Sexual harassment: it’s not just something that dudes do. And here’s a little story from the GamerGate wars on Twitter to demonstrate this.
Yesterday, an anti-GamerGate Twitterer known as @Auragasmic directed a question to Adobe Software. And got an indignant reply from a GamerGater known as Cameralady.
https://twitter.com/The_Camera_Girl/status/524654719982391297
Now, this response is interesting for several reasons.
For one, Cameralady on Twitter, called that because she is the, er, camera lady for the YouTube channel ShortFatOtaku, is the same Cameralady I ran across repeatedly when going through those logs of the #burgersandfries IRC channel, one of the main organizing hubs of the campaign of harassment that became #GamerGate.
Cameralady, one of the angriest commenters in that angry bunch, showed up in the IRC channel on August 23rd ready to do battle with Zoe Quinn, who she claimed had once “belittled me for having autism.”
She turned out to be an indefatigable researcher, digging up a great deal of dirt about Quinn’s past, including what she said was a photo of Quinn at age 13. And she passed along lurid gossip from Zoe’s terrible ex about her sex life.
Here’s the charming way Cameralady introduced herself to the IRC channel, the log of which you can find online here. (I’ve removed some unrelated comments, indicating cuts with ellipses. )
Aug 23 01.51.50 <Cameralady> fuck zoe quinn
…
Aug 23 01.52.08 <Cameralady> she’s not interested in equality she’s interested in stuffing her flappy cunt with flaacid boy penises
Aug 23 01.52.14 <TechPriest> So your in this to take her down, and dehumanize her because she deserves it….
Aug 23 01.52.38 <foTTS> To be honest, I wouldn’t credit her with depression quest since she only provided 75 lines for it, Cameralady
Aug 23 01.52.54 <Cameralady> that’s less than the lines of cum she’s swallowed…
Aug 23 01.53.26 let’s al capone her
On another occasion, she thought about releasing all the dirt she found on Quinn to the world.
Aug 23 18.57.47 <Cameralady> there’s a part of me that is evil and says MAKE A BIG DOXX AND RELEASE IT AND SHIT ON ZOE MOOOORE …
Aug 23 18.57.57 <Cameralady> but the rational part of me is “what no what will that even do”
Aug 23 18.58.18 <W334800> exactly, give her more attention her current monstrous form craves
Aug 23 18.58.34 <rd0952> attention is not the same as punishment
You may also recall in one of my previous posts about the IRC log that I quoted someone fantasizing about starting a relationship with Quinn just so she could “dump her in the most brutal, heartwrenching way possible.” That was Cameralady.
So that’s one of the interesting things about this alleged opponent of harassment.
The other one?
Well, shortly after Tweeting about how only anti-GamerGaters harass people, she sexually harassed an anti-GamerGater.
https://twitter.com/The_Camera_Girl/status/524660916810678272
When someone called her on it, Cameralady accused him of homophobia:
https://twitter.com/The_Camera_Girl/status/524668632476176385
No, I’m pretty sure what we’re talking about isn’t lesbianism (or misogyny) but harassment. When you say, to a woman you’re having an argument with on Twitter, that you want her to prove something “preferably in a post-coitus conversation with me, grrl,” that’s harassment, not a clever pickup line. Regardless of your gender.
Especially since this isn’t the first time that Cameralady has crudely “propositioned” Izzy Mariana on Twitter. Indeed, a week ago, they had this exchange:
Indeed, to even call these “propositions” is a bit misleading. These are attempts to rattle Mariana by addressing her in a crudely sexual way, not serious attempts to ask her out.
Are any GamerGaters calling out Cameralady for this behavior? No, they’re trying to pretend that she’s being oppressed as a lesbian — for sexually harassing a woman who already told her to get lost.
GamerGaters always deflect accusations of harassment by saying that “we don’t know if the harassers are GamerGaters.” Well, here’s an example of a rather prominent GamerGater sexually harassing a woman in broad daylight on Twitter — and all her GamerGater comrades can do is deny and deflect and throw out accusations of homophobia.
Oh, and give Cameralady virtual high-fives for her harassing tweet — which at the moment boasts seven favs and retweets, all of them from active GamerGate supporters.
Such ethics. So anti-harassment.
EDITED TO ADD: According to this Storify, Cameralady has done this to at least one other person.
@Skye & thebewilderness
Damn, that really sucks.
I’m still glad I’m not able to keep up with their awfulness, eww.
We should be reporting them then, but I don’t think it will help a lot.
PS: no problem about my name. I find it hilarious that trolls seem to think it’s an insult that they can’t write it right…
@Skye also, I don’t mean you are a troll, I use the same name in different sites. Just a fun fact.
That “camera lady” account apparently started tweeting around September 3 of this year, as far as I can tell. That to me says “troll;” is there any reason to believe this is the same personality (offscreen though he or she may be) from YouTube?
This thing of hiding behind a neurodevelopment disability (real or fake) is particularly troubling. One of my sons is autistic, and about the last thing he would ever consider doing is hanging out online throwing crudely nasty tweets at people. If anything he’s hyper-empathetic, often internalizing to an almost debilitating degree the pain and distress of others (discounting when they’re distressed by his intense religiosity).
Even less likely to fall out of his mouth is a suggestion that he ‘can’t help himself’ because of his autism, to say nothing of an accusation that people who criticize him for any reason (like, asking him for a little less Jesus, please) are making fun of him because he’s autistic. He even comes close to completely disavowing the very label of ‘autism’. Hiding behind it as an untouchable excuse for bad behavior? No way.
As others have pointed out, waving the ‘I’m-autistic-and-therefore-anyone-criticizing-me-is-an ableist-bigot’ flag is one horrific and potentially damaging cop out.
Yeah, that was real classy.
After cosying up in a long thread with a show of starting a conversation, which Zoe Quinn was understandably reluctant to participate in, cameralady apparently lost patience and went for the sexual snipe:
https://twitter.com/The_Camera_Girl/status/523902198095577088
https://twitter.com/The_Camera_Girl/status/523902374818365442
Adding that “disclosure of sex” comment at the end was in no way meant to be an attack, no no no.
Bingo. That’s precisely MY problem with them, too. That, and they misquote Voltaire (taking a quote from a novel about him to be an actual Voltaire quote, which it is not).
I don’t defend anyone’s right to say any old thing to the death, because I’m German and my people have already gone down that road. The Weimar Republic had pretty much absolute free speech, and that didn’t go so well for them. The next party in power just rolled right over that, unimpeded.
Oh, does that mean that it is really okay to yell “FIRE!” in a crowded theater, when there is no fire?
Free speech is only free when the speaker recognizes and respects certain limitations and responsibilities. You know, like do not threaten anyone or cause harm to others with your flapping mouth.
Ken is an idiot.
🙂 No worries. Didn’t get that impression. Glad you aren’t offended. I try to get people’s names right.
Um…anyone else hear that Felicia Day has been doxxed?
@samantha — with all due respect (and forgive me for not doing well with quoting comments), the old saw about “fire in a crowded theater” is a bad place to start with a free speech analysis. This article has a good description of why, but you can find many more like it: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ It’s simply a a bit of dicta from an overturned and poorly decided case.
@absinthe:
That is hands down the most galling part: that they act like we didn’t all grow up on the internet too, like the chans are still some super sekkrit haxxor hangout that nobody knows about.
It’s pathetic, really.
@Skye:
Yup. She wrote this great piece about why GamerGaters scare her. It was very mildly worded and spoke from her own perspective. In it she alludes, among other things, to the fact that she’s not commented much publicly before now because she thought she’d be targeted.
It took 50 minutes for someone to post her home address. IN THE COMMENTS FOR THE BLOG POST. Guess how many other posts she’s been doxxed in? Zero? Did you guess zero?
I think they’ve really shot themselves in the foot here. Day is not a journalist, she’s fiercely pro-gaming (she made The Guild, for fuck’s sake) and she’s the darling of a whole swathe of internet fandoms. They couldn’t have planned it much better if their deliberate aim was to make GG look like a bunch of spiteful malevolent kids – woman says she’s scared of the anger in people who share a hobby with her, they respond with a doxx that clearly sends the message “we can get to you”.
These people are terrible. Please, someone, let the ones doing awful stuff be discovered and arrested. A lot of them deserve jail time.
… And, right on cue, they’re already calling “No True #GamerGater” and “False flag” on it.
Semi-related, but it’s bizarre that so many people I know who were staunchly against the Tea Party have gone from “I’m a liberal” to “All liberals must die” and considering Breitbart to be about as truthful as the Weekly World News to holding them up as a bastion of journalism. The Republicans tried so hard to rebrand themselves in order to attract a younger generation and failed, then this came along and did the rebranding for them.
@strivingally – sorry, was wrestling with a closet…*blushes* sure, go ahead and quote me.
@binjabreel – It’s positively boring and predictable. Instead of doing something good in the world, they’d rather have a tantrum. Also, one of the worst things about this is that they think they are doing Something but really they’re doing nothing but showing how horrible they are as human beings.
I suppose that’s something, but really, I’d rather be known for something good than for being part of a hate movement.
I think everyone here needs to allot 20 minutes to watch this video by Folding Ideas on GamerGate. It does an excellent job of using critical analysis to break down the mentality that festered into the movement. There’s one particular quote that summarizes not just the movement’s tactics, but all oppressive culture in general perfectly :
The comments section has some decently well-pruned (although not completely shithead-free) discussion as well.
I’m not surprised they hit Felicia.
They will hit any female in gaming, or even, indeed, in vaguely game-related things, who expresses the most mild of uncertainty about GamerGate.
What follows that are arguments on two points:
1) She deserved it!
and
2) FALSE FLAG.
There’s some poor guy DMing me asking me who is in ‘charge’ of GamerGate so he can tell them to stop, and I’ve been trying to tell him – no one.
It isn’t a movement. It isn’t anything. It’s a collection of vaguely half-baked trolls and some anti-women virulent assholes and some people who REALLY LIKE GAMING and everything is under the same umbrella. In fact, to be honest, talking about #notyourshield? It’s the moderate gamers who are the shield – for GamerGate. They’re so incredibly useful. They’re there, at every point, to be sacrificed to the assholes who can use them like ablative armour.
And all you have to do, to get this endless army of self-sacrificing lemmings, is to convince them that those Evil Social Justice Warriors HATE gaming and LOVE corruption. Easily done, too, given the evidence.
By which I mean, the ‘evidence’ is that they’re easily signed on as lemmings. But yeah – that whole ‘Zoe Quinn hates autistic people’ thing? That’s STILL BEING USED…
Ugh. Who needs brain bleach?
He’s really not. He’s a criminal defence lawyer, which causes him to have a very poor opinion of government overreach, and he thinks that the best remedy for free speech that bothers you is MORE free speech. Clark’s an asshole, though. He calls himself an ancap libertarian, and fancies himself a self-made intellectual who’s AWAKE, man. And he’s a misogynistic rape apologist.
In other words, he’s an idiot.
Okay. He may not TECHNICALLY be an idiot, but being a free speech absolutist and rape apologist makes him, in my never terribly humble opinion, a very bad man.
Maybe I am just getting too old, but I am having an increasingly difficult time putting up with the vile anti-woman, anti-progressive attitudes that abound on the ‘net. And I am sick to death of whining little manboys blaming women for all the ills of the world – like war and poverty – that, for the most part, are caused by men!
I know. I will re-watch Firefly and, when I am done, everything in my ‘verse will be shiny again! 🙂
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
WWTH, that kitty has made backpedalling into an art form! 😀
@Alex M
/checks link, scrolls down to comments before starting the video
Whaddya know, it’s full of sea lioning. In reply to the “our playground, our rules, deal or we’re kicking you out” comment, too.