This graphic by somewhat_brave on Reddit pretty much nails it. (Click here to see a larger version.) When #GamerGaters talk about “ethics” in journalism, this is pretty much code for “journalists shouldn’t be allowed to say anything critical of us!”
And in case you missed the all-Cat version of the manifesto, here it is again:
Are you seriously claiming that you know better than the women who were there? You are mansplaining the revised history. AGAIN!
Okay, I’ll cut the history thing if it sounds so much like the “mansplaining” I criticized in my post with the link. I had in mind the decline of the old New Left. Funny how labels age. And yes, I’m going on 50.
I had a Camille Paglia phase too. Fortunately, I recovered. I’ve been moving toward more radical positions as I age, socialism mainly but feminism as well. Interestingly, it was an Objectivist who ultimately sent me on my leftward journey: Chris Matthew Sciabarra, a professor at New York University and the author of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, but most importantly a teacher of dialectics. Understanding dialectics is what led me to realize just how wrong Rand really is. Now I’m studying Marx.
Speaking of Rand, did you know Ayn Rand Institute head Yaron Brook is evangelizing Objectivism to the MRAs? Rand did declare herself a male chauvinist on US national TV, after all…
Oh dear. You phrased that as a question, which means he’s going to respond, probably at great length and with even more historically inaccurate rubbish.
I’ll just be over here trying to figure out if there’s a way to upgrade my straw stuffing to goose down, since it’ll be winter soon and even eeevil man-hating radfems need to keep warm.
I’m at a loss to see where criticising radfems gets us in this thread, given that the whole fecking point of feminism has been to get men to see women as fully human. Not every arsehole in feminism has been a radfem, and not every radfem is an arsehole. The two appear to be unrelated.
Unlike both the MRM and GG, both of which have a vitriolic arseholeness as their raison d’etre.
Waiting to speak only after being spoken to, bringing a plate, and dressing neat and tidy got us nowhere for decades.
And I apologize. I feared I would descend into something like this. Autism gets me into trouble again…
I’m pretty sure that autism doesn’t automatically lead to ageism, or to regurgitating anti-feminist cliches.
You are entitled to your opinion. I think it wrong of you to blame autism for calling old women like myself relics. That is my opinion.
Yeah, I can understand autism causing you to keep talking when you should stop, but doesn’t explain being wrong in the first place.
You’ve bought into the anti-feminist defintion of what radfem means Dennis. I suggest you go educate yourself.
To clarify – the splaining, yeah, I can see how that might be an autism issue so no problem, you now realize it’s annoying people, end of story and move on. Calling radfems “man-hating”, though, or dismissing the opinions of older women and teenage girls as irrelevant? That’s just standard issue sexism, and that’s what people were actually calling you out for.
Higher profile? No, there weren’t two reasons. There was just one. It was entirely an invention of MSM. I Was There on the marches and at the meetings.
Sure there were a few women wearing grubby overalls and safety pins for earrings, but most of us were wearing ordinary jeans, skirts and trousers with maybe a bit more tie-dye pattern than you might see at a Sunday School picnic. People who didn’t know us, and people who did know and work with us, accused us of being man-hating, pinko, lesbian, radical, prudish promoters of Disgraceful! sexual libertarianism. Never mind the internal inconsistency. The myth about burning bras appeared within days of the event at which no bras were burned.
The “radical” criticism was, right from the start, confected out of whole cloth by reporters and editors, and lots of religious and other killjoys, looking to find the very worst things they could say about ordinary women wanting fairly ordinary things.
Just as it was back in the days of the suffragists.
Some things never change.
Considering how totally shit things were for women, and how much their was to fight against, any vocal, visible, uncompromising feminism was going to get called radical. The context of the times is what people soooo conveniently forget in quoting Dworkin or any of the main writers then and saying “Oh how horrible they were, they hated men!”
Re: the manifesto, I think “we are alive” translates as “and we ALONE are alive”. Only gamers have feelings, thoughts, and agency. They are unique snowflakes in that regard. Their concerns take precedence over all else. The subhumans don’t matter. It’s OK to harass critics, SJWs, and women, since they’re not really “alive”.
I mean, otherwise, it’s an incredibly stupid and redundant thing to say.
And may I formally delurk to say “thank you” to all the “older” feminist and Radfem women on this thread who did and sacrificed so much and worked so hard for all women’s options, rights freedom and safety in those decades. It is not a small thing and it’s heartbreaking to see the legacy and history attacked and erased from so many quarters. You deserve so much more.
@kittehserf
*shakes head*
Oh, kittehserf, haven’t we discussed this already? Context is misandry! It’s utterly unreasonable to expect misogynists and other unsaviory dirt you might find stuck on the sole of your shoe to treat history as a continuum and social patterns as patterns instead of individual, unrelated events. Except when finding things that can be given a misogynistic spin and drawing an imaginary pattern that shows that women are inherently bad.
/sarcasm
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
That’s a very thoughful way of putting it. I merely got the feeling it’s just another melodramatic way of saying “the eeeebil librul feminazi are totes trying to destroy us (since that’s what leftists want to do, because they’re eeeebil), but we are standing up for our right to harass, threaten and silence women free speech and integrity! They’ll never have our freedommmmm!!!eleventy!!!!!”
I might be jaded, though.
@humourlessRadicalFeminazi:
Welcome! Have a Welcome Package!
http://artistryforfeminismandkittens.wordpress.com/the-official-man-boobz-complimentary-welcome-package/
Anarchonist, I know, I know, I am misandering again, with that dreadful word, CONTEXT!
But I feel safe that I shall gain some small measure of approval from the Feminist High Council and maybe get a bonbon if I keep it up.
(Your comment had me laughing aloud, which is a good way to wind down for the night!)
humourlessRadicalFeminiazi, hi and welcome!
Want a present, gamers who’re not assholes? Well, enjoy. Apparently this guy Hideki Kamiya is the creator of Bayonetta, and gamergaters were tweeting at him and trying to get him to support the gamergate tag. He was not impressed. Sample.
“So many insects. Summer vacation in your countries again?”
More here. Click the link to his original response too!
http://takeshihongo.tumblr.com/post/100333043940/konkeydongcountry-brook-montypla-gamer
I just assumed, “We are alive,” was a response to the slew of articles saying, “Gamers are dead” that came out when all this started.
@Anarchonist – yeah, there definitely is a melodramatic, defiant, fist-in-the-air intent behind the “We are alive” statement. They’re trying to rally the troops behind their anthem. But given their black-and-white thinking, and their way of always defining themselves in opposition to their opponents, I couldn’t help seeing the subtext there. “We are alive….and you are not.”
Also, my 1980s relic-brain keeps translating “We are Gamers” as “We are Devo”.
Whoa, hold up, Dennis. Autism is not a Get Out of Saying Asshole Things Free card. While you’re apologizing to us “old relics,” you may want to apologize to our other autistic commenters who would never say that shit.
You’re not exactly young yourself, so you may want to rethink your position on women’s aging.
Buttercup Q. Skullpants: Yesterday I saw a bumper sticker that said “Honk If You’re Devo” and had a laugh.
@Dennis Jernberg. Hi! Occasional commenter here. I was around during the days of which you speak, and I still consider myself a radical feminist. There are more of us still around, still working for feminist causes than you may be aware of. I don’t mind being characterized as an old relic, but I reject the label of “extremist”. Many of the things we advocated for back then were thought to be extreme but are totally accepted now. Women doctors, women lawyers, people forget how few we used to have. I remember having discussions with people about why I would go to a woman doctor, and why I thought women were entirely capable of being doctors. And I’m only in my 50s.
Radical feminism:
From here: http://bellejar.ca/2014/07/04/seven-reasons-you-should-thank-a-feminist-today/
True story: the final nail in the coffin of my friend’s marriage was that, when she went to the bank, she discovered that he’d cleaned out her account to go bet on the horse races.
It was not a joint account. It was her account. His name was nowhere on this account.
She expressed her displeasure to the teller, who responded, “But he’s your husband!”.
This was in 1985.
Seconded and welcome!