12/02/2022
Stop the bullying! MFW do good work and are trying to make a better world!
My name is Jennie Hill and I’m the founder of MFW. Once again we’re bringing you a post we would give anything not to write, and once again we apologise for its length but ask you to read it if this is an issue which interests you.
Last Wednesday we published a detailed post explaining some issues with the App and information about intense abuse we’d encountered over past weeks, and how those were related. We’ve since had several meetings with the developer and have decided to work on it for a limited time to see if it can be fixed. The App is unpublished pending these changes. Once again, we’re sorry you don’t have it and are committed to publishing it as soon as possible.
On that post, a comment went up containing information about real individuals which shouldn’t have been posted. The first time it appeared we deleted it, but the thread that day was so busy we didn’t notice when it went up again. We’re short-staffed on moderators as some are inactive because of the horrendous trolling of recent weeks.
Yesterday, one of the people named in the comment posted it on his Twitter account, and we immediately found the comment, deleted it, and apologised to those named. However, his tweet re-ignited the Twitter abusers who’ve been going after our account for weeks, and this time the pile-on has been even more vicious. We remain sorry the comment appeared but some of those named in it appear to be harming themselves and others named more than we could ever do by deliberately drawing attention to it.
We addressed most of the lies being told about MFW in the post last Wednesday, and once again offered a full refund of any donation money if anyone felt let down by us by not producing the App yet. Nobody had requested a refund until last night when two people got in touch: we’ve contacted them both this morning and one has received their funds while we wait for the other to reply to confirm how they’d like us to pay.
Yes, we did block some comments on the page last night because we were getting dozens of comments every minute at one point and this is generally the only safe way to deal with such an attack. We also deleted our Twitter account because of the streams of abuse as we have not only a lack of woman-power to moderate Twitter at the moment but the moderators we have are burnt out, traumatised and exhausted. At all times our first obligations are to both our team and our witchy community, so we block or prevent attacks as a first approach to keep regular supporters (some of whom are extremely vulnerable) from potential harm. We are aware blocking comments and deactivating accounts implies some sort of guilt or lack of availability but that’s absolutely untrue since we publish on four different platforms and three of them are currently very much active. This morning we unblocked the comments which were not so harmful and spoke to the two people we identified wanting refunds.
We’ve also tried to contact a woman whose screenshot comment has gone all around Twitter, who says she’s a single mum who donated to us in lieu of buying her children their school uniforms, but so far she hasn’t responded. If she donated and we can pay her back her funds we will: in fact, if we can help her buy her kids’ uniforms we’d be happy to do so because she sounds as if she could really use the help.
While we addressed what was being said about MFW in that post, we didn’t address what’s also being said about me personally. Because I’ve been relatively open about my association with MFW, both I and my family have been the main focus of vile personal attacks recently. And while I detest having to counter outright lies in this way, I feel this has become so out of hand I need to correct the record about some of what’s being said.
Like all lies, some of what’s now claimed about me has a grain of truth, but that truth has been so twisted that it’s unrecognisable from my actual life. Which is, of course, the intent of those posting it.
The first myth about me is that I’m a “Crypto-scammer” of some sort. Yes, I had a brief interest in cryptocurrency some four years ago. I was commissioned by two publications to write pieces about my brief interest in that field, and the pieces I wrote were strictly focussed on a feminist angle to the crypto phenomenon. As an opinion writer for some years, I’ve been published on many topics and this is only one of them. I do not trade or use crypto-currency now in any form, I only did so briefly and very poorly, and I haven’t been involved in the field for four years.
The second rumour is that I tried to start another App which also failed and I somehow “grifted” funds for it (which would make me a serial grifter, I guess). About 8 years ago I started a small volunteer FB page to connect people who owned pets with people who would care for them when they had to evacuate because of bushfire or other emergencies. It was called “Bushfire Bobby”. After running this for three years on a purely volunteer basis in my local community (and helping many people evacuate with pets during that time), I was approached by the Victorian state government to expand the idea into a non-profit entity. For a number of reasons that idea did not come to fruition but at one point a very small fundraiser was published to try to develop the idea further, which would have eventually involved an App of some sort. When the idea was discontinued that money was refunded to donors.
This next rumour is too ridiculous for words but it has nevertheless gained traction: that I own a Porsche paid for by MFW. This rumour was started by a Twitter stalker and impersonator some MFW followers will remember was a huge pain in the arse for MFW for years until the account was finally deleted by Twitter. At one time a relative of mine owned a very old Porsche and I went for a trip in it, and a picture of that trip was posted on my personal FB account. Somehow it ended up in the hands of this stalker and the story of my Porsche seems to have only improved in the telling: now, people post pics of $400,000 cars saying I own them. I wish!
Yes, I have written about my gay brother who killed himself in 2007 and thanks so much, Twitter, for the comments in recent weeks claiming it was no wonder he killed himself with a sister like me. You have no idea how much my widowed mother has enjoyed seeing pictures of her dead son on the internet alongside claims I’m stealing the money of strangers. It’s particularly painful as my brother was a highly respected film maker working for climate justice and for him to be associated with such baseless rumours is devastating. I’ve also written a couple of times about my severely disabled son (as a way to try to improve health funding in this country) and am similarly amazed people now use these heart-felt pieces to say they’re not surprised he’s sick with a mother like me, and to claim he should be taken from me because I’m clearly causing his disability. For a family which has moved heaven and earth (largely without success) to try to help our son have some quality of life in the past six years, these comments are also devastating.
I was born into a working class family in a country area and have worked my entire life in fields where I have tried to help people. I qualified as a teacher of the deaf and after a few years started my own business (with my husband of three decades) teaching school students advanced driver training techniques. I ran that business for more than 25 years until it was forced to stop operating when hit in Victoria. I now work part-time for MFW and part-time doing other training-related work.
It’s not at all usual for me to say anything to garner sympathy for myself but I’m also a two-time survivor of sexual assault: once as a child and once as an adult. I started MFW as a way to deal with the rage and anguish of the second assault when I was attacked by a friend of extended family and of not believed for some time by others within that family. Many women have responded to that authenticity and integrity on the MFW page and feel that when I write I speak for them and their similar pain. This is also why I try to change the discourse around people like Alan Jones: because it does so much harm to survivors. The trauma of dealing with the social media attacks I’m subject to now are almost unendurable combined with the complex PTSD I battle every day.
There are more lies going around about me (so many I can’t even remember them), and I know this post will do nothing to stop them. In fact, this very post will be picked apart and used against me, such is the growing frenzy. But I know and my family and friends know that although the nature of MFW’s work is not to everyone’s taste I undertake every day to do my best for those who follow this page and who rely on me and the team around me to do something about Murdoch’s attacks on democracy. It was one of the proudest days of my life to get Alan Jones’ misogyny taken off the air in 2020 and I will never not be happy that we helped protect women and girls by having his horrific verbal abuse of women stopped.
For the first three years of MFW’s operation I received no financial payment whatsoever and neither did any of the team. I also worked for another large feminist group for three years between 2012 and 2015 and received not a cent in payment at any time while there. It staggers me on every level that a woman like me who spent more than 6 years working many hours a week as a complete volunteer for women’s causes is now being called a grifter. And if you find my trying to start an outfit which would help people and animals during bushfires, working for decades to teach disabled children and prevent car crash injuries and deaths amongst teenagers, working unpaid for feminist organisations in all my spare time for many years, using my own rapes to try to help others, and using the little writing skill I have to advocate for equal marriage, better action on su***de and better health outcomes for disabled people a grifter, I’d hate to see what you’d call someone who really deserved that title.
In late 2018 MFW started receiving small donations (only after people wanted to help and asked us to set up donation platforms) and that donation base grew when we started the Alan Jones campaign. We needed it badly to pay the staff who did so much work during that year. Our MFW App fundraiser published in July last year initially asked for $40,000 to build the actual App and we only set stretch goals when people wanted to pay us as they truly believed we could help make Australia better. We were completely transparent then and now about where the extra funds would go. At present (refunds which may still be asked for not-withstanding) we have around $90,000 held to pay our part-time staff to do the work needed to continually update the App when it goes up again, and to help grow this movement. This is a tiny, tiny percentage of what most activist organisations operate on and as someone said on our thread earlier, we punch far above our weight in terms of bang for buck in achievement for the funds we receive.
Finally, there are huge misunderstandings around how non-profit businesses operate and these are also feeding into the lies and mistrust. MFW Limited is a non-profit company but it doesn’t have charity or DGR status, mainly because there is no appropriate government category available under which we could apply. There is no secrecy or wrong-doing around this or any of our operations.
MFW has made some mistakes over the years because we’ve always been loud and sweary so when we mess up (which we have at times) we’re an easy target for people to criticise and hate. I get that and accept it goes with the territory. I also understand that the late publication of the MFW App makes both MFW and I a sitting duck for claims of dishonest conduct from many quarters, but the sheer extent of it and the willingness of so many people (including those who say they support progressive causes) to believe the lies has been beyond anything I could imagine. I never thought so many people would believe so many lies with no evidence at all that they’re even partly true.
I also note that the same people insisting we respond to their demands about everything to do with MFWs operations belong to the same cohort of people saying they’re now looking for me and want me hurt or killed. The hypocrisy of this is really stunning.
Finally, it is very important to me that all MFWs supporters know that we have not - not one single time - harassed or even interacted with accounts which are now claiming we did so. I’ll repeat what we said last Wednesday: go and look at the Twitter campaign against us if you want to know the truth. There are some women involved but almost all the initial tweets about us are from large men’s accounts, are spread mostly by other men’s accounts, and are directed purely at MFW and a group of other women’s accounts. We have no association with those other women’s accounts except that we have all been targets in recent months. If you can find a reason for this other than the obvious one, you’re doing better than me.
MFW does not and never has expected unexamined support from anyone or, indeed, even from other feminists but we did expect a modicum of interest in the truth.
Thank you for the personal support I have received in recent weeks: every message means the world. I’m determined to help my team publish this App because I made a promise to this community, but it’s getting harder and harder to achieve anything in this maelstrom of hate. Which is, of course, exactly what those who are posting lies about me and about MFW want. I know why they do it, I know what they want, and I hope they will not win.
Whether they do or not will depend only on the support of this community and some collective understanding of what is going on here, and why. The reasons are clear to me but I’m aware they’re not to some others. If any of our genuine supporters engage with us in good faith on this thread, we’re happy to answer questions about any of this information.
My dearest wish is that that everyone would fight to oppose a terrible government instead of fighting amongst themselves. But that appears at this stage to be a very forlorn hope. I hope I’m wrong.
Warm Regards,
Jennie Hill
[Pic ID: A young woman holds a sign saying “F**k the Tories”.]
