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.
@Dhag85
And when have I said that I thought it was normal? Or something that shouldn’t be changed?
If you’re not buying it, don’t bother. I’m not exactly gonna lose sleep over that.
So you’re not denying its existence altogether, you’re just questioning whether it’s really as bad as everyone says it is. Pretty much the same from our perspective.
Look, lots of people have patiently explained to you how this works, given you linked examples, and even suggested ways you can find out for yourself, but you just keep repeating “But is it really that bad?” The longer you do that, the less you sound like someone honest in search of answers.
For example here:
I never said you’ve said that. Stop fucking around.
Oh, joy, MRAs have progressed to literal terrorist threats.
@Max
Yes, as far as Anyone can tell, mysoginy generally leads to more violence than general abuse. Because general abuse tends to be more because the person doing the abusing is riding off the high of Anonymity to insult people without worry or repercussion.
Things like racism and sexism tend to draw much more specific, long term abuse that is fuels by actual hatred for that specific person. This driving hatred is generally a much bigger motivator for real world action than being an Ass because they find it funny.
I’m not sure I phrased any of that very well but I hoped it helped.
I am trying to get my head around the fact that this diatribe was sparked by a woman objecting to being called a ‘slut’, and then wanting to name and shame men who sent threatening and abusive messages.
How is it despicable behaviour to NOT want to be threatened and abused? To object to it, and feel that the perp should be held accountable? He gives NO instance of ‘feminists’ (ie any woman who speaks up for herself in any way ever) sending threatening and abusive messages. Now THAT is despicable behaviour, oh and what do you know, Barnes is advocating that fully.
‘Not violence’ is:
1) arse covering so he cannot be prosecuted for incitement;
2) clearly does cover anything non physical – and anyone who has been harassed knows that that leaves an abuser a hell of a lot of options.
But at least we know that this idiot is full of shit. Now that he and his family have NOT been threatened by feminists after the doxxing of a few months ago he needs to find something else to fuel his fury.
He really appears to be grasping at straws for this one.
“More seriously, where would you have me ask about that? On A Voice For Men?”
http://33.media.tumblr.com/a153261e649b51047077e33a86bceabf/tumblr_nqzxwbUavi1twtwhqo1_400.gif
No I’m questioning if it is the root of the abuse, or if it should be tackled in another way. You look like you’re looking for a fight, but you’re won’t be getting that from me.
@Josh
Thanks, so that would answer my question. It’s not something that is readily perceptible for me, so I’m interested in reading up on that. Got any good link or book?
Please read the comment policy before flinging around words like insane.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, intent doesn’t negate or even mitigate harm. You’re harming us with your words. Stop it.
@Leda
On the off-chance you didn’t get it, that was sarcasm.
Max is a derailleur. Wouldn’t put any more time into him. Ze avfm trolls are here.
@Leda:
My reference to AVFM. I’m asking here, because people know about misogyny here.
@Max,
You’re doing something called the Fundamental Attribution Error. Basic form of that error is “I behave the way I behave because I have reasons. They behave how they behave because of their nature.”
They don’t do horrible things because they have a horrible nature. They have reasons – bad reasons. Bad Upbringing. Impossible societal expectations. Past trauma. Insecurity or anxiety. These are expressed in numerous ways. Given our society’s default of “men are actors, women are objects,” this often expresses as misogyny.
Scientist Mode Activated : Assuming Direct Control
Others have addressed how different the outcomes can be for women – Orion to the rescue as always. As for whether there is a deeper pattern? There’s always a deeper pattern. You can always keep digging, until you’re talking about barrel neurons and neurotransmitter gradients. For any discussion, though, there’s one (or more) useful levels of granularity.
The basic argument of feminism is that societal expectations based on gender are damaging to society and to individuals, and in general they are more damaging to women than men. It proposes society be changed in some way to equalize gender roles and as much as possible reduce the damage done to everyone with a weight according to the harms currently inflicted. That’s why it’s called Feminism and not Equalism, because the amount of work needed is much greater for one gender than another.
For this level of discussion, talking about basic psychology is useful – sometimes. For doing the work of creating those changes and reducing those harms, though, it can be a distraction to auger into the psychology too deeply – it pulls focus from the actual issues that need fixing. Leave that sort of thing for the ponderous armchair discussions. They’re good to have! But if you introduce yourself with that argument, you’re going to have people assuming you’re just trying to discredit the idea of misogyny.
What does everyone else think about that? Am I totes wrong or just half wrong?
He can stomach it because he is not a human, he is a gang of cats in a suit. Pretty sure that was established somewhere.
(p.s. – I hate to nitpick, but it’s misogyny, not misoginy. Sorry 😀 )
@Max
Sadly no. I would suggest looking around the site for stuff directly related to online abuse, it really helps put things into perspective.
I recall hearing about a formal study on the different treatment of women vs men in gaming, but I don’t remember any name for it.
@Freja:
Thanks for your post, very very instructive. Definitely helped me put things into perspective, I’ll need to reflect on that and get more educated on these issues.
Yeah I realized that only a few posts ago. I was hoping it had gone unnoticed. 😀
@Josh
OK no worries, I’ll try to look it up.
That’s weird, Leda’s reply vanished. Fwiw, I laughed. 🙂
@Max,
Books? White papers? You speak my language. The following is from Simons, Rachel Noelle. “Addressing Gender-Based Harassment in Social Media: A Call to Action.” iConference 2015 Proceedings (2015). :
“This type of online harassment must be understood within the larger framework of gender-based discrimination and hatred, particularly against women (Nussbaum, 2010; Citron, 2014; Cross, 2014)”
Citron, D. K. (2014). Hate crimes in cyberspace. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Google books link.
Cross, K. A. (2014). Ethics for cyborgs: On real harassment in an “unreal” place. Web link.
” The U.S. Hate Crime Statistics Act officially includes gender as a protected category and has found that hate crimes motivated by gender bias more than doubled from 12% to 26% between 2004 and 2012 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2014).”
“Likewise, previous research indicates that women face a disproportionate amount of online harassment, simply due to their identity as women. Meyer and Cukier (2006) found that fake online accounts with feminine usernames incurred an average of 100 sexually explicit or threatening messages a day, while masculine names received only 3.7 messages”
“Working to Halt Online Abuse (2013) reports that women were the victims of 70% of the 4,025 cases that it handled between the years
2000 and 2013. Another survey found that only 6.3% of women had not experienced some form of online harassment (240 female respondents), compared to 12.8% of men (109 respondents) (National Centre for Cyberstalking Research, 2011).”
All of the above are from a single paragraph of that paper.
Interested to hear your opinion on the above quotes – the links are good, read’em, but just on the quotes above first.
@kupo
I got tired of seeing my name. 😛
http://33.media.tumblr.com/a153261e649b51047077e33a86bceabf/tumblr_nqzxwbUavi1twtwhqo1_400.gif
Can’t stop laughing 😀
http://i.imgur.com/mo3ivWg.gif
@Scildfreja
Well my opinion is the opinion any person should have: this is absolutely distressing. I had no idea it was that severe, even reading David’s blog. I guess seeing aggregated figures just speaks more to me than a thousand anecdotes. I need to get educated on that a lot more from what I can see.
Thanks for your patience, and Leda, if you still want links, it seems I have some now.
When people show you who they are, believe them. I have no reason to think someone who is being a misogynist and targeting women has some other cause. Why bother looking for a motive when the motive is already stated?
@ scildfreja
That’s an interesting statement. I’ll obviously defer to you because you’re a scientist (and I still can’t figure out heavier than air flight) but I find it surprising.
I’m sure there are people whose attitudes are a consequence of external factors, but I have come across people who seem to be just, well, shits. They hurt people because they can and they find it fun, or satisfactory in other ways. (ETA: or at least that’s how I interpreted it at the time)
I’m conscious that that’s just anecdotal, and most of the people I’ve met like that have been in the criminal justice system, so there’s a selection bias.
But does every nasty person have some actual reason for that lurking in the background?
If so there are obvious moral implications as to how we react to them, and perhaps it would affect the way we’d try to redress the problems they cause.
I’m not looking for an excuse to hate anyone (I don’t hate anyone anyway, no matter how horrible they are) but it’s a paradigm shift for me if it transpires there’s always an explanation (beyond general nastiness) for such behaviour.
I’m intrigued and you’re good at this. If you have time I’d love to hear more.
That’s what motivated my initial question as well, as it is also my experience. I guess there are different profiles, some people being abusive for the sake of it, and others being more determined to act in specific instances and not others.
Some people are abusive to anyone and everyone they can get away with being abusive towards. Others are abusive to specific groups. I’ve know both types and I’ve always felt the root cause was the same: they feel powerless for some reason and so they exert power over other(s). As for how it manufests, I think that’s mostly due to upbringing and their environment, which is why misogyny is a big deal in the US: because of all of the cultural messages around gender.