Some guys aren’t freaked out by tampons.
Jessica Valenti – Guardian columnist, Feministing founder, non-man-hating feminist – has been fending off an unending torrent of harassment and abuse since she tweeted a picture of herself wearing an ironic t-shirt a couple of weeks ago.
Last weekend, a seemingly innocent tweet from her– asking her readers if they knew any countries that provided free tampons – set off yet another wave of abuse. Her question, and the cogent column she ultimately wrote on the subject, arguing that there are legitimate health concerns that justify government subsidies for tampons, inspired countless thoughtful comments from her critics. Like these:
@JessicaValenti If you're so worried abt tampon availability, maybe U need 2 stick a few fingers in UR you-know-what to stem the bleeding.
— #s k z d a l i m i t (@skzdalimit) August 8, 2014
https://twitter.com/adam_mcphee/statuses/497892354331000832
These sorts of comments (and there were many more along these lines) are sadly typical of the sorts of things feminists – particularly those of the female variety – get whenever they happen to state their opinion about anything online. (If you click on the second one you can see the Tweeter defending his vagina remarks against assorted critics.)
But a reader pointed me to something, well, interesting about that second tweet: It came from a fellow named Adam McPhee, a self-professed “egalitarian” who just happens to be a board member, and the official spokesperson, for a group we’ve discussed here before: the Canadian Association For Equality (CAFE).
CAFE has won itself a certain notoriety in recent months. In May, you might recall, the group’s planned E-Day festival fell apart after its sponsors and some of the musicians scheduled to perform at it discovered that they had unwittingly signed on to a Men’s Rights event.
The group has also organized talks by antifeminist speakers, including the now-notorious appearance of Warren Farrell at the University of Toronto, which inspired some, well, let’s just call them counterproductive protests that we’ve been hearing about endlessly ever since.
But CAFE has been working hard to gain itself a bit of respectability. It somehow managed to win itself charity status from the Candadian government, and has raised money to start up some sort of men’s center. And it has been trying to distance itself from one formerly close ally, A Voice for Men.
Indeed, McPhee himself recently gave an interview to the Toronto Star in which he described AVFM’s harassment of some of those who protested Warren Farrell’s talk as “completely wrong.”
So it seems just a tad ironic, to say the least, to see McPhee happily harassing Jessica Valenti on Twitter.
PS: Adam, I agree with Jessica on that whole tampon thing. So feel free to Tweet me your thoughts about my gaping vagina.
Adam McPhee made a single comment. Not two comments, one comment. Yet Futrelle writes that a single comment somehow rises to the level of “harassment”.
To which I say:
“Keep it up David. You certainly do know how to make yourself look foolish enough to the point that you don’t deserve to get taken seriously. Keep it up.”
Oh Doug. This is really the hill you want to die on? Your “human rights movement” is built on the “right” to criticize someone on the basis of the size of their vagina? But he only said it once, so he’s just like MLK, Jr?
Nope. McPhee is an immature, misogynistic asshat. And he is apparently your exalted leader. That tells me everything I need to know about your “rights” movement.
And this is leaving aside the fact that the comment demonstrates McPhee’s ignorance of biology and anatomy. Again, kind of par for the course for you bigots.
RE: Doug
Really? How many times do I get to mock the size of YOUR genitals before it counts as harassment?
She got bombarded by equally crass and misogynist tweets from MRAs who love to coordinate this kind of shit. So yeah, harassment.
Protip for the MRAs: human rights movements don’t associate themselves with insulting their opponents’ genitals. Talking about genitals in this way doesn’t advance the objectives of the human rights movement.
Good to know, as long as a whole bunch of us only leave one disgusting comment each, it doesn’t count as harassment!
Doug, Adam made more than one comment; click on the date in his tweet to see his comment in context on twitter, and you can see that he doubled down on it when criticized.
But even if he had made only one tweet, posting a hostile comment to a stranger that involves a reference to their genitalia is harassment. I’m pretty sure if you sent a note to someone at work along those lines, the HR department would be on your case, and rightly so. The fact that people consider this acceptable behavior on the internet is not a reason to excuse it; that attitude is part of the problem.