addition, we recommend that Mr. Gerard refrain from further contact with the members of the Interdisciplinary Studies Department to avoid escalating the situation to the point that it becomes a hostile environment in the legal sense.
That’s right. Gerard wasn’t charged with anything. He faced no sanctions. He was simply asked not to contact those on campus he was making uncomfortable.
But apparently this “no contact” request is so offensive to Gerard and his AVFM comrades that they have decided to launch the very retaliation campaign that the KSU complainants were afraid of. Thus, once again, proving their critics have been right to label them a hate group in the first place.
AVFM’s new target joins a long list of women (and a few men) who have been doxxed and/or harassed in retaliation for their “crimes” against Paul Elam’s delicate sensibilities.
Elam started off this parade of harassment shortly after this site started by attempting to get a woman fired from her job at a women’s shelter for a comment she made here in which she wondered aloud if Elam had a criminal record.
Since then, Elam and his AVFM cronies have:
Started Register-Her, a fake “Offenders Registry” designed to vilify and intimidate women. (The site is now in the hands of AVFM defector John Hembling.)
Gleefully participated in the unending harassment of a Canadian feminist that one AVFM author dubbed “little red frothing fornication mouth,” for her crime of … arguing with some AVFM activists at a demonstration once. Unflattering images of “Big Red” at that demonstration have since been plastered all over the internet; she even has a page devoted to her on KnowYourMeme.
Launched a years-long harassment campaign against feminist writer Jessica Valenti. Starting with a 2011 post in which Elam himself attacked her as a “stupid, hateful bitch,” the hate campaign has moved on to labeling her a “child abuser,” posting her personal photos on AVFM without permission, putting her on Register-Her.com, and libeling her by making up inflammatory quotations and attributing them to her. (AVFM’s “social media director” and serial quote-fabricator Janet Bloomfield was evidently permabanned from Twitter for her persistent harassment of Valenti.)
Supported GamerGate’s harassment of cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian, with AVFM’s PR whiz Bloomfield doing her part by blatantly libeling her on Twitter.
Launched a campaign of vilification against a Chicago-area “mommy blogger” for writing that she felt uncomfortable with the idea of a male day care staffer taking young girls to the bathroom.
Along with an assortment of white supremacists and online assholes, joined in a hate campaign against a young woman wrongly accused of trashing applications from white guys as a staffer at a college admissions office. Elam declared the woman, by name, to be a “warped by ideology” with “deep seated prejudices that guided her unscrupulous actions.” The blog was a hoax, and the woman Elam so eagerly vilified had nothing to do with it.
Published an article falsely accusing a male feminist blogger of being a “confessed rapist,” because, as Elam puts it, “karma is a BITCH.” (AVFM’s defense? It was being “satirical.”)
Accused a former AVFM staffer, with no evidence, of absconding with money donated for a men’s shelter.
Attacked feminist and skeptic Rebecca Watson on numerous occasions, including a post from Elam in which he used the term “whore” several dozen times.
And of course AVFM has accused me of everything from starting Reddit’s terrible BeatingWomen subreddit to somehow faking my site’s traffic stats on Alexa. (AVFM has never even bothered to provide “evidence” for any of their various accusations against me, perhaps because none of them are even remotely true.) Elam has posted bizarre sexual fantasies involving me, called me a pervert, and publicly suggested that I kill myself. One of AVFMs most, er, enthusiastic activists once left me a creepy, threatening voicemail at 1:38 AM. And AVFM “activism director” Attila L. Vinczer has tried to dox me, with somewhat comic results.
This isn’t even close to an exhaustive list of AVFM’s assorted retaliatory campaigns against feminists and other critics.
AVFM has made it very clear to the world – through its actions and its rhetoric – that if someone starts putting up AVFM posters or stickers on your campus or in your neighborhood, you have every reason to worry.
AVFM is not a civil or human rights group by any stretch of the imagination. It is a hate group, plain and simple, less akin to Martin Luther King Jr. than it is to those who so stubbornly fought against him.
NOTE: Here is Sage Gerard’s (aka Victor Zen’s) video of his sticker “activism.” You can probably see why people found it a little unsettling.
I know, right? The wandering womb has made hallucinate news stories about anti-feminists harming women. Again. Drat.
44 today! (OK, last mention of my birthday as I’m sure you are bored hearing about it)
Here’s the thing about Martin Luther King: you read some of his work, and even though, as a white dude, I’m the problem, it’s clear, precise, and persuasive. It covers the bases, and then goes a little further and brings up things that I hadn’t thought about before. It talks about the issues of the day, and then it steps back and talks about the bigger picture, making connections. I learn things from reading someone like Dr. King.
Elam largely peddles the same bullshit about different targets. There’s no stepping back, there’s no bigger picture, there’s no ties to any kind of coherent philosophy. You don’t learn anything from Elam that isn’t already echoing in your own head, and he’s afraid to try and spell out why he’s upset because if he does so he has to confront the problem that it just doesn’t make coherent sense.
I can’t fully agree with that reasoning (partly because I have a rare name). Some names are much more common than others, and some names may be over-represented. Outing someone from their pseudonym isn’t doxxing but it can still be a damaging invasion of privacy, and, like in the example in the OP, it may be the most significant step in gathering information for credible threats, dead animals in the post, SWATting etc.
But I agree with the need for a distinction between doxxing and investigative journalism. At the moment, there’s too much room for false equivalence, such as Gators crying “but LW# doxxed a teen” when they mean “linked to an article about persistent Wikipedia pests”.
Haven’t caught up with comments, but 2 people in the UK were jailed for menacing a woman over Twitter.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/twitter-trolls-jailed-over-menacing-abuse-sent-to-feminist-campaigner-caroline-criadoperez-9082213.html
They only got 8 and 12 weeks in jail, but I reckon the threat of that would be enough to keep most people civil.
Menacing is a crime in the US according to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menacing but seems to hinge on a fear of imminent physical harm.
We’re all for free speech in England but we recognise there’s no public interest in being a knobhead.
If no one else will say I will, watching a new woman visitor use a word you’ve (just to be clear-crazy in this case) banned or whatever you call it..and even after she apologized repeatedly and tried to explain her error you fucking DOGPILE and multi paragraph lecture & shame her until she finally apologetically leaves PROMISING NEVER TO RETURN…As a longtime visitor to this site, with mental health problems myself let me say
You all in my opinion were really fucking jerks to that woman. Hope you’re happy.
Why is this shit okay? Meaning, it’s obviously not ok with women, but men don’t seem to give a fuck, so this piece of trash gets to do what he wants ’cause free speech and whatever.
Can you imagine if a woman was going around actively making men feel unsafe? Would that fly for even a nanosecond? Of course not. Men are people, duh. They should totally feel safe in the environments in which they live, work, and study! But women? Those sub-creature things? Who fucking cares? Not anyone, that’s who.
@talbotfish: Are you sure you read the thread in the right order?
Newt, tallbotfish can’t have done so!
One abides by the community rules, doesn’t continue to flout them despite gentle reminders and then flounce off, trying to make others feel bad in the process unless one is A. a troll, or B. so clueless that they cannot get through the day without making countless others feel bad.
Seconding talbotfish’s comment. Kylag was really cool and she had some great things to say. Not happy she’s been driven off. Save the claws for the sealions, trolls and annoying repetitive fools.
Nothing happened to Gerard and yet they still feel the need to complain vociferously. Their overweening sense of entitlement, as ever, extraordinary.
Anyone who doxxes should be reported to the police. It is a wildly unpredictable type of harassment – could lead to some pathetic letters, or a full on murderous stalker – it is the virtual equivalent of arson.
Ellesar: it’s the same root attitude as their whole movement- they want to be able to do whatever they want whenever they want, not having to consider women as people worthy of basic respect (because putting others down makes them feel big) and when society and law stops them from that goal they have a meltdown. Not matter how slight the “offence”.
Sorry lads but there is no law or social custom that says you can get off scot free behaving any way you want. Are you sure you’re libertarians and not anarchists?
I’d better expand on why I disagree with that summary, then: I thought kylagb was doing OK and would have worked it out after a couple more posts… and then the flounce was quite a surprise, apparently down to misreading a single comment. Only two people had responded by then. All the multi-paragraph posts happened after that – and even then, it was not so much “dogpiling” as regulars going “wait, what?”
I’m so tired of in-fighting, y’all.
Re: “Freeze Peach”
I thought free speech did not cover threats (and as many times as Elam pulls the “this is not a threat, IZ A PROMIZE” crap, any reasonable person would identify these articles as a threat) or any speech that would incite harm of another individual.
You know, the whole “your rights only extend as far as they don’t infringe on another’s rights” thing.
Again, I would be curious to know if Gerard could be held accountable for these articles for that reason–he had a direct hand in their creation, and the articles are pretty clearly a threat.
There was literally no piling on with kylagb. At all.
They used the word “crazy,” I said they shouldn’t. They said they could, I said it was a community standard. They said they felt stifled. Dawn explained how Dawn viewed the concept, and disagreed that it was stifling. Kylagb flounced.
That was it. From then on, anyone who wrote a comment about the situation was reacting to the sudden flounce. Reread the comments if you have to; everyone was extremely polite to Kylagb, but they decided for some reason that still escapes me that that they didn’t feel welcome anymore, possibly because of a very uncharitable reading of Dawn’s comment.
I don’t know where you get the idea that Kylagb was dog-piled, or that they were treated any differently from anyone else who uses the word “crazy” and has to be reminded not to.
FFS, there were a total of around 4 comments after Kylagb flounced referencing their final comment, and one was Dawn apologizing for the sentence that may have been misrepresented… How the hell does anyone read this and get the impression that Kyagb was “driven off?”
*grumble grumble grumble*
Watermelon Sugar, you ‘re right. Sage Gerard should be expelled. He is personally responsible for whatever Elam does. Also, why do the rest of the members of AVFM get a pass? It’s not just Elam. Without them paying him and egging him on this shite wouldn’t be happening. They seem to think it’s a game. They never give any thought to the emotional distress they are causing another human. They need to understand that they are putting themselves out there as responsible for Elam too.
I have no problem with identifying harassers and terrorists, especially as long as the judicial system has no interest in protesting people from them.
That is not for the purpose of targeting that person for harassment and terrorism. Yes, a sustained barrage of threats, slurs, lies, stalking, renege porn, late night phone calls and all the other tactics MRAs use and AVfM encourages makes doxxing a person part of a pattern of deliberate terrorism and abuse. This terrorism is happening in the private, public and professional lives of people and it needs to stop. Angry white dudes are killing an awful lot of people right now for us to pretend that these threats of rape, stalking, abuse and murder should be brushed off as being just what happens on the the internet.
Let’s just address the elephant in the room.
Rapists, murderers, tranphobics, racists, homophobics and abusers have internet access too. The things they could once only do to a few people, usually feeeemales in a lifetime, they now have the opportunity to build a community of other abusive, stupid, bigoted, lying pieces of shit and they have jumped at that opportunity. They hope what Twitter did for the Arab Spring, it can do for them. They use Facebook. They use email. They use Reddit, etc to get their rage jollies out.
It isn’t that the internet is different. This is how the whole world works for women and minorities. Other people are being confronted with it now and their denial of the problem is unacceptable.
It isn’t that AVfM may purposefully cause the terrorism of women and their allies irl one day. They’ve done it. This is the real world. These are real people being threatened.
And holy fucknuts! Are you serious? A grown man was dressed as a janitor, slapping what may as well been swastikas on the wall of a school bathroom for women while fantasizing about physically assaulting a woman for screaming if she saw what he was doing.
He has had no charges brought against him? What the everloving fuck is wrong with people?
Elam is calling for the head of any women this horrorshow may have scared the shit out of?
He’s livid and calling for repercussions because a woman or women complained about this. Women who presumably pay to attend that school or work there?
With the prevalence of campus rapes being what it is?
With AVfM frequently demonizing rape victims and encouraging men to think of them as less than human evil sluts that deserve punishing?
Really?
talbotfish,
I am.Thank you for your kind wishes.
We don’t do ablism here. Feel however you like about that. Thanks for commenting. Thanks ever so for leaving.
You gravedance so prettily.
Yet again I have stuck my foot in my mouth on something I didn’t fully grasp.
Apologies.
Can these guys also please pick one or the other?
They are either a serious movement with many organized supporters who actively and reliably provide them funding, popular with enraged misogynists everywhere whose ideals are on the verge of changing the world or they are just some guys who like, write some satire sometimes and totally wish people would stop bullying them because they are the real victims and aren’t REALLY involved with all of their more “passionate” (read as threatening and fucking scary) supporters etc.
Elam supports a man this dangerous entering women’s bathrooms and enacting some sort of violent fantasy about cornering an uppity women in a bathroom and …shit this is too sick to even.*
Elam cannot feign credibility with anyone. Surely only the most depraved and hateful people could support this kind of behavior?
TRIGGER WARNING VIOLENCE
*Jesus, that sounds like the kind of thing a guy does before he staples your scalp to a mannequin. Can you imagine your daughter going to that school?
Around here is is common for women to conceal and carry and I hate guns. Hate them. Still, I understand why nurses, servers and students who are women would want to carry them. This is why.
Men like Elam know it. They don’t really think rape, murder and abuse of women isn’t happening. They just wish it happened more and that women were helpless to stop it. They like that we carry pepper spray and watch our drinks when we’re out. They like that we don’t always feel safe walking alone, especially at night. They get off on the fear. Elam has it made. He can sit his ass behind a keyboard and goad other men into sending him more sick shit to put in his spank bank. He’s an abusive asshole who is making technology work for him.
Next article in the “series” is up. Paul has a direct call to stalking now:
“KSU students, if you happen to see [name redacted] out in public, grab a quick shot on your phone and send it over.”
Surely that crosses a line, right? Like a legally actionable one? It’s not just flowery threats of “spanking” or whatever.