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.
Wow, projection much.
I’ve known David for 40 years. The version of him that MRAs rail against bears no resemblance to him but looks an awful lot like like a collection of projected MRA attitudes and personality traits.
@Really wondering
It’s not just that it’s “over the top,” it’s that it’s completely misplaced. Of course it’s not unreasonable to be livid if something terrible happens to your child. But Barnes is trying to place blame on someone who had nothing to do with it. Not only that, Barnes and others are telling outright lies to justify placing blame on someone who had nothing to do with it.
David gave Barnes as much sympathy as he deserves already. And can you really blame David for not being very sympathetic toward a person who’s threatening him with violence over something he didn’t even do? “Or is the whole human race just an abstraction to you?”
Hi David, I usually don’t comment but I read every post and I really appreciate what you’re doing here. I hope you’re all right. Best wishes to you.
Cyberwulf, those last two sentences were over the line.
Don’t freaking do that, especially not now.
@Cyberwulf
Can’t fucking wait until you finally get banned.
Wow, the atmosphere here is really quite … ahem … toxic…
Shut the fuck up, troll.
I rest my case
You expected to be treated with silk gloves when you stumble in and make excuses for people who harass and threaten random people on Twitter? There’s nothing toxic about calling trolls out for being trolls. It’s actually cleansing. Go on, run back to Paulie and tell him how mean the Mammotheers were to you. Nobody gives a fuck.
Compared to where? The one commenter who said something inappropriate got scolded. Do you think that would happen on AFVM if someone said they wanted David to break his neck? And how about the gamergate sites that are full of anti-Semitic memes and slurs of every imaginable variety.
Seconding the shut the fuck up, troll.
Sorry to hear about what’s happening David. Thanks for keeping the service going and not letting this dipshit silence you, I appreciate it.
@Really wondering
You do realize David is probably asleep and can’t tend to it at the mo? Oh, of course you do.
Cyberwulf, I understand your anger, obviously, but I deleted your comment; it’s not helpful.
And thanks everyone for the support.
Really wondering, I’ve been doxed. It’s a shitty thing. I didn’t use the doxing as an excuse to threaten Paul Elam or Jack Barnes.
@mockingbird
“@autosoma @mrex – Ack, I didn’t mean my response to sound like an endorsement. I meant it more to call out his reasoning and to say, “Even if someone’s a complete asshat with whom we disagree on just about everything, that doesn’t mean that they’re abusive to their family and randomly calling CPS on people is never OK.”
Popping back in late to say that I was agreeing with you, and with auto. 🙂 The gotcha troll that suggested calling CPS deserved to be banned. Calling CPS *is* SWATing.
Sorry, but I don’t even much care about David and his reputation here. David’s an adult. The foster care system (and CPS) is already overtaxed, making a false call because we don’t like a father’s political views is putting real children at risk and gets my inner mama bear going. Not to mention any emotional damage to his daughter that could come from using CPS to harass a political opponent.
I don’t agree that calling the CPS is SWATing. SWATing is worse imo because there’s a fairly high chance you’ll get someone killed. CPS doesn’t charge in with guns drawn.
But yeah, I agree with everyone that calling CPS on Barnes would be a seriously shitty thing to do.
@sbel
It’s not literally SWATting but I think you could argue it’s in the same category of shitty things to do.
Has it dawned on anyone that the claims of having been doxxed/threatened” are bogus? Playing the victim is pretty much a regular feature among the “race realists.” They like it very much when we drop investigation of them and get caught up entertaining their flights of fancy instead. Or is it that arguing with them is some sort of addiction to drama? Stop it:) Stick to reporting, rather than participating.
@kfreed
I think many of us have had those suspicions. Initially I was almost certain Jack doxxed himself, but seeing how this thing has played out I’ve changed my mind. It’s almost certainly a 4chan or 8chan troll. We also seem to have reached a general consensus that it’s unnecessary to speculate on that particular topic. Whether this was a false flag operation or not doesn’t really make any difference. Doxxing is still bad and we should still condemn it.
@dhag,
You could argue that. I don’t agree, because SWATing has a much higher chance to kill someone.
Auntie Alias | November 11, 2015 at 10:34 pm
@Fruitloopsie
“It wasn’t stated quite as blatantly as that. I don’t remember the wording and I’m too weary to go looking for it. Sorry.”
Sorry for the late reply and don’t worry about it.
Lol, arguing with them implies we expect some level of actual discussion. We generally stick to pointing, laughing, and discussing amongst ourselves any legit issues raised (see above re: SWATing, calling CPS and whether it matters who dox’ed Barnes)