Canadian feminist activist receives death threats and other abuse after being targeted by Men’s Rights Activists
And so the MRAs have found yet another woman to hate.
Earlier this month, as many of you no doubt know, a Men’s Rights group sponsored a lecture at the University of Toronto. The event drew protesters, and the protesters drew MRAs with video cameras. One of the MRAs filmed a confrontation between a red-haired feminist activist and a number of MRAs who continually interrupted her as she tried to read a brief statement.
Her crime? She wasn’t exactly polite in responding to the interrupters. And so, after video of the confrontation was uploaded to YouTube, and linked to on the Men’s Rights subreddit and elsewhere, she became a virtual punching bag for the angry misogynists of the internet.
A Voice for Men, naturally, led the charge, running an article by Canadian MRA Dan Perrins labeling her “Little red frothing fornication mouth” and commenting on her breasts. The Amazing Atheist weighed in with a video I couldn’t bring myself to even watch.
Since being targeted by angry YouTube misogynists and MRAs, the red-haired activist has received death threats, rape threats and literally hundreds of other hateful and harassing messages. She’s also been “doxxed” — that is, she’s had her personal information plastered all over the internet, including on A Voice for Men’s forum. Ten days after being uploaded to YouTube, the video of her faceoff against the MRAs has garnered more than 300,000 views, and YouTubers are still leaving threats and insults and crude sexual comments.
This, apparently, is what “Men’s Human Rights Activism” consists of: the doxxing and harassment of individual women.
Several days ago, she contacted me to tell me about the harassment she’s endured. Here’s some of what she wrote:
I’m the red-head. I’m sure by now, you’re one of the 260,000 people who have seen the video of me … .
Because I had the audacity to tell a dude to stfu, an MRA no less, I have since been the target of not only just online misogyny (as if that’s a surprise) but cyber stalking, rape and death threats. They somehow found my facebook, they found my tumblr, they found a twitter acct that I don’t even use, they even found an old [dating site] profile of mine with outdated info …
I also got an anonymous message on tumblr that specifically said “[name deleted] would be disappointed”. [Name deleted] is my dog that died 1.5 years ago, I don’t talk about him on tumblr, nor fb, so they would have had to reaaaaalllly dig to find this info. …
In about 12-24hours, I got about400-500 new messages on my blog, most of them hate, which included rape and death threats, also people wishing death upon me or the typical troll “kill yourself” message. They made a meme of me.
I dunno how many haters I have, and I don’t know where they are. I can’t be sure at any given second, if I’m ever outside my house … if anyone is going to recognize me and try to hurt me.
With her permission, I am reposting screenshots she sent me documenting some of the harassment she’s endured. Even though her personal information has already been widely disseminated online, I don’t want to contribute to that, so I’ve whited out any information that might reveal her identity.
TRIGGER WARNING for what follows, for threatening language and crude sexual remarks.
Here’s a death threat she received from someone claiming to represent the “Islamic Brotherhood.”
Here are some sample comments from her Tumblr inbox. I’ve whited out comments and parts of comments that consist of her contact info, which being sent to her in an attempt to intimidate and frighten her by letting her know they “know where she lives.”
Here’s another threatening comment sent to her via Tumblr:
Here are some comments sent to her via her YouTube account. You’ll notice that the second comment comes from AVFM’s Dan Perrins, who is clearly relishing the attacks on her.
And another glimpse into her YouTube inbox:
Here’s a screenshot from a Men’s Rights forum revealing her personal information.
Meanwhile, over on YouTube, the hateful comments continue to pile up. Here are some of the nastiest ones I’ve collected. I am deliberately posting a lot of them in an attempt to convey something of the relentless nature of the attacks on teh red-haired activist — though I should note I’ve only gone through a small portion of the total comments there and this doesn’t even reflect all of the awful ones I found. These are not in any particular order. I threw in a few non-threatening ones that struck me as a tad ironic or otherwise revealing.
Again, this is only a small fraction of the abuse she’s gotten on YouTube.
This is what happens when MRAs and other misogynists target a woman online. The only thing that’s surprising here is the sheer amount of the hateful comments.
I’ve seen no serious attempts from any MRAs to rein in this sort of hatred. A Voice for Men has tried to distance itself in a superficial way from some of the harassment it has played a central role in unleashing, with an official announcement asking readers to refrain from posting the personal information of the red-haired activist in the comments. Meanwhile, in the AVFM forum, comments linking to her defunct dating profiles remain up.
This is what MRA “activism” looks like.
Coming tomorrow: A more detailed look at AVFM’s role in the harassment.
Posted on April 15, 2013, in a voice for men, antifeminism, atheism minus, gloating, harassment, hate, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, not-quite-plausible deniability, penises, racism, rape culture, rape jokes, reddit, sexual harassment, taking pleasure in women's pain, the c-word, threats and tagged a voice for men, antifeminism, harassment, men's rights, misogyny, rape jokes, reddit, university of toronto. Bookmark the permalink. 1,711 Comments.
Aw… Solis has a sad that we aren’t saying she was evil. Cry me a river.
Solis, take a few minutes and read through this entire thread worth of comments before you come and say the same thing a dozen other MRA’s have already said, and that all of the commenters here have already addressed.
You made the weakest disclaimer yet. It’s pretty obvious you take delight in her getting threats and harassment. So you can go ahead and STFU.
@Solis
Ah, ah - nope. You can’t just say that and then assume that there’s no reason to change how the internet works in this respect. It’s a REAL PROBLEM, you see, so whether that is “how it works” currently is irrelevant.
Oh, and the problem we have with this incident is not that she’s a feminist being threatened with rape and murder, but rather that she’s receiving threats. You seem to be too stupid to get the nuance, though - either that or you’re a dishonest sack of shit, because it’s quite obvious that our stance against these threats have nothing to do with whether the target is a feminist.
And please blame the victim and spew your misogynistic garbage - it’s a great way of highlighting how much of an asshole you are. Now go away.
“I bet no one has ever tried to justify death threats, rape threats, and general harassment by reference to the medium of interaction, bolstered by derogatory comments about the target’s appearance and demeanour! Oh ho, what would the internet do without me and my cutting-edge insight?” Solis, probably.
Many of you may not have noticed, but MRAs, like true Feminists, fight for equality.
This woman, on the other hand, spends the majority of the day screaming at people. The MRAs were actually quite respectful, whereas she was being rude, loud, crass, and wasted the governments time by inciting a riot and having her people pull a freaking fire alarm. She used bully tactics and was quite proud of herself for doing so. I’m all for equality, but this woman is rude, disrespectful, and all around disagreeable as a person. Her ideology is flawed and her methods of spreading it are crass and do more irreparable harm to the movement than anything else in the past 40 or so years. She has single-handedly set the movement back, because her own actions have made her the face most people connect with feminism. Not that HER brand of feminism is any good anyway, she’s one of those new-age tumblr feminists who want men to be subservient to women rather than acheiving actual equality.
And before anyone replies with ”’oh you don’t get it because you’re a blah blah this and that”, i actually happen to be well versed in this subject and i am of the opinion that we women have lost our way in recent years, especially inj regards to the fight for equality.
Lea, the only way you would know that this woman spends the majority of her day screaming at people is if you have her under surveillance. Do you have her under surveillance?
Also, if you think she is the face of mainstream feminism you’re wrong. That place is clearly occupied by our dear leader Valerie Solanas.
Now go away and stop necroing a dead thread in the hopes of getting the last word, you blah blah this and that.
(To everyone else, can “I happen to be well versed in this subject” be the new “And that’s real”?)
1) let’s pretend she is a horrible insufferable person, that still doesn’t merit threats. Well that was simple.
2) any redheads want to weigh in on whether she’s an insult to y’all?
Hi folks
I am admin MF of the facebook page against misogyny ‘Rapebook’. Our page was so heavily attacked a couple of months ago, that we had to abandon it. The following blogs by me detail some of the attacks which happened on our page. On the comments section of the first blog, you can find links to what ABC Katu, ABC National, the Huffington Post and the Guardian published about us.
http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Bavaria/Munich/blog-776385.html
http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Germany/Bavaria/Munich/blog-786282.html
Since the attacks on our page have made it impossible to run the page, we have since been using alternative ways to combat the misogyny on facebook. Here is the latest. I hope, everybody will join in, to help us with our cause of prompting facebook to keep itself clean of misogyny. Tweet and share the following as much as you can.
We have media support, so now is the time to keep the pressure on facebook. This is an ongoing protest, so keep reporting for the long haul and follow the instructions on how to report what is not removed by facebook, so we can follow it up.
”Thanks for being part of ending gender-based hate speech on Facebook!” Join us in our next stage of protest, to help make sure facebook upholds their agreement to remove content which promotes violence against women and girls. Please, report as follows and then send an email to the email addresses as appropriate. That will help us keep track of whether facebook is taking steps to keep itself clean of this type of abuse, as they said they would during or recent protest. ”It’s important to note that our campaign and Facebook’s commitment specifically address content that glorifies, promotes or makes light of violence against women and girls. : : So, depending on what you have to report, here’s how to do it: For content that glorifies, promotes or makes light of violence against women and girls: First, report it to Facebook using their standard reporting system. If the content has been reported and Facebook has declined to remove it, email us, and we’ll take further action. Please include any information you have about when and how you reported the content, and what response(s) you’ve received from Facebook.” From http://www.womenactionmedia.org/facebookaction/how-to-report-gender-based-hate-speech-to-facebook/
Could you be a fair person instead of a man so demasculated he beleives anything a loud angry women says? you focus on the threats against her to somehow justify her actions.
But she intterupted a mens seminar. However you also proclaim it is not ok for men to interupt her when she is talking? Im happy with gender equality. But lets be honest instead of being pathetic sheep. What you advocate is anything women say is EQUAL but men speaking up? No no no. bad men bad. ( how do you even call yourself a male? oh wait i bet your partner tells you what to think so you dont have too )
Go read the thread. Or at least this page of comments. You’re about the 8th person to say some variation on “the threats justify her actions”, “well she had it coming for what she did”, “the threats are reprehensible but look at what she did”.
So for the billionth time, threats are never the answer.
And man bad, woman good; you’ve got miles to go to fill Owly’s shoes for that dance number.
Wow, that was some incoherent word salad from Steve, who is so happy with gender equality that his idea of an insult is to call someone a woman.
I LOVE GENDER EQUALITY, YOU TERRIBLE FEMALES!!!
Translation: “I support gender equality, but there’s totes nothing wrong with accusing men of being ‘demasculated’ in order to shame them when I perceive them as feminine.”
@Steve,
I’m not surprised you have a problem with loud, angry women. I bet most women you talk to become loud and angry after hearing what you have to say. You’ve said only a few sentences, and I’m already annoyed.
Those men weren’t “speaking up”. They were making rape and death threats against her. And yes, they were “bad men bad” when they made those threats.
It’s not Misogyny at all. Her gender has nothing to do what so ever with why people don’t like her. Her attitude, her foul language, her aggressive bully like behaviour etc. are the reason people are threatening her. You don’t have to be a female to act like a rabid pit-bull. To put it bluntly, you are a nasty person. The reason everyone hates you is because of your behaviour and at the end of the day it’s your fault for acting like a bully to people in public. Your sex is only an issue to you and probably because you are a sexist yourself.
Bren has hit the nail right on the head.
RE: Bren
So, in your opinion, death threats and abuse are viable ways of responding to people who are jerks? (Also, are you an Ann Maxwell fan? Hope against hope, but ah well.)
For at least the fourth time this thread…oh fuck it. Just scroll up.
“Go read the thread. Or at least this page of comments. You’re about the 8th person to say some variation on “the threats justify her actions”, “well she had it coming for what she did”, “the threats are reprehensible but look at what she did”.
So for the billionth time, threats are never the answer.“
You should read some back copies of MS. magazine from the 1970′s. Nothing but vicious hate from the woman’s liberation movement against men largely promoted by National Organization Of Women. What goes around comes around.
So new troll thinks people are accountable for the “sins” of their “ancestors”. Revolutionary. :]
Dennis, what a great idea! I haven’t read any 1970s-era Ms. magazines in a while, but now I’ve paged 12 volumes and should get them Monday or Tuesday. In the meantime, why don’t you tell us what you’ve found? Don’t forget the citations so that we can check to make sure that (a) you’ve actually read Ms. Magazine, and (b) that you are quoting and/or describing the texts accurately.
Thanks!
“Her attitude, her foul language, her aggressive bully like behaviour etc. are the reason people are threatening her.”
“What goes around comes around.”
And it’s you two who are accusing her of being hateful. That’s rich.
… What goes around comes around 40 years later?
I know “The wheels of justice grind slow”, but - really?
Yeah there was literally nothing new said in your post, Bren.
Also, do you seriously believe that if she was a man, shed get a ton of comments insulting her gender, body, and also giving rape threats? Or talking about her breasts?
You are really fucking disgusting if you think that the MRM’s reaction was deserved.
Jesus, this fucking thread won’t die. Hey new trolls: read what’s been written. Y’all are bringing nothing new to the table.
Bren has hit the nail right on the head.
By engaging in bullyragging behavior? By using foul language and a nasty demeanor?
Sorry, she may be deluded, and inane, but she’s hit nothing on the head. She’s engaged in tired rhetoric (really tired, as in this thread is pretty much nothing but a bunch of people who beat her to the punch on this line of bullshit).
People hate her because she’s a woman speaking out. Paul Elam says the MRM needs to, “fuck their shit up” and no one is going all “hound him to the ends of the earth”.
So thanks for playing, but it’s old news.\
Dennis:You should read some back copies of MS. magazine from the 1970′s. Nothing but vicious hate from the woman’s liberation movement against men largely promoted by National Organization Of Women. What goes around comes around.
You can do it.
Hellkell: They need some place to count coup.
WELL I MAKE FART NOISES WITH MY MOUTH…PFFBBTT-PFFBBTT-PFFBBTT-PFFBBTT-PFFBBTT
I’m so glad you necro’d an old thread to share that.
I’m sorry, but….. I giggled.
That’s nice Gabby. You go sober up in the back now.
Idk pffffbbbbtttt is pretty funny while sober. Though I guess we could count my sleeping pill induced fog as not sober. In any case, go pffffbbbttt at trolls, not dead threads.