Anti-feminist trolls attack FemSoc members over Milo Yiannapoulos

The University of Bristol Journalism Society’s decision to invite controversial speaker Milo Yiannopolous caused tremors on social media this week.

Shocked by the idea of the University endorsing a speaker who they called a “transphobic misogynist”, the Bristol Feminist Society expressed grave concern at the idea on their Facebook page.

Lead by Hannah Dualeh, the Widening Participation Students Officer at Bristol SU, many of the group’s members demanded Milo to be No Platformed on the event page.

Unfortunately what started off with outcries for free speech and respect for Milo’s platform turned into hate speech and internet trolling from some.

Although the group’s demands came to no avail, many of Yiannopolous’ fans from around the world decided to storm the event page to show their support for Milo after he posted a tweet referring to the feminist’s protest.

Comparisons were inevitably made between Adolf Hitler, slaughterer of millions and instigator of widespread fascistic social and economic reforms, and 21st century feminism.

Two commenters posted fake messages, allegedly mocking FemSoc:

 Others tried to cause a commotion by labelling the feminists “feminazis”:

User ‘Leftism is a mental disorder’ decried the use of the ‘feminazi’ label but for all the wrong reasons:

Commenter Lucian plainly laid out his views on the gender politics discussion and remained unchallenged:

Others such as Jack celebrated the fact that the talk was going on:

The University of Bristol Journalism Society responded to the trolls by “condemning all use of offensive material” on the page and by urged them to discuss their views in private forums elsewhere:

From The Tab’s investigation into these individuals, the vast majority of them aren’t UoB students with some hailing from Finland and the USA.

Francesca Collins, the head of Social Media at FemSoc was one of the individuals attacked.

She told us: “I think it certainly doesn’t help the point of the Journalism Society, with all of these people crawling out of the woodwork in its favour.

“It’s embarrassing for them. I don’t know what it says about FemSoc’s stance, other than that wherever there are feminists, trolls will arrive and try and stir something up.”