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FRENCH WOMEN WHO set up an anti-harassment phone line announced they had been forced to shut it down after just three days because of a wave of insulting messages.
Activists Clara Gonzales and Elliot Lepers launched the “anti-relou” (anti-annoyance) mobile phone service on Friday, encouraging women being hassled by insistent men to give its number out instead of their own.
If a man who refused to take no for an answer texted the fake number, he would receive an automatic response reading: “If a woman says no, there’s no point in insisting.”
Gonzales and Lepers said they axed the service after the number received “more than 20,000 insulting messages” over the course of a few hours.
The organisers were also targeted on Twitter with a flood of hate messages including death threats, while dozens of food orders were made to their homes.
“We were the victims of a coordinated attack against the service and a campaign of harassment against us personally,” Gonzales and Lepers wrote in a statement.
“We will try to reactivate a similar service as soon as possible.”
They added: “Above all, we want a government response that matches the expectations expressed by the whole of society in recent weeks concerning the fight against violence targeting women.”
The trolling campaign comes in the midst of a global outpouring of anger over sexual harassment and abuse following the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
The French initiative took its inspiration from a similar phone number set up by US feminist pop culture website The Mary Sue following the claims against Weinstein and millions of other men around the world.
The coordinated wave of text messages appears to have been intended to bankrupt the initiative, which had launched an online fundraising campaign, as the service sent an automatic reply to each one.
Gonzales and Lepers said the campaign against them was organised via an infamous youth forum on website jeuxvideo.com, roughly a French equivalent of the English-language message board 4chan, a hub for young internet trolls.
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A fantastic result. No longer will the law or our constitution consider religion above criticism and proper scrutiny.
@Good enough for Jehovah: watch Fry and Hitchens debate on YouTube
Truly brilliant
Well done everyone who voted YES. Another small step towards a truly secular state.
@The Risen: We need to make sure our idiot politicians maintain freedom of speech from now on.
@Daniel Donovan: and some of the idiots like @TheRisen who push a SF agenda. They got stuffed in this presidential election.
@Brendan Kernan: in fairness he mentioned several times that he planned to spoil his vote in the Presidential election by writing ‘GOD’ on the ballot
And thats all that really matters to the insecure Irish…meantime, the banana republic operates unchallenged!!
@John Smith: Not to mention that the few days that the dail will be in session over the next year will be squandered now on changing various laws to suit this newly changed constitution. How much will the legal advice bill go up by? We’re only greesing the wheels of the banana republic.
@John Smith: that really irritates me too about the Irish. The pathologically need to be liked or accepted by other nations. It’s a deep seated inferiority complex. They love the pat on the head from their “superiors”. Drives me nuts. Then when something goes “wrong” and we are harshly judged my other nations it’s the coin flipped – aren’t we a terrible people, the worst little nation in the world.
@David Patrick Cahill: Whaddya on about?
@Bríd Gallagher: The need for validation or acceptance or to be liked. The obsession with how others view us. Its an Irish trait that annoys me. I voted to remove blasphemy from the constitution but at same time I don’t care how the outside world views the result of the referendum. Its a recurring theme very time we have a referendum. We rush to see how other nation’s have reacted to the result. Have you not noticed this?
@David Patrick Cahill: Not even when it could mean life or death to people abroad?
Speaking as someone who was almost expelled from a Gaeltacht for reading a book that was only disapproved of, I’m not surprised that some people vaguely think it might have been a good way to enforce some sort of control over others.
@David Patrick Cahill: Speak for yourself, I dont suffer from cultural cringe.
@David Patrick Cahill: why let it bother you David? Surely you wouldn’t waste your time reading and commenting on the article if the international reaction is irrelevant to you?
about time too !! No religion is above scrutiny !!
@Chris Cantwell: careful now ,say that to the wrong person and you could end up with your head …. ( fill in blanks yourself) !
@Siobhán Ni Mhurchú: Off down to the local Mosque. Wish be luck
The more liberal society becomes it appears the more intolerant people become. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around.
@Aine O Connor: So true
@Aine O Connor: Ain’t that the truth. The illiberal liberals.
The atheists are in their element, Ireland of the saints and scholars no longer applies (hasn’t in years anyway) so when are they going to target the Angelus at 6pm on radio and television, Christmas is safe for the moment as its only about consumer spending for most.
@Charles Coughlan: ‘ so when are they going to target the Angelus at 6pm on radio and television’
Well it’s a long weekend so we’ll probably pick things up from next Tuesday.
@Charles Coughlan: Christmas originated as a Pagan festival anyway not a Christian one
@Charles Coughlan: I wish they could be called “Secularists” instead.
I am sure there are plenty of atheists who don’t give a crap either way, and not the least bit militant about ultimately irrelevant things like this.
Hope it passes, but European Court of Human Rights said defaming Mo “exceeds the limits of free expression” So religious rights trumps human rights in the European Human Rights just as we join Spain in reject blasphemy.
Crazy that it’s 2018 and saying that God does not exist is only now going out the bleedin window.
Madness
@andyearley: of course he exists – where do you think chocolate comes from.
@Etherman: Easter bunny’s ass
@Etherman: and hell exists. That’s where marzipan and mince pies come from
Another big do about a non-issue. Anything rather than tackle real problems
Should have been an ecumenical matter.
Now do what England does and call it a hate crime to say something a bit critical about 1 religion that can’t take any criticism
I do love Stephen fry
@Drahcir Neirbo: you are alike
@Michael Maher: thanks although I’m nowhere as clever as he, thanks
A liberal tolerant Ireland that’s happy to kill precious unborn babies. How wrong. How very very very sad.
@Bernard Byrne: ok hun?
@Bernard Byrne: Feel free to incubate them in your own womb Bernard.
Great, now who’s coming to my Draw Muhammad contest?
@Harry Dunn: count me in but will use a nom de plume just in case oh I get it now signed Justin casey
Does this mean I can curse in the comments section?
@Paddy Kavanagh: Wow what a life! The epitome of freedom is saying bad words on the journal.ie.
@Bríd Gallagher: yep
Language is subjective. No good language, no bad language. Just language
I think that the verdict of the vote on blasphemy is not good, this country is going downhill fast, Ireland was a very religious country but now it is not so, I serve in the church and I believe in God and so do a lot of eastern Europeans, Ireland is bending to the whims of the unbelievers if we do or say anything we are bad, but if they say or do anything it is ok for them. Ireland is gone from being a very religious country to being a soft touch, in a period of 2 years
“Now listen very carefully as I will only say this once”!
“OUCH , what did you do that for?”
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