Software increasingly defines the world around us. It’s rewriting everything about human interaction – I spend a lot more time on my iPhone than I do at my local civic center. Facebook, Apple, Tinder, Snapchat, and Google create our social realities – how we make friends, how we get jobs, and how mankind interacts. And the truth is, women don’t truly have a seat at the table.
This has disastrous consequences for women that use these systems built by men for men. I must use Twitter, as it’s a crucial networking tool for a software engineer, yet I must also suffer constant harassment. Women’s needs are not heard, our truth is never spoken. These systems are the next frontier of human evolution, and they’re increasingly dangerous for us.
You can close your eyes for this. You can cover your ears, shouting “LA LA LA LA!” at the top of your voice. You are free to do so.
Until it’s your daughter, and you realise that your refusal to acknowledge this huge problem will have consequences.
Putting seriousness of these threats aside…
These days Twitter is a “crucial” tool for a software engineer? My God, what has the world come to.
Indeed. I could understand if it was IRC or mail. But twitter as crucial? Perhaps for PR-stuff, but?
I must be missing something there.
As to threats on her life, such threats are always totally unacceptable. Gender doesn’t enter that equation.
Independent, small companies like the one she runs definitely require Twitter to talk to both customers and peers.
But why? This is a genuine question. I don’t have a Twitter account and have always wondered what makes Twitter so special.
The truth is that nothing but using Twitter requires Twitter…
Obviously, you have evidence that there is roughly a proportionately equal amount of Youtube death threats towards the males as there are for the females (of any side) in this Gamergate brouhaha.
If I may clarify: Gender does not enter the equation of this being totally unacceptable. The gender of the victim (and the perpetrator) does not make it more or less unacceptable. It is simply totally unacceptable, no matter the gender of the victim or the perpetrator. The gender may or may not play a role in the causes of the specific case, but this tendency of white knighting actually reinforces the patriarchal structures of the capitalist system. Which was surely never the intention.
Proportionally, no. But if you start insulting gamers (many of whom probably still live with their parents) and calling them names, whether you’re male or female, there’s a pretty decent chance you’re going to get harassed, esp if the mainstream press brings attention to you. How do I know this?
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/teen-charged-with-harassing-antiga…
I guess all those woman-hating gamers that sent him death threats must’ve thought he was female, right? Yeah, I guess that’s it. And what’s even more interesting is there are comments saying things like he deserved it. Hell, I can remember comment threads back then where people were saying they wish he’d just die, or whatever. But a woman starts getting the same death threats, and it’s like ‘OMFG’ – you can watch these white night SJW’s literally trip over themselves to demand action.
Look, I know it sucks to be a woman on the Internet (esp if you’re an outspoken feminist), and I am not unsympathetic to what they’re going through. But two things must be understood:
1. Short of ending anonymity on the Internet, there’s really no getting around the lamers. It’s not like if you could somehow banish the #gamergate tag, that these idiots would suddenly turn into upstanding citizens and start volunteering at their local homeless shelters.
2. People screaming ‘misogyny’ at the gameergate crowd are full of shit. Sure, there might be a lot of immature morons in the group, but gamergate as a whole has never been about misogyny. It actually gives me the impression that they’re trying to divert attention away from … something … that they want to cover up. They want so badly for people to believe it’s all about woman-hating, it actually reeks of desperation to me.
It is fascinating to see SJW’s preach against throwing a whole group of people under the bus because of some bad apples, yet they don’t seem to have a problem doing so when it suits their purposes. They will readily label you as an ‘-ist’ or a ‘-phobe’; it’s their way of trying to censor opinions that they don’t agree with. And you can watch and see if this comment gets modded down in retaliation.
Edited 2015-02-12 01:36 UTC
I don’t think it’s desperation or an attempt to cover something up.
Just, when one of the major things you spend your life-time on is fighting misogyny, every negative response you get (on whatever, and for whatever reason) will be seen in that light.
This applies to many other causes as well – for example, some of the “gamergate” activists are pretty worked up about the standing gamers have in society.
And now there’s a problem: two communities that respond maximally to every perceived slight and feel the need to prove that they’re being mistreated and definitely not the bad actors.
Since they mistreat each other and things escalate over time, as whole communities they’re both right for the former and wrong with regard to the latter – but it’s often considered impossible to be both victim and perpetrator.
In case of feminists it certainly doesn’t help that many of the threats are phrased more or less sex specific (rape threats are still seen as something only men do only to women).
I figure that would pretty much be common sense, no? Usually dudes don’t send rape threats to other dudes, and even if they did, I doubt many of us would be intimidated by such a threat. If a woman sent a rape threat to a man, he’d probably take her up on it
Not in retaliation, but because i disagree with you. There is a difference.
Edited 2015-02-12 14:31 UTC
The downvote button is not a disagree button. I do not see “-1 disagree” in that list. Downvoting because you disagree is like covering your ears, shouting “LA LA LA LA!” at the top of your voice. You are free to do so but it does make you look immature that you can’t handle views that run contrary to your beliefs.
Edited 2015-02-12 15:11 UTC
There is an “Inaccurate” option, as well as a “Troll” and an “Off-Topic” option. Inaccurate fits “Do not agree with” in this context IMO, considering I feel your post is inaccurate.
Edited 2015-02-12 15:44 UTC
When you start claiming that 2+2=5, then I’ll mod you as inaccurate*.
(*) except for very large values of 2.
Edited 2015-02-12 16:16 UTC
That makes no sense. When you mark something as inaccurate, you are, in a very fundamental sense, disagreeing with them. I believe that your op was inaccurate for the following reasons:
There are a lot of misogonistic elements to Gamergate, which you can see in the attempt to legitimze the harrasment of these women as “fighting corruption” in gaming media, which would be fine, but gaming media is as corrupt as it comes, and as long as it was some dude, nothing was really said. But as soon as a woman has the chops to stand up to the way women are portrayed in video games, she has her life threatened, is forced from her home, is doxxed, is slut shamed (over nebulous claims), the “movement” tried to intimidate her to back down. When attention was drawn to their antics, they retconned the whole ugly affair to be about corruption in Gaming media.
The whole backlash against these women is what reeks of desperation, and that’s why i find your post to be inaccurate, because it does not fit the facts.
That’s funny, some others claim exactly the opposite. Perhaps you should check the timeline.
http://wiki.gamergate.me/index.php?title=Timeline
Just read it for yourself. You don’t have to believe the timeline itself, you can follow the actual sources listed there. Read the source material. Watch how the DMCA was invoked on discussions about Depression Quest and shitty journalism, and massive censoring was going on on several boards, and how it was then turned into misogyny. When a man behaves like an asshole, he gets called an asshole. When a woman behaves like an asshole, you better not say a word or you’re a misogynist. I can’t believe feminists support her, she basically removes her own agency and blames it on genders.
With all respect, the facts show that this woman was lying about it (see further down this thread).
You mainly see backlash against these women because that’s what you (and the media) focus on. The media love it, it’s a juicy story and it draws attention away from themselves.
In any case, this is not a clear “you’re wrong and I’m right” situation, hence unless someone writes something that you can refute with solid facts, modding a post as “inaccurate” is just “disagreeing”.
That wiki page is decidedly biased. That’s like using Star Trek to prove aliens exist. It proves nothing, other than anybody can put up a wiki page.
Now, heres some links to Ars Technica, a much more reliable resource.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/09/new-chat-logs-show-how-4chan-…
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/10/death-threat-forces-cancellat…
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/09/fbi-offers-help-to-game-devel…
Edited 2015-02-13 15:47 UTC
Ah please, you didn’t even check a single source there. It points to the facts themselves, not to what some shitty journalists think or want you to believe what happened.
As for Ars Technica, a senior editor of theirs was the creator of the whole GameJournoPros list. They joined in the Gamers are dead attack which was clearly a coordinated event. They pushed the whole “4chan started it” narrative on mentioned mailing list before releasing it. If you believe they are fair and neutral, I have a bridge to sell you.
Funny comment from one of those articles you copied:
“I like the double standard. When it’s anti game “journalism” stuff it’s just a few accounts pushing millions of tweets. When it’s twitter death threats it’s obviously every male out there attacking a single person.”
I disagree with your interpretation of the events, and i disagree with your stance. You disagree with mine.
I don’t think either one of us is going to sway the other one, and to be honest, I don’t really want to. I said my piece, and you said yours. I’m out
WHAT? That’s crazy talk! I’m sure it’s just a massively-convenient coincidence that this “controversy” started heating up right around the time we started seeing public media exposure of the rampant trans-phobia among radical feminists (*cough-cough* http://theterfs.com/ *cough-cough*)….
It has started with male entitlement, then brought forward the thin veil of objectivity in games journalism. But don’t actually want objectivity.
Also national socialism never was anti-jewish, as a whole.
Well… That shows how objective you are and not fast at throwing people under the bus. Oh wait! You just did!(Derogatory use of SJW)
IRC or mail crucial for software developers? My god, what has this world come to?
Yeah, i could understand BBSes and telex talk sessions, but irc and mail? My god, what has this world come to?
If only it was easier for someone in her situation to avoid making such inflammatory claims.
“Inflammatory” comments deserve death threats? Okay…
Sending death threats is not okay, but calling out this whole thing being as men vs women is also not okay imho.
The same people who harass men are the one whom threat women. Though in case of men, we do not care as much simply, because they have the power, right?
It often looks like that cases like harassing Phil Fish is okay, because he is just a nerd jerk, but harassing Brianna Wu it is not okay, because that is misogynyst. The last swatting case just happened not so long ago, which I think clearly shows that this is not a men vs. women issue.
Yes, they are attacked her weak point, because yes, in real life there are more women assaulted then men. But is she is attacked because she is a developer with an opinion, not because she is a women, and her opinion often sounds more anti-men than pro-women. Because what does built by men for men mean in this context anyway? What is so pro-men about Twitter? What is it about Facebook that is just excluding women or degrading for women?
And don’t forget that posting a bitter screed about an unpleasant past relationship is totally unacceptable when one of the participants happens to be a female game developer… but when there are entire sites devoted to encouraging women to do the exact same thing, that’s apparently A-OK (E.g. DontDateHimGirl.com).
Both are not right. Being A-OK with exposing a cheater compared to being glorified for it and kicking off a campaign of harassment are not equal.
So in your mind, pointing out that a statement is inflammatory equates to condoning death threats? Okay…
So you’re saying she should just shut up and not have any opinions?
Everything may be said (at least in most western countries; some limits may apply), but not everything is smart to say in every context.
While the “by men” aspect can probably be deduced from twitter’s workforce (though there’s probably not detailed enough information in public to know if that male majority is also present in interaction design, or just in the sysadmin team) it’s not quite clear why twitter must be “for men”.
I rarely write software for myself when doing that for a living, and the specifications are often driven by direct customer input or customer observation. The latter often conducted by psychologists, which is a predominantly female trade.
I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that twitter is similar in that regard.
So there’s a statement loaded with (to my knowledge unproven) assumptions that, given the topic, will certainly fuel the flames some more.
Now look at what you reacted to:
This isn’t about shutting her up. It’s about breaking the vicious circle of people lashing out at each other. What do you (and what does she) expect the opposite party to do with such a statement?
It really is fuelling the flames (with no beneficial side-effect as far as I can see), and it would be nice if people in such a situation (both her camp and the other) had other options at their disposal in their communication repertoire.
more people would take her seriously and her crappy game.
Thankfully she has nothing to do with the the consumer revolt. Her constant attention whoring shows how desperate and pathetic he truly is. She is just another lowly white bourgeois.
With the FTC laying down the law against Gawker and other click bait sites and companies removing theirs ads, GamerGate is making huge strides. 2015 is going to be a great year.
Thank you, Thom. The more people read about GamerGate, the more people join the consumer revolt. Proof and exposure is the key to defeating charlatans like Anita and doxxers like Zoe.
Bullshit. The only things that GamerGate idiots have accomplished is to give free publicity to people like Sarkeesian… and giving them a convenient shield to dismiss any legitimate discussion of flaws in their reasoning (of which are there legion). Thanks to GamerGate, if someone points out that Sarkeesian is a third-rate academic whose “analyses” consist of little more than blatant examples of confirmation bias, it’s immediately seen/spun as siding with people who post rape & death-threats.
This is hardly a revelation, Jim Sterling was able to grasp that fact more than 2 years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MxANWWhpMs
Cultural critic is not an academic. She never claimed to be an academic. What she is and what were her goals are no secret.
Hense her work, however much you dislike, cannot be subject to academic criteria. It’s in the realm of the arts.
You can close your eyes for this. You can cover your ears, shouting “LA LA LA LA!” at the top of your voice. You are free to do so.
Thanks for providing your permission. But I think I’ll just have a good chuckle at the gullibility of anyone who buys into the laughably dishonest victimhood and oppression narrative being pushed here.
Abusive trolling and doxing should be condemned, and actual threats or swatting should be prosecuted (whichever “side” does it), but many of the claims made in that article (and elsewhere) fall apart under scrutiny.
For example, it’s utterly (and provably) false that Wikipedia “chooses to discipline only feminists”. Of course, the reality wouldn’t allow Wu to spin an attempt at a neutral POV in an online encyclopaedia into yet another disingenuous example of sexist oppression…
Do you guys hold the same opinion for people like, say, Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell? I bet you ignore them.
If these female writers are wrong or even “inflammatory”, why not do for them what you do for the likes of the Westboro Church? ie, ignore them. Why is it necessary to make death threats?
* I’m not saying these female writer’s writings are comparable to these other inflammatory sources.
I’ll bite… I do ignore Robertson, Falwell, and their whole ilk. I would also like to ignore the entirety of this particular topic, but its hard to avoid it with Thom posting about it nearly weekly.
His prerogative of course, I just think the whole thing is overblown and getting way more attention than it actually deserves.
Whoever is sending death threats, doxxing, etc., is f*cking crazy. Most people are not crazy, most people are rationale. Even most people that are tired of hearing about these constantly harassed feminist journalist are rationale.
I (and probably others) occasionally post things here outside of what might be considered “supportive” of these women when these stories pop up. Its because the whole thing reeks of social engineering (in the sense of politics). Just my opinion of course, but that doesn’t make me crazy. I don’t threaten people. I doubt many people on this site do.
ps. If I’m wrong, and there are basement dwelling cowardly psychos in the audience itching to anonymously threaten women they don’t even know, I apologize. Go back to 8chan, your not welcome here.
Yeah, I’d be surprised of anyone reading this site but perhaps a very tiny minority has ever harassed or sent a death threat to a woman. For this reason, it would probably be more fitting for Thom to go and post these diatribes on a site like 8chan, where the actual offenders are.
@femfreq posted a week of not-so-pleasant twitter messages she received, with user names of the senders. I checked a random sample and found that outside these messages, most of the accounts seem to belong to very average people of all ages, professions and sexes, living pretty average lives when they’re not happen to send rape or death threats across the Interwebs.
It’s always a minority, but that minority seems to be present everywhere, not just on 8chan.
I think it’s good to have a reminder of the effect of that every now and then. If it really needs to be in the frequency Thom decides (or more often, or less), no idea…
Of course there are. Just a few posts above there is a person claiming victory for G####G### and calling Anita Sarkeesian a charlatan. Forgetting that Anita should not even be relevant to the issues… but that is why anyone’s claim that ## is all about journalistic integrity is pure BS!
This is far from a cosnumer revolt. This is radical elements of subculture not willing to accept that their subculture is changing.
Because a scarily large amount of gamers are apparently psycopaths.
“Why is it necessary to make death threats?”
Leading question fallacy.
Accusations still doesn’t count as evidence, and neither does death threat. These women still do a terrible job defending their big claims.
I just can’t take people like Brianna Wu seriously anymore, I’m not covering up my ears and not listening. I’m not even a GamerGate supporter.
GamerGate has a huge perception issue when it comes to most people from the outside because most people can’t be bothered with taking the time to learn about both sides beyond news entries from the gaming media or wikipedia which tend to have a perceived misogynist bias against GamerGate when in fact the core of the group is quite against that.
Angry Joe did a pretty okay coverage on his stance on it despite some inaccuracies, Sargon’s response to his video covers it a bit more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Uf9kS7Rp3Y
That being said GamerGate and the SJW Groups have had their fair of trolls and idiots that have made the situation worse by Doxing and making threats. People like Brianna have been taking up the whole situation to promote themselves and become e-celebrities by continuing to push back publically on how victimized she’s become as a result. Aside from that she’s known for making a game originally released for the iOS called Revolution 60.
While I do agree threats and general douchebaggery that’s common the internet needs to be addressed, I don’t think it’s fair to claim that GG is fully to blame for it nor do I think paying any credence to people like her is doing anyone justice.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – any reasonable claims that ## has had are drowned out by the radicals.
Then prolonged association with ## reuslted in even the ratioal supporters being sucked into the storm. John Bain is a good example – from being a reasonable commentator on the issues, to radically protesting any claims that gaming is a boys club.
From the title alone, should tell you she is mentally unstable and prone to delusions.
Why, because she shouldn’t take death threats seriously? From your comment alone, you can tell that you are mentally unstable and prone to delusions.
It’s easy to throw those words around. Are you a psychologist? A psychiatrist? No? Then keep the diagnoses to yourself.
The problem with this whole truckload of bullshit is that there are so many people who resort to name calling, derision and threats when somebody disagrees with them.
Edited 2015-02-12 14:39 UTC
I truly believe in equality between men and women death threats are incredibly asinine and go against my beliefs. Women are our equals in practically every way and more so in others, we have our differences but without each other we wouldn’t have us, we wouldn’t have humanity (who can think of their mothers as being less than themselves — I certainly cant)
The problem I have with this whole thing is that radical feminists are just as bigoted as the misogynists they rally against. Why is all of this gamergate crap surrounded by radical feminists ?
Also did Brianna Wu undergo sex change (so technically born a man)?
I personally don’t agree with any of it its all very childish and no Thom I don’t believe either side is completely right or completely wrong, because its just 1 big massive convoluted mess covering several different things within it.
Also I don’t believe that twitter is a crucial networking tool for developers, that is just pure rubbish.
Only one side are producing death threats and doxxing though. Doesn’t matter if you agree with the other side or not, if you think making death threats (or actually murdering someone) just because you’re butthurt over their opinions you should be in a straightjacket.
Edited 2015-02-12 06:34 UTC
I’d like to point you to the harassment, death threads and doxxing that gamergate receives from the social justice people then:
https://jennofhardwire.wordpress.com/2015/01/06/gamers-discussing-ga…
Warning: there are some disturbing NSFW images further down in that page.
If you think this is not the social justice movement as a whole doing this but instead a select bunch of seriously troubled people, then perhaps you may want to apply the same logic to the gamergate movement.
The main difference I noticed is that the gamergate movement actively condemns harassment (as it just damages their cause) unlike the other side which remains completely silent about their part and often denies its existence (while smearing GG in the press).
The whole thing reeks of hypocrisy and double standards.
That is messed up, and I don’t doubt it’s real. Some people will look for any excuse to be sadistic.
e.g. there was an infamous troll in the SF/F community recently. She would raise valid points about sexism and racism in other people’s writing – but also harass and threaten them, in a truly nasty fashion. (On one occasion said she wanted to throw acid in another writer’s face. Seriously.) Having valid political points doesn’t absolve one of wrongdoing.
I have to say though, and guy who does stuff like the above while calling himself a feminist is just being a shit. If you’re sexually harassing a woman, you are by definition *not* a feminist. I don’t care if you’re further to the left than Noam Chomsky and she’s further to the right than Ann Coulter, it’s just wrong.
Being against ## is no movement. I’m against it, but I will take on no badge.(There is a good reason why you say “the other side”, instead of a name)
Also saying that no-one that is against ## has not come out agaisnt harassment is another load of BS. In fact, all of the opponents have comeout out and unanimously and unconditionally condemned the harassment. Unfortuantelly, to my knowledge, any condemnation from ## supporters that I am aware of has come with conditions.
Who is a radical feminist – Wu, Quinn or Sarkeesian? There are radical femenists, but none of them are center stage in this issue. Bad male examples are very much center stage on the supporter side, though.
What does this have to do with anything?
Wyoming is “The Equality State”, and one picture that has stuck with me from a museum is a Husband and Wife with their two kids, and two dead coyotes, each shot by one of the spouses who are holding their rifles. This was in the late 1800s. Buffalo Bill’s show included Annie Oakley. Pioneer women were as tough as the men.
Sam Colt made everyone equal. Most states allow Concealed Carry with the proper permit.
I don’t have a daughter (yet) but if an actual incident like the threats occurred, I think I would ask in the aftermath, “Was the fatal shot through the head or chest?”.
If Brianna Wu is actually frightened and threatened, then she should take the proper actions to defend herself. Not merely post libelous and equally horrid tweets and then whine about trolls. A restraining order is not a bullet, and I’d be interested in seeing if she actually went to the court – many of these stories are exaggerated.
Many pro-GGers have been doxed and threatened in similar manner. Ought not all threats be investigated and those which are actually criminal (not all are) prosecuted, or is it just threats against protected classes?
And you can do civil actions and subpoena Twitter’s records and the ISPs. Do so if you feel the need.
Please provide names. I hear this all the time, but it’s allways nameless.
So if I’m keeping score correctly, the abstract class of women is wonderful and and to be respected and your mom.
But any individual woman who speaks up about harassment is a whiny attention whore who should just shut up so we can all go back to contemplating the ideal.
Have I got it right?
Thanks for sharing this article Thom and throwing a little light in the dark corners.
Applying your logic any guy that dares to say that equality works both ways is a patriarchal misogynistic pig who doesn’t deserve to live.. I think I am applying your logic correctly..
Have I got it right?
Edited 2015-02-12 06:20 UTC
Though equality indeed should work both ways, the fact that we live in a world that currently enormously favours white males, mentioning “equality works both ways” in a general context of women being abused indeed does show you’re a sexist, if not a misogynistic pig.
A man who says that women are already equal and “sometimes more equal” is sexist and may be mysoginistic.
A man that actually means that equality is equal both ways is as much a feminist as mainstream feminism.
When main topic here was about BeOS?
I promised myself i wouldn’t cry …
Gamers… developers… Engineers… whatever… I know for an absolute fact that men do not hate women
And I for one would think all the female gamers, developers and engineers that I have worked with were pretty awesome.
Sure there is the occasional exception and their are jerks male and female alike. But the respect and friendship you get from people or the lack thereof is not something you can FIX.
You have to change the circles of people you hang out with …. get with people that like you and quit assuming that the world owes you anything. You have to earn respect and friendship! The real kind not some 5000 mile away online experience!
It isn’t the world that is broken … its how you are trying to live in it!
Edited 2015-02-12 02:50 UTC
You say that the world is not broken. OK. Then why do males earn that respect far easier than women? How is it respecting women, when harassment is omnipresent even by men that “respect” a woman?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A
When Twitter is completely ineffectual at handling harassment — it’s because women don’t truly have a seat at the table in running it.
For the last year, Reddit has had a female CEO named Ellen Pao… Ellen, you have a hate group operating on your site called Kotaku in Action, creepily called KiA. This lunatic fringe of gamer doxxers who slanders us creates a culture that is making it impossible for us to do our jobs.
There is a basic contradiction here. The problem is not the absence of women at the table. It is firstly that monitoring Reddit, Twitter, or any other new medium would be very expensive – too expensive for these companies to do while offering the “free” services that their customers want; and secondly that law enforcement is not interested in spoiling the party for big business.
If I set up a website that hosted KiA, I would expect to be sent to prison. If a large and profitable corporation does it, no action is taken.
In fact, Brianna Wu might be in a position to solve her problem – not by conventional means, but through her connections.
I remember reading about a trainee doctor who received a death threat from one of her patients. She knew perfectly well that it would be useless to go to the police; so she waited until the next day and went to see the Dean at her University. The Dean phoned his friend the Chief of Police, and the bum who threated the doctor was arrested the same day for some other offence, and could not get out of jail because he could not afford the bail bond.
Have you even looked for one second at KIA (Kotaku In Action) before writing all this?
Here, I’ll link it for you so you can decide for yourself if it’s really about terrorising women. Also read the sidebar, the timeline and the rules.
https://np.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction
So she should rely on connections to a good-old-boy network?
I get what you’re trying to say – I really do – but think about the case you mention. All the social power there is wielded by dudes.
For your information, Reddit’s current CEO is a woman with a degree in electrical engineering and graduated at Harvard Law School. I’m pretty sure she has proven herself and isn’t part of the “old boys network”.
Edited 2015-02-12 20:06 UTC
She has an old white man as father…
Graduated at Harvard Law School, aha.
Edited 2015-02-14 04:48 UTC
Law enforcement should be taking death-threats seriously. If not, it is not doing it’s job correctly. A death threat is a death threat whether in a letter, shouted in the street, or sent via twitter.
I find this logic barely capable of standing under it’s own weight:
“Software increasingly defines the world around us. It’s rewriting everything about human interaction — I spend a lot more time on my iPhone than I do at my local civic center. Facebook, Apple, Tinder, Snapchat, and Google create our social realities — how we make friends, how we get jobs, and how mankind interacts. And the truth is, women don’t truly have a seat at the table.
This has disastrous consequences for women that use these systems built by men for men. I must use Twitter, as it’s a crucial networking tool for a software engineer, yet I must also suffer constant harassment. Women’s needs are not heard, our truth is never spoken. These systems are the next frontier of human evolution, and they’re increasingly dangerous for us.”
Women are somehow incapable of creating competing products to “Facebook, Apple, Tinder, Snapchat, and Google” and wikipedia? Is this a serious person who is saying this?
So is the solution to that to just substitute women for the leadership in such organizations? The product was still “made by men for men”? If you ask the women (not programmers) using those products do they feel the same way? That they are disenfranchised in the product? Missing a seat at the table?
I know how annoying it is not to be taken seriously, but sometimes the error is not in the person’s birth but in their presentation and attitude. Or does the author feel their concerns are not taken seriously because they are a woman and thus want to be taken seriously because they are a woman?
Why not taken seriously because you are a human being? One’s sex should have nothing to do with it.
I agree with you. Complaining about software written by men?
Really, what would Twitter or Facebook do differently if they were written by women? What womens’ needs would they address differently?
And they can’t be that hostile to women, because I see girls and women using Twitter and Facebook all the time.
It is tech, it doesn’t know who is a woman or not.
If you look at it, the claim that the technology is hostile to women is anti-feminist itself, claiming that women are mentally weaker and need more protection from hostile words than men do.
That’s kind of like claiming that uranials are unisex. If you are clueless as to the difference between women and men …. You will not understand what women need.
Not really. A urinal was designed specifically for men. Twitter and Facebook are more like toilets which are equally used by men and women (standing or sitting).
And do remember, you brought up the analogy.
So what you are saying is that, like a urinal, Twitter, Facebook, wikipedia, et al were specifically designed for men? Really? Somehow, I doubt that.
Totally off topic, but I love the analogy between social networking sites and places to urinate in
Yeah, you’re predisposed to disagree without understanding. Or possibly you don’t understand what analogies are. That kind of sucks for you. You’d have a better life if you tried to understand arguments first and/or understood analogies.
Hmmm, that seems strangely familiar… Oh right:
– The Art of Conversational Terrorism, Ad-Hominem Variants
http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html
Uranials are gender specific. Keyboards not.
For one, the first button to get designed would be called “Report haressment”, and they would have an effective algorithm for detecting and banning haressers.
But… this is sexism !
Clearly that’s just because they’re poor, oppressed victims of the man-o-centric male-ocracy…
I’m confused by the assertion that twitter was designed for males. The majority of social media users are females. If the general thought processes is oppression by the majority, then at least on Facebook and Twitter that oppression would be driven by the female majority.
http://www.cision.com/us/2011/07/social-media-gender-the-impact-of-…
http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/11/27/study-males-vs-females-in-socia…
Twitter isn’t exactly Slashdot or OSNews if the majority of a population is normally driving a bias against a subset of the population then I really don’t understand her point. Developing workforce is a completely different issue, but Facebook and Twitter would literally be missing the point if they designed there site for Men.
Edited 2015-02-12 15:48 UTC
Thom: If there is one thing we know is not a solution, it’s escalating the animosity by yelling at everyone as if it’s the majority and not a tiny toxic majority that is the problem. That’s a great way to alienate everyone to the cause instead of gathering support for it.
Agreed in principle. In practice though, this is extremely hard. I think this essay, which was also linked by Thom, puts it well:
http://seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-point
You have a few ringleaders, who are very lacking in empathy. Talking sense to them won’t help, they’re messed up people. But they’re also manipulative as all shit. The real problem starts when the ringleaders rope in all their normal buddies. And those “normal” people quickly start doing the same shit.
Would they listen to sense? Maybe. But if some guy walked up to you on the subway and started spewing insults at you, would you be more inclined to talk sense to him, or tell him to sod off?
On a related note, last time I looked at Zoe Quinn’s Twitter feed I was barely able to understand her. She seemed endlessly angry, and it kind of spooked me. But, looking at her side: she is getting, what, a dozen threats of murder/rape/mutilation every day? If I were getting that much hate mail thrown at me, I would be incoherent with rage too.
Everyone involved in this is human. Once has to forgive occasional failure to be entirely polite, in the face of threat after angry delusional threat.
Absolutely. I don’t blame the victims for being angry, they should be.
But Thom’s approach to supporting the victims is to yell at readers of this site indiscriminately. I don’t think this will help solve the issue, it just riles everyone up. As evidenced by the comments on this story. I hardly think (hope?) that most readers here support gamergate and yet the way the issue was presented in such an accusatory fashion has polarized many people into criticizing the response or the victims.
When I was 12 if you asked me to name a female game designer I would have said “Roberta Williams” because King’s Quest was a ground breaking game series and not some hipster piece of garbage called “Depression Quest”
Everyone wants to be a victim and push the victim mentality, no one wants to take responsibility for themselves or their actions anymore.
Not again these ” Boy has a penis and girl has a vagina” articles.
No one is forcing anyone to use some specific software, so if using something feels too manly for you, then use something else. Simple as that.
Besides empty words can not hurt and I suggest just learn to filter and ignore things. People get harassed everyday regardless of the gender but only some feel the need to fish for attention or pity of others. Do not be a baby and stop crying about everything.
“No-one is forcing you to take the bus, so if using it makes you feel discriminated against because you have to sit in the back with the other negroes, then use something else. Simple as that.”
This is totally at odds with reality. People can get PTSD from being threatened.
Women are overwhelmingly harassed more than men. You know that. The fact that you claim otherwise makes you very disingeneous.
Your lack of humanity almost makes me think you passed the Turing test.
Do you understand that you’re essentially telling everyone how to feel*? Does that not seem crazy to you?
*Aside from the fact that these are more than words she’s reacting to, but very real and very scary threats.
She lost me there. It is demostrated that that person invented death threats.
Edited 2015-02-12 07:34 UTC
Demonstrated? By whom and where? By Gamergate-supporters who hate on Sarkeesian? Or by someone who doesn’t belong in either group?
She never fled her home, she made the whole thing up. Some pictures from her webcam during an interview right after she ‘fled’ her house and earlier photos from her house prove this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuoQL3m7yJI
Recently she harassed herself on Steam Greenlight, but when realising she was still logged in as a developer, she deleted it. I recall a few similar situations like that in the past where she pretended to be someone else harassing her but that’s harder to find.
Thom just got trolled for attention. His LALALA’ing makes it extra funny.
Edit: ah whoops, I misread the conversation, I thought you wondered about Brianna Wu
Edited 2015-02-12 09:47 UTC
That’s interesting, though the OP was talking about Sarkeesian and the link you provided is talking about Wu. I do admit, though, that those pictures were very definitely taken all in exact same place.
Do you happen to have any links about this, then? I’m just curious and I’ll know to disregard anything she says in the future if these allegations are really true.
Yeah my bad, sorry! Knowing Brianna Wu faked threats while I don’t know about Anita Sarkeesian made me interpret the “that person” as the former.
The Greenlight one is here, the thread itself is indeed deleted.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B9WhYziIEAA4FjU.png:large
As for the other threats, I don’t like encyclopedia dramatica as I really dislike its inflammatory tone, but that doesn’t discard the evidence posted there:
https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Brianna_Wu#Briana_caught_faking_his…
Edited 2015-02-12 10:41 UTC
Wow, that Encyclopedia Dramatica is a total cesspool of shit, amazing. Exceedingly petty to insist on calling her with a masculine noun, too. Still, googling around does indeed seem to back up the claim that she was faking those threats. That’s totally despicable, to try and gain favours and attention by faking something that some people actually have to go through for real :S Kind of amazing that someone can stoop so low.
I should really learn to avoid all these Gamergate-things, both sides are just resorting to absolute bullshit-tactics and it all just makes me hate humanity even more >_<
Yeah I agree, that site is a total shithole. It was the quickest search result however.
Perhaps I should have searched for a better source but I couldn’t find one where several instances were documented on one page and I didn’t want to spam a whole bunch of loose links in one post here. It would have saved me some pointless arguing however
Don’t worry, most of humanity is still more or less OK. There are plenty of good people out there. They’re just harder to notice, on the internet words speak louder than actions.
Edited 2015-02-12 16:11 UTC
Agreed.
What I took out of it is that Twitter-talks are close to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
Unfortunately it even swaps to the outside world to otherwise great tech-sides 🙁
http://www.returnofkings.com/42602/did-anita-sarkeesian-fake-death-…
http://billthemanfromkentucky.tumblr.com/post/97189340808/the-girl-…
For me Gamergate has exposed that an unfortunately significant portion of gamers are utter morons (I consider myself one – erm, gamer that is).
Anyone who lives in the real world in pretty much 90% of the planet and has regular interaction with female friends and relatives understands that women in general are getting a raw deal in many things in life (sexual harassment in some form is to be expected, lower pay, lower likelihood of promotion, being judged by appearances, etc). Everyone apparently but a subsection of gamers.
When angry loud feminists are shouting about an issue, you can respectfully disagree or ignore. But the vile and disproportionate response they get is just mind-blowing.
Gamergate is the saddest thing I’ve seen in a long time. People responding to a feminist rant by convincing themselves that they’re under attack. They need to believe there’s something bigger in play.
This isn’t directly relevant but I can’t help but feel this describes many of the poor poor male victims of gamergate:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/02/what-happened-confro…
Edited 2015-02-12 09:50 UTC
When you lump a whole group of people together and call them “evil” or whatever, dont be surprised when some of them get pissed off and retaliate.
This works both ways of course
Edited 2015-02-12 10:27 UTC
I for one is getting sick and tired of anything related to gamersgate.
Important to discuss, but maybe not on OSNews. Gimme OS news.
Here’s how the “bad guys” see it: https://encyclopediadramatica.se/GamerGate
Not taking sides. Just got bored of Thom’s preaching, so I thought I’d give a link written by the other side.
Me? I don’t care even if it’s my daughter some day.
That “article” starts right off with lies about Quinn – lies that have been exposed time and time again by everyone involved, lies started by a vengeful and hateful ex-boyfriend.
The only ones still believing those lies are fucking idiots.
Then again, if Encyclopedia Dramatica is your source… Well, that’s like putting a fork in your own morning shit hoping to find a good meal.
As I originally said, I don’t really care. Dramatica is very funny to me, as is your “good meal” comparison.
I certainly don’t take is seriously, but I bet some people do. That is more real to them than say CNN.
All serious issues that I do not want to joke about aside (like death threats etc.), I did find it curious that a “game” about depression that started the whole thing could have gotten such positive reviews in the first place… Obviously, not because it was written by a woman, but because it is a non-game.
Thom, have you even bothered to spend time on reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction, a (the?) major hub for the GamerGate group? Have you even considered that the mainstream narrative may be incorrect or biased? Even a little? Nobody in their right mind could spend time on the KiA subreddit and come away believing it’s a misogynist movement, not even the slightest.
Are you aware of the abuses of the anti-GamerGate/SJW crowd against GamerGate? It is well-documented.
https://jennofhardwire.wordpress.com/2015/01/06/gamers-discussing-ga…
The anti-GamerGate crowd are some of the most dogmatic, aggressive and authoritarian people I’ve encountered online, and that’s saying a lot. GamerGate’rs are some of the most accepting, reasonable and sympathetic people I’ve met online, and THAT’S saying a lot. Anyone that buys into the false narrative that says otherwise needs to have a “come to Jesus” moment and actually do some research instead of swallowing everything they hear in the media.
I love OSNews and I frequently agree with your opinions so I’m naturally disappointed when you willingly echo such ignorance. I just encourage you to abandon your bias and do some real research on the topic. This includes exposing yourself to the other side instead of relying on the echochamber.
Edited 2015-02-14 16:00 UTC
Funny that… Every time I bother commenting on YouTube on a related issue results in having a lot of abuse thrown at me. People on the internet are a$$holes – period.
Me? I don’t care even if it’s my daughter some day.
Then what the fuck is wrong with you. That’s not cool, that makes you sound like a complete dick.
I’ll care then.
Seriously though, I do not want to downplay the importance of gender equality and security. I value freedom more though and I’m glad that those assholes can say whatever they want on 4chan, because that’s their right (or at least it should be).
What I do not like is when people are hiding behind gender, religion or race. If you are a white male, then you are on your own. If you get doxed, it’s because you fucked up. If you are a woman, you got doxed because you are a woman.
If I ever have a daughter, I try to teach her to stand on her own and to take responsibility for what she does. Her strength should come from within and from her own merit, and not from behaving like a feminazi.
Yup, good call. Awesome women who shuts up and does their work gets tons of respect. This whole #gamersgate thing is just blown out of proportion due to a few vocal feminist.
The death threats are appalling and prosecutions should take please. But, please, this is not the end of the world.
Now let’s get some real OS News, mkey?
That is not what I said.
It’s what I said though
This is “real” OS news because I bloody well say it is. Deal with it. This issue will be a major topic on OSNews until the day women do not face never-ending brutal online harassment.
If you can’t deal with that, the little close tab button is *right there*.
One name – John Walker Flynt. Google it. Brianna Wu has zero credibility.
a) All I can find is stuff on Encyclopedia Dramatica and GamerGate related sites.
b) No I would not like a steaming pile of transphobia to go with all the misogyny, thanks very much.
It’s not “transphobia”. I count a number of people as friends or work colleagues who underwent a similar procedure. But they are normal well adjusted individuals who benefited from their re-assignment, not crazy whack-jobs who have a personal vendetta against the “world”.
I normally respect your comments – even if we usually disagree – but this is just insanity. Are you seriously believing and advocating for a transphobic, baseless conspiracy hosted on fucking Encyclopedia Dramatica?
For real?
You really want to go down that path?
At least Encyclopedia Dramatica has more cred, takes itself as a joke and doesn’t invent unreal things unlike the anti-gamergate SJW’s do.
Unreal things like…?
Anyway you should look at the link I posted earlier, re Dramatica.
*Sigh* Thom, when the argument is based on right (your only standpoint) and wrong (an impossibility in your eyes), the argument is already stacked and is pointless.
Brianna Wu is not a beacon to hold up. There are plenty of women you can choose to advocate, including other trans women. But, sorry, not her.
I sat through an entire interview she gave on her game. I came away respecting her business partner (a woman, by the way), but finding Brianna totally abhorrent. That was before gamergate, and her input in to that set of events solidified my opinion of her.
You don’t have to agree, I really don’t care, nor am I going to comment any further on her.
Edited 2015-02-12 18:19 UTC
Your text went all “I’m not transphobic, but…”
No such statement has a good outcome and indeed you came off like a n a^^hole as a result. Congratulations.
Most of those pages attack her specifically for being (supposedly) transgender. So yeah, that is transphobia, by definition.
Ignoring the grammar and anger of her being trans, the actual evidence of the lying, back stabbing and total publicity machine that she rides – no. Bad people are bad people, excusing them for gender related issues is poor. I dislike her, not trans people, not women. I have two daughters, so I’m acutely aware of how unfair the male dominated world is. It doesn’t mean I’m going to support Brianna Wu though – she is a giant band wagon jumper.
And yet you still irevocably linked her flaws with being trans… Transphobia at it’s best.
Maybe women just got bothered too often,
Maybe women that get bothered just react very extreme,
Maybe we only hear from the most vocal, extreme reactions.
But is there any evidence that women actually get harrased more than men? I constantly get harrased from advertisements that want met to date hot/sweet/willing ladies even though I am not interested in that at all.
And when I see a topic like this on one of my favorite sites the reactions from the women are relatively sexist, but the men are polite and joking: http://www.boredpanda.com/hot-dudes-reading-books-instagram/ (loved the “hey ladies, our eyes are up here comment)
*pentafacepalm*
Who do you think code those advertisements?
Do you seriously think the programmers have anything to do with this? Do you seriously think men have anything to do with this? This is just capitalism. If it didn’t work, it wouldn’t be there. Money talks louder than gender.
Furthermore, I don’t consider advertisements as harassment. Annoying, sometimes distasteful and disturbing, but not harassment.
As a side note, there have been studies about that. The abuse both genders get is about the same. However, a sexual slur towards men is often considered a ‘personal insult’ (and disregarded) while one against a woman is more often considered a ‘sexist insult’.
Edited 2015-02-12 13:42 UTC
Programmers (male or female), bots, randomizers, or advertisers that want to target a more or less specific demographic.
But I don’t want to think, I want evidence
Yes, you guys are believing the same site that has stuff like this:
https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Jew
Totally serious and reliable information source, that.
Really dudes, what the fuck.
While that site is indeed full of bullshit and trolling, it does not imply that everything mentioned there is false. While the messenger seriously discredits the message, I suggest you still look at the screenshots before totally discarding the message. For me, it was just the easiest find, everything is drowned by all the information out there.
Par analogy, I could easily give you some articles from TheGuardian that are outright fabrications (about Wikipedia’s ArbCom for example). Does that mean the whole newspaper is bogus? Sometimes you have to judge content on its own merit and accept that good people can be wrong and lunatics can be right.
In this case, I’m not going to give it the benefit of the doubt. Look at the freaking link. At best it’s a massive, manipulative troll, at worst it’s antisemitism cloaked in hamfisted irony. You cannot possibly consider the source trustworthy in either case.
Yes I agree. Read the other conversation above though, it was just an easy search to have several documented instances of Brianna Wu faking her own harassment on one page. Despite ED being complete and utter shit, they are true (feel free to Google for verification).
I regret being lazy there though, it would have saved us from this argument.
Edited 2015-02-12 17:25 UTC
I’ll look at it. From what I’ve seen myself though, I’m inclined to trust Wu a hell of a lot more than some random anonymous people with a thing against her.
Edit: I’ll note though that almost anything can be faked online, and trolls are… well… known for faking stuff. Possibly including faking other people faking stuff.
Edited 2015-02-12 17:54 UTC
That’s fine.
Indeed, Photoshop is a scary thing these days, but from everything I have seen and how she behaves… let’s say it’s not one isolated incident. It’s best to judge for yourself and if you still think it’s all made up then feel free to let me know why, perhaps there are some facts I have missed and otherwise we’ll have to respectfully agree to disagree.
I followed her on Twitter for a while, for whatever that’s worth, and nothing I saw spoke the slightest bit of such “behavior.” She was unfailingly civil and polite, and quick to admit when she got things wrong. And Twitter in my experience brings out some of the worst talk from decent people. I know, that’s only internet communication… Take it as you will. I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt for now.
I’ll also readily admit that the look of the characters in her game makes me a bit uneasy, in view of some of the feminist writings I’ve read on e.g. unrealistic standards of beauty:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Revolution_60_Lo…
But that’s not really my place to criticize, and also completely beside the point.
Alright, I looked. I’m regretting it. The thing is a blatant attack piece, probably qualifies as libel, and borders on outright hate speech.
The supposed 2008 blog entry looks damn naive for someone with even the most cursory knowledge of feminist theory. Googling turns up zilch for it, and it would be trivial to fake something like that.
I won’t even bother investigating the rest. If you trust these trolls at all, you might as well trust Stormfront as a source on Jewish history.
What 2008 post? Are we talking about the same thing?
I meant this here: http://www.osnews.com/thread?604992
The picture of a “Spacekatgal” blog post on Dramatica, not the Youtube video.
For the Youtube video, hmm, dude is ranting and blathering on and on… Yes yes I see, it’s the same room, that didn’t have to take six minutes. Whatever. I don’t know the whole story there, and I would still give her the benefit of the doubt.
Again, ordinary opinionated person vs. bunch of utterly gonzo libel-slinging trolls. Maybe possibly not-quite-verified lies, vs. very blatant lies, character assassination, hate speech, you name it. Being wrong on some issues, vs. being wrong on pretty much everything. You tell me which side sounds more trustworthy.
oh joy… another one of these posts. i’m trying not even touching these with a tenfoot pole but it’s becoming increasingly difficult..
just curious, apart from “bitching about it” and wanting a sit at the board, what exactly do these people want? Even if everything she tells is true and as clear as crystal, what effectively are the reasonable, achievable & “smart”[^1] objectives/actions that should be taken to prevent such internet nastiness ??
she provides 4 ways on the article itself, which is much more than what is usual on these kind of stories, so let’s examine each one:
1. “I am calling on Pao and her Reddit admins to stop letting this hate group operate on their site.”
ok. reddit closes /r/kotakuinaction subreddit. tomorrow, being a speech platform as it is, those folks get new usernames and create /r/ktkuinactionImproved. now what? will reddit and the reddit admin read and control everything that gets written and posted there?
newsflash: a speech platform is virtually unable to prevent people using it for actually, you know, speaking… THe best you can hope is making it crystal clear that’s it’s illegal so there’s no argumenting about it when it’s shutdown, and having the social stigma that makes everyone that stumbles upon it to report it. (by the way, that what happens with “kid porn”. legal tools don’t work there any more that they work anywhere else, it’s jsut that everyone reports it when they see it.)
2. “there have been no prosecutions for the hundreds of death threats ”
ok, maybe this is reasonable. if it’s a clear death threat and the FBI thinks it’s credible (as in actually possible to happen) then it should be prosecuted. maybe the FBI dropped the ball on that one. or maybe they didn’t think it was credible. (And no, saying ” i wish you were dead bitch” or some other dumbness online, doesn’t qualify for death threat..)
3. “Dick Costolo, we need Twitter to work with us to ban them when they create new accounts until you can develop better tools. ”
a) if new tools from preventing banned users comming back and saying nasty things again are so easy or even possible to create, please just set up a github. i’m sure a lot of people would be pleased with it.
b) GOTO 1….
4. “I am calling on the Obama administration to arrest and prosecute Fredrick Brennan, the owner of 8chan. 8chan doesn’t just host child pornography,”
DMCA safe harbour laws, and related/parallel laws. A website with user generated content is not responsible if any of it is illegal as long as it has the appropriate channels for it to being reported and taken down. I don’t see why 8chan would get adifferent law than every other website on earth.
—
seriously, i’m so f*. tired of this kind of posts and “gender war insanity”. they serve no purpose apart from getting the poster some ” high horse” moral/aura. There’s nothing you can do to prevent other people disagreeing with you, the best you can do is actually control how **you** respond to it. Not giving them antenna time is fracking good solution..
IF it’s clearly against the law, then fine, get the law officials on it, but consider that they also have limited time and resources. if it’s not, then be a big boy/girl and deal with it by ignoring it.
free speech platforms don’t have any way of dealing with it without stopping to be free speech platforms. You want a controlled environment where people are never nasty/disagreeing with you? get a closed forum and mod it like hell. just be aware that it will probably require huge amounts of effort and or actually not having/reaching to that much people.. You can’t have it both ways.
And for god sake, stop whining about twitter/reddit/whtever is runned by elements of group X/Y/Z and you want in too. You want to have a say in it? fine, just freaking build an alternative yourself..
*[^1]= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria
Not to mention the minor detail that she doesn’t seem to even understand that the leader of the federal government generally doesn’t personally issue/execute search warrants or directly prosecute offenders. That’s not arcane legal minutiae either – anyone who’s so much as watch the intro to Law & Order knows that much.
My reflexive reaction to this was, “oh no, another opportunity for tech companies to use this problem to impose all sorts of restrictions on political views they dislike, blindly classifying them as hate speech. In addition, there are numerous individuals and some groups who orchestrate bogus campaigns to shut up people with differing views. I’ve experienced this myself on Twitter, know of others who have, and watched it happen to numerous others.
If we don’t all pitch in and ostracize and report those who make vile comments, we can look foward to individuals, groups, companies, and even governments imposing their own view of what’s “corect” political speech.
Got sent this article by a friend today. Thought it was a good summary of the GamerGate problem, and other such stuff.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/12/obama-s-isis-hesit…
And it also contains what, in my privileged white male opinion, is the best honest definition of masculinity ever:
“Whenever men feel like masculinity is under attack, men get dangerous. Because that’s exactly what masculinity teaches you to do, what masculinity is about. Defending yourself with disproportionate force against any loss of power? That’s what masculinity is.”
Boom.
Ah hell, wrong link…
Correct one is
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/16/of-gamers-gates-an…
Err, can someone correct the above?
But note how it isn’t about violence, equality, human rights, it is about feminism and political correctness. That is the problem with the SJWs – because there is a caste system where a more victimized minority can’t even be accused of actual crimes to a less victimized one. And speaking of “your daughter”, in England:
http://reason.com/archives/2015/02/12/political-correctness
Major official inquiries, including one published last week, have discovered that in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, around 1,400 young people, mainly white working-class girls, were sexually exploited and abused by gangs of men, most of them of Pakistani Muslim heritage.
The girls, mostly poor, vulnerable, and from broken families, were groomed by the men and passed around as sexual playthings. Some were prostituted; many were plied with drugs and alcohol.
What does this have to do with P.C.? P.C. facilitated these crimes; it aided and abetted them.
The left-leaning Labour-run local council in Rotherham was so hamstrung by P.C., so riven with what the U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May has called “institutionalised political correctness,†that it was reluctant to investigate or talk openly about the Pakistani men’s sex crimes for fear of appearing racist and demeaning an ethnic minority.
a) Lack of privilege is not a writ of zero responsibility. It *can* be a contributing factor to some crimes. That does not make it an excuse.
b) The Reason article misses the point so hugely it’s insulting. “Unleash a new morality,” give me a break, that sounds almost like Bill O’Reilly or something. Morality is treating humans as humans. Basic rights trump “wah wah my sensibilities are offended” every time.
Eric Raymond. The whole article and those it links to is exactly on this topic and explains why all this monkey-screeching is at best self-defeating, and at worst just more harassment.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6642 which begins
I just read Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy. and When Nerds Collide.
I’m caught between admiration for Meredith Patterson’s writing ability and what she’s trying to do, and a feeling that the attempt is fundamentally doomed.
She who travels as maradydd speaks for hackers very well. I’m happy to see someone else doing it; the ability is rare and the only other people besides me I see playing at a similar level are Paul Graham and (more obliquely) Randall Munroe.
The problem is, maradydd’s attempt requires the feminists and social-justice warriors she is addressing to fundamentally be about justice and inclusion, enough so that it is possible to change their behavior by appealing to those values. But that’s not what I see what I look at those people. What I see is thin rationalizations over bullying, dominance games, and an endless scream of monkey rage.
Shanley Kane, who maradydd says she’s puzzled by, is a case in point. We’ve learned recently of evidence that she has a recent past as a virulent racist. The informant, Auernheimer, is himself a repellent character and the reporter was wise enough to suspect he might be trolling, but apparently there’s documentary evidence of the relationship and his claims.
But even before this Shanley Kane didn’t puzzle me at all. Whenever I see screaming, hate-filled behavior like hers the important part never turns out to be whatever principles the screamer claims to be advocating. Those are just window-dressing for the bullying, the dominance games, and the rage.
You cannot ameliorate the behavior of people like that by accepting their premises and arguing within them; they’ll just pocket your concessions and attack again, seeking increasingly abject submission. In one-on-one relationships this is called “emotional abuseâ€, and like abusers they are all about control of you while claiming to be about anything but.
Third-wave feminism, “social justice†and “anti-racism†are rotten with this. Some of the principles, considered in isolation, would be noble; but they don’t stay noble in the minds of a rage mob.
The good news is that, like emotional abusers, they only have the power over you that you allow them. Liberation begins with recognizing the abuse for what it is. It continues by entirely rejecting their attempts at manipulation. This means rejecting their terminology, their core concepts, their framing, and their attempts to jam you into a “victim†or “oppressor†identity that denies your lived experience.
The identity-jamming part maradydd clearly gets; the most eloquent sections of her writing are those in which she (rightly) rejects feminist attempts to jam her into a victim identity. But I don’t think she quite gets how thoroughly you have to reject the rest of the SJW pitch in order not to enable their abuse.
Intolerable, the CEO. Personally, the stock more than tripled, and she believes in meritocracy, unlike the feminist that ruined github.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/01/12/yahoos-ceo-must-…
Like most female tech executives, Marissa Mayer is a feminist’s worst nightmare. For one thing, she is ruthlessly focused on merit, claiming to be “gender blind,†which annoys women-in-tech campaigners no end. They say women should be given special consideration to redress the gender imbalance in the industry. Some even believe in the installation of quotas.
Secondly, she infamously told a women in business conference that having a baby while trying to turn Yahoo! around was “way easier than everyone made it out to beâ€â€”omitting to mention that it was only possible because she had full-time nursery staff paid for by Yahoo!. Not exactly sticking up for the sisterhood.
Finally: she’s making a bit of a mess of things at the moment, and with so few women running big companies, every woman is scrutinized and, perhaps unfairly, seen as a reliable predictor of female performance in top jobs. So the headlines about rudeness, lateness, bossy behaviour and what have you have an impact on other women.
Even if it’s true that some criticism of her has been tinged by sexism, gender arguments cut both ways: it’s hard to imagine a male executive who behaved for one day as Mayer does on a daily basis remaining in his post for long. You could argue that Mayer gets away with a lot because she can be persuasive, charming and she’s a lot easier on the eye than a fat old guy in a pinstripe suit.
Here are some outside GG, long article
http://nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-…
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TL;DR summary of the article:
Look at me, everyone, look at me! Aren’t I so strong and brave for having the courage to stand up and say “I’m against those things that everybody complains about!”?
The overblown rhetoric has become so thick you’d need a chainsaw to cut through it. Risking her life? Piss off. Reality check: there’s a teensy difference between “risking” nasty Twitter comments and literally risking your life. Trying to conflate them is a spectacular display of “first-world-problem”-style naivete, and borderline offensive in the context of women like Malala Yousafzai who have endured actual risks to their lives, over much more serious issues.
And what in the hell would be different about Twitter if it were designed “by women, for women”? What, the name would be spelled “Twytter” instead? Wow, so inclusive! That just reeks of an intellectually-lazy inability to distinguish the medium from the message.
GamerGaters are morons, without exception. But that doesn’t mean we’re obligated to unquestioningly swallow every morsel of bullshit from the “other side,” out of some misguided sense of “fairness” – no matter how hard both sides constantly try to re-mold the issue into an oversimplified “with us or against us” narrative.
What a freak show.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/02/13/the-wacky-world-of-wu-th…
I didn’t realize Breitbart had sunk that low.
Also… check your privilege, dude.
Speak English.
Perhaps (she) was always this way.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/02/13/the-wacky-world-of-wu-th…
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