Thanks, memegenerator, for contributing to the harassment of a private citizen
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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 (@CityNews) 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.
Thanks 🙂
Ugh and I forgot they co-opted honey badgers too!
Not to mention alt-righters co-opting anime. Gah 🙁
Animals and anime – anything else with “anim” in it?
Puffins are adorable. And so, in their weird-ass way, are lowercase honey badgers. Trite MRA memes with animals attached? Honey Badgers™? Bleah, fuck that noise. Lay off the animals. Just admit that you’re human dreck and have done with it.
@Mish
Animated GIFs. Even SpongeBob’s imagination rainbow hasn’t gone untarnished (they have a “Kill yourself” version).
@SFHC – nnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooo, pls no.
They probably hate Spongebob because of that brilliant song from the first movie – “Now that we’re men”. I love that song so much.
@ mish
Hey, sounds like your conference went really well; glad you enjoyed it. I’m sure I’m not the only person here who’d like to hear more about it if you get the time.
Was also thinking of you over the weekend. Various bits of on-line animal rights stuff cropped up. I’m now looking at all that through a new prism. So many issues.
Hey David, I’m also living in Toronto, in the Spadina area. Would you please give Ms. Binx my email address? Please let her know if she needs anything at all, even just to vent, I’m more than willing to help wherever possible.
She deserves some reconciliation with the internet in a way she can go online and live her life without these retarded threats. I may be a guy and not all for feminism but damn she was badass telling them to shut the f**k up. Its about time someone did. Life isnt all smiles and agreement and i wouldve done the same. She deserves a normal life free from harassment and id always welcome her with a smile and no judgement.
Hope she gets a break soon. If she wants my email too she can have it. She needs to know that even through all the hate she still has alot of support. Take care.
@Andrew Doran
Comments Policy. Read it. Thanks
ETA: moderation, yay!
@Alan, @Mish
Yeah, me too, Mish.
Alan, I’d also be interested in hearing your new thoughts about animal rights.
@ kat & mish
It’s not so much I have new thoughts about animal rights per se; but some of the discussions here have brought up interesting points about the social media aspects of animal rights campaigns. That’s why I’m so interested in seeing Mish’s paper.
This thread for instance has some relevance to the fallout from the Cecil the Lion case. Would we be as concerned if Chanty Binx had been a lion murdering dentist?
And what about things like this?
Obviously, even within the animal rights community PETA are controversial, but stuff I’ve picked up here gives new perspectives.
I’m really excited to see Mish’s paper about all this, and that’s even before we get onto whether you can be a feminist if you drink milk 🙂
@Alan, @Kat – how do people here contact each other without putting personal info on the site? Is there a special secret ceremony? Is it telepathy? There’s been a few times – like now – that I’ve wanted to take up a discussion with people without hogging the thread, but am obviously wary of offering my email/FB etc. (not wary of Mammotheers, of course, but hostile onlookers).
I’ve been vegetarian and pro animal rights for nearly 3 decades now, and the whole ‘scene’ of animal rights has changed enormously; it has a much more visible public presence now. This brings new complexities. Alan, your comment about Cecil reminded me of the fallout over Harambe. I found myself unable to agree with the ‘majority’ condemnation of the killing because it was so vicious (especially towards the child’s mother). I also had friends decrying it who happily eat wagyu beef, which I find problematic (yes, I get that gorillas are endangered and cows are not).
I’ll stop here; worried again about derailing/hogging, especially given this isn’t a personal/open thread. Thanks both for your comments!
@ mish
People here have had no problem finding me on Facebook (of course, everyone here is smarter than the average bear 🙂 )
Oh yeah, Harambe. Plenty of my normally compassionate friends going down the ‘shoot the parents’ route. I’ll have to admit I was pretty irate at first; until my mum reminded me of all the times I’d done something daft as a kid (she also pointed out that she’d have happily swapped me for the gorilla at times); but emotions running high I suppose. It was such a waste; and I’m in a circle that’s not fond of zoos generally.
And the ‘which animals are food’ thing is also a big issue. Ties in with everything from the recent dog festival to Taiji. It was a friend calling me out on my tricky position of disquiet at eating some animals but not others that was a factor in my conversion to veggie (“Would you eat Sassy?” was a pretty good rhetorical question)
[it was a plaintive message “Please stop eating piggies” that actually swung it]
It’s strange when the internet collides with the real world. Such as the case with the guy who posted the footage and comments about Binx. You have to wonder, that guy at Trader Joes that helped you find the Cookie Butter…does he spend his evenings posting hate? That guy you just said you’d meet for coffee from OkCupid, is he giving other women death threats? Because honestly, these MRAs are normal looking guys. They got mothers. They got sisters. They got girlfriends and wives sometimes. They got women in their life they care about..some of them at least. They got normal jobs and live in normal society. But they just hate women so much. And a lot of those threats made to Binx are some of the most violent, darkest things I’ve ever read. How can that amount of violence even be inside someone? You got to have some pretty black insides to come up with half of those threats. And all for what? I simply don’t get it.
Maybe somebody has mentioned this already, but they didn’t do a great job of hiding “Chad Collins'” identity on his wildly-violent and sickening threat.
I’m going to watch the report now and hope that the person who misused his employer’s video surveillance to force them into a contentious social issue on the creepy side at least got fired.
This is sad and makes me feel sick inside. If there is a way to help her and other doxxing victims I would love to help.
I personally find it a bit intriguing that the author of this article forgot to mention, that Brix and her crew were there protesting a speech about man’s stuff. And it only concluded in a discussion outside, because they were interrupting a harmless talk/lecture with screaming, noise, and in the end pulling the firealarm.
Of course that doesn’t justify making Brix’ life a living hell!!! Don’t get me wrong, but imo feminism in general should move towards reasoning and argumentation and away from the need for safespaces because other people have different opinions 🙂
@DerDeutsche
Necro’ing a thread to whine about feminist safe spaces on a story where a feminist confronted her ideological opposite, on their own turf, and just for doing this has suffered a completely unbelievable campaign of harassment and hate for the last 3 years?
Come on, man. Did you even think before you posted that?
Addendum: what’s with all the German burners dropping by on this thread?
So fucking what? Freedom of speech applies to liberals too.
(And the right to peacefully protest is an actual free speech issue, unlike online rape/death threats.)
This is heartbreaking.. It sickens me to the core that people do this to Chanty.
These disgusting abusers claim feminists get offended at everything, yet they make someone’s life hell for three years just because Chanty expressed her point of view and was a bit rude while at it. Now tell me, who’s really the cowards who get overly offended?
I wish Chanty all the best of success and that this senseless torrent of abuse will stop. If there’s any way at all that I can help, I will gladly do so.
You know, for a online group, the alt-right is surprisingly well organized. Within a month of that video’s release, Binx’s life was already a living a hell. How to these groups manage to pull off this stuff? The Alt-Righters that protest at feminist conventions never get death threats, and their info is well-known.
@Greg
The reason Alt-Righters who protest don’t get the same level of abuse hurled at them is not because feminists are less organized, but because we’re not terrible people who hurl abuse at others for exercising their rights to free speech.
I’m disgusted by the conduct of Chant Binx in the infamous video. She wasn’t just a bit rude. Please… If that type of vitriol was hurled at you, there’s no way you wouldn’t post about it, there’s no way you’d describe as merely “more than a bit rude, really”. The downplaying of her embarrassingly unhinged conduct isn’t honest at all.
That said, it was years ago, and as far as I can understand, she’s not only suitably embarrassed by her display, she’s in no way owed the type of responses I’ve seen. Some of those comments really shocked me. She is deserving of disapproval and perhaps a good old loud, strongly worded confrontation. Not THIS though. THIS is crazy, uncivilized, criminal and just sickening.
“Chanty”: for what it’s worth, I think you’ve paid an unfair price and I’m unreservedly sorry. What I see here is wrong wrong wrong. You didn’t deserve it. It’s terrible. Fuck those guys. Again, I’m sorry.
She mocks male victims of suicide. She harasses peaceful MRA meetings. She shouts death threats towards religious people. Yet, she’s the ‘VICTIM’????
She’s not “the victim” for those reasons. She’s been a victim of stalking, spying, harassment and bullying. Even rape and death threats. She deserved SOMETHING in the way of a confrontation for her behaviour, but this was WAY beyond the reasonable. Being guilty of things doesn’t mean you can never be considered a victim of future things.
@kupo
U say feminists don’t hurl abuse? CB mocks victims. #KillAllMen Feminists driving a male victim to suicide.
Chris,
You lies are tired and your attempt to cast a victim as deserving abuse is shitty.
Fuck off.
More lies, Chris?
Tsk tsk
Even if she did do these things (she doesn’t), yes. Yes, she is still a victim of abuse, because women you don’t like are still people and can still be victims. It’s actually not ever okay to treat a human being the way she has been treated.
Peaceful MRA and meetings. Three words that do not go together.
Um, thank you for your, uh, contributions, Chris. Very, um, very… very insightful.
She yelled a swear word. What exactly does she deserve for that? Why are you so upset at something so mundane? Haven’t you ever seen people be angry and rude before?
Men shout worse fucking things at women every day. Street harassment. Look it up.
Rude customers say worse fucking things to retail/food/customer service every day.
Trump supporters have been shouting much worse fucking things at people of color, immigrants, Muslims and LGBT people every day.
None of those people end up receiving harassment and threats for years over it.
Get the fuck over it and stop insinuating that she deserves some unspecified amount of harassment. Nobody is going to be fooled by you. Nobody is going to give you a cookie for being a “moderate” who things women should be harassed by hordes of angry misogynists only just a little bit.
I would want the coward Chris should get specific about their version of Chanty Binx’s behavior. I see no quotes, I see no analysis of body language. I don’t really like rumor-mongering…
…but that smells of another cess-pit of bias related to sex and gender. It’s far better to note that Chris thinks any of that excuses distracting from the treatment of a person that this blog entry is about. I want to know more about what it was that inspired Chanty to react the way that they did. Their social treatment justifies concern about society.
Chris should just fuck off.
@Good Guy Greg
What does “something” mean? Be specific. In fact, quantify it. Exactly how much abuse should she hafta deal with? Show your work
weirwoodtreehugger: communist bonobo,
Love the screenname, but you seem really upset and I don’t know why, and you seem to have trouble telling when someone is in agreement with you. Like me.
Probably something similar. Isn’t that what you’d do?
I’m not. I’m mentioning my thoughts on it. I have every confidence that if you try REAL hard, you can tolerate the onslaught of my comment 😉 You seem “so upset at something so mundane” actually. We’re just talking here.
Yes. Haven’t you ever confronted someone for being rude before?
… and you would… um… NOT criticise that behaviour or confront it, given the opportunity? You’d tell people who would confront them that “No, no, don’t say anything”? I don’t know you, but it seems to me that you have no problem with confrontation. Just misdirecting it.
No.
I wasn’t doing that, so… not a problem.
Sigh. I’m tired….
Greg, you’d have an easier time if you’d just do as Axe suggested:
Provide an example of what you think she deserved, and who you think ought to have given it to her. Explain why she deserves the punishment you’re outlining.
Let me venture a bit into the philosophy of punishment for you. There are two basic principles that can be used to justify punishment. You’re speaking in terms of deserts: she deserves to be punished in some nonspecific way. The people harassing her are using an instrumentalist perspective: they are punishing her in order to terrorize other women and deter them from speaking up themselves. Instrumentalism doesn’t require anyone to be guilty of any transgression, and it doesn’t require the punishment to fit the transgression. In fact, it is more efficient to not bother wasting any time determining guilt, and the more outlandish the punishment, the better the deterrent effect.
Just something for you to keep in mind going forward.
Greg, I suggest you pull your head out of you ass before you chew through your tonsils.
Although it’s probably already too late . . .
You necro’d an old thread to scold the behavior of woman who’s been harassed for three years by misogynists and you’ve focused just as much, if not more on her behavior as you have on the harassers as if there’s a remote equivalence. Come on now.
Sure. What I don’t do is is harp on it three years later on a blog post about how said rude person is being stalked and harassed.
Oh, the hysterical woman gambit? Original. I’m not upset so much as irritated that every time a woman is harassed and/or threatened, a collection of dudebros always, always have to crawl out of the woodwork to imply that she had it coming.
Really? Because I’ve already explained it in the very post you’re replying to. I’ve explained it again now. Hopefully you know now.
@Greg #2
rolls eyes
@Chris
CB is one person, not the majority of the movement. My point was that we’re not ineffective, we’re just not a movement of abuse, so you can’t measure how well we’re doing by how much abuse we hurl, as the previous comment implied.
Feminists don’t don’t believe in killing men no matter how much you try to paint us that way. But aside from that, where are you getting this information about suicides? Do you have a source? I’ve never heard of it, though it’s truly awful if someone has been driven to suicide. Feminists are working hard to try and help men and women who feel suicidal.
@Greg Enright
Speaking of what Chanty deserves in a social space that is emphasizing what she endures is unsightly. When one cares about changing a social pattern that leads to social harassment, one is willing to accept criticism on how one is subtracting from the overall social context when it comes to social strategy.
That’s for basic human interaction, if someone cares about harassment in a general sense that is.
You are getting criticized, deal with it. At worst you get drilled like the more “colorful” subjects of this blog. At best you are well meaning and don’t have much social experience in this area.
Wasn’t #killallmen one of the 4chan troll campaigns anyway? These hashtags are just anti-feminist lulz trolls arguing with gullible and earnest anti-feminists. At no point are actual feminists involved with that shit.
Who farted?
Oh…a necrotroll. Possibly two. Christ, somebody light a match.
And no, Chanty Binx did not deserve anything but to be left alone. She was heckled while reading off a prepared statement, as I recall, and that’s when she told the MRA heckler to fuck off. Maybe not “ladylike”, but who the hell cares? He got what HE deserved. She did not deserve what came after.
But then, women aren’t supposed to tell men to shut up ever. Not even when men SHOULD shut up and listen for a change.
Got it!
@ weirwoodtreehugger: communist bonobo
They fight with straw men,
wrestle against their shadows,
Facts need not apply.
@Necrotrolls
No more false anguish.
It’s even less convincing
Than a purple sky.
Oh good, a man has come to this old Chanty Binx thread to do the important man job of telling a woman that she’s too upset.
C’mon, y’all, Greg is tired. He wasn’t welcomed with open arms for taking a toxic golden mean tactic, and now he’s tired. Poor Greg. Let’s all do a ton of free emotional labor for this total stranger and make him feel refreshed and appreciated.
I think the angry deranged people should be rejected from both Femiinist and Men’s Rights groups. They do nothing but alienate people from these groups. Allowing these individulas to speak for these groups only damages the groups and people run from them. I personally stopped calling myself a feminist after seeing Bynx on Youtube.
@Trez:
It was necessary to resurrect a seven-month-old thread to point this out?
Well, that’s original. Never heard that one before.
@Trez
Both sides very bad.
South Park said it so it’s true.
Ignore swasticka.
@calmdown – fantastic puffin meme and you are SO RIGHT.