Evie Ruddy still believes in fighting for equality
In spite of being told by strangers she should “rot,” be raped and shot, Evie Ruddy doesn’t regret standing up for her beliefs.
So she told 150 high school girls at Thursday’s YWCA Power of Being a Girl conference, sharing her experience as the subject of a local controversy in late August.
When Ruddy claimed a local barber shop had discriminated against her by refusing her service, there was public backlash.
“I was cyber-bullied to the extreme,” said Ruddy, who received hundreds of mostly negative comments on social media.
She sought out Ragged Ass Barbers, a trendy men’s shop, because her regular hairdresser of 12 years couldn’t do the “hard part” style she wanted.
“There’s been a lot of misconception about what actually happened with the haircut. Some people have said I tried to target a local business and tried to attack them,” said Ruddy.
She says she was told by the shop — which she didn’t name during her keynote address — that it only gives haircuts to men.
Ruddy then went to the CBC and said she planned to file a formal complaint with the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.
As the story made its way through the media, Ruddy was bombarded by threats and insults online.
She was called a “moron,” an “attention whore” and was told to “get a life.”
Someone wrote “I hope you rot,” while another person threatened to track her down at work.
Another tweeted, “‘People like you make my blood boil,’ simply because I pointed out that a local business was discriminating against a group of people,” said Ruddy.
The worst of the lot threatened her physical well-being: “‘She needs a bullet.’ Some people had said I needed to be raped. Someone specifically said I needed to be shot in the uterus. And I had to go to the police because I was fearing for my safety,” said Ruddy.
“Those messages that I received were specifically intended to silence me,” she added, “to prevent me from standing up for women’s rights and for gender equality.”
Though Ragged Ass Barbers declined an interview on Thursday, at the time of the incident the shop encouraged civil discussion about the matter.
“Name-calling, threats, and insults are not what we condone,” reads a post on the shop’s Facebook page. “They are neither constructive, nor are they ever the start of a peaceful resolution.”
Ruddy encouraged her audience to stand up for equality, even on a small scale.
After all, “There wouldn’t be any change if people listened to those hateful messages. Women would not have the right to vote if hadn’t been for feminists who stood up for that right.”
Ruddy declined to comment on whether she has filed, or still plans to file, a formal human rights complaint.
The SHRC also declined to comment.