Jack Barnes, a volatile American Men’s Rights activist known for his harassment of feminists on Twitter, is now threatening to unleash a new offensive designed “to strike fear in the hearts of feminists.” In a post on Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men bristling with violent language, Barnes declares that
we have our hands on the throat of feminism. This isn’t the time to ease up. This is the time to squeeze harder.
The ostensible subject of Barnes’ post is a several-weeks-old piece on News.Com.Au by Australian writer Kerri Sackville about a road-raging, red-Jag-driving man who shouted “slut” at her when she honked at him for blocking the road. Barnes adds to the abuse, declaring her a crazy, misogynist (!) “cunt.”
The real source of Barnes’ fury at Sackville is a campaign she launched last December to “name and shame” men who sent abusive and threatening messages to women online using their real names.
And that’s what leads Barnes to what he says is the real “point of this article,” a declaration of virtual war against “Sackville and her fellow feminazis.” He writes:
Here is what we do. We make it hurt. If they want to continue to do this then we make them regret it. They need to learn that their are consequences for doing this. They need to learn that we will extract a pound of flesh, figuratively speaking. They need to learn to fear retribution from us.
Barnes claims that this “retribution” won’t include physical violence, but he doesn’t specify exactly what it will include, merely suggesting that he will soon have the “tools” necessary “to strike fear in the hearts of feminists.” And by soon he means next month.
We won’t use violence. We don’t need to use violence. How do we make these feminists think twice before going all Gestapo on any guy who has the balls to call out feminism or individual feminists on their FemKKK behavior? Well I can’t tell you that right now. Lets just say a plan is in place and being brought into fruition as we speak. Expect it to be revealed before the end of February provided that everything goes according to plan.
Barnes then launches a preemptive strike on any even slightly ethical MRAs who might be “wringing their hand” [sic] over his mysterious threats, bluntly informing them that “this fight is about to get dirty. Deal with it.”
Barnes — using a rhetorical switcheroo common amongst MRAs — frames his threatened offensive as a defensive move. Feminism is dying, he asserts, and like many dying beasts it is lashing out against its enemies in a desperate frenzy. He predicts that
feminists will become increasingly more vicious. … MHRAs with lives ruined, imprisoned and dead is not outside the realm of possibility.
As he sees it, not just Sackville and her fellow Australian ally, writer Clementine Ford, but all “public faces of feminism” are fair game for “retribution” for whatever offenses he’s decided they’re guilty of.
You don’t get a warning. You all have engaged in this despicable behavior. You will receive consequences. Go ahead and whine and cry about the horrible MRAs threatening you. We don’t care. This isn’t a threat. This is a statement of fact. We will not use violence. But we will make you hesitate to ever do these things again.
Barnes apparently believes in some sort of collective guilt, making clear that he will hold prominent feminists “responsible” not only for their own alleged crimes, as he defines them, but for the behavior of what he calls their “mindless minions.”
This is not the first time Barnes has announced his desire to harass feminists into silence. Usually he remembers to put the word “harass” in quotes, as if this will be enough to transform harassment into something that doesn’t sound quite so bad.
Usually, but not always:
Nor is this the first time that Barnes has issued threats that he insists aren’t really threats.
Indeed, I myself have been the recipient of some of these non-threat threats. Last November, after someone doxxed him and his family, Barnes decided that I needed to be held “responsible” for the doxxer’s actions, even though I had nothing to do with that person or persons, didn’t know who they were, and didn’t even know about the doxxing until I learned about it from a video by AVFM head honcho Paul Elam a day or two later.
I made it clear I knew nothing about the doxxing or the doxxer (who later ended up doxxing me). I condemned the doxxing, publicly and repeatedly. It didn’t matter: Barnes declared the doxxer to be a “cult follower” of mine, so anything they did was somehow my fault.
“I promise you David,” he wrote in an AVFM post, “that for the rest of your life there will be nights you cry yourself to sleep in anger and frustration over me.”
Indeed, he wrote, if anything happened to his family as a result of the doxxing, he would literally show up on my doorstep for
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’ve “done” is to condemn the doxxing that Barnes blames for putting his family at risk.
Barnes is hardly the only AVFMer who believes in this sort of guilt-by-non-association; assorted others rallied behind him on Twitter, repeating his accusations and defending his threats. The title of Elam’s video on the doxxing declared bluntly that I was “Trying to Get MHRAs Killed.” How? By writing critically about AVFM.
Elam’s bizarre inflation of my carefully documented criticism of MRAs into an attempt to literally “get MHRAs killed” is not only jarring; it’s ominous. By pretending that the writings of feminists leave MRAs, quite literally, in mortal peril, Elam, Barnes and others associated with AVFM can justify almost any actions they might take against feminists, no matter how sleazy or underhanded or even violent, as a form of self-defense.
Abusers who think — or simply pretend — that they are the victims are some of the most dangerous people in the world.
Sarah Palin says Track Palin punched his girlfriend in the face and threatened suicide while holding a gun because he has PTSD and because Obama doesn’t respect vets.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-21/feminazi-label-and-threats-do-not-faze-kerri-sackville/7103880
Sucked in Jack.
Yeah, I’m not expecting new tricks because the reason they keep recycling their bag of old tricks ad nauseum is that they only have so many tricks.
Although I’m sure that somewhere there is an MRA going blue in the face while holding his breath to see what brilliant new secret non-violent silencer Jack Barnes has been shining in his garage.
@Kat,
Agreed! Conscious attentiveness and willpower aren’t enough to make a good character, but they’re certainly important parts.
No, it’s a component of the thalamus. It’s a spooky little pea. It’s my professional opinion that it’s full of tiny ghosts. Best to not talk about it, or you might get haunted.
(It’s related to the basic concepts of consciousness and awareness – the difference between being asleep and being sedated by a general anesthetic is activity in the central medial nucleus of the thalamus. Amongst other things, of course! But our state of conscious awareness is very much entangled with the CMN)
Oh man. I just looked back over my posts and some of them were just riddled with missing words and run on sentences. Oh well.
I just want to pop back in to say
This ^^^
I was remembering just now a chant my friend and I made up as middle school aged kids. It went like this
When you see a pervert
There are many perverts
When you encounter a pervert
First scream, then run
Yell “rape!” as loud as you can!
In some ways, it’s a funny memory. We would skip down the streets in our neighborhood, singing this all the time. But, it’s also an incredibly sad memory. Pre-teen kids shouldn’t have the sense that there are many perverts out there we need fear. But we did. There was the neighbor man that would make lewd comments to the women in the neighborhood, was caught looking in my other neighbor’s windows with a telescope, and would frequently offer us girls candy and soda if we came in to his house for a visit (we always said no). There was the man we called 911 on multiple times because he was taking pictures of young girls in their swimsuits at the nearby beach. There were the catcallers we witnessed other women and girls getting and were starting to get ourselves. On and on and on.
Women often learn very young to spot the red flags in men. We understand at a very early age that we’re bound to be harassed just for being female. This is why it’s a real rage trigger with me when some guy wafts in here, or other places where misogynistic harassment is being discussed to question how sure we are that gendered abuse is really an issue. Fuck. That.
Word.
@dhag85
I”m finding it interesting how the Maxes of the world attempt to control the conversations they’re engaged in. ‘You’re nice, you’re helpful, you interact with me in the way I want to be interacted with, you should speak more.’ ‘You’re mean, you’re not helpful, you interact with me in a way that doesn’t give me the feelings I want to have in this situation, you should speak less/stop speaking.’ I’ve occasionally seen this in class discussions, and I use a variant to chair difficult meetings. But I can’t see how it could be effective in something like blog comments, since anyone can post whatever they want whenever they feel like it; they’re not competing for space. I’m realising that when in a story I wrote a male character does this it seemed ‘off’ to a reader, and now I think I know why–it’s the kind of thing that would really only be expected to work on women, who are supposed to care if we’re ‘nice’ or ‘mean’, so it’s not something you’d typically run into at all, only when a man is engaging multiple women or presumed-women, on a feminist website or in the occasional class discussion.
Oh, I missed the troll, too (sleep and Ikea construction).
I just want to add that during lurking and commenting here I’ve often thought at the beginning that some regulars were too quick to brand someone as a troll, but every. single. time. it turned out to be true. The few instances where someone reacted a little annoyed at the way a new comment was formulated and it turned out not to be a troll, the commenter in question quickly apologized and/or let the issue be, returning in other threads as a normal participant. So, wwth, I’ve learned to trust your (and others) trolldar.
Also, while Max’ ESL tactic is obvious to all, I felt I should have a look in my Robert (French version of OED), because in my (slightly rusted) experience with French, people use “demander” instead of “interroger”. So I give you the full quote from the Micro Robert:
So, yeah.
@guest
Good point. That tactic is a huge red flag to me, but I haven’t thought about how this is something usually used against women. (Aah, the trappings of privilege…)
I have zero troll spotting ability, combined with guys being confused about women brings out all of my maternal instincts. (So do kitties and doggies, baby people, not so much)
re books about critical thinking, aimed at everybody including (very) young people – Stephen Law has written 3 or 4 which are pretty good; the first one is called The Philosophy Gym iirc. He also wrote Believing Bullshit, which is more aimed at adults, and is perfect for analysing logical fallacies (and the tactics of snake-oil salespeople, evangelists, bigots, political trumpery and trolls).
I did acknowledge them in fact I have thanked them several times. You see what you want to see, so whatever.
Yeah, generally people don’t really like it when you’re an ass to them. Freja gave me answers that contradicted what I thought, but they were answers. If you seriously consider that people should take it upon themselves not to react when you are a dick to them, you are insane.
That definition basically confirms what I was saying. When somebody says “Je m’interroge sur…” or “On peut s’interroger au sujet de…”, it doesn’t mean they are interrogating themselves in the english sense of the word.
That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy as well: you antagonize people whom you think are trolls, if they get defensive you see this reaction as proof of what you thought straight away, if they don’t, you continue until they do. WWTH behaved like a little shit, while kupo and Hippo-something were trying to get in as well for attention.
I guess I’ve learned two things from this:
-Misogyny is specific in its causes.
-There are insane little shits even in the good fights.
And for the few posters who will say that by saying that I confirm that I was a troll, well, at some point, you just stop being nice when people in front are crazy assholes.
I have no clue what happened to people like WWTH in their life, but I can tell they deserved every bit of it.
Still breaking comment policy. You still didn’t bother to read the policy, and you’re still being an ass to regular commenters. Tell me again how you’re not a blatant troll.
-_-
Telling people they deserve to have bad things happen to them is very much a bannable offense. So is continuing to use ableist slurs despite being told to stop several times. How fucking stupid are you?
I have read the policy, I’m doing it on purpose. If I’m going to be lambasted anyway, I’d rather do that.
People tend to get nasty when you’re nasty with them. Next time, I’ll tell you how you can avoid being wet by not going into water.
Cool, you’re upset with a person on the internet so therefore you’re justified in taking your frustrations out on all mentally ill people. And then you wonder why people don’t like you.
Keep trying dhag85, you’re fighting the good fight.
Come back on earth, there’s 5 people watching us.
Add to the list: purposeful misunderstanding/refusal to understand other people’s points. Trolls are supposed to be entertaining, damnit. This is so 101.
Can’t even understand what he’s trying to say anymore. I’ll email David tonight if the troll hasn’t already been banned by then.
I do love how he’s admitted to breaking the comment policy on purpose, yet somehow he’s not a troll. 🙂
@ scildfreja
I dig the psych insight. I thought your interpretation of the name “fundamental attribution error” was very interesting… did you know that the name is controversial in social psych? Many insist on calling the effect “correspondence bias” because it does not assume an error in perception has occurred.
every. single. time.
Funny how the troll tries to put that down to a self-fulfilling prophecy and in the same breath proves my point.
Met with a little annoyance, Max, you have a few choices: you can a) politely apologize (even if you don’t think you did something wrong), b) let it go and just engage with the people who answered your question in the way that you seem to have expected, or c) let it go entirely and don’t engage with anyone because they are meanie mean to you (just by questioning whether you’re here in good faith, which you, in your first comment, had yourself seen as a possible reaction).
You chose instead option d) continually whining about the one person who was meanie mean, trying to put a wedge between “the good ones” and “the bad one(s)”, and then escalated that to option e) insult and antagonize everybody, whine how mean they were to you, consciously violate comments policy and monopolize the thread with constant repeats of “All lives matter”, “I was just asking” and “I didn’t say/mean that”, as if we can’t scroll back and read your original comments.
As I said, there are many examples of people choosing the first two options, but that is usually cleared up in the first comment after somebody questioned whether they are here in good faith. Your next comment, however, pointed the way downhill to the messy whining that followed. Do you not realize that nearly all the people who answered you earnestly have now changed their minds and agree with us that you’re a troll?
I’m disappointed in Max. It took fewer than 24 hours for him to melt down.
I’m pretty sure him wishing bad things would happen to me was meant to upset me. Especially since my last comment was about how by middle school, my friends and I already knew that to be female meant to face gendered harassment and abuse. I think he was trying to insinuate that I was molested and he’s glad about it.
Really, I just laughed at him though. I actually find it much creepier that he’s now fixated on Freja, and Freja only as the good commenter even though several people were perfectly nice to him.
It’s kind of amazing how men on the internet can so frequently go from zero to raging Hulk smash when challenged by someone who is self identifying as or perceived to be a woman. Remember the masculinity so fragile Twitter hashtag? I guess it’s so fragile that some men’s masculinity is threatened by opinionated women disagreeing with him even with internet anonymity protecting them from any reputation damage.
My trolldar was set off by “I’m not a troll, but…”. However, I let that one slide because something more concrete would have turned up soon enough. And it did.
The Blockquote Mammoth did not show such patience.
The fact that you used the wrong word confirms that you used the right word? That’s a bizarrely literal take on most MRAs’ “Words don’t mean things!” refrain.
Between the shtick, the 0-to-60 meltdown and a few of the phrases he’s used, I think this is Pell.
Max, if you’re deliberately breaking the comment policy, you’re essentially asking to be banned. I have granted that request.
Hello.
> Bernardo Soares
Well, there is a slight difference between the two : “interroger” is mainly for scholar questions or police questions.
A teacher to a class (as an example, a written exam is “une interrogation écrite”), a policeman to a suspect (this is called an “interrogatoire”), an interviewer to an interviewee, and so on. We could say that it is like asking with some formal code/frame/protocol. If you like programming, “interroger” is a subclass of “demander”.
Of course, there are some exceptions. To give a questioning glance is “interroger du regard”, and it is not formal. On the other hand, for self-reflection and introspection, it is mainly linked to the “importance of the question” : upon the meaning of life, we use “s’interroger”, and for the evening meal, we use “se demander”.
I am not sure to be very clear. I am sorry if i am not.
> Max
L’ignorance n’excuse rien. Plutôt que faire profil bas et t’excuser de ton erreur, tu oses ramener l’excuse du langage pour te plaindre d’une réponse qui t’as parue agressive. Tu es tellement égocentrique et imbu de toi-même que tu oses dire aux autres que c’est à eux de s’adapter à toi.
Ici, ce n’est pas un site pour s’éduquer ou poser des questions comme la première que tu as posée. Il y a des sites et des forums qui sont plus adaptés pour ça, et si tu avais réellement eu l’intention de t’interroger là dessus, tu te serais suffisament sorti les doigts du cul pour les trouver. A la place, tu viens sur un forum EN LANGUE ANGLAISE (alors que tu prétends que le Français est ta langue maternelle), qui précise bien dans son bandeau de tête qu’il n’est là que pour rire et se moquer de la misogynie sur le net, et tu poses une question sans rapport direct avec le sujet de l’article. Et en plus tu précises que tu vas sans doute être pris pour un troll, et qu’en tu es traité comme tel, tu viens chouiner, ce qui ne fait que confirmer que c’est le cas.
Bref, ta mauvaise foi est évidente, et ton comportement misérable.
—–
I do not know the equivalent expression in English, but here, we say “Il n’est pire sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre” (rough translation : “there is none so deaf as those who will not hear”), and “On ne saurait faire boire un âne qui n’a pas soif” (rough translation : “You can not force a donkey to drink if he is not thirsty”). The two have quite the same meaning, the second being a bit more caustic. All in all, both apply to both Barnes and his league, and Max and his trolls.
Have a nice day.