15 year old girl faces threats over anti-war cartoons

alonzomourning23

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Ava Lowery is a fifteen-year-old who lives in Alabama. She calls herself a peace activist, and for the past year, she’s been producing her own short animations on her website, peacetakescourage.com. All in all, she’s made about seventy of them, she says, and most of them oppose Bush and his Iraq War.

“I was just so mad about it,” she explains. “And the media are not showing the real images of the war, so I did a lot research and started my own website.”

She submitted one of her latest creations, “WWJD,” to the monthly “contagious” contest that huffingtonpost.com is running. (It’s an open contest that ranks the number of viewers for each submission.)

“WWJD” (“What Would Jesus Do”) is a powerful animation that features a soundtrack of a child singing “Jesus loves me, this I know” while one picture after another of a wounded, bloody, or screaming Iraqi child fills the screen.
“The object of the animation,” says Lowery, is “to get the following point across: Jesus loves Iraqis, too.”

Lowery ends the video with quotations from Beatitudes, including, “Blessed are they who mourn” and “Blessed are the meek” and “Blessed are the merciful” and “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

She says she’s received a lot of positive feedback in short messages back to her site. And she understands that the fact that “people are on the web, and they just let loose.” But she was unprepared for the viciousness of the negative feedback—especially the ugly sexual slurs similar to those that Cindy Sheehan has faced. (If you can’t stand foul language, stop reading now.)

“It’s people like you who need to fucking die and get raped while your corpse rots in the sun,” said one e-mail Lowery shared with me. “fuck you, I would jack off on your parents if I could. If you don’t like the team, get out of the park. That means take ur small dick and get the fuck off of my homeland you $$$$$$ chocolate gulper.”

“You are a TRAITOR to your country and should be executed for treason,” another one said. “All you do is bitch about the US. If you hate it so much, why don’t you GET THE fuck OUT.”

“Why don’t you go masterbate [sic] to a pic of Sheehan and fuck off,” said a third.

“Are you a muslem [sic] terrorist?” asked another.

She says there was a threat against her that was circulating “on the conservative underground.” And she says she received one e-mail from someone who said, “Contact me ASAP. It concerns a danger to your life.”

When her mom called the number, the person who answered denied any knowledge of the threat, Lowery says.

She adds: “I was really weirded out by it.”

http://www.progressive.org/mag_mc042406
 
Both the reactions to and defense of her are a bit peculiar, and, I'd argue, representative of sexism. She seems savvy enough to defend herself, and I don't think this needs to be framed as a "Republicans don't even respect teenage girls." Of course they don't. This kind of vitriol is somewhat typical, though I imagine that it'sa bit more sexual due to the gender of the person making these slides.

Images are very powerful things, and the photos she used in the "WWJD" slide are precisely the thing that the media has shied away from showing. In the end, she may not change many people's minds, but it is telling that few people can take on a teenager intellectually by trying to claim that this is a war that Jesus would approve of, and instead resort to sexual harrassment and name-calling.
 
PAD's response:
[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']I doubt this is true, but if it is, this is not representative of the group. You can't use the retarded extremists to reach conclusions about everyone. Why do you liberal traitors have to always smear the U.S. like this?[/quote]

15 minutes later...

[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark'] ROP Update: Islamic Extremist Kills 5 in Car Bombing

God damn sandniggers.[/quote]
 
I know I'm taking this off track here, but I was just reading some of the comments on the Progressive's website (btw nice non-bias source there). People saying things like "your art is part of that leadership. Now I'm not going to say this girl doesn't deserve some props for doing what she is doing, but from the 3 I've seen, these aren't really art, they aren't even animations. These are taking pictures (not taken by her) in a slideshow and adding an audio track. It takes no real talent to what she's doing, simply a simple knowledge of computers. At first I thought she was actually animating things, but nope, if you're going to say I make animations, then at least do a decent flash animation. There I said it, I just need to point that out.
 
Actually, given the quality of the 'threats' I'd just attribute it to the inherent mass of stupid that comes with the internet.
fuck you, I would jack off on your parents if I could. If you don’t like the team, get out of the park. That means take ur small dick and get the fuck off of my homeland you $$$$$$ chocolate gulper.”

This guy doesn't even know its a girl. Small dick, chocolate gulper and I'd assume $$$$$$ is "bundle of sticks". Homophobia, racism and sexual insecutiry... obviously your typical 12 year old trying to be "edgy and offensive" on the internet. Personally, I blame them MTVs. :lol:

Yea, speaking of cumming on someone is offensive to a girl, but its not like a troll of such staggering intellect wouldn't say the exact same things to a guy. Hell, I've had worse insults hurled at me for saying game X was beneath my expectations. I've also received death threats for killing monsters in Diablo 2 that 'belonged' to someone else.

The simple truth of it is that the internet is just full of people looking to say "I want to cum in a goats ass and make you drink it." Thank you juvenille sense of anonymity! I can more or less guarantee there would be people saying the exact same things if she was making cartoons advocating the war.

*ignore any spelling mistakes, I typed this up in 3 minutes and didn't really proof read*



[quote name='mykevermin']Both the reactions to and defense of her are a bit peculiar, and, I'd argue, representative of sexism. She seems savvy enough to defend herself, and I don't think this needs to be framed as a "Republicans don't even respect teenage girls." Of course they don't. This kind of vitriol is somewhat typical, though I imagine that it'sa bit more sexual due to the gender of the person making these slides.[/quote]
 
That might be my favorite piece of hate mail I've read this year.

Get off my homeland, Small Dicked Chocolate Gulpers!
 
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