Phone number launched as tool for women being pestered by over-insistent men closes after intimidation and death threats

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Internet trolls carrying out an orchestrated campaign of intimidation and death threats have forced the shutdown of a French telephone hotline aimed at shaming men who refuse to take no for an answer.

The anti-harassment phone number was launched on Friday afternoon as a tool for women being pestered by over-insistent males.

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Victims were advised to give a mobile phone number to men whose behaviour was inappropriately persistent.

When the men contacted the number they received an SMS message reading: “Hello! If you’re reading this message it’s because you have made a woman uncomfortable … It’s not complicated: if a woman says ‘no’ don’t insist. Learn to respect women’s freedom and their decisions. Thank you.”



The “anti-relou” (anti-pest) number, coming in the wake of the #MeToo social network campaign sparked by the Harvey Weinstein scandal, was inundated in the 48 hours after its launch as the telephone number spread on social networks. In three days, the number received 26,000 messages, with each reply costing 16 centimes.



At the weekend, Clara Gonzales and Elliot Lepers temporarily suspended the campaign as the bill for SMS charges passed €600 (£527) due to the number of people texting the number, with only some of them genuine victims of sexual harassment. The pair launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay the growing bill.

The hotline was shut down definitively on Tuesday, after the concerted trolling campaign saw 20,000 hate messages, including death threats, sent on Monday afternoon.

“At first we thought there was a technical problem, then we realised we had suffered a spamming attack,” Gonzales told the Guardian. “The aim was clearly to try to run up such a large bill that we’d be financially ruined and have to stop the service.



“Since then we’ve suffered a strategy of intimidation, hatred, harassment, insults and messages containing death threats. We discovered our names and address are circulating [on the internet] and have had dozens of food delivery orders made in our names, so it’s clear they know where we live.”



She added there had been a coordinated campaign of intimidation against her and Lepers on social media, including Twitter and the video games site jeuxvideo.com. None had sought to block the culprits, she said.



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“As feminist militants we’re not shocked. We know all about the subject of violence against women so we expected a backlash. It’s more disappointing and annoying,” Gonzales said.



Lepers said they had been approached by lawyers and were compiling a file for possible legal action against those responsible for the hate campaign against them.



“We have been able to identify several of them and we’re concentrating on getting the proof together,” Lepers said. “Then we’ll look at setting up a new telephone number and service.”



In a statement on Twitter, the pair added: “We will try to reactivate a similar service as soon as possible.”



Gonzales and Lepers were inspired to set up a French version of the “Rejection Hotline” after hearing about a similar initiative set up by the American feminist website the Mary Sue, which suggested it as an option when dealing with “men who won’t respect their wishes or space”.

