What a surreal life Anita Sarkeesian must lead, in which virtually everything she says and does becomes grist for the Great Internet Lady Harassment Machine, Sarkeesian Division.
Take the latest blowup, which followed a few comments Sarkeesian made in the wake of Friday’s school shooting in Marysville, which may have been triggered by the shooter’s angry response to a romantic breakup. On Friday, Sarkeesian posted a few thoughts on the matter on Twitter:
We need to seriously address connections between violence, sexism and toxic ideas of manhood before boys and men commit more mass shootings.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 24, 2014
Not a coincidence it’s always men and boys committing mass shootings. The pattern is connected to ideas of toxic masculinity in our culture.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 24, 2014
While it it not literally true that every single mass shooter in history has been male, we are talking about an almost exclusively male club: one recent attempt at crunching the numbers found that 97% of school shooters have been male, and 79% of them white. (The Maryville shooter was Native American.)
In any case, the notion that a crime so heavily associated with men might have something to do with our society’s notions of masculinity isn’t exactly a radical notion. Indeed, it seems rather obvious.
But to Sarkeesian’s many haters, on Twitter and elsewhere, it was as if Sarkeesian had just posted a video of herself drowning puppies. Cue the twitterstorm.
Here are just a selection of the literally hundreds of lovely comments that Sarkeesian had Tweeted at her on Friday and Saturday after making her original comments.
[Giant TRIGGER WARNING for violent, explicit threats, harassment]
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There were, of course, the explicit threats:
And the implicit threats:
And the sexual harassment:
And those who merely expressed their hope that Sarkeesian would kill herself:
Or die a horrible death:
Or simply die :
But not everyone wished violence on her. Some just told her that the threats and/or harassment she’s already getting is totally justified:
(Apparently by “fishing” Mr. de Alba means “expressing an opinion or making an observation.” Also note that the tweets that set off this latest wave of harassment didn’t contain the #GamerGate hashtag. )
Speaking of harassment, we’re just getting started in our chronicle of the latest wave.
Let’s continue with an assortment of Tweets using the c-word, a favorite slur amongst Sarkeesian’s detractors.
Why, yes, that is Suzanne McCarley, A Voice for Men’s “Assistant Managing Editor” happily adding her voice to the harassment.
Others pulled out the f-word:
She was called a “bitch.”
She was called a “whore.”
She was called a “terrorist.”
And a Nazi:
One fellow said that he thought Sarkeesian’s tweets were actually worse than the shooting itself:
And one even declared her “officially worse than Wil Wheaton,” the former Star Trek:TNG actor who has won mass opprobrium from internet dicks for publicly expressing his belief that people should not be dicks.
To add insult to injury, a few reported Sarkeesian herself to Twitter for various imaginary infractions:
Another asked why she wasn’t in jail for her, er, crimes:
Just to remind you: these tweets are all from TWO DAYS’ worth of harassment and threats on Twitter. And this isn’t all of them.
At this point anyone who claims that Sarkeesian is “making up” the harassment she gets, or writing it herself, or just the work of a “few trolls,” is either disingenuous or delusional.
I’ll leave the last word to Sarkeesian herself.
Our culture is deeply sick when simply asking questions about how toxic forms of masculinity may harm men leads to hours of hate on Twitter.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 25, 2014
EDITED TO ADD:
ATTENTION NEW COMMENTERS! I would like to draw your attention to this bit from my comments policy:
[I]f I’m writing about someone who’s gotten harassed by misogynists on the internet, and you want to talk about how much they deserved it, or what a lying liar they are? Well, fuck you! Your comments go right into the trash.
So take that into consideration. It might save you some time.
CORRECTION: I removed a screenshot of a Tweet that wasn’t threatening but was posted by a troll. See here.
“By paring the two words “toxic” and “masculinity” you imply that masculinity is toxic.”
By pairing the words “Hot” and “Food” do I imply that all food is hot?
@Policy of Madness
The only way men and women will behave exactly the same is by force. You cannot decide the personality for the entire human race. Individuality and uniqueness are key to human genetic diversity. In fact many of the “societal differences” between men and women are a product of hetorsexual maiting which is what enables our species to continue existing.
@t1oracle: Did you even read what proxieme wrote? Doesn’t look like you did.
@M. the Social Justice Ranger
Are you calling out “hot food” as a threat to society? Are there no alternatives to “hot food” in the common vernacular?
… Is t1oracle an Eliza bot?
“By paring the two words “red” and “balloon” you imply that balloons are red.”
“By pairing the two words “human” and “resources” you imply that resources are human.”
“By pairing the two words “space” and “exploration” you imply that exploration is space.”
All you’re demonstrating here is that you don’t know how English works. Are you a non-native speaker? Let me explain: when a noun is modified by an adjective, this serves to specialize the noun, to mark off the category encompassed by this particular use of the noun from the larger category encompassed by the unmodified noun. For example, “space exploration” is a sub-category of “exploration.” There are many types of exploration that don’t involve space; by modifying the noun “exploration” with “space,” we are specifying that we are referring to only a specific sub-category of all exploration which involves space. Similarly, the “red” in “red balloon” serves to signal to the listener that we are not talking about all balloons, but only the red ones. Further adjectives can be applied (“big” and “this”) to further narrow down the subject. “This big red balloon” clearly refers to one specifically identified balloon, not all balloons.
Do you understand now?
@t1oracle
Clearly I’m talking over your head. Nevermind, you aren’t intellectually equipped for this discussion.
Evo psych! Evo psych! Get out your bingo cards, everybody!
@Policy of Madness
What you are demonstrating here is a “Strawman Argument” which is a logical fallacy.
I apologize to t1oracle, and to all bystanders, for assuming that t1oracle is capable of understanding the most basic of basic philosophy. This was an unwarranted assumption on my part.
Pairing an adjective with a noun doesn’t mean the writer is automatically saying that the adjective is always describing every one of the nouns. That’s not how English works.
Also, if you think men and women will only behave the same under force, why does your graphic have a male and female figure with an equal sign between them.
“Clearly I’m talking over your head. Nevermind, you aren’t intellectually equipped for this discussion.”
Congratulations, you’ve just added “Ad hominem” to your list of logical fallacies.
The only way men and women will behave exactly the same is by force. You cannot decide the personality for the entire human race. Individuality and uniqueness are key to human genetic diversity. In fact many of the “societal differences” between men and women are a product of hetorsexual maiting which is what enables our species to continue existing.
Heh. That’s a beautiful way of answering the question without answering the question.
@weirwoodtreehugger
The equal sign is not about equal behavior, it is about equal value.
@Policy of Madness
How many more Ad Hominem attacks do you have?
Where is the strawman in POM’S post? I’m confused. I didn’t realize explaining how noun-adjective pairs work is a strawman argument. That makes no sense.
@Fibinachi
My answer boils down to “no” with a thorough explanation. Thank you for reading.
@t1oracle
The fact that you know the term “logical fallacy” doesn’t mean you know what one is, or know how to recognize one when you see it. I attempted to engage with you intellectually, and you clearly don’t grasp what I am saying even though what I’m saying is not complicated in the slightest.
I cannot have a discussion with someone who is unable to distinguish the concept of “is” from the concept of “ought,” or to conceptualize a hypothetical. It just isn’t possible.
So, it sounds like she’s not pushing her own book, but recommending others. I just wanted to note that authors (and tweeters in general) frequently pre-schedule promotional tweets. That means she loaded the tweets up earlier, and they went out on schedule, and do not reflect a lack of care and attention to events that occur AFTER she scheduled the tweets.
By pairing the two words “toxic” and “masculinity”, we’re adding an adjective to the word “masculinity” so that we can talk about a particular variety of masculinity that is toxic.
That’s not ad hominem nor is it a strawman. Try again. Stating someone cannot have a conversation about quantum mechanics without a proper grounding in physics is true, not an ad hominem. Saying you missed the point is true, not an ad hominem. You seem not to understand basic philosophy.
Not an ad hominem – a statement about the grounding of your argument in impossible premises.
@weirwoodtreehugger
I am not talking about noun adjective pairs. Loaded phrases like “toxic masculinity” are just as harmful as phrases like “islamic terrorism,” please look up “Loaded Language” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_language
@t1: No, not really.
Pairing words to make a phrase =/= imply that they’re inextricably linked or necessarily even generally associated (see “red balloon”, etc above).
Buuuut I can see that you seem to just be here to argue about made-up shite / engage in purposeful obtuseness, so I’ll leave you to it.
@Fibinachi
My grasp of the ad hominem fallacy is already solid, thank you. Do you always suggest that strangers on the internet are unintelligent, or you do just reserve that for the ones who disagree with you?
That’s not an ad hominem. She’s not saying your argument is invalid because you don’t understand how English works. Just noting that it’s preventing you from arguing your point well.
You also don’t understand what the equal sign means. It implies sameness. The sign doesn’t imply anything about worth. If your argument is that men and women are intrinsically different, they can’t be the same.
Also if men are inherently different than women, and the vast majority of mass shootings are committed by men, it suggests that there is something maleness that makes one want to shoot many people. Right? That makes your argument more sexist against men than ours. We’re saying men aren’t inherently violent and changing the culture would fix the problem. Under your theory, men are just violent.
Of course there are toxic males. And some toxic females as well, although usually more subtle.
Seems to me a common thread is narcissistic Entitlement, which cuts across gender lines.
Maybe if he didn’t try to make graphic and text occupy the same space he’d see his equals sign more clearly and be able to stick with one argument.