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.
David, just want to give you all my best wishes.
You wade through a mound of mindboggling shit to report back to us, and I admire your courage, humour and lucidity in doing so.
Sometimes I can’t even read your posts, the subject matter is so horrifying. But it’s important and empowering to know just what is going on in the misogyno-sphere.
Problem is, as you have ably documented, there is virtually *no* appalling behaviour that someone out there won’t justify, excuse, or glorify.
Keep safe and may your kitties hug you.
This shit about “invoking Futrelle as a reason” to dox someone makes zero sense. You can’t invoke random people as the reason you’re doing something that the person would be opposed to. Well, you can, but the person you’re invoking is obviously not responsible for whatever stupid shit you decide to do.
nthing that we have no reason to believe Jack is being abusive to his family, other than the fact that he is abusive to strangers on the internet. He could be a very loving husband and father, and it just so happens that he takes his rage out on everybody else instead. The reason to get CPS involved is when there’s actual evidence of abuse.
Having said that, I obviously would be thoroughly unsurprised if he’s as much of a violent monster to his family as he is to others.
Just to add
a) I’m not “afraid to admit” I’m a feminist. I’m PROUD to PROCLAIM I’m a feminist.
and
b)
Kitten massage for you David, with purring:
On the bright side, this sort of thing makes it incredibly easy to recognize which people aren’t worth the time to attempt engaging in any sort of dialogue. The people who swallow this sort of story wholesale are the people who only like to shut down discussions and try talking at or over everyone else. In some ways it’s actually impossible to have a dialogue with them, because they’re so fundamentally unwilling to accept literally any opinion that doesn’t match up to their own.
Hi Dave. I know I don’t comment very often anymore, but I still come around. Thank you for facing this bullshit for all of us. What you do is a good, important thing.
As for Jack Barnes or any of his supporters reading this thread and looking for quotes to mine, I get the impression that you’re bullies who are used to getting away with what you do. But you might just want to consider taking this seriously. What you’ve done could already be considered a federal offense. No, seriously, look at subsection C. And no, neither “free speech” nor “I wasn’t really serious” are valid defenses. Your laughable attempts at veiling your threats might, but I certainly wouldn’t want to count on it.
No “face to face in person discussion”, but all the lawyers, prosecutors, judges and juries you could hope for. And every threat you publish – online, for millions to see – only makes it worse.
I believe that this whole thing has been handled inappropriately. David had many times stated that he is against doxing, it is written on many articles, who wants (“wants” is the key word here) to know David’s stance on doxing can easily read it, it’s out there.
As this is being said, the question should be: WHO THE FUCK CARES who doxed Jack Barnes?? Seriously? Who the fuck cares?
Jack Barnes is a hateful, threatening harasser that hardly deserve any sympathy from anyone. And someone that he harassed or threatened decided to dox him.
And that is not David’s problem or the problem of anybody except of Jack Barnes.
David has nothing to apologize for and nothing to confirm. It is not David’s problem that the cuckoos that quote him deliberately ignore the parts of his article in which he stated that he is against doxing.
It is not David’s problem that he deals with people with infantile capabilities when it comes to comprehension, thinking and honesty.
David should only make sure that he is safe and contact the authorities, because the threats of Jack Barnes should be taken seriously just like the ones from other rage-filled-mra maniacs with access to guns.
The rest of their “writing” should be ignored because sociopaths feed on attention, it acknowledges their pathetic existence, it gives them validity.
They deserve none of that. The same as creationists don’t deserve any attention because they start to think that the gibberish they spout has some validity.
Okay, I know it’s not the main focus of this piece, but I’d just like to address Hannah Wallen’s “logic” real quick. X implies Y only equates to false if X is true and Y is false. If X is false, Y can be either true or false. Saying that X implies Y is equivalent to Y implies X is fallacious.
I hope you (AND Jack) stay safe, I really hope the situation de-escalates in a peaceful and civil manner.
Now this is interesting. I’ve seen no actual proof that he was doxed, either, other than his own say-so. And that of other MRAs. All of whom are, collectively, so full of shit that their earwax is brown and smells like a manure pile. If he was in fact doxed, as he claims, where is the proof? And where is the proof of threats to his family? And where, above all, is the proof that David or any other feminist is responsible?
The more I think about it, the more this reeks of a propaganda offensive to me, and a very inept one at that.
I sympathise with anyone upset about potential harm of themselves, their family and loved ones. Absolutely. However, this attack on you is beyond surreal, completely horrifying and I hope you are tacking on the appropriate authorities to keep yourself safe.
How a person who advocates harassment of people not see how insane their point of view is, particularly as it pertains to themselves and the effects of harassment on people, is sanity threatening. Honestly.
Be vigilant. None of this is okay.
@ Denteavvelenato – If you know where to look, it might be useful to Dave for you to find and provide those comments on the Experience Project. If this is a pattern to Jack Barnes’s harassment, that could be important information for any legal case.
Nice try, trolly, but you, too, are so full of shit that your tear ducts are leaking raw sewage.
This is, as several commenters above have already pointed out, NOTHING like the situation with Thunderfart. And there is no evidence that anyone DID dox Jackass Barnes, or threaten his child, much less on behalf of WHTM. The only evidence we have is him and a bunch of other MRAs claiming so, and given their track record for truthiness, I choose to take all those claims with a truckload of road salt.
All this noise and hullabaloo they’re making is just to whip up terrorism against feminists. Yes, TERRORISM. Because if he’d REALLY been doxed and threatened, he’d be taking it to the police, not the fucking internets. And he’d be lying low, not mouthing off like the fucking idiot he is.
As for “getting irrational and aggressive when someone threatens their children”, there’s already ample proof that he is irrational and aggressive to begin with, and if he had any sense (which he doesn’t) he would leave his kid out of it. He’s just spoiling for a fight, and he isn’t going to get one. He’s trying to intimidate his critics into silence, and he isn’t going to get that, either.
Lastly, fuck off with that “rethink your platform, your audience, or both” shit. That, too, reeks of silencing, and that, too, ain’t gonna happen.
I guess what I’m really trying to say here is, FUCK OFF, YOU TROLL.
“Because if he’d REALLY been doxed and threatened, he’d be taking it to the police, not the fucking internets.”
No! No no no! This is the same bullshit people say to harassment and rape victims, and it is not okay. Anita and Zoey and Rebecca all had to deal with it. Victims do NOT have to go to the police for us to take their claims seriously. If anyone is being harassed or doxxed, we condemn it. Period.
IF anyone is being harassed or doxxed. IF is the operative word. There is no proof, only his claims. Why should I believe a word he says? As I’ve said before, he’s full of shit. How do we know that he’s not just another MRA-boy crying wolf? He is a stochastic terrorist.
IF it happened, I condemn it. But I have a right to expect proof first. His mere say-so is not proof. Got that?
Also, I deeply resent you of accusing me of acting the way people do toward rape victims. THAT is not okay.
And that said, I’m done here for today. Out.
Uhg. When people say shit like that it’s used as ammunition against David.
*Facepalm*
*Facepalm again*
@ColeYate you mean you haven’t heard of Gondi? The man who freed Indiana from Grate Burton? He was a big inspiration to Marten Luthier Qing.
This is one of the worst comparisons I’ve ever seen. Anita etc have a long history of being harassed, threatened and doxxed; Barnes has a long history of lying about being harassed, threatened and doxxed. Anita etc have provided literally millions of words’ worth of proof and provide more every day; Barnes’ proof boils down to “Uhh… Look over there! It’s Elvis! And he’s a feminist and he’s doxxing meee!” Anita etc went to the police and the media; Barnes went to Paul Elam. Anita etc are honest, forthright and blunt about what’s been happening; Barnes, well, read the article.
If he was doxxed, the person who did it should be fucking ashamed of themselves. But Barnes couldn’t tell the truth if he was dangled over a Lego pit. Saying that not believing him is like not believing Anita etc (or like not believing rape victims) just comes across as being really offensive to Anita etc (or to rape victims). It’s apples and vintage pogo sticks.
@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.”
I’ve known enough people with really awful views and who’ve even acted out those views in the public sphere but who were absolutely lovely otherwise or in specific other facets of their lives* to make any assumptions.
* Of course, as in the example I provided, it can help if you don’t know about their views.
Buuuuuut I guess I should have just written that.
It was early.
No coffee.
And to reiterate: If you call CPS on Barnes (or anyone) without damn good reason – and by that I mean “you’ve actually witnessed abuse or had it disclosed to you” – you’re being a piece of shit and I hope that there’s some law against wilfully false reports that can be applied in your jurisdiction.
False allegations are bullshit and never OK.
And if there’s someone out there who did dox Barnes or who is thinking about acting on doxxed info – especially against his family – back the fuck off.
mockingbird, my bad too, I was trying to agree with you calling out @joe and adding my two-penorth-worth to the call out to. I think anyone with half an eye would agree that attempting to escalate this is more than wrong.
Joining the chorus of support here. Stay strong and safe, Dave. Do what you must to protect yourself. I hope you are involving LE in this. Direct threats to your safety warrant it.