Jack Barnes, the notoriously hotheaded Men’s Rights Activist and longtime contributor to A Voice for Men, has escalated his attacks on me. In a post on AVFM, Barnes addressed me directly:
I’m a junkyard dog with no owner and no collar. …
Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you shouldn’t piss off a redheaded country boy from the backwoods of Tennessee? I promise you David that for the rest of your life there will be nights you cry yourself to sleep in anger and frustration over me.
In a followup post on TwitLonger, someone claiming to be Barnes — and it seems abundantly clear that it is in fact him — threatened to drive from Tennessee to Chicago to confront me in
a face to face in person discussion … No cops. No lawyers or prosecutors. No judges. No jury. No hiding behind a computer. Just me and you. …
I don’t know of any parent that would blame me for stomping a mud hole in your fucking ass and walking that motherfucker dry for what you have done!
What I have done is, in fact, nothing — nothing beyond letting the world know of some of the disturbing things Barnes has posted online.
But as Barnes sees it, I am responsible for putting his family in danger. How? Well, not long ago, someone apparently doxed Barnes, posting personal information about Barnes and his family on Twitter.
Of course, I had nothing to do with the doxing and only learned about it later from an AVFM video. I don’t know who did it, and I have publicly condemned it several times.
I will condemn it again, right here: the doxing of Jack Barnes and his family was wrong and a deeply shitty thing to do; whoever did it is a shithead and no friend of mine.
But Barnes is convinced one of my “cult followers” did the deed and bluntly warns me that ” I hold you personally responsible for this occurring.”
Even though I did not dox him, don’t know who doxed him, did not tell anyone to dox him, and have publicly denounced doxing in general and the doxing of Barnes and his family specifically.
The TwitLonger post declares:
You have crossed a line David. This is no longer about the MHRM vs feminism. This is no longer about AVFM, which I have no affiliation with, and your website. This is no longer about Paul Elam publisher of AVFM vs you as publisher of your website. You have made this personal. This is now about me vs you.
I don’t care that your little cult follower doxxed me. But when he/she doxxed my wife and little girl it became personal.
The author of the TwitLonger post, almost certainly Barnes himself, says that he will only come to Chicago for the promised “face to face in person discussion” if his family members come to harm.
But I do not have the luxury of seeing the threats as conditional ones. There are no conditions listed when he writes:
I don’t know of any parent that would blame me for stomping a mud hole in your fucking ass and walking that motherfucker dry for what you have done! Hell, I bet even Gondi would be like “he did what to you family? Fuck him up!
He is not saying that he would only be justified in “stomping a mud hole in [my] fucking ass” if something were to happen to his family; he is saying he is justified in doing so now.
Because some person who is not me, and who is unknown to me, did something I only found out about later and that I have publicly denounced.
And a possible “stomping” is not all I have to worry about: in his AVFM post, Barnes made sure I know that he
live[s] in a state with more guns than people, where a side arm is as common as a cell phone and where it is legal for 10yr olds to hunt with high powered rifles and without adult supervision.
So I can only assume that if he ever decides to pay me an unwanted visit he will be armed.
The author of the TwitLonger post — almost certainly Barnes — declares that his obvious threats against me are not in fact threats but “simply a statement of fact.” I think any reasonable person reading these posts would see them as clear threats, and I am treating them as such.
And it is plainly obvious to me that Barnes intends to terrorize me into silence with his threats — as his “promise” on AVFM that “for the rest of your life there will be nights you cry yourself to sleep” thinking about him makes abundantly clear. His threats are consistent with the threatening language he uses against feminists online, particularly on Twitter, which are clearly intended to shut his opponents up. As he put it in one notorious Tweet
https://twitter.com/Jackbarnesmra/status/559761561028669440
Adding to the surreality of this all, Barnes and his allies at A Voice for Men are so committed to their bizarre caricature of me as some kind of cartoon supervillain that they not only blame me for things I haven’t done but for not doing things that I have done. In this case, their eyes seem to have blurred over when they’ve come across the things I’ve written condemning the doxing.
In his AVFM post, Barnes wrote that while other feminists had denounced the doxing,
there was one person who has remain eerily silent about all this. That person is David Futrelle. Seems odd since all of this doxxing was done to avenge him. There is not a peep from Futrelle about this on his site or on social media anywhere that I could find. As a parent I know my kid is up to no good when she is quiet. Wonder if the same goes for adults (assuming the word applies)?
In fact, I had condemned the doxing two days earlier in a post that Barnes has publicly acknowledged reading.
On Twitter, AVFM’s “Chief Public Relations Officer” Suzy McCarley did Barnes one better, somehow managing to miss my denunciation of the doxing in a Tweet of mine that she was literally quoting at the time, leading to this rather surrealistic exchange:
It is almost as if they are so committed to seeing me as a monster that they cannot handle it when reality defies their expectations.
Another longtime AVFM supporter, so-called “Honey Badger” Hannah Wallen, has added a decidely Kafkaesque series of Tweets to the Twitter dogpile, including one that puzzled me greatly until she explained her “logic” in more detail:
Reading "If you X, I'll Y" as "I'm gonna Y!" = admitting to planning X. What have you planned to do, doxing Dave? https://t.co/93hT4Dlsaj
— Hannah Wallen | Professional Smartass (@Oneiorosgrip) November 9, 2015
Eventually, I was able to understand that she was taking my concern over Barnes’ threats … as proof that I was planning to harm his family.
She explained her “logic” in a blog post I discovered later. Utterly ignoring my denunciations of the doxing, and of doxing in general, she declared that if i didn’t immediately “admit”that my worries about Barnes’ threats were “a completely irrational overreaction to being held responsible for the effects of his dishonest shit stirring on his followers” I was essentially admitting that I was planning some sort of attack on Barnes’ family:
[H]is current response indicates .. that he intends for harm to come Jack’s family as a result of his shit stirring, that he DOES encourage his readers to engage in this type of behavior, and that he DOES intend for one or more of his readers to respond to his writing by engaging in violence against HIS political opponents.
After all, “If X, then Y” only infers Y on the condition of X… so responding to “If you X, then I’ll Y” as if the individual has only stated “I’m going to Y” is an admission that you’ve planned on X happening.
This, I have to admit, is pretty ingenious. Kafka would be proud.
But just in case anyone thinks there is anything to Wallen’s sophistry: I do not support doxing in general, and have made this clear on numerous occasions. I did not, do not, will not support the doxing of Jack Barnes or his family, nor do I have the slightest idea who did it. I do not “intend … for harm to come [to] Jack’s family” or to him. (Indeed, I don’t even know where they live; not only did I have nothing to do with the doxing of Barnes and his family, I didn’t even know about it until after the doxing tweets were deleted.) I do not support violence against my political opponents.
All of this is obvious to anyone who actually reads what I write on this blog without their perceptions distorted by MRA-induced prejudice or preconceptions.
That said, I will not apologize for taking Barnes’ threats seriously.
Nor will I apologize for exposing misogynistic Men’s Rights activists to the light of day — not by “shit stirring” or engaging in Wallen-esque sophistry, but by quoting their own words and reporting their real deeds.
And when people harass and threaten me — whether that’s Barnes, those at AVFM who have aided and abetted his threats, or anyone else — I will take every legal step I feel is necessary for my safety and the safety of others.
This post is one of those steps.
Delphi_ote,
The only reference I’ve seen to internet detective was this from Brooked
Which would be in agreement with your position. Could you clarify what you’re referring to with internet detective squad?
Dhag,
Oh my. So they’re scouring our comments for proof that we’re pro-doxxing and/or swatting and a comment that got shot down by everyone was the best they could come up with? Sad!
To all you MRAs reading this, if Joe isn’t one of you playing gotcha troll, he is at least not a regular commenter. I don’t remember this person at all from any other thread. Sorry, guys. You’re not going to find behavior as bad as yours or worse on this site. Try as you might.
I’m actually being a hypocrite I shouldn’t say they’re falsely accusing, darn it with JB’s ableism and darn it about the blockquote mammoth.
Oh boy, I just read JB’s latest blog post about all this.
Talk about projection, she’s accusing David of playing the victim while making this whole shit storm about her and her ‘persecutors’.
So, David’s minions have been waging a campaign against her and the FBI is involved?
So she sent David emails and won’t hesitate to publish them? Well I for one can’t wait.
It’s possible that he got doxed by a feminist “sjw.” There are always a few shitty people in every movement, no matter how positive the movement/group is.
It’s also possible that he got doxed by a fellow mra pretending to be a “sjw,” or that he faked the whole thing.
I don’t think it’s really worth debating unless anyone has some evidence. No matter what actually happened, his comments about/against David are way out of line.
@sbel,
I can believe he got doxxed. What I also believe is that AVFM are using this as an excuse to scapegoat David and smear this blog and it’s readership, which is pretty darn cynical and opportunistic.
Unlike bvh, I see no point investigating this dox and that’s a bad road to take in general.
That said, I’m not going to pretend that I’m not skeptical about Barnes. People can be skeptical about Sarkeesian and anyone else, we’re going to have different rooting interests and people who we believe more.
This is a human reaction and not a terrible one.
Just don’t turn that skepticism as a reason to investigate or accuse Barnes of anything based on gut reaction. Barnes doesn’t have to answer strangers’ questions about the photo or ISP providers. I don’t know the truth about the dox and I won’t pretend to or claim to, that’s a reasonable moral stance in my mind.
I have no problem believing trolls attack anyone and trolls can presumably be sympathetic to any and every cause. I believe that Barnes can be harassed, I certainly believe pro-GG people were probably harassed because the whole thing was troll infested shit show.
JudgyB and others think that online harassment is fodder for PR spin that can be used to vilify their critics and gain impervious moral high ground. I believe they’re wrong and that strategy is fucking annoying.
I’ve been offline for a while and I haven’t caught up on this thread, but I know someone said something about calling CPS.
PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS. You don’t know anything about the family situation. Jut because Jack is an asshole to me doesn’t mean he’s a bad dad.
I imagine other commenters here have made this same point but I wanted to add my voice to that.
I actually feel really uncomfortable speculating at all on whether or not he actually got doxxed. Even if the victim is a confirmed Lying Liar who Lies, speculating on whether someone is telling the truth when they claim something bad happened (outside of situations where it’s necessary to determine the truth, eg, insurance claims) is just a kind of shitty thing to do.
Regardless of how much of a Lying Liar he is, this still reinforces the idea that victims need to prove themselves before the court of public opinion and that victims have to act a certain way in order to be credible.
Imagine if someone else was reading who had been doxxed/swatted. How do you think all the “He didn’t go to the police! He lied this other time!” stuff would come across to them?
yea the point is that feminism as an ideology doesnt support harassment. So if an “SJW” sends a rape threat as JB alleges, that is directly in conflict with the concept of social justice and feminism in particular, because feminism teaches consent. Id go so far as to say a major part of supporting social justice and equality is to oppose people using power and force to silence and harm others in general, so I dont see the Barnes doxxing, particularly as it threatned a female child specifically, as being in line with feminism. Its like blaming Columine on Marilyn Manson or taking the odd coincidence of many mass shooters liking Catcher in the Rye as a reason to threaten JD Salinger’s family or something, it just doesnt follow logically.
I’m pretty sure that the person who posted that about CPS is a troll trying to cause trouble; I’m deleting their comment and banning them.
Delphi_ote — other than perhaps disagreeing on the size of the problem, I agree with you. I’ve seen a handful of people say things like how he must be abusive, call CPS, or trying to google up info on him, all (by and large) told to knock that shit off. I’d prefer it not happen in the first place, for fucking sure, and openly claiming it’s likely a false flag really, REALLY rubs me wrong, but all in all it seems we’re staying above board morally. I guess what I’m saying here is that oh fuck yes are you right, but the people doing those things seem to be a thankfully tiny minority.
WWTH — I think the bit about an Internet detective square was in response to bvh’s speculation on the image the dox’er used, and their own attempts to find that image // images of him. Which, while really not fucking cool, was one person.
As for whether he was really dox’ed, who did it, whether his response changes those assumptions, etc — does it matter? What do we have to gain from doubting it? And what do we have to lose if we’re wrong? Personally, I’m sticking with fishy, but believing it happened and that it was someone not associated with WHTM, maybe a feminist, maybe another MRA, maybe someone who just doesn’t like him, doesn’t really matter who did it. And taking his apparent lack of police evolvement to mean it didn’t happen? Can we really please not go there? Whether there’s a right way to respond that proves the validity of it is really, really, not a thing for us to judge. But there’s certainly a wrong way, and it’s on display in all its ugly colors in the OP.
@sn0rkmaiden
Yeah, they’re behaving pretty badly. And they’re acting more delighted than concerned, so I can understand why some people think it must be fake.
Sorry bvh, I hadn’t seen brooked’s comment and didn’t mean to pile on.
– sn0rkmaiden
HER OWN mails attacking and accusing David will surely be damning evidence of HIS wrongdoings…. wait…. no they won’t 🙂
As for who did the doxxing. I don’t think we should state that it absolutely must be a false flag. It might be, but it might also be someone who identifies as a SJW or feminist who did it. Shitty people can be found everywhere, even on the side that’s NOT full of misogynist, neoreactionary douchebags.
David, I am so so sorry. I hope you to stay well. Actually, it took a surprisingly long while for you to start receiving open threats. I hope nothing else happens.
You are one awesome person and a great journalist too. Thank you for digging into so much shit for us through all of these years, the informations in this blog and the discussions in this comment section improved my life and solidified my ideas, they definitely made me the feminist I am today and keep improving me daily, as well as providing me with a steady stream of cat pics. Be well.
Another proud feminist here. I stand behind you, David. Those MRAs seems determined to expose their shitty methods…Stay safe. Would this be a matter for the police?
Agreed – no matter how much I may dislike and/or disagree with someone’s political or personal views, and even when they are raising children presumably with said views – this is absolutely not a valid reason to report them to CPS or whatever body holding similar authority that exists in their jurisdiction. Some guy on the internet being a dick with asshole opinions and jerkwad political views DOES NOT make assuming his family is in danger from him a legitimate concern whatsoever.
Also agreed – while I’ve stated that individuals should experience being shoe-less in a room with wall-to-wall lego flooring, it’s been my experience that ACTUAL wishes that a person be the victim of a violent act, be it implied or explicit are THOROUGHLY denounced by both David and WHTM commenters. This extends to the matter of doxxing and SWATting – those activities are NOT supported, endorsed, encouraged, or requested here. Anyone who indicates that they *might* do one or the other or both are called out and informed they will not be given refuge or safe quarter here.
David, be safe and you have my support.
Barnes and MRA/MGTOW/Redpillians/AVFM – wishing the continued safety of your family, even though I’m a feminist, who still thinks you’re a bunch of asshats.
“I’m not aware of a single MRA, even the crazy ones, who have doxed a CHILD.” – JB
Oh really. AVFM found a video of a pre-pubescent boy being sexually assaulted on LiveLeak, saved it on their own server, and published it without blurring out the boy’s face. I complained to several of them when I ran across them in comments sections and none of them gave a shit. In this case, the boy’s identity was unknown but it was still a vile thing to do. Their motive was to depict women as sexual predators so they could have a misogynist ragefest about it.
In another case, an AVFM staff member set up a site to dox a woman he’d been convicted of sexually assaulting. It publicized the names of her and her family, their address, had a family photo including her baby, with a Google map containing directions to her house. AVFM provided a link to that website in support. (I’m not going to name the guy. He left AVFM and AVFM has wiped nearly every mention of him off their site.)
You’re a liar, JB.
Delurking to post support for David. Be safe. This sucks. Email me if you want some free legal advice (although I am not licensed in Illinois, so I’d have to be general).
Credibility is relevant to all of this. If the statements being made by the parties were evidence being presented at a trial, the credibility of all of the witnesses would be subject to cross examination, testimony of other witnesses, and documentary proof.
Here, the credibility of Barnes and the other MRAs has routinely been proven to be, at best, questionable, at worst nonexistent. Numerous falsehoods abound in their writings just about this incident. In contrast, David has been consistent, truthful and credible, not just with respect to this episode but all others of the same ilk. If this were a trial, there’d be no contest given the string of falsities.
But the reputation for truthfulness of any source is always at issue in any attempt to separate truth from falsity. The truth of the matter is that the MRAs, including Jack Barnes, have a long, proven history of spreading lies, and this is important. We would be fools to believe their statements about anything given this track record. And trying to bully people into accepting their narratives about what did or did not happen is not the same thing as what happened to Anita or Zoe. Anita and Zoe showed proof of what happened to them. It was confirmed. They are proven truth-tellers. Their evidence would be sufficient to meet any standard of proof in a court of law.
I can’t separate the wheat from the chaff when I receive information from people known to lie repeatedly about everything. And I won’t be the fool that conflates my skepticism about what really happened with situations involving proven facts and credible sources. I don’t know whether Jack Barnes was actually doxxed. Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. If he was, that’s wrong. Nonetheless, looking at this situation should not be devoid of the common sense that should pervade every review of evidence. He’s a known liar. He’s less credible because of it. Not my fault. I don’t believe anything coming from him because of his history. And, I really resent people trying to act like such reasonable skepticism is the same thing as what happened to Anita, et. al. It’s not.
In short, I get to consider the source, just like any other fact finder. The source sucks.
Junkyard dogs?
[img]http://ak-hdl.buzzfed.com/static/2014-07/1/20/enhanced/webdr11/enhanced-buzz-13574-1404259479-56.jpg[/img]
Hey you guys, I share the thought that the people who are doubting it until it’s proved are doing the same that was done with Anita. It’s the exact same narrative. It’s natural that we all remain a bit skeptical, but please, keep this for yourself as it doesn’t even matter. And by all means, don’t go “calling him out” on “faking it” on Twitter or something like that. That’s horrible, don’t become that.
How fucking stupid do you have to be to start openly threatening people on the internet? “I’ll come to your house and by the way I have lots of guns.” Well done on using your real name Jacky boy. Enjoy the real legal consequences, you piece of shit.
David,
Sincerely hope that:
One: the threats are the typical internet BS that comes to nothing. Two: that you’re acting as if he’s showing up armed at your house tonight.
I so appreciate the work you do here. Holding the MRAs up to ridicule is the best way to dissipate their power.
And, yeah, doxxing is bad, no matter who is being doxxed. And, yeah, I’m a feminist.
Can’t believe I didn’t say this sooner but we are sorry that this is happening to you David and we are all right behind ya. Stay safe and strong. And also to the rest of the people who have dealt similar situations like this. Hugs sending to you all.
Here’s hoping this kind of foolishness doesn’t escalate, and that all people involved on both sides remain safe (both Mr Futrelle, and Mr Barnes). In case it needs to be said (yet again): the doxxing was morally wrong. It should not have been done. It was an invasion of Mr Barnes’ privacy, and as such an unkind, unethical act.
In case it also needs to be said (yet again): making threats of violence against another person, for whatever reason, is also morally and ethically wrong.
Oh, and I’m proud to say I consider myself a feminist. Have been for years. Intersectional feminist with strong Marxist leanings, to be precise – I’m interested in the sorts of systems of control the people who have power put in place in order to create and sustain this power dynamic. Including, it has to be said, co-opting the ambitions and hopes of people such as Mr Barnes and Ms McCarley, in order to create a layer of “shock troops” who will carry out the hard work of enforcing their systems, and thus be willing to fight tooth and nail in order to preserve a system which is not in their own best interests, and is, in fact, oppressing them.
(PS: I find the most annoying thing about sealions is the way they force you, by proxy, to turn into one of their kind, by requiring constant, personal re-iteration of the most bleedingly obvious points.)