- Female anti-harassment hotline shut down after a campaign of abuse by men
- Activists Clara Gonzales and Elliot Lepers launched the phone service on Friday
- Women hassled by men could give out the fake number instead of their real one
- But the hotline experienced a wave of abuse from men and had to be closed
French feminists who set up an anti-harassment hotline were forced to shut it down after three days following a campaign of abuse by men.
Activists Clara Gonzales and Elliot Lepers launched the ‘anti-relou’ (anti-annoyance) service on Friday, encouraging women being hassled by men to give out the fake phone number instead of their real one.
When an insistent man sent a text to the fake number, he would receive an automatic response reading: ‘If a woman says no, there’s no point in insisting.’
French feminists who set up an anti-harassment hotline were forced to shut it down after three days, following a campaign of abuse by men. Activists launched the service encouraging women hassled by men to give out its number instead of their own
But the service was axed on Monday after they 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 service was axed on Monday after they 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
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 fund-raising 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.