When I first saw this video, I couldn’t believe it was real. A male feminist attending a pro-choice rally in Toronto kicked a pro-life woman and it was all caught on tape. The man was later identified as Jordan Hunt and he has since been fired by his employer.

Before the kick, Hunt was apparently tearing down pro-life posters. This upset Marie-Claire Bissonnette, a pro-life activist, and she confronted Hunt about it. At this point Hunt asks Bissonnette if abortions are okay if a woman was raped. Bissonnette starts to reply and Hunt roundhouse kicks her.

You can hear Hunt saying “I meant to kick your phone” (like that is really any better). Kicking someone because you have different political beliefs is not okay. Full stop. Even if he intended to kick her phone, that’s still awful. There is no excuse.

What’s interesting in this brief clip is there is a woman talking to Hunt about how she prefers to deal with the opposition by “killing them with kindness.” It seems like they were discussing how Hunt was upsetting people by destroying their signs. But Hunt seemed to not listen to this at all as he escalated to full on assault of Bissonnette.

More broadly, I think this is worth discussing because it’s important to be critical of those on “our side.” Yes, it’s easy to point to the bad behavior of our political opponents, but I think we all can do better at self-correction of our own group.

Additionally, this taps into a larger issue with male feminists. I’ve written about how just saying you’re a male feminist is not enough. This guy, Hunt, may be a solid ally for women. We don’t know much about him other than he is pro-choice. But his aggressive behavior here is counterproductive. And it’s an example of how men can sometimes want to get cookies by doing things like telling everyone on Facebook how they are not sexist (or kicking a pro-life woman), but maybe they could do better by just taking a backseat and listening instead of centering the attention on them. Especially, if they are going to do things that make us all look bad.

UPDATE: It appears Jordan Hunt may have assaulted another pro-life woman years ago as well. Video here.

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