So I was idly perusing Janet “JudgyBitch” Bloomfield’s Twitter yesterday, and I came across an alarming tweet. It seemed as though Bloomfield had somehow penetrated the 47 levels of security protecting the Feminist HIgh Council to discover incontrovertible evidence of Operation Wicked Succubus. You know, the feminist plan to eliminate all men (except for me).
https://twitter.com/BloomfieldJanet/status/523458962704699393
Her followers were aghast:
And naturally one of them brought up #GamerGate.
There were a few others, but you get the idea.
It never occurred to any of them to, you know, try to find out just who the bald man advocating killing all men was. Or who exactly he was talking to.
So I decided to do some serious investigative journalism to see what I could uncover. I typed out “‘eliminate men as a gender’ security” into a little known internet “search engine” called Google, and boldly clicked on the first result.
This led me to a Tweet with a URL in it. Bravely, I clicked on that URL and found myself looking at a video of a presentation at something called Monitorama PDX 2014 — clearly the code name for one of the Feminist Conspiracy’s conventions.
I looked it up in Google and discovered a web page for the event, which had been held in May. It was described as an “An Open Source Monitoring Conference & Hackathon.”
Ah, clearly a clever Feminist code name.
And then I decided to look up the name of the speaker: James Mickens. Turns out the guy works at Microsoft, one of the companies at the center of the Misandrist Conspiracy. Mickens is also the author of a number of papers, with titles like “Pivot: Fast, Synchronous Mashup Isolation Using Generator Chains” and “Mugshot: Deterministic Capture and Replay for JavaScript Applications.”
Obviously, some high level feminist theorizing.
Then I decided to watch the video. And I was shocked!
Because it wasn’t a speech about killing all men after all. It wasn’t even a feminist speech. No, it seemed instead to be a highly technical talk about internet security issues, illustrated with a lot of silly slides. Like this:
And this:
I must confess that I didn’t get the overwhelming majority of his jokes. But he audience seemed to find these slides, and much of what he said, hilarious. So if you ever need to hire a comedian who can joke about Synchronous Mashup Isolation Using Generator Chains, Mickens is your guy.
So where does the whole “kill all men” thing come from?
Well, I skipped ahead a bit in the video until I found a section in which Mickens talked about the dumb things people do that can undermine even the most sophisticated security setup.
His example: gullible, horny men who are tricked into “friending” hackers on Facebook posing as hot babes — even when there are pretty obvious indications that the hot babes aren’t really hot babes at all.
Things like: saying they graduated from Central University, even though there is no school by that name in the US, or spelling the name of their profession wrong.
These are all good clues, he said, that the hot babe you just friended on facebook was really this guy:
Given that men are regularly duped with simple tricks that play on their horniness and gullibility, Mickens joked, maybe the real goal for people trying to design secure systems should be the elimination of all men.
So that’s where the slide comes from.
And by the way, that whole bit of his killed — not as in “killed all men” but as in “got giant laughs from the mostly male audience.” Expecially the part about killing all men.
If you want to see the whole bit, starting with Mary and ending with “eliminate men as a gender,” it starts at around 20:40 in the video.
Men’s Rights Activists: more gullible than guys who friend Mary from Central University on Facebook.
NOTE TO EXTREMELY LITERAL-MINDED MRAS: That bit about the feminist plot to kill all men (except me) at the start of this post was a joke. Feminists don’t really intend to kill all men (except me).
Or do they?
When I said your side I meant the mens rights activist. You may have noticed that is the title of this effing post. Mens rights activist most gullible people in the world or most gullible people in the universe. That is your side, that is in favor of rape and death threats to women. I told you earlier that you should stop digging. You should have listened.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA fuck, you are soooo stupid.
When you come a’trolling on a site that mocks misogyny, and trot out tropes like “ethics in journalism” you’ve got all the tells, child. You really think we haven’t seen this before? Sign up for your remedial trolling class, you’re not doing at all well.
“Chockanga, you’re also less entertaining than the gunk stuck in my bathroom tiles. Well done.”
I’m not here to entertain you. I’m here to point out your failings.
“He’s all “I want to fight, why won’t you fight with me! I arrived pre-enraged and everything! Submit to my authority!”.”
I don’t want to fight, I want you to acknowledge that you’ve done something wrong. I claim no authority other than the facts. I’m personally a nobody, a nickname on the Internet. But I was tired of seeing you congratulating yourself for finding yet another way to smear your critics with a healthy dose of “guilty by association”.
Pls explain where this occurs. And what happened. And everything about why you are right.
On second thought, you’re boring, repetitive, and grossly unethical (or so ignorant about discussion you appear that way) and I’m done with you.
This harkens back to: If you want to provide critique, you have to actually critique. That means evidence and well thought out rationalisations that have actual arguments to back them up – not just “self-evident thing is self-evident”.
Honestly, I’m against doxxing people, mostly because a) it puts those people in a dangerous position because it’s likely only done to inflame your userbase, and b) because it seems unethical to out someone who doesn’t want to be outed on the internet (ie: posting behind an anonymous screename) without permission just because you don’t like them (if it’s criminal issues that’s something completely different but also not doxxing because criminal issues should be sent to the authorities and not to the internet since the INTERNET IS NOT POLICE), as it does not address the argument, and c) because doxxing doesn’t include just a name, but also other personal details like an address. A name allows other people to dox, and while that’s not great either, especially if your userbase is a bunch of asshole harrassers who are likely to go out and find that person’s address and send them death threats to scare them (ie: every single woman targetted by GGers so far).
Moral failings troll wants to discuss feminists moral failings with them to improve them for their own good. What a selfless guy, eh?
That’s a good point, I need to unclog the toilet… Damn storms backing up the drain with leaves… Ta for now, Mr Independent™.
Moral flaws? We’re supposed to discuss our moral flaws?
Oooh, I know!
I do not invariably provide lap space or belly scritches for the kitties upon demand.
That’s a serious moral flaw.
Anyone else?
“That is your side, that is in favor of rape and death threats to women.”
Prove it. Prove that I’m a MRA (I’m not). Prove that I’m in favor of rape and death threats to women (I’m not). Otherwise, stop the slander.
“I have no authority, but dammit, respect mah authoritay!”
So fail, much lulz.
@Chockanga:
Of course it was. How convenient. I’d be curious to know if you had a reference where Matt Cavanaugh (the author) actually claimed it was satire, or if you did so on your own as a reflex to protect your own.
2690 words describing (and misrepresenting) as many sordid accusations as possible is not satire. It’s a hit piece.
The “doxxed” person is a medical professional using her status to misdiagnose and slander PZ by insinuating he had an STI (gotten from sex with the SkepChicks). It wasn’t exactly a joke, and you can’t really use the “doxxing” framework when you’re talking about someone who is violating professional ethical standards.
Poor PZ and his unethical nature. Do you even get that we recognize the manipulative dog whistles you are honking away at? D00d! STOP>
Chockanga
Do you have any sources for that accusaition, please? Or just assertion?
Yet you’re not engaging in any meaningful kind of journalism criticism. Only trying to shield somebody with a proven harassing behavior from an imagined slander. And you’re no fanboy..
“Pls explain where this occurs. And what happened. And everything about why you are right.”
The Skepchick account doxxed Skep Tickle, the author of the joke. You can find all the evidence you need on Twitter.
If you think that doxxing is wrong, you should be against this.
“Moral failings troll wants to discuss feminists moral failings with them to improve them for their own good. What a selfless guy, eh?”
You should be the ones who want to improve yourself. It’s not my job to tell you what to do. I’m just saying what I think.
Defend them from what? Your unfounded accusations that they are unethical journalists?
A group of adorable children just walked past my window. There was a teacher leading them and they were all holding on to a rope thingy with little rings on it (I assume they were from a preschool).
“Yeah well you say X did a bad thing but Y did a bad thing too, so the bad thing X did doesn’t count!” is at about their level on the moral development scale. Adults really should have moved on a bit.
If you go back through your comments trolly I think you will find that you do not think the same thing two minutes in a row.
“If you go back through your comments trolly I think you will find that you do not think the same thing two minutes in a row.”
Be more specific, please. I read my comments again, and while I noticed a few typos I made while typing very fast, I see nothing I would change.
But if you have any useful criticism, I’ll be happy to hear it.
Useful criticism? Learn how to troll better. Surely there must be classes available or something.
It it time for number ninja yet?
Thought experiment: Imagine I wrote a piece where I said that David Futrelle belong to the same ideological side of Valerie Solanas, just because he used some words from the SCUM manifesto, and I expressed a vaguely phrased concern that his words might inspire an attempt on someone’s life.
If in that situation, you had said I was being dishonest, and sleazy, and unethical, you’d have been perfectly right. So why can Futrelle do the same thing to thunderfoot without anyone but me calling him out?
Oh wow. Can you neg us in a more subtle way? Those are some of the stupidest, most obvious and in-your-face negs in the history of negs.
@chockanga:
(RE: thebewilderness’s quote)
Remember your little rant about nuance? Here’s another example of how you can’t handle it. Saying a “side” is pro-death threat here is not saying that every single member of that side is pro-death-threat. That couldn’t possibly be the case. (It’s different when the position defines the group, like “pro-life” folks). It’s all about a culture that allows and fuels such folks who are pro-death-threat.
I read it the first time. I even quoted a bit!
*sigh* Again, you do not understand nuance. There is a huge difference between “helping to create a culture” and “personally approving of everything that culture produces.” No, David is not saying anything about Thunderfoot approving of the death threats. Here is, in its entirety, everything David says about thunderf00t in the other blog post.
Boom. The author may have picked up similar language.
You don’t understand nuance, you leap to extraordinary lengths in an effort to accuse people you don’t like of bad behavior, take astounding measures to deflect criticism of people you do like, and you continually misrepresent your opponents so you can accuse them of doing the same.
You, sir, do not have the chops to have this discussion.
Mockery and satire do have some things in common so I don’t think anyone would have a hissy fit if you said that about David and Valerie.
That implies that there may be a discussion that he does have the chops for, which seems overly optimistic.
@Chockanga:
Would we? What are the details? What language did hypothefutrelle borrow? How was that language used? Does he have a history of promoting similar violent ideas? Is he part of a group that has a pattern of violent rhetoric? C’mon dude, we need more information than this.
(Did the SCUM manifesto even inspire an attempt on someone’s life? I legit haven’t heard anything like that)