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.
@ WeirdWoodTreeHugger
about the mortality of cats, dogs and horses in old films – yes I do. And even grass: the vanished grass of a long forgotten summer filmed in black and white. (All flesh is grass).
@ Alan Robertshaw
I once drew a cartoon of a gruntle (a cross between a sad warthog and a moomin, if memory serves) with a reward offered for anyone who found and returned it. I was working at a more than usually depressing office in Dover, and it became a common office meme – instead of saying “Hi, how’s it going?” it would be “Hey, have you seen my gruntle?”
Plus – you rock. Just thought I’d mention it.
He lives in a fantasy world. There is literally nothing reality based in his rant.
Misogynists already kill us. If it hasn’t made us anything but pissed off yet, its not going to start scaring us back into the kitchen now.
His attempt to terrorize is noted. Ho hum.
These guys so badly want to convince some other man to murder and face the consequences in their place. That’s the mra version of helping men.
Sounds like a Malignant Narcissist. Dangerous.
@ banned
It’s true that the law could stop the distribution of pornography. Of course if you just sent it to people who didn’t object then there would be no complainant, so the police would be unlikely to get involved.
If you sent sex toys and contraceptives over an electronic communications system, the authorities would probably be distracted by the fact you had a working teleporter .
Jack Barnes seems to be the biggest loser amongst the MRAs. I wonder how the other losers at AVFM don’t realize that Jack does them more harm than good?
That a 30-something year old man has the time to write and plot such childish revenge fantasies speaks volumes.
All of this rage is just a reflection of his own misery. He is a small and pathetic man. He is not important. He knows that, but his cry for attention could lead other losers amongst his readers to do horrible things.
I hope someone keeps an eye on them and (if necessary) contacts the authorities.
@ bluecat
Ha, that’s brilliant. If people asked “what gruntle?” Did you point to your picture and say “dis gruntle”?
Moggie FTW!
@PI
I’m still catching up on this thread, so apologies if this was brought up before, but I take issue with this wording:
Intent doesn’t come into play when it comes to violence. If I didn’t mean to hit you with my car, it’s still violent. If I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, that doesn’t erase the hurt. It’s a sore subject for me because people walk all over my feelings all the time and then get angry at me for getting hurt by them. They think their intent should magically erase the hurt I feel, but it doesn’t. The things they said still hurt, and now I’m even more hurt that they only care about themselves and not about how they’ve hurt me. It’s like if I stepped on your foot and then got angry at you for still being in pain even though I apologized and explained I didn’t mean to step on your foot.
Sorry if this doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s early and this is a topic I have a hard time explaining for some reason.
Well, once a 3D printer can handle the base material, you could send the template electronically to someone who could then fabricate a functional sex toy. Pharmaceuticals are probably a bit further off.
I have it on good authority that the word is “prevenge.”
On a more serious note, there’s another big problem with restraining orders, which is that in America, at least, they don’t seem very effective at restraining people. I don’t see how they could, really, unless they came with strict (and very expensive) scrutiny. Someone planning a murder is already prepared to risk the penalty for murder, and thus it’s hard to see how the penalty for breaking an order would scare them off.
It’s more likely, of course, that it might deter someone from low-level harassment , but according to Gavin de Becker harassers respond to an restraining order with escalation as often as withdrawal.
Evidently I don’t know how to do fancy URLs on this board. “good authority” was meant to link to “Prevenge,” the song by They Might be Giants.
According to Merriam-Webster, “disgruntled” means “very gruntled,” just as “disheveled” means “very heveled.”
And how “disturbed” means “very turbed”
@ freemage
Can a 3D printer make another 3D printer? One of my alternative world domination plans calls for Von Neumann machines (the army of atomic powered super monkeys just isn’t working out; have you seen the cost of bananas these days!)
@ Orion
“Inflammable means flammable! What a country!”
ETA: big fan of De Becker, as you may have noticed from my constant recommendations for ‘ Gift of Fear’
Don’t make me bust out my retro-feudal post-singularity RPG, Alan. I’ll do it.
Kupo:
Your words are loud and clear. I think you mean to say,
“Intent is not magic”. A person’s intentions does not magically wipe away any harm that’s been caused by them.
History Nerd:
Since I like to connect the various ‘isms to one another, what this guy is engaging in is classic projection for the purposes of using it as an excuse for violence against a targeted group later.
It’ can be seen right now in the hysteria over Muslims and Mexicans being out to harm white people. Then the rhetoric becomes strike at them before they can hurt anybody.
It’s been the case for several decades in the media for black men in general, and right now with BLM, with people just outright lying about BLM being violent to white people and killing police. Notice how every time a cop gets shot now, the media tries to lay the blame at BLMs feet, even when the perpetrator has nothing at all to do with BLM.
It was used in the case of MLK, declaring him dangerous for the purposes of harassment, and in the case of the Black Panthers as an excuse to bomb them.
Claiming that a targeted group of people is violent is just lending justification to commit violence against them. It’s the excuse certain people need to act out on whatever “ism” they happen to espouse, and apparently this is a tactic that MRAs consider legitimate, knowing damn well there aren’t any feminists out there committing harm to men.
Also, him constantly saying “non-violent” or ” physical violence” is just him covering his ass. He wants violence to occur , he hopes it occurs, and is actually inciting violence, but wants to have his ass covered just in case it does. That way he can point to his remarks and say, “I said non-violence”.
@Alan
Currently most mechanical components are printable, but not electronics.
Bugger, monkeys it is then.
I’ll echo Catherine here. I was pushed towards feminism because guys like JB (why are there so many?) alarmed me to the misogyny men can project. I wish I could say it’s what lead me to my red pill moment but that analogy’s tarnished in MRA excrement.
Want to stop feminism without violence, Mr. Barnes? Stop threatening (or non-threatening, however it works in Jackanese) women online. In fact, tell your mates too. That’s just a first step but it will really help battle those pesky feminists.
I want to erase the concept too. I don’t want to be a feminist anymore, but because of people like you I have no choice.
I’m gonna be called a troll, but I have a serious interrogation:
How many of the guys who threaten women on the Internet actually act on those threats? I don’t mean if men hit women in general, we know it happens, but I’m wondering how serious these threats actually are. Because they look a lot like what I always got as a boy while playing online when I was still into gaming at the beginning of the Internet age. People would threaten to find others to hit them all the time, whether because the other guy was either too good or too bad, they would try to ridicule each other all the time as well. I once managed to get a dude who wanted to kick my ass to engage on a six-hour journey to nowhere just by saying I’d be waiting there.
What I’m getting at is that from my perspective, focusing on women being abused online is like feeding homeless as long as they are white: we all have the same issue but it seems more important to solve it for some specific people. Unless I am mistaken about how often these guys act on those claims, which is possible, but then I’d like to know.
Not discounting anyone’s experience or trolling, but I am genuinely curious about this. As a dude, getting abuse online while playing is more or less what I always experienced. I have the impression that what women call online misoginy is women getting abused like guys have been all the time online.
@ Orion
It says a lot about me that my first thoughts were “that’s the coolest rocket powered grenade launcher I’ve heard of!”; but I’m guessing you mean the D&D game thing.
This is only speculation, but I think there’s an explanation for why sites like AVFM are so extreme. The modern MRA movement started in the 1980’s during the height of the mainstream backlash against second wave feminism. The people recruited into the movement were middle class white guys in their twenties and thirties who didn’t like social conservatism.
Now many of the “old school” MRA’s have been getting into their late fifties and early sixties and society hasn’t exactly gone in the direction they want it to go. So they’ve decided to push for deeper and deeper radicalization in hopes they can make some change in society before they get too old to lead the movement. Plus, inciting controversy can increase the number of people who visit your blog.
Alan,
3.5 was arguably both.
@Orion I have to say I like Mindjammer 2nd Edition for a post singularity/transhuman take on things.
@ Orion
As to your serious point about effectiveness, in England ‘Restraining Order’ is generally just a colloquial term for a specific type of injunction.
Injunctions can come with an attached ‘power of arrest’.
If the injunction just stops someone from blocking your drive or an ex employee working for a commercial rival then you don’t need that. If they breach the injunction you just issue an application for a court hearing to determine whether there was a breach and if so, what should be the consequences.
But with a power of arrest the police can, as it suggests, arrest someone if there’s an alleged breach. You still have a court hearing as above, and the person may well be bailed pending that; but it does at least provide some interim safety.