Elliott is charged with criminally harassing two Toronto female political activists, Steph Guthrie and Heather Reilly, in 2012. (...)
The graphic artist and father of four lost his job shortly after his arrest, which was well-publicized online, and if convicted, could go to jail for six months.
Indeed, Elliott’s chief sin appears to have been that he dared to disagree with the two young feminists and political activists.
He and Guthrie, for instance, initially fell out over his refusal to endorse her plan to “sic the Internet” upon a young man in Northern Ontario who had invented a violent video game, where users could punch an image of a feminist video blogger named Anita Sarkeesian until the screen turned red.
Guthrie Tweeted at the time that she wanted the inventor’s “hatred on the Internet to impact his real-life experience” and Tweeted to prospective employers to warn them off the young man and even sent the local newspaper in his town a link to the story about the game.
Elliott disagreed with the tactic and Tweeted he thought the shaming “was every bit as vicious as the face-punch game”.
Until then, the two were collegial online, with Elliott offering to produce a free poster for Guthrie’s witopoli (Women in Toronto Politics) group. (...)
The criminal harassment charge is rooted in the alleged victim’s perception of the offending conduct.
Yet Guthrie and Reilly didn’t behave as though they were remotely frightened or intimidated: They convened a meeting of friends to discuss how Elliott should be publicly shamed; they bombarded their followers with furious tweets and retweets about him (including a grotesque suggestion from someone pretending she was a 13-year-old that he was a pedophile); they could and did dish it out.
