Utah State University has just announced that Anita Sarkeesian has canceled a talk she was scheduled to give at the school tomorrow after receiving a threat of a “Montreal Massacre-style attack” by someone promising ““the deadliest school shooting in American history” if the cultural critic was allowed to speak.
Here’s the official announcement:
Anita Sarkeesian has canceled her scheduled speech for tomorrow following a discussion with Utah State University police regarding an email threat that was sent to Utah State University. During the discussion, Sarkeesian asked if weapons will be permitted at the speaking venue. Sarkeesian was informed that, in accordance with the State of Utah law regarding the carrying of firearms, if a person has a valid concealed firearm permit and is carrying a weapon, they are permitted to have it at the venue.
Emphasis added. That’s right: the school received threats from someone promising to shoot people at a public event, but because of Utah’s gun laws, authorities would not be able to prohibit audience members from BRINGING GUNS to the talk.
Before learning that this was the case, Sarkeesian — after consulting with authorities — had planned to go ahead with the talk. As a spokesman for the school told the Standard Examiner, a northern Utah newspaper:
“They determined the threat seems to be consistent with ones (Sarkeesian) has received at other places around the nation. … The threat we received is not out of the norm for (this woman).”
The email threat came from someone who claimed that “feminists have ruined my life and I will have my revenge, for my sake and the sake of all the others they’ve wronged.”
The email, sent to several campus officials and posted online by the Standard Examiner, warned:
If you do not cancel [Sarkeesian’s] talk, a Montreal Massacre style attack will be carried out against the attendees, as well as students and staff at the nearby women’s center. I have at my disposal a semi-automatic rifle, multiple pistols, and a collection of pipe bombs. This will be the deadliest school shooting in American history and I’m giving you a chance to stop it.
The email writer claimed that even if authorities manage to stop him from an attack at the event,
There are plenty of feminists on campus who won;t be able to defend themselves. One way or another, I’m going to make sure they die. …
Anita Sarkeesian is everything wrong with the feminist woman, and she is going to die screaming like the craven little whore that she is if you let her come to USU. I will write my manifesto in her spilled blood, and you will all bear witness to what feminist lies and poison have done to the men of America.
All this because she made some videos discussing sexism in fucking video games.
Here’s a screenshot of the full email, from the Standard Examiner site:
I’m speechless. What the fuck is wrong with these people?
NOTE: This is a NO TROLLS, NO MRAS, NO GAMERGATERS, NO VICTIM BLAMER thread. I will delete comments and ban people who do not respect the rules.
UPDATE: Sarkeesian has provied more details on Twitter; there were multiple threats, including one that specifically referred to GamerGate
Forced to cancel my talk at USU after receiving death threats because police wouldn't take steps to prevent concealed firearms at the event.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 15, 2014
Requested pat downs or metal detectors after mass shooting threat but because of Utah's open carry laws police wouldn’t do firearm searches.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 15, 2014
Multiple specific threats made stating intent to kill me & feminists at USU. For the record one threat did claim affiliation with #gamergate
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 15, 2014
At this point supporting #gamergate is implicitly supporting the harassment of women in the gaming industry.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 15, 2014
I’m safe. I will continue my work. I will continue speaking out. The whole game industry must stand up against the harassment of women.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 15, 2014
Daeran:
No. That is deeply disturbing. I will never ever advocate for violence towards ideological opponents. They are also not “evil, anti-civilization terrorists on the order of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, NSDAP, KKK et al.” I think their movement is a reprehensible, reactionary smokescreen for harassment, but they have never actually killed anyone, and saying that they are on the same level as ISIS is ridiculous and hyperbolic.
The people who are responsible for sending rape, death and bomb threats – whether associated with GG or not – need to be arrested and face due process. That’s the only kind of state action that should be taken against anyone in this situation.
So, just to be clear, the consensus among the Gamer Gate crowd is that the only reason it would be bad to murder Sarkessian, Quinn, etc is that it would be bad PR? Yeah, pretty sure that the “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” route is the appropriate one for both the media and the gaming companies to take with these guys.
In fact, mods, can we get Daeran put on moderation? I’m deeply uneasy with someone advocating yet more violence on a no-troll thread about mass shootings.
BTW, Daeren? You’d fit right in with the Gamer Gate people, so I’m not sure what you’re doing here. The door is to the left, please show yourself out.
@ tinyorc
My guess is troll trying to goad feminists into agreeing with him rather than sincere but with a broken moral compass, fwiw.
Yeah, troll using buzzwords like “State violence” and “shaming”.
Yeeeah, that’s pretty blatant trolling.
“I’m going to get some fem-nazis to show their TRUE COLORS so I can take screen shots! Hurr!”
Because awful people assume that those with which they disagree are just as awful as they are.
Ok, I said in anger that if a Muslim faction made a threat like this in America the ATF would be knocking down their doors and then pondered why Gamergate gets a free pass. I found the threat to Sarkeesian bloody terrifying, but I don’t endorse the statement above. It’s fucking insane.
Let me just say that I don’t endorse squashing anyone with cold iron fists of state violence, but I do think that law enforcement agencies should be taking the terror threats of gamergaters seriously, but I’d like to see good rigorous law enforcement and professional police investigation applied. Not prejudicial killings or Stalin style purges-that’s nuts!
Do I think gamergate are basically a hate group, sure. Do I think that the police should be keeping a very beady eye on them-absolutely. Do I think that every one of them needs to be liquidated or sent of to Gitmo, no-that’s completely mad.
Jesus Christ, get a grip!
I’m really sorry actually. I thought about it and I realized that saying that they should be killed, as bad as they are, is morally wrong, never mind, as others have said, being ammo for “look at them they’re fanatics who want to kill people who disagree!”, aka the kind of behavior that they actually exhibit. I basically posted because I was so angry that these people seem to be getting away with it that I literally screamed “KILL THESE FUCKING BASTARDS” irl then posted it here.
I do stand by my ISIS/Al Qaeda comparison though. Their views are just as extreme, just as eliminationists They want feminists dead and women enslaved. Don’t look at Twitter or even /v/ for what these people really think. Look at places like /pol/ and vdare. They just don’t have the power yet. But the line of thinking is the same – “We, entitled and aggrieved group A, blame out-group B for all our problems so they must die!”
Being from the UK the idea that it is perfectly legal to take a gun into a public place, and that this means that a woman is justifiably in fear for her life is not only shocking but utterly bizarre.
To then read that you cannot have a gun free dorm in a university in Utah? This is beyond all that is normal in my world.
From this report it sounds like the relevant ‘authorities’ just want AS to go away – they are not interested in making this gun-nut accountable.
I am so angry and sad that this is the route of censorship that these awful people have chosen – not reasoned debate, not even unreasoned debate! But actual terrorism.
I say that it is a route of censorship because I personally do not believe that this person is going to do a shoot em up. I think that he is full of shit. But if I was AS I still wouldn’t take the risk. She had to make that decision, based on what I have read here.
@Michael Lindsay: Do I think that every one of them needs to be liquidated or sent of to Gitmo, no-that’s completely mad.
I will say btw that people have been sent to Gitmo or had drone strikes against them for a lot less than what Gamergate has done (for example, having your 4th cousin be a Taliban fighter or something), which kinda says a lot about this country. I also don’t really expect the FBI to do much either, otherwise we would have seen arrests the last time Anita reported this to the FBI.
How ca they cry false flag? What feminist would get on the FBIs radar for THAT?
The delusions are layered with these people.
One of the oldest right-wing tricks in the book. If it makes you look bad or goes against your worldview, it’s a false flag. Basically, it’s a way to define away inconvenient facts.
Also the Utah police need to inform airports that concealed carry permit holders can go where they like with guns. It will be a wake up call for the TSA.
First off, I don’t think the would be shooter would be a concealed carry permit holder, but besides that, I’m sure that venues anywhere can have a policy of no guns regardless of what permits a person has. Having said that, the whole thing is unsafe even if they get a lot of security. The person threatened a massacre and they don’t have to get in the venue to do that. Lots of people’s lives were in danger. I think someone so delusional and unhinged as to make highly illegal threats that fall under FBI jurisdiction must be taken seriously, because they are not playing with a full deck.
@Daeran Zemaitis
I’m certain that even the majority of GGers do not send death threats, but even then I’ve no idea why you’d compare THAT with people who commit or committed beheadings, noctural drive-by-shootings and firebombings, hanged and clobbered people to dead or tried to conquer Eurasia while planning to eradicate large parts of its population.
The majority of people in GG, sadly, are the kind of folks whom you can meet anyplace offline or online. And target killings and abductions of folks associated with an ideology (even under the law) are exactly the type of crime all the organizations you listed have committed or are still committing. You’re actually supporting exactly the type of behaviour you pretend to condemn there.
Mate, I get it. But we can’t become the monsters too.
I’m an Aussie, my old suburb was a kilometer away from Clifton Hill in Melbourne-where a neo Nazi skinhead and former soldier called Julian Knight killed seven people and wounded 19 others in a shooting rampage back in 1987. So I first felt a literal chill down my spine followed by just…rage. My partner asked me what was wrong but I was too shaken to tell her.
My response was pretty much in line with yours, I just wanted to punch something-but that sort of thinking can trip you up. That kind of anger can make you a monster, that’s something we should both be mindful of in a feminist space like this one.
I don’t disagree with you that these guys are essentially terrorists. If you are threatening to kill people with guns and bombs because you disagree with their stance, that makes you a terrorist. If you threaten to rape, kill or torture them because their ideas aren’t in line with yours that makes you a terrorist too.
That said, the biggest lesson for the west since the rise of ISIL really should be that throwing away the rulebook after 9-11 and then resorting to torture, kidnapping and prejudicial killings didn’t solve the problem, it may have made it worse.
Criminals are criminals and the police are there for a reason, I really wish that they’d take this thing a lot more seriously and deal with it with calm, methodical, professional police work and not look the other way. In fact I really wish they’d do this a lot more as regards crimes against women instead of chasing potheads around the block and trying to collect more parking tickets because that’s easier.
But all of us owe it to ourselves not to become these bastards, when we feel that way we need to take a step back and realize what it is in them that we don’t want to become.
The great irony here is that the shooting at Ecole Polytechnique (also called the Montréal massacre) brought in Canada’s gun legislation and Québec continues, for a variety of political reasons, to have far stronger anti-gun sentiment than much of the rest of Canada.
… or we could just freeze peaches over the fact that carrying guns to a school that has explicitly been threatened with violence is okay.
It’s weird to me that the right to carry a gun in America is actually MORE protected than the right to carry any other kind of object. Like, let’s just say there were rumours of a plan to set off a load of stinkbombs a talk at a university in Utah. Unless I’m deeply mistaken, campus security would be within their rights to search bags at the entrance and confiscate anything that might be a stinkbomb? You know, because this is a necessary precaution to make sure the event isn’t disrupted and prevent damage to university property?
But you’re not allowed confiscate guns at a specific event, despite a highly detailed mass shooting threat?
JUST WHAT UTAH.
Sorry, should have said US, not America!
That’s a good quote. It gets to the point where you’re facing people who are willing to resort to evil means for evil ends, and you feel like you *have* to fight fire with fire because you’re losing for not being able to be as ruthless as them and besides the “ends justify the means” right?. However, it could be argued that the means justify the ends as well. That’s why my initial statement was fundamentally wrong -immoral actions even in the service of a good cause actually make the cause less good.
But what is to be done? Can’t reason with them – any logical points get “false-flagged” or “conspiracied” away. It’s the same kind of thinking that drives all right-wing hate groups. And frankly – a lot of people are apathetic in general, and won’t really go out of their way to condemn people who support gamergate. And even if it hits the national news (which it kind of has but right now, the Utah State story should be, at WORST the 3rd story behing ISIS and Ebola, yet it’s not), they’ll just pull out the tried and tested librul media card (did I mention that this is a right wing hate group yet?)
These terrorists need to be outed and arrested. Every single one of them.
Never mind, it’s on CNN and other mainstream outlets, but it should be WALL TO WALL coverage.
Daeran,
There is no fighting fire with fire here. They are terrorist bigots. They have threats and lies. We have reason and facts. Ruthless? WTF? There is no way to be “ruthless” about wanting men to stop terrorizing women. You need to take a time out. What means are you hoping to justify? You are not making sense.
I know, I’m just explaining the thinking that led me to make the statement like I made earlier. It’s not exactly logical thinking, it’s emotional anger based thinking that actually, as Michael said, makes the problem worse.
Daeran Zemaitis, I deleted that comment of yours, you know which one, That sort of thing doesn’t fly here. But since you’ve walked back from it I won’t put you on moderation for it. Just, you know, don’t do that again.