Earlier today Jack Barnes, one of A Voice for Men’s most energetic attack dogs, popped into my Twitter mentions with a link to an AVFM post accusing me of … threatening Cassie Jaye, director of the upcoming documentary The Red Pill, in the open letter I wrote to her the other day.
The post, written by Jack Barnes with assistance from AVFM head boy Paul Elam, was filled with the incisive writing and clear thinking we have come to expect from that site. A sampling:
David Futrelle, publisher of the online supermarket tabloid We Hunted the Mammoth, appears to be suffering from enough stress to wilt a buttercup. ,,,
The Red Pill, filmmaker Cassie Jaye’s documentary on the MHRM and gender politics, appears to challenge his worldview, thus the crying and stained diapers.
Yes, it apparently took two people to come up with those oh-so-cutting insults.
Later in the post, Barnes and Elam described the flood of money that MRAs and Milo Yiannopoulos fans sent to Jaye with a rather peculiar metaphor:
Jaye’s fundraiser burst through the finish line like David Futrelle through the doors of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
When he was done with that last box of chicken tenders, he started typing – allegedly after wiping the grease from his fingers and chin with a napkin.
There’s more, lots more, but the real point of Barnes and Elam’s post was to smear me by declaring that I had threatened Jaye.
Oh, at first they danced around the accusation by phrasing it in the form of a question: “Did David Futrelle threaten Cassie Jaye?” They then declared it ” a threatoid … not an actual threat.”
But they followed this up by declaring flat-out that what I had written
is as clearly a threat as it is in the stereotypical mafia movie where the mobsters says, “Nice family. Be a shame if something happened to them.”
So what is this terrible threat they claim I made? The two quoted me as saying this:
I suspect you are doing far more damage to your reputation than you even know….I suspect, sadly, that you will ultimately learn this lesson yourself, the hard way.
You may notice that Barnes and Elam snipped out a bit in the middle there, as indicated by the ellipsis.
That’s because what I really wrote, in its full context, was this:
Against my better judgement, I continued to hold on to some kind of hope that you would live up to your reputation in the end.
And now, frankly, I feel like I’ve been played.
Unfortunately, it looks like you have been played too, much more spectacularly than I have. I suspect you are doing far more damage to your reputation than you even know.
One thing I have learned in five years of watching, and writing about, and dealing with, the Men’s Rights movement, is that if Paul Elam is happy about something, that thing is almost certainly terrible.
I suspect, sadly, that you will ultimately learn this lesson yourself, the hard way.
That’s right. My “threat” was that … she would eventually realize that when Paul Elam gets excited about something, that’s generally a very bad sign. Because Paul Elam is terrible.
I will stand by that assertion. Which is not, by any stretch of the imagination, actually a threat or even a “threatoid.”
Neither Jack Barnes nor Paul Elam are famous for their honesty, but this is pretty flagrant on their part. And they made a point of not linking to my post (or even an archive of it) in their post, presumably so no one would notice what they cut out of my quote.
There is an added irony here, as alluded to in my headline: My (false) accuser, Jack Barnes, himself threatens feminists all the time. Indeed, he has admitted plainly that he harasses and abuses them. Those are his words, not mine, and for once he is being honest here.
The Men's Rights Movement is about harassing women, hating women, hurting women and only harms mens real issues. pic.twitter.com/L3agciVA3j
— TakedownMRAs (@TakedownMRAs) January 28, 2015
And if that’s not direct enough for you, try this Tweet (archived here in case he deletes it).
https://twitter.com/Jackbarnesmra/status/623269403799482369
In this recent Tweet, he alludes to the vicious harassment inflicted upon feminist Youtuber Laughing Witch, and wonders if similar harassment could be brought down on two Twitter feminists he often tangles with:
MRAs stop at nothing to silence people exposing their little hate group. pic.twitter.com/fQCKfpCW3Y
— TakedownMRAs (@TakedownMRAs) October 27, 2015
Oh, but there’s more:
Any of my U.S. or Indian friends care to correct this ridiculous MRA? pic.twitter.com/JgactHLBRh
— TakedownMRAs (@TakedownMRAs) October 20, 2015
MRAs actually think like this. Like, for real. pic.twitter.com/xYyI4Gj1mP
— TakedownMRAs (@TakedownMRAs) October 30, 2015
But this Tweet, posted in response to a murderous shooting rampage carried out by an angry misogynist at a Louisiana theater, is perhaps the most chilling.
https://twitter.com/Jackbarnesmra/status/626838268173283328
Barnes actually took a lot of flak from other MRAs about that last tweet; he stood by it.
Cassie Jaye, if by chance you are reading this, take note: this is the real Men’s Rights Movement. Not what they tell you, all teary eyed, when your camera is rolling.
Funny that they used the word ‘Threatoid’. The original definition of a ‘factoid’ was something that was said or reported often enough to become believed to be true whether it was or not.
Maybe they think if they call it a threat often enough…
Freedom of speech is such a wonderful thing: The more the MRAs expose their real methods and “philosophy” the more people will turn away from them. It must be some sort of DIY….??
Feminism eliminated from India? Somebody better tell the Gulabi Gang.