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.
Here’s one.
http://i.imgur.com/7vX09.jpg
@weirwoodtreehugger
It can also easily be interpreted as masculinity in general being toxic, which is how I and many others took it. And certainly many in the comments here seem to believe that masculinity as a social construct is no longer needed. I disagree.
“It can also easily be interpreted as masculinity in general being toxic, which is how I and many others took it. ”
Which tells us a lot about you: Apparently, your masculinity is so toxic that you think it’s more important todefend your totally-not-toxic masculinity than, you know, discussing why a mass shooter with clear masculinity issues did his shooting.
That you value the honor of your masculinity higher than the victims of a mass shooting is actually really, really disturbing. It’d be difficult to find better proof for toxic masculinity than, well, folks like you.
@fxc
[blockquote]I started this by saying that I believe her thesis to be solid and many of her examples to be well presented. The fact that I have stated that I have issue with some of the arguments was enough for many of you to respond in overly-aggressive, immature, and insulting ways. [/blockquote]
That’s a lie! We can read what you wrote, you know. You called her a troll-baiter that profitted from her harassment, and then a liar and cherry-picker.
You’re an asshole, no matter how much you try to couch it in “polite” words. “Calm your hysteronics” indeed. Fuck you.
That’s not an easy interpretation. That’s an interpretation that requires you to ignore everything you’ve ever read and heard, and consciously decide to separate a noun from its adjective.
The commenters here do not, in general, feel that masculinity as a social construct is no longer needed. Indeed, many of us are very please with the masculine people in our lives. Some of us ARE masculine people.
We feel that a healthy, non-abusive, non-toxic masculinity would be lovely, if we could only get rid of the toxic variety that permeates our culture, and results in far too frequent mass murder.
I wonder: do people who leave such vile, detestable, hateful comments for people feel good about themselves? Proud? Would they show this crap to their mother? Their daughter. It scares me that people exist who see no problem in writing such filth.
You can go from boys will be boys to not all men without batting an eye if you ignore the bodies piling up. Both Zoe and Gia are dead at the hands of a boy suffering from toxic masculinity, and you can eff the eff off.
Today I learned, feminists shouldn’t use the term “toxic masculinity” anymore because some men don’t have middle school reading comprehension skills and don’t understand what it means when you put an adjective in front of a noun.
Since I was talking about Buffy earlier, I’ll let her speak for me.
http://media1.giphy.com/media/HZlTHYH90ahqw/giphy.gif
Or what?
@fxc
Calling her a troll-baiter, a liar, and someone profiting from harassment were things you directly did.
Remember: We can actually read your earlier words and conclusively deduce that you are an asshole.
What is with you MRAs and your complete failure to understand that other people can actually read your previous words?
This is my personal favorite bathroom vandalism, though I take no credit for discovering it, the image has been online for a while now:
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/00/dd/d6/00ddd683512d6665d2267b79b359e7e1.jpg
(Let’s see if that embeds)
@Catalpa, I’m sending you the bill for cleaning my monitor. *wipes coffee from chin*
fxc:
BUT BUT BUT FXC, I am deeply upset and offended that you would lump me in with the people are making fun of you rather than engaging with my well thought-out responses to your criticism.
Just like Anita Sarkeesian has a responsibility – nay, a moral obligation! – to wade through reams of abuse, insults and graphic threats in order to find and engage with each individual detractor who made a half-decent point while managing to keep things civil, surely you have a responsibiltiy to engage with each and every point that has been brought against your argument here? Otherwise, are you really any better than Sarkeesian? You, after all, chose to come into this space and participate of your own freewill, but now you’re generalizing and accusing us ALL of harassment because a few regulars called you an idiot and an asshole?
I mean, here are your own thoughts on the subject from further upthread:
fxc:
Don’t you think you’re being just a teen-tiny bit hypocritical? I mean, no one on this thread has threatened to rape or murder you, or made a game where we can beat you up for saying things we disagree with, but you’re already throwing in the towel and refusing to engage with any of my points? Poor show, fxc. Poor poor show. I am UPSET.
JV:
Your lack of basic reading comprehension is exactly one person’s problem, and that person is not Anita Sarkeesian. Policy of Madness has already taken the time to give a lesson in How Adjectives Work 101 further up in this very thread. How much more handholding do you need?
JV:
Nope. No one on this thread said masculinity is no longer needed. Most of us agree that masculinity is a social construct, but social construct ≠ no longer needed. You arrived at that conclusion all by yourself.
Most of us agree that the world would be a better place without toxic masculinity. And just to be ABSOLUTELY CLEAR, by toxic masculinity, we mean “aspects of masculinity that are toxic” and not masculinity as a whole.
You can see a lot of examples of how toxic masculinity is constructed and perpetuated in our society in the games Sarkeesian analyses and that your sons play. For example, most videogames show only two possible “manly” responses to grief and loss:
1) Brood
2) Take violent revenge on the people who hurt you
That particular construction of masculinity cuts boys off from healthy responses to pain – such as asking for help, practicing self-care, forgiving themselves and others, etc. – by making them they feel like they can’t be openly emotional with compromising their masculinity. This is harmful for young men, a group with disproportionately high rates of suicide and depressions, and harmful for those they lash out at when all their repressed sadness and insecurity bubbles to the surface as anger – because this construction of masculinity says that anger is the only emotion “real” men are allowed to act on. That is an example of masculinity that is toxic… or, as anyone with a rudimentary grasp of the English language might say, “toxic masculinity”.
Oh, we have a “just a guy asking questions” troll who would rather lament his own fee-fees than take the OP seriously.
Gosh, Mr. Troll, how would you feel if so many people suggested you be raped and murdered online? Or repeated versions of “Die Cunt Die” were thrown in your face?
Are you saying that’s the reasonable response to
misunderstanding the phrase “toxic masculinity” ? Do you honestly expect us to believe that?
I think that there is too much aggression by both male and female. The fact that men seldom report a woman for hitting him so he don’t look like a wuss is the main reason there is so little abuse by women reported. That is not the same as it not happening.
I think the reason these things are happening is because there is no longer anyone in the home raising the kids. People have kids then dump them on the nearest day care, shove them in school as soon as possible, we don’t allow them to feel anything negative and if they do anything wrong we make excuses so they never learn from anything.
Everything today that is happening is because we are so busy being their best friend we have forgotten we are parents and that it’s ok to say no, it’s ok for the kids to fail, to have disappointments, to hurt…. We don’t allow them to experience reality until they are too old to learn how to deal with it.
Girls tend to turn to sex or gang up on others on social sites. Boys are more physical. It is what it is but both are acting out and to ignore that girls are just as troubled as boys makes you ignorant and useless when it comes to solving the problem.
@tinyorc
“Also, your false equivalence is false. If 98% of apple thefts were exclusively committed by Irish men, I think it would be important to explore the link between Irishness and apple-based kleptomania. Though if you wanted to really hammer the Irish stereotype home, you should have gone with potatoes. Total beginner’s mistake.”
1) Correlation is not causation.
2) I don’t want to hammer any stereotype, which is precisely why I didn’t use potatoes.
If 98% of apple thefts were exclusively committed by Irish men, it still would not mean that apple theft is linked to being Irish. It could be that all of the Irish people are starving and apples are the easiest food to steal. Then it becomes clear that the problem isn’t being Irish, the problem is being poor.
@weirwoodtreehugger
“Today I learned, feminists shouldn’t use the term “toxic masculinity” anymore”
Because it is ignorant, hateful, misandry. You perceive masculinity as the enemy and the cause of everything that you imagine is wrong in the world. This same thinking was used to justify slavery, apartheid, “ethnic cleansing,” and various atrocities across human history. Men like:
Michael Brown
Eric Garner
Kimani Gray
Kendrec McDade
Timothy Russel
Ervin Jefferson
Amadou Diallo
Patric Dorismond
Ousmane Zongo
Timothy Stansbury Jr.
Sean Bell
Orlando Barlow
Arron Campbell
Victor Steen
Steven Eugene Washington
Alonzo Ashley
Wendell Allen
Ronald Madison
James Brissette
Travares McGill
Ramarley Graham
Oscar Grant
were all shot by police because African American masculinity is perceived in America as toxic. Fear of their masculinity is what resulted in the unnecessary deaths of these men.
Fear is a powerful thing and your rhetoric of “toxic masculinity” only promotes it. There is nothing about masculinity that leads to violence. There is no such thing as too much masculinity or too little masculinity. However masculine a person is depends entirely upon the personality that they were born with. Masculinity is not cultural, it is not programmed by society. Masculinity is as much a choice as sexuality is. Masculinity is in fact male heterosexuality. It is an identity that people are born with.
You cannot take an individual who is not masculine and make them more masculine. You cannot take an individual who is very masculine and make them less masculine. However, you can take an individual and burden them with shame for being who they are. Doing that is wrong.
No one should be shamed for who they are.
Masculinity is not the enemy of feminism. Feminism would actually be stronger if they embraced the masculine identify, and cultivated an understanding and acceptance of differences.
*identity
What is with the influx of trolls these last couple of days? You can’t move for their droppings in the threads *shakes shoe in disgust
You heard it right here folks – gay, bisexual, asexual and transmen can’t be masculine. Nope. They just weren’t born with it.
So much fail. Nobody is ‘born masculine’, you bizarre individual. Masculinity and femininity are purely social constructs. You may be conflating ideas of ‘biological sex’ with ideas of gender but after your spiel of nonsense posts I have no idea.
And no, I am not creating an ‘ad hom’ by calling you a bizarre individual, just in case you were going to pull that one again.
Seems a lot of men identify with their gender role so much that they don’t understand the difference between masculinity (gender role) and being male (biological sex).
Feminist have already fought to seperate the concept of femininity – which is a lot about being decorative and submissive and doesn’t come naturally to little girls – and simply being female.
Toxic masculinity is being taught things that you should always be in power, that women are of less worth than you, that you are entitled to use violence. It’s a harmful gender role.
People are not ‘born’ with personalities either! What the hell! I can’t look at that post anymore, sweet Bootsy in a bucket.
Of course, men are very attached to their masculinity because it benefits them. Women might have an easier time shaking off harmful femininity as it’s more obviously restricting.
Can we create some sort of filter where trolls have to make their “point” in 500 words or less?
Actually let’s make it 100 words, 500 is too generous.
I think numbered lists should automatically be filtered and tossed.