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A little over three years ago, a Canadian feminist with bright red hair confronted some Men’s Rights Activists outside of an event at the University of Toronto.
The woman, known as Chanty Binx, was trying to argue a point; they kept interrupting her; she raised her voice, told them to shut up, dropped the f-bomb. She was, as she admits, a bit rude to them — more than a bit, really. But being rude is not illegal, nor even uncommon, when people who disagree fundamentally encounter one another in person at a demonstration. Much worse things have happened at demonstrations.
The one thing different about this confrontation? It was caught on video, and uploaded to YouTube, at which point a vast army of the world’s worst people decided to do their best to make her life a living hell. Footage of her at the event was posted and reposted and spliced into countless antifeminist videos on YouTube; it’s been watched literally millions of views.
Binx was besieged with insults, misogynistic slurs, and grotesquely violent threats; her image was appropriated for who knows how many creepy memes. She was doxxed. “Artists” drew pictures of her engaging in sex acts. Think of any way a woman can be harassed and bullied online, and chances are it was done to her.
Binx has laid low for three years, hoping that this onslaught would pass. And, she says, the direct harassment had died down somewhat in recent months.
Now one of her haters has put her back in the spotlight again, and in a supremely creepy manner. Not long ago, you see, Binx stopped by a government-run liquor store in the Toronto area to pick up a bottle of wine. A seemingly friendly employee offered her help.
In fact, he claimed later, he had recognized her from the internet, and was hoping to hear her speak to make sure she really was who he thought she was.
After she left, he somehow accessed the store’s surveillance footage, took a screenshot of her visit to the store, and put it up on Facebook (without the blurs you see below):
No, liquor store creep, it hasn’t been two years. It’s been three. THREE YEARS of hateful, disgusting, privacy-invading harassment. Because THREE YEARS AGO a woman yelled at a couple of MRAs, and they filmed her doing it.
This time Binx has decided not to lay low. She spoke with CityNews about the latest twist in the internet war on her. The report is chilling, and well worth watching.
Feminist says LCBO privacy breach fuelled flood of online hate https://t.co/rrh0hvgfPx pic.twitter.com/W5I7nibXre
— CityNews Toronto (@CityNewsTO) June 30, 2016
“[I feel like] I’m being watched constantly,” she told CityNews. “No matter what I do, I’m under a monitor.”
Now that the CityNews segment has run, the hate campaign against her has predictably ramped up again. On YouTube, a video about the CityNews segment from “Rekt Feminist Videos” has racked up 47,000 views, and generated 1900 comments, since it was posted earlier today. Here are a few of those comments:
Several commenters “jokingly” discussed staking out the store she was filmed in.
I spent only a few minutes reading the comments; I’m sure there are many more along these lines in the 1900 posted so far.
The discussion took a similar turn on LiveLeak:
A Voice for Men, meanwhile, complained that CityNews had quoted threatening posts on its website in order to construct “yet another threat narrative” aimed at … MRAs. The comments to the AVFM post did not exactly reinforce the site’s claim that MRAs are the real victims here:
Naturally, Binx’s haters are mocking her for allegedly bringing this latest wave of harassment on herself by, well, speaking up about the vile harassment she was still getting, three years on, before she spoke up for herself.
This, from the CityNews segment, is some of what she was getting BEFORE she spoke up for herself. CONTENT WARNING: Rape, violent threats.
.
Apparently, as the haters see it, she has only two choices:
She can remain silent about the ongoing harassment, and pretty much everything else in the world, for the rest of her life.
Or she can risk getting “deservedly” beaten or raped or killed. For the “crime” of yelling at some MRAs once, three years ago.
But they’ve been threatening to do that anyway, without her saying a word to them for three years. Being silent hasn’t protected her from harassment or threats or someone literally posting surveillance footage of her that lets the world know where she lives.
I’m glad she’s speaking up and reclaiming her voice. She deserves all the support in the world for it.
If anyone here has good ideas on how to show this support, post them below. If anyone wants to explain how Binx really does deserve harassment, go to hell.
NOTE: I’ve been in contact with Binx and she is ok with me identifying her by that name; it’s all over the internet already.
@Mel
Fuckin hell, pal. There are gay misogynists. There are ace misogynists. There are misogynists with spouses and children. Biological children. From having sex. It cannot be this difficult
And even if it were this difficult, why does it matter? Ignoring the splash damage here, why is it so important for you that Bill is both straight and has never gotten any? Cos either you’re working an angle, or your normativity is showing. So, once again for the balcony, chill
Oh, and:
I’m both petty and sexless. Come at me
i’m not interested in trolling you. you don’t seem like a misogynist troll, so why would i come at you?
you might just be taking this too seriously. working an angle? you also might be a little paranoid.
also, i get the feeling everyone is assuming i’m a dude. i’m not a dude.
i belong to a forum for people with autism. most of the guys i have interacted with there that have issues with misogyny are sexless and it infuriates them. they tend to be the trolly ones, who go on and on about feminists and “women with high standards”. what i’m saying is, in my personal realm of experience the antifeminist trolls really are the sexless basement dwellers. i understand that not all trolls are of that same stereotype, but they are common enough and they are the ones i have interacted with the most.
i understand wanting to be good allies and stuff, but you guys might be a touch oversensitive. like, get off my dick.
@Mel
Gaslighting users?
We’re off to a pleasant start
Down the rabbit hole.
Anecdotes are trite.
Scapegoating fellow autists,
Some ally you are.
But but oogly Mel is a *menstruating* woman!
Mel, emphasizing the menstruating female thing actually ups the creepy factor, and it’s not helping that you’re missing the point about splash damage, shaming sexuality, fixation on genitals, etc
http://data.whicdn.com/images/42565438/large.gif
wtf is with this thread
I’m really confused? What is Mel’s point, especially in a thread that’s almost a year old? Making fun of trolls? Because we do that already. We don’t need Mels to do that for us.
@CleverForAGirl
Oh no the forces of menstruating vagina goo are starting to punish me for my transgressions! Forgive me gynoids of the Catdromeda!
@Handsome :Punkle Stan: Jack
Are we not trolling them to her standards? Like we mock, cite examples, long posts and olive branches, gif reactions, poetry, what else does she want? A musical? A new dish? Fireworks spelling out “you are a douchebag”?
It’s not okay to insult people in such a way that it creates splash damage. It’s cruel to non-target people, and completely unnecessary. When you are unnecessarily cruel to people who have not earned your ire, on this board, people are going to come down on you.
Misogynists do and say plenty of things that are mockable that don’t create splash damage. If you can’t focus on those things, then you are not going to be welcomed here.
We’re familiar with MGTOWs and incels here. The problem with these groups is not that they can’t get laid, it’s that they react to their lack of luck with partnered sex by going misogynist. Lots of people can’t get laid, or don’t want to get laid, and don’t hate women as a result – those people are not lesser than you.
You sound a lot like some past trolls we’ve had here, who pretend to be feminists in order to see if we will let some non-feminist language slide to try to trap us. If you’re not a troll, it’s time to ask yourself why you sound like one.
Mel, specifically, you sound like one of those misogynist trolls who are tediously insistent that women are only feminists, or lesbians (or, gasp! feminist lesbians) because they can’t get penis from a man.
Boring and wrong, as well as irrelevant, and an attack on an attribute that is not actually the problem.
‘ciswoma between 10 and 65’
65??? Christ, I hope not. (Just starting the process at 51, really hope it doesn’t last 14 years.)
@guest, I wanted to include potential outliers?
It usually starts in the mid 50s in my family.
I should just quit sleep
@Mel
And yet…
Nope, I’m taking this the exact right amount of serious, thanks a bunch
Lovely. By working an angle, I mean that you seem to be extra intent on pushing a specific narrative. Perhaps to shield queer sexists. Perhaps to other sexists? Perhaps to explain (by scapegoating) sexism. Doesn’t matter what. Point is, I do think you might be working an angle. That is, using the frustrated virgin trope for a personal or ideological purpose. Or it’s just you being heteronormative and unthinking. Also possible
Yes, you already said. But your womanhood (both senses of the word as you’re so eager to explain) means jack shit in this instance. Also, what did I say to you that was gendered? Lexically or otherwise. Legit curious about that
I’d ask the relevance of the autism bit. None of the rest of the comment mentions it again. Build up, no reminder, no payoff. Chekhov would be unimpressed
Sure. Here’s the thing tho. You don’t get to go from there to ‘this specific misogynist, by virtue of being a misogynist, must be sexually frustrated’. That’s just bad logic if nothing else
Come. At. Me!
ETA: wait, nevermind, I found it. I said ‘bruh’ at you. That is gendered. At this point, it’s more of a general exclamation, but it still defaults male. Bad assumption. My B
*yawn*
@Mel
Worst. April. Fools. Joke. Ever.
that’s hilarious. if you only knew me in person, you would know how funny that is. i am a feminist woman. my best friend is gay. i am a socialist and a pacifist. that you guys think i’m a misogynist troll is fascinating to me. i can’t believe that i gave that impression just by suggesting a guy who likes to troll a feminist ally website might be feeling angry at women because women won’t pay attention to him in real life, when i know so many men like this personally (unfortunately, being on a forum for autistic people with poor moderation means a lot of guys like that hang around and are hard to escape from.)
seriously, i think you are all a little oversensitive. i get that you are probably trolled a lot by anti-feminists losers, but that’s really not my intention. i’m going to stop commenting here now. have a good weekend, everyone!
Your intentions don’t matter. People explained to you what the issues with your comment were. You could have apologized or at least considered why the comment was a problem. You didn’t. You doubled, tripled, quadrupled down. You acted like a troll.
Also, speaking as someone with an autistic brother who is not a misogynistic jackass, I’m beyond tired of people blaming misogyny on autism. He is nothing like an internet troll.
@wwth
B-bu-but look how much virtue she’s signalling clearly we’re in the wrong to be cross with what she posted! /s
@Axe
Some vices are worth the wasted time.
@Mel
Hate to break it to you, but you’re not the one in a position to yawn here. You’re the one who’s been called out on trollish behavior and went on doubling down like no tomorrow instead of, y’know, acknowledging the bullshit and maybe working on it.
No one said you were a “misogynist troll”. We said you’re acting like a troll, a sex-shaming one, which isn’t exactly the same as misogyny. And we’ll give sex-shaming coming from feminists the exact same side-eyes we give to plain old misogyny. ’cause, y’know, here’s something you said :
None of that gives you a pass. You’ll still get called out on bullshit and be expected to fix it. Like every single one of the regulars. Hell, if anything, it’s tempting to go harder on your ass because there’s a chance the stupid might be shaken out of you, unlike the more usual trolls.
That so hard to understand ?
Last but not least :
Dontcha love it when some random “ally” comes here and single-handedly decides that everyone else is “going too far”.
@Melian Dialogue
*sigh*
I like how she don’t see a prollem with this
Or this
Exactly what was said, surely…
Shit, or get off the pot. Why is this important to the story, yo? Dayum
Yes, you already said
You left out key context. The MRAs were only forced to listen to Binks because her gang of thugs had pulled the fire alarm, forcing the fire department to terminate the whole conference.
In that light, your claiming that the MRAs were “interrupting” her, reveals a grotesque sense of entitlement. It was their conference. They didn’t come to listen to her, but to talk to each other. Not to some speech suppressor who shrieks (no exaggeration, look at the YouTube video) at them to “shut the fuck up.” Saying “shut the fuck up” is rude, but saying it repeatedly, forcing someone to listen to you at their own conference, which you disrupted … that’s oppressive. Especially when you use government agents — the fire department — to disrupt their conference under false pretenses. That’s a felony, BTW, and breaking up someone’s conference with the threat of fire is *violence* as well as suppression of rights. Freedom of Speech. Right to peacefully assemble.
Forcing someone on threat of violence to listen to you tell them how you have their best interests at heart and that they should trust you to micromanage all of your basic human rights (like the right of a man not to be raped, the right of an abused 12 year old boy to shelter from his abuser) if you would only “shut the fuck up” is more than “rude.” It’s stalkerish. It’s like writing a love letter, tying it to a brick, and throwing it thorugh a bathroom window when the object of your affections is taking a shit.
The threats — whether they were written by MRAs (which I doubt) or by Red and her allies for attention — are deplorable. But mean internet tweets are not as violent or threatening as what Red and her fellow travelers did to those MRAs. For all their occasional absurdity, the MRAs remain more sinned against than sinning. Calling what she did mere “rudeness” is death-dealing understatement. 9-11 was rude. Pearl Harbor was rude. Red and her fire-alarm-pulling felon pack were downright oppressive.
I feel sorry Binks has to suffer harassment for her sins. Really.
Those that break the law are criminals and hopefully will be treated as such. Like whoever pulled that fire alarm to disrupt an MRA meeting…nobody saw who it was, right?
This is the real world and the world of extreme feminism is only a subset of it. She got it really wrong somehow. She does not have the right to dictate to the world and expect people to “shut the fuck up” and listen to her feminist lies.
So she has had some crazies harassing her…they are out there. Will they go away? I guess if she does…who knows. I hope they do, for Binks…she is a human, even if I am very happy I will NEVER meet her, she has rights. I expect you will find MRAs despise what she believes and likely dislike her intensely as well, but the same MRAs support her rights to believe and say what she wants.
I must say, I agree with Petra (above). Completely. And I seriously doubt that there are large numbers of MRAs or MGTOWs targeting her for her past behavior. I am guessing they are deranged haters, and that IS dangerous. Sorry Binks had to learn diplomacy the hard way and I hope it does not cost her any more hassle or worse.
From an MRA (who got fucked by a Canadian woman that kidnapped my children from their country of birth and the law let her get away with it).
Which is why they’ve spent years harassing her.
Is that a veiled death threat?
The fuck? She yelled at some MRAs once. That’s it. Why are you spending years angry about it? Men publicly yell more offensive things than “shut the fuck up” every damn day. They don’t get harassed about it for several years. Stop pretending this harassment campaign is about anything else besides misogyny. Some men were angry that a woman wasn’t being deferential to men. They felt they had to teach her a lesson. Pretend you’re opposed to the harassment all you like, you’re still victim blaming an legitimizing the harassment with this shit.
Yeah, something tells me there’s more to that story.