This guy, who enjoys outing anonymous college students and making videos featuring his own endlessly talking head, wishes to remain anonymous.
Some months back, I made a post in which I referred to the mysterious JohnTheOther by his real name. I didn’t think this was a big deal, since John — whom regular readers know as the number two man at Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men – had previously used his real name, and linked it to his online pseudonym, in various writings of his and on YouTube. But he asked me to remove his name from Man Boobz because, he said, he was being harassed. So, out of courtesy to him, I did.
Now, frankly, JohnTheOther is making me feel like he played me for a sucker, and is making me wonder why I continue to pay him this courtesy.
It’s not just that JohnTheOther’s real name is widely known already, and easy enough to find out with a simple Google search. And it’s not just that, for all his alleged concern for his own safety, he hasn’t bothered to remove posts linking his real name and his online identity from his own JohnTheOther.com site, or from A Voice for Men (where he is also identified by name as the site’s “vice president”),or asked any number of other Men’s Rights sites to remove similar postings.
It’s that, by his own stated logic, I should be shouting his name to the heavens.
Why? Well, as anyone who’s been reading this blog lately is well aware, A Voice for Men is in the midst of what you might call a crusade against anonymity, directed at participants in a demonstration recently held at the University of Toronto protesting a talk by MRA icon (and “positive incest” expert) Warren Farrell. And JohnTheOther is in the thick of it.
On Monday, AVFM outed, or “doxxed,” one young woman by name. Her main crimes, aside from attending the protest and possibly tearing down a poster or two advertising the Farrell event, seem to be that she made a couple of jokey remarks on Twitter, including one in which she said “kill all men hail satan,” which the folks at A Voice for Men apparently see as a literal call for male genocide.
For these terrible crimes she has been placed on Register-Her.com, a phony “offenders registry” set up by A Voice for Men in which feminists are profiled as “bigots” alongside women who are literally murderers and child molesters. AVFM promises that it will be outing more demonstrators in the days to come.
Realizing that some, even in the Men’s Rights movement, consider these tactics deeply problematic, JohnTheOther posted the following comment on A Voice for Men defending the outing; he later reposted it on the Men’s Rights Subreddit. (I crossed out the student’s name.)
In further comments on Reddit, he explained what he sees as the purpose of AVFM’s strategy of outing opponents:
And responded with indignation to a critic:
This all seemed a tad hypocritical coming from a man who himself hides behind an online pseudonym in order to avoid “consequences attached to actions,” so I sent John a message on Reddit:
I’m rather astonished that you continue to argue that it’s ok for you to “out” people online, while insisting that it is wrong for people to refer to you by your real name. Especially considering that you put your real name out there in the first place, explicitly linking it to your youtube account on Men’s News Daily and AVFM and possibly elsewhere. (It’s actually still up on AVFM, FYI.)
When you asked me to stop using your name on Man Boobz some months back, I did, and I went back and scrubbed it from the site. And I’ve got it in the moderation filter as well to ensure that no commenter names you.
I will continue to keep your name off of Man Boobz, but since I have gone to the trouble to do this, I would appreciate a good clear answer to this question:
Why is it ok for you expose other people to possible harassment and worse by outing them online but not OK for me to use your real name on Man Boobz?
He responded with this bit of overheated nonsense:
I out the names of people advocating violence, such as Vliet Tiptree’s 4000 words talking up male extermination on radfemhub. To do otherwise would be complicit in their attempts to foster violence – and murder. I also publish the names of criminals already in public record, child rapists and so on. The U of T participants were not anonymous, they were broadcasting their hate under their own names. In Vancouver, I was the guy with posters which read “you dont hate women, do you” and “men’s rights are human rights”:, the local feminists had knives, and surrounded me with 30 people.
Nobody in the mrm is going to do harm to these women, but in spite of our opposition to violence, the killing of a MRA would, if it even made the news at all, be characterized as necessary killing of a terrorist. I wear a camera to prevent assault on my person.
You know perfectly well which side is likely to commit violence here, and it’s not us. Hell I say “likely” as if it /might/ happen. The violence is dialling up, and it’s all coming from the feminist side of this debate
This evasive and at times unhinged “answer” left me with even more questions, so I asked them in another Reddit message:
Give me a fucking break. Where did [the University of Toronto student] “advocate violence?” She made a joke on Twitter.
Do you really expect me to believe that you are incapable of recognizing a joke when you see it?
When someone tells you a “knock knock” joke do you get up to open the door?
I mean, you’re pretty obtuse, but I find it hard to believe that you’re THAT obtuse.
Or are you perhaps grasping at straws in an attempt to find more feminists to harass?
You already made yourselves look like idiots, even amongst your erstwhile allies in the MRM, by pretending that Katherine Heigl was advocating castration of men in her joke video.
Also, what about the “mommy bloggers” you guys have put on register-her: Where exactly did they suggest “violence — and murder” of men?
No, they said shit you didn’t like, so you set out to harass them and intimidate them into shutting up.
Hell, when did [feminist writer] Jessica Valenti ever threaten anyone? You twisted a quote from her to mean something it didn’t, and used that as an excuse to put her there.
The issue here isn’t just naming people; it’s that you put these people on a website designed to suggest that they are somehow the equivalent of the real criminals and child molesters you have on there.
Meanwhile, the idea that feminists are all a bunch of evil murderers while MRAs are a bunch of innocent little lambs is ludicrous. There were plenty of threats made against the protesters before you guys put up [the student’s] name. I get violent threats from MRAs all the time. AVFM is filled to overflowing with threatening language, designed to intimidate. Your fucking slogan is “Fuck Their Shit Up.”
You may stop short of directly and explicitly threatening violence against anyone but I don’t think anyone outside the ranks of the AVFM faithful will buy that kind of “plausible deniability.”
You plainly intend your campaign against [the student] to cause her trouble; indeed, you state this outright in your recent Reddit post. You also plainly admit that this method of causing her “consequences” isn’t safe, but you go ahead with it anyway.
So why should I take your concerns for safety any more seriously than any concerns that [the student] — or any of your targets — might have?
If [the student] and others should face real-world “consequences” for their words, why shouldn’t you?
And just where is this feminist “violence” you say is “dialing up?” On the footage of the protest, I saw violence — I think you would call it “proxy violence” — being directed at the protestors by the police. I saw no violence against MRAs; indeed, the police cleared away the blockade and let them through.
Some of the protesters yelled and were assholes, but guess what, being an asshole isn’t a crime. The police were there in force. If the girl who told the MRA he was “fucking scum” was violating the law, why didn’t the police arrest her?
As for this alleged confrontation with 30 knife-wielding feminists you keep talking about? Where’s the proof this ever happened? Indeed, the “evidence” I’ve seen so far seems to show pretty clearly that it didn’t happen. The video footage I’ve seen didn’t show 30 people confronting you. It showed you arguing with a small number of people, in broad daylight, on a busy street. At no point did I see anyone threaten you, much less threaten you with a knife.
Can you please point to evidence that you really were confronted by a mob? Point me to precisely where in the videos posted I can see this 30-person mob? Point me to precisely where in the video any of the people you were arguing with threatened you with a knife.
I can’t tell if you actually believe the bullshit you peddle on a regular basis, and in your comment to me. Is your head really that far up your ass?
(Note: I do not literally believe that your head is up your ass. That would be anatomically impossible. It’s a figure of speech.)
John has not yet given me answers to any of these questions, though he did find time to write yet another grandiose, indignant and altogether hypoctitical defense of doxxing for AVFM.
All this adds up to a pretty powerful argument for doxxing … JohnTheOther.
Happily, there’s no need to sully my hands with such a task, as he’s already done such a fine job of doxxing himself.
(Note: I’ve added some links to my quoted messages above to provide more context.)
EDITED TO ADD: And AVFM has doxxed another student who was at the protest. Her crimes, aside from going to the protest? She posted jokey “kill men” comments on Twitter and a picture suggesting it is a good idea for people to get consent before having sex with people.
I read Elam’s latest ass rant, and what I want to know is when will PaulE and the Gang realize that not every country is the US and doesn’t have the same laws? Freedom of speech isn’t everywhere.
@lurker – one of their notions is that women aren’t funny. Perhaps they think women don’t actually make jokes. Or rather, pretend to think so for their own convenience/purposes.
So lets see…. JtO says her calling men scum is evil which merits a lifetime of punishment.
But saying women ought to be raped, beaten, even killed is just harmless fun. Not serious, and even if it were, they deserve it because they said men were scum.
Thus proving that some men are scum. They never seem to get that part. Not only do they look ridiculous, they look kind of evil.
Their double standards make my brain hurt trying to make sense of it. Forget it I’m just going off now to watch and laugh at my “fake Walmart roomba” running into my furniture to lighten my mood.
Time for a kitty video:
http://youtu.be/InhztfIyCwg
One of the comments from the latest article re the ‘violent’ tweets:
Do they honestly think women are skulking around the country wreaking violence against men? I’m seriously floored by this. You’re gonna call the RCMP and tell them that a U of T student said a mean thing on Twitter?
Reading their posts and comments reminds me of reading an Ayn Rand novel. * It’s just a world I don’t recognize at all.
*I use the term novel loosely.
If they’re worried about their sons’ safety in the US, it’s random men with guns and grudges they should be thinking about, not women. And even that’s a (comparative) rarity.
I think I’ve just reached the point where I’m becoming less amused and more angry by MRAs thinking oppression/not being privileged enough is trendy and/or a fucking game.
BWAhahahahaha! Yep, watch out, Canadian wimminz is teh KRAZYPANTS! We rove in packs across the tundra, attacking everything male that we see, using them as kindling to stoke our FIRES OF IRRATIONAL FEMINIST RAGE (and keep warm, ‘cuz it’s a tad nippy on the tundra).
I was at that point with misogynists before I’d ever heard of the MRM; their views were how I saw too many men’s attitudes to women, even if they weren’t as explicit. I’m grateful to have this site to read. It’s easier to laugh and share contempt for them than to just be angry about them and not have any safe outlet.
Plus cute animal videos.
@Unimaginative – I’m seeing this like the chase sequence in the Due South pilot, with the baddies on snowmobiles chasing Fraser and Vecchio across the mountains! 😀
It is a relief to laugh, after a day of talking to women who have no choice but to take their abuser very very seriously.
You know I had to check out this “doxxing” site. I got as far as Ketherine Heigl. Very first person I saw. So, as far as I can tell, AVfM is alerting the world to a video Katherine Heigl posted on Funny or Die? Because clearly – OBVIOUSLY – when the obscure Katherine Heigl makes a video so few people see it. So, of course, AVfM has to make sure it gets out to its wide, wide readership. They need to use that AVfM megaphone make sure Katherine Heigl isn’t flying under the radar. Can’t really decide if this is more delusional than narcissistic or vice versa.
How sheltered and deluded do you have to be to think this way?
Dogsleds made of the bones of young boys! Igloos made of foreskins! The Canada not be safe for the menz, eh!
Course in more urban areas, the only real danger are random spermjackings. DO NOT STOP at a red light, menz, coz krazy Canadian womynz will totes jump in ur car and steel ur seeemenz! Oh noes! U of T gives out free seeemenz-steeling containers to all wimmins studies fembotz Lenininistas!
Ugh. I think my head asploded.
BTW: You know how there’s the rule for gay outing that anti-gay activists can be outed? Maybe there should be a similar exception: doxxers can be doxxed?
If anyone has any messages for Sophia, the latest victim, I have a way I can pass them along to her.
Wow, all power to the Canadian womenz in their boy bone sleds. You know how these guys keep going on about the red and blue pills? I think they have just swallowed whole heaps of any colored pills. Teh crazy it burns!
Have the boys at AVfM watched too much Reservoir Dogs? It’s Agents Umber, Orange, and Mauve. So silly.
“Will my sons be safe in Canada?? Will contact the Canadian Embassy here and make them aware of this … Do you have similar to Homeland Security in Canada where I can make them aware of these statements??”
The drama, it stings…and reeks of delusions of grandeur… or that all this percieved danger is sexy and cool. Yuck, gross. You’re not Jason Bourne, dolt.
You know how they’re always claiming women like to think of themselves as victims? Well, they’re really into it. I mean, REALLY into it.
“Will contact the Canadian Embassy here and make them aware of this …”
Wouldn’t you love to hear that phone call? What’s diplomatic speech for “tell this paranoid fuckwit to stop wasting our time”?
My favorite Canadian stereotypes cartoon:
http://imgur.com/gallery/KIQeF
Oh, it’s by the totally amazing Kate Beaton, who the MRAs probably also hate…and who did this “straw feminist” cartoon:
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=341
@jodioli – I LOVE Hark, A Vagrant! I spent a whole day going through the entire blog after I saw the link in the blogroll here.
Mid-day at the Consulate General of Canada in Sydney.
Pierre: Hello, you’ve reached the Consulate General of Canada. My name is Pierre. How may I help you?
MRA: I am planning a trip to Canada with my sons next year, and I wanted to know what the feminist threat level will be?
Pierre: Excuse me?
MRA: Yellow? Orange? RED???
Pierre: I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
MRA: I need to know what steps I need to take to protect myself and my boys from being killed by feminists. Do we need to get any shots?
Pierre: Did you say ‘feminists?’
MRA: How many men would you estimate are killed by feminists in Canada in January? February? Or do feminists only thaw out in the Spring?
Pierre: You think we freeze feminists?
MRA: I need to make travel plans!
Pierre: Sir, I think you might have been misinformed.
MRA: I assure you that my information is accurate. It cannot be denied that feminists have been engaged in a campaign to kill all men in Canada.
Pierre: Sir, I believe I would have heard about that.
MRA: I SAW A VIDEO! A pack of rabid feminists tore Warren Farrell apart, limb from limb, and feasted on his spleen!
Pierre: Warren who?
MRA: Then an angry mob of feminist zombies attacked John the Otter with flamethrowers. Or maybe one of them had a cigarette lighter, but it was definitely menacing.
Pierre: John the what?
MRA: They might have accidentally singed his sleeve! Or murdered him with fire!
Pierre: Sir, I’m not sure how to say this but… It might be best if you stayed home.
MRA: It’s because they’re SPERMJACKING us now, right? You’re saying that for my own protection. I get you.
Pierre: Um, sure. Right. Please do not come to Canada. Ever.
MRA: THEY’RE POINTING A GUN AT YOUR HEAD RIGHT NOW, AREN’T THEY?
Pierre: [Holds phone in front of his face for a moment. Slowly places it back in the cradle.]
MRA: [Hears dial tone.] Oh my god, they’ve killed him. I must alert A Voice for Men!
+1 to cloudiah
Here’s a video of John showing off his ability to stack cups.
At one point, he’s like “These cups don’t stack! MISANDRY!”
Cloudiah, you an internet for that. And I second Pierre: MRAs outside of Canada? Don’t ever come here. MRAs in Canada? Go to the moon and never come back.
I am shocked, SHOCKED at this outrageous slander of Nellie the Otter. She is the best otter and John is the worst otter.
Pretty good, Cloudiah. You got the histronics and grand leaps in logic down pat.
I have to admit that when I wrote “feasted on his spleen” I chortled in a way that alarmed my cats.
Cloudiah, I nearly inhaled a peppercorn. “They might have accidentally singed his sleeve!” I don’t know why but I can’t stop laughing at that.
also, this is off-topic, but I’m watching “The Santa Clause”. and I’m pretty sure MRAs all think they are Tim Allen in that movie.
MRA’s think they’re Tim Allen, period.
No, I take that back. They probably see themselves as the guy behind the fence.
Double plus good to cloudiah! Is it just me but I get a picture of well clad Mounties riding over the hills in search of bands of feral wimmenz?
it’s like a bizarro world Dudley Do-Right in which the villain is Feminist Snidely Whiplash.
LOOK HOW MANY MEN ARE TIED TO THOSE TRAIN TRACKS!
Heh. The well-clad Mounties ARE feral wimmenz. Feral wimmenz are EVERYWHERE in Canada. We have infiltrated all careers, all avocations, all locations, all walks of life. There’s a reason that Canada is a hotbed for MRA activity: fearful reaction to the power of the wimmenz’ ferality. Totally a word.
(I haven’t figured out what’s going on in Australia, though, as it seems to be the other hotbed.)
Cloudiah, I hereby grant you permission to post your funny story to your own blog. Because you totally needed permission.
@katz, I believe I need an excuse, like, say, katz illustrating some portion of that. Perhaps the “feasted on his spleen” portion. Or Mounties. Or singed sleeves.
In any case, I need graphics.
XD
I heart Pierre, he is totes my new hero.
Now I just want to know what he looks like. 🙂
It is embarrassing. Mind you, two dozen idiots = a hotbed with the MRM.
I don’t get how he can turn a blind eye to sexist jokes against women but treat sexist jokes against men as if they are deserving of public scorn and life ruining in the form of making the word “bigot” appear next to their name if a future employer searches them on google?
I don’t think these “kill all men” jokes are mature or helpful per se, but I do see them as some women letting off some steam. As a woman I hear rape jokes and kitchen jokes day in, day out. When I see someone making a joke about men it’s a relief in a way to see the coin flipped. And I’ve seen more feminists on tumblr posting stupid stuff under the kill all men tag, like olsen twins videos and other things that show that we’re obviously not taking that sentiment seriously.
But whatever. He thinks he can claim that feminists are more likely to incite violence against MRAs due to some incredibly tame protest video where there was maybe a bit of pushing. So what about the violence at the union protests that I saw on the news today? Those were men! This is what happens at protests sometimes when cops are trying to silence them and people try to fuck with them. But just like faux news, who said something about liberals having dark souls based on that footage, MRAs are spinning the canadian protest as if it shows all feminists to be evil and violent.
But seriously. If I had a website with the full names and photos of every man who has said some misogynistic shit on the internet… well… very few men would be getting hired after being googled. Do you really want to go that route john? Do you really want all MRAs basically blacklisted due to the problematic, insulting, degrading, and violent stuff they’ve said on youtube?
“Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you histrionically jester point into the bowels of the abyss the abyss also histrionically jester points into the abyss of your bowels. I’ll work on the wording to this later.” —Friedrich Nietzsche
As an Australian it’s kind of weird to see that we’re a hot bed of MRA foolishness. I’ve noticed it with the rascist arses on alternative right too. Unfortunately being a small country, idiots can have an unrealistic impact (however we also have our version of the deep south in the deap north).
OMG Cloudiah I want to make that into a short film, put it on funny or die, and get added to registerher.
@Yoyo – you’re not wrong about the Deep North. My sister and BiL moved up there years ago, came back for a while and are moving up north again. Now they were fairly racist anyway, but oy, the attitudes and language they’ve absorbed up there … it’s horrible.
Actually…what happens if a feminist says something they don’t like, they put that feminist up on RegisterHer, and then they discover that the feminist in question is a man?
Cassandra — wouldn’t they just shout mangina while imploding? (Also, hello!)
I was thinking that they might be forced to issue an apology. Not for wrongly registering the person for vile feminazihatespeak, but for calling a man a woman.
(Hi!)