A Voice for Men’s Attempts to Find and Publicize the Personal Information of a Toronto Activist Could Threaten That Young Woman’s Safety
[TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE THREATS]
The Men’s Rights movement has been described by some as “the abusers’ lobby.” I don’t think that’s fair, but there are certainly those within the movement that fit the bill – not necessarily because they themselves are abusers, but because, among other things, they lionize abusers and advocate on their behalf.
In the case of hate site A Voice for Men, there is another way in which the term applies: the “activism” of the site and its followers, insofar as it consists of anything more than self-promotion, often mirrors the actions of abusers – AVFM is known for harassing individuals, usually women, and exposing (or threatening to expose) personal information that could be used to stalk and harm them, in an attempt to intimidate them and other feminists and shut them up. Indeed, the site on several occasions has offered $1000 “bounties” on the personal information of its foes.
Now AVFM has another individual in its sights: a young woman, presumably a student, who participated in a recent demonstration against Men’s Rights author Warren Farrell at the University of Toronto. Men’s Rights activists have been promoting a video depicting the protest, in which a group of feminist activists blockaded the building at which Farrell was speaking, until they were forcibly removed by police. The carefully-edited video pays particular attention to one of the activists, the woman in question, as she confronts supporters of Farrell, calling one of them “fucking scum.” (See here for an even-more-manipulatively propagandistic video that focuses even more intently on the woman; and here for one that more clearly depicts the police pulling, shoving, and knocking non-violent protestors to the ground.)
I don’t personally support blocking speeches by opponents; I think it’s bad both in principle and as a political tactic. But Warren Farrell certainly deserves criticism; demonstrators certainly have the right to demonstrate; and as anyone who has ever been to a demonstration knows, sometimes people on opposite sides shout at another.
Apparently the politically inexperienced “activists” at AVFM are unaware of this. And so the site has responded to the demonstration with a campaign to uncover and publicize this woman’s personal information – for the “crime” of using angry language at a protest. In one of the several posts on the subject now up on AVFM, the MRA known as JohnTheOther describes her as, among other things
her own generation’s brown shirt, and she knows it. …
She is clearly sadistic, unable and unwilling to recognize the humanity of anyone who does not slavishly and blindly agree with her own religion of hate.
There is more, much more; if you have the stomach for it, I suggest you read the full post to see JtO’s extended attack on the woman. As is often the case with MRA writings, the full quotes in context are worse than the excerpts I quote here.
A later post from site founder and head Paul Elam includes a picture of the woman, with the caption “Seeking this undesirable’s identity.”
Elam warns that
We have her image and know her general location. We will identify her and profile her activity and name for public view.
We will not stop there, or just with her. And while we will not publish our complete intent, we are dogged in our efforts.
Again, this quote is if anything worse in context; see the entire post here, filled with vituperative, thuggish, threatening language and illustrated with a picture of a violent storm, evidently intended to represent what AVFM is threatening to rain down upon its opponents.
In still another post, with the inflammatory title “Yanking Off the Hood,” Elam defends his site’s “doxxing” policy, writing
AVfM is conducting outreach and investigation into the identities of the persons involved in the violent protest against the rights of men and boys orchestrated and conducted by the University of Toronto Student Union and other antisocial elements within that institution.
To that end, one individual has already been identified, and you will be seeing a story on her here in the near future. Our search for the woman highlighted in the video of the protest continues, with some leads. …
Gender ideologues absolutely hate the light of day. They hate it shining on their ideas and on their lies. Many of them also don’t want it shining on their identities. They seek anonymity for the same reason Klansmen wear hoods.
Even beyond the vicious nature of AVFM’s language and tactics, the hypocrisy here is off the charts: most of AVFM’s writers – gender ideologues all – hide their identities behind pseudonyms, including of course JohnTheOther, who launched AVFM’s campaign against the still-unknown protester.
JtO, who now wishes to conceal his identity, used to write under his own name, and has linked his name with his pseudonym on YouTube and on Men’s Rights sites he has written for. Though his real name is fairly widely known, and can be uncovered with the simplest of web searches, JtO has now decided to try to get that cat back in the bag, and at one point demanded that I remove all mentions of his real name on this site so that he would not – irony alert — face harassment. As much as I don’t respect John, I respected this wish of his, and did so; he may want to take this issue up with his friend Elam, as a post by the AVFM head still up on the site identifies JohnTheOther by both name and pseudonym.
There is no question that the student activist targeted by JtO and AVFM will face harassment when and if her personal information is exposed. Indeed, she is already being singled out for abuse now. On YouTube, videos featuring her have inspired numerous threatening comments. Here are a sampling of comments I’ve found there:
Here you can find even more, sent to me by someone who was at the protest.
If AVFM releases the personal information of the student now being attacked online they are giving a green light for this sort of harassment online and off. They are aiding and abetting those who wish this woman to come to real physical harm.
That’s why I think it is fair to call AVFM a hate site, and a member of the abusers’ lobby.
(Meanwhile, JohnTheOther seems to be undergoing some sort of meltdown on Reddit; more on this in my next post.)
Like this:
Posted on December 8, 2012, in a voice for men, advocacy of violence, antifeminism, bullying, drama kings, evil women, harassment, hate, hypocrisy, irony alert, johntheother, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, paul elam, threats, trigger warning, video, warren farrell and tagged a voice for men, antifeminism, man boobz, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, university of toronto, warren farrell. Bookmark the permalink. 171 Comments.
@ katz - let’s just add ‘plausible deniability’ to the list of things that the MRM just does not get.
@Pitchguest:
That is a lie. We routinely have MRA’s showing up here who deride and insult us, and say that we should be beaten, raped, or murdered for merely wanting to attend a speech/reading books/going to school/having sex without the approval of a male guardian/withholding sex from a sex-starved man/etc. Occasionally, such men get banned. But David has never published any of their names despite the fact that, I am sure, he can find that information, sometimes easily. Never happened.
As for “what about teh menz”, although I sometimes disagree when it’s invoked, in many situations the phrase is apt. Discuss rape in any context, and inevitably someone will derail the conversation with screams about false rape accusations, the idea being that criminalizing rape creates a bigger problem than it solves. Discuss any issue that affects women, like, I don’t know, childbirth, and a good minority of people will be horrified why anyone would worry about anything that affects women when there are men suffering in the world. There is definitely a widely popular belief that women constitute a small minority of humanity (I suppose it’s a belief embraced by people who are really bad at math and biology), and that no one may ever address any bad thing that happens to any woman until every single man on the planet is in a state of perfect happiness.
And sometimes not even then.
@katz
Err. Yeah. I’m pretty sure that with the right determination, anyone could find the personal information of whomever their chagrin lies with at that moment. However, there is no evidence that AVfM is looking to reveal the home address of this woman, nor threaten her. They merely addressed her by name, from a twitter account that has her name on it. And they sure as hell haven’t dropped that bit of information for everyone to see. If someone did drop her docs, and the action did not get reprimanded, then we can talk. Not until then. It would do David Futrelle a world of good if he didn’t make blanket assertions without backing them up, just because he’s chiding MRA’s. The truth is, there are skeletons in the closet in both camps. For instance, I’ve never seen David denouncing the many radical feminist sites that spout similar rhetoric as some MRA’s do, but in reverse. Not in his best interest, I suppose.
In any case, to get back to the “doxxing”, it’s asinine to claim that this woman is being doxxed because they linked to her twitter page. Again, that would mean I’d be doxxing David if I linked to the Manboobz site and asked the question, “Why is David Futrelle so [insert questionable attribute here]?” It doesn’t make any sense. At all. Then cherrypicking the comments on the video to highlight the ones about raping her, as if that’s the extent of what the comments there are like, is dishonest and slimy. Especially since the contention is the video of the protest is “carefully edited” and then he goes ahead and does the same thing, “carefully” picking the comments he wants us to focus on. So much for rising above that shit.
Funny how feminists continue to believe that women have no agency and should never be held accountable for their actions and choices.
Funny how MRAs continue to ignore everything said to them and just reiterate their inane talking points.
Dude, gateman, do you even READ? We are saying that internet vigilantism, rape threats, online or in-person harassment are not “holding someone accountable.” They are terrorism. Holding someone accountable is reporting them to the proper authorities.
THIS IS NOT HARD. THIS IS SOMETHING CHILDREN LEARN FAIRLY EARLY ON. WHY IS IT SO HARD FOR MRAs TO UNDERSTAND?
Yet another MRA providing evidence that “accountability” to them means “arbitrary punishment meted out by men.”
Hm. I thought pitchguest looked familiar. He’s the one with the creepy vendetta against Jen McCreight and Atheism+
David, was pitchguest unbanned?
http://manboobz.com/2012/10/16/reddit-mra-upvote-brigade-to-the-rescue-or-the-battle-of-the-urban-dictionary-atheism-definition/comment-page-3/#comment-214029
Women have no agency in your eyes, since you believe only men should have the right to speak.
As for the subject of accountability, no one should be “held accountable” for how a bunch of thugs and yahoos react to that person’s actions and choices. When someone gets carjacked, I doubt you argue that the carjacking is a way of holding the victim accountable for having a car in the first place. You are making precisely the kind of argument that terrorists make. “If you hadn’t pissed me off, I wouldn’t have bombed you. Accept responsibility for your choices!” Yours is also the argument that rape apologists make — that raping a woman is a way to hold her “accountable” for having the temerity to exist outside the home. Or in the home, even.
You jokers need to come up with new material.
Unless the car owner is a woman, of course. Because women drivers, dood, amirite?
That’s right. Any uppity bitch who drives instead of letting a man drive deserves to get carjacked AND raped.
But she shouldn’t be
askingwhining for a man to drive her around! It’s like those gold-digging whores in Saudi Arabia, innit?Tulgey, thanks for that. I forgot I banned, not just moderated, him. He’s banned agian.
Gateman, consider this thread off limits.
Uh. Why?
Well, I guess since you asserted it, it’s true.
Yeah, you’re right. I mean, it’s not like there’s some kind of systematic effort to go after the identities of small-fry feminists—oh, wait.
Oh, darn. Now pitchguest isn’t going to be able to regale me with tales of how feminists regularly talk about getting off on fucking MRAs’ shit up and that we are therefore hypocrites.
I’m just gonna leave this here…
gateman: Pecunium, there’s a world of difference between someone posting comments online and those conducting criminal activity which is what the blockade was.
Non-responsive. JtO says he has to hide his name to prevent being attacked. AvFM wants to, “fuck their shit up”, has Thomas Ball’s appeal to violence on it’s front page and is saying, “here is her name, she goes to school here, and she is evil”.
That’s more than just, “here’s her twitter stream”.
And harassment, online; as well as off, is criminal.
Again, your “moral high ground” is well below sea-level.
Moreover, your claim of, “criminal activity” suffers from several problems. 1: You have yet to show that she actively attempted to commit a crime.
2: You haven’t told me what crime you believe to have been committed (that will require the statute in question).
3: The presumptive condition is that she committed no crime(s) as there was a police presence, and arrests were made. A reasonable person would have to assume that had she been committing a crime, she would (as others were) have been arrested.
Pitchguest: Err. Yeah. I’m pretty sure that with the right determination, anyone could find the personal information of whomever their chagrin lies with at that moment. However, there is no evidence that AVfM is looking to reveal the home address of this woman, nor threaten her
They are threatening her. They have people in there fora who are calling for her to be raped: threats at least as plausible as her “desire to kill all men”.
AvFM has made it much easier for those people to find her.
That is a threat. Not, perhaps, overt; but actual nonetheless. One that their members admit to being a threat; as they go all sorts of rage-filled at the merest hint that one of them might get doxxed (see anti-manboobz for a ridiculous example of this).
And,.. I see pitchguest can’t reply. Crushed am I to be deprived of his response.
You know how you hold someone to account for their actions and choices (and oft times their words?)
If it is illegal, you contact the authorities and report on it.
If it is not illegal, you outline what it is and you explain why it is wrong. “Saying that incest is good because people do like it is wrong because the person who said that ignores the very real pain that it has caused. Here is a study that shows this.”
You do not publish the person’s personal info and say “oh I hope no one hurts them…wink wink”
Shit suz posted:
““I have no refutation of your arguments,”
If anybody here were making arguments instead of squawking out spastic leaps of ‘logic,’ I’d be all in. Instead all you can offer is some weird variations on:
“Give some examples of misandry.”
So I make a short list and get responses like:
“That’s not an argument, it’s a list” {duhhhh}
“Some of that stuff is real, but the most important thing is the fact that Suz is creepy, hates women, has issues with her son, is a man…..”
“Divorce theft is not a ‘thing.’”
“You don’t agree with me, therefore you must be “fill-in-the-blank.”
“Like I said, sixth grade girls. Drunk sixth grade girls playing house with stuffed animals. Boobzie is a joke and Booblets are the punchline. No wonder his readership is falling off; what “serious” feminist who wants to be taken seriously, can afford to be allied with this crowd? You grrrlz aren’t the only ones who come here for laughs.”
OK.
Boobzie is a joke? Then it’s a joke you take very seriously. Otherwise, why the hell do you keep showing up here? Because Man Boobz is a joke, dude? Where the hell did you get “his readership is falling off.” ?
Also, You called us “grrrlz.” Gee, that’s not signifigant, is it, fella? Or referring to our replies as “squawking.”
Your bullshit list of misandry was WEAK. A fifth grader could have shot holes through it. Ladies Night? Bumbling sitcom dads? Mean t-shirts? Rape reports being taken seriously is misandry? Complaining about the draft, when there is no active draft, at a time women are fighting to be equals in the armed forces? Oh, and you didn’t call it “divorce theft,” you called it “divorce rape.”
Somewhere around the level of the Mariana Trench, like the rest of that cohort.
Hello David and MBz, long time, no see! I gather you’ve had a visitation from Pitchguest, who’s one of the fulminating misogynist Rebecca Watson haters from the aptly-named ‘Slymepit’ forum. He shouldn’t be too cocky, seeing as the trollish commentariat there are well-known for ‘doxxing’ people when it suits them. Like the MRA douchebag and sometime AVfM contributor Justin Vacula publishing a feminist skeptic’s home address and even putting up a picture of her apartment building on there.
TL,DR: Nothing of value will be lost by banning him, or any of his ilk.
That explains quite a bit.
The sitcom dad: Why, when looking for misandry do they only look at sitcoms or jokey commercials? There are dramas, shows with actions and I have not seen the bumbling husband in those shows, yet some of them do have the nagging wife or hysterical woman. I always thought you only see that in comedies because the thought of a husband being dumber than his wife is so absurd it’s funny. At any rate there are plenty of depictions of great men doing great things in shows that are not comedies.
Not all the comments are talking about raping her, so it’s unfair to talk about the ones that are!
@SSAE and the bumbling husband is still able to hold onto his hot and doting mother-wife, who does all the housework and child-rearing and forgives him for forgetting their anniversary again *laughtrack*, and loves him in spite of it all, because….well, we’re never shown why she loves him, but we’re told she does, and that’s good enough! Right?
Cherrypicking the “rape” comments?
The point isn’t that ALL the comments are rape comments. It’s that THERE ARE rape comments.
If someone threatens the president and gets arrested, he can’t say, “well, you’e cherrypicking my comments. Most of my comments aren’t threats against the president.”
Psh, nobody ever talks about the 40-something presidents Oswald didn’t shoot. And yet he gets shot and killed for just one?
I call misandry.