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.
I’d say the same for bullet points if the trolls ever figured out how to use them.
“You heard it right here folks – gay, bisexual, asexual and transmen can’t be masculine. Nope. They just weren’t born with it.”
I never said they can’t be masculine. You must think sexuality is binary.
“Nobody is ‘born masculine’, you bizarre individual”
I understand that you hate masculinity, but must you really be so disrespectful?
“People are not ‘born’ with personalities either!”
A personality is a combination of genetics, epigenetics, and social conditioning. Perhaps you should do more research.
“Of course, men are very attached to their masculinity because it benefits them. ”
Masculinity is either part of you or it isn’t. There is no benefit. That’s like saying gay people are attached to homosexuality because it benefits them. That makes no sense at all.
Isn’t ironic that in a blog post about how disrespectful Anita’s detractors are, we see hundreds of posts of vitriol from Anita’s supporters? It’s like both sides deserve each other, you all have horrible attitudes and no manners to speak of.
Isn’t it ironic how being disrespectful and harassment aren’t the same things? Oh, wait, no, words mean things.
(At least the troll vomit was more succinct this time though, so points for that.)
@ t1oracle
Intersectionality fail. Racism is a thing, you know. It’s the fear of black people, black men in particular but black women also, that causes violence like that. Notice how that sort of violence is often committed by white men. What is the identity of the vast majority of the people doing the killing? White, male, often in positions of power. And also keep in mind that white men are not subject to the same levels of violence. Toxic masculinity values control over almost all things and is rooted in the idea that violence is justified in order to keep that control, whether the victims are women or other ‘inferior’ men. So actually, racism and toxic masculinity in white men caused the deaths of those men.
Social conditioning. Social conditioning… how can someone be born with something that takes social conditioning in order to develop???? Also epigenetics is just environmental factors that change the way genes are expressed without underlying changes in DNA structure, and also occur throughout life, not just prior to birth. Perhaps you should do more research.
I think he was hoping that nobody would know what epigenetics means, but that it would sound impressive.
Wow t1 oracle, that is some incredible equivocating there. I don’t even need the word false. This calls for invetion of a new word.
Epigenetics is actually really cool. A really concrete example of it is seal point cats. The genes for coat color express differently at different temperatures, so the cooler extremities of a seal point cat are darker than the rest of their fur. That’s also why seal point kittens tend to be much lighter than they will be as adults.
SCIENCE! HAIL BOOTSY!
http://lovemeow.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/e4ZQTUq-1.jpg
Praise be.
t1oracle, wait… there is no benefit to masculinity? Since when?
And it’s *still* ironic, no matter how you try to twist it that trolls are on this particular post, here to troll about how we might be upset about this particular post… and then complaining about being disrespected. And don’t tell me that you “don’t condone” or “outright condemn” these tweets. if that were the case you’d be arguing on some other post here. You wanted to deflect from this one.
“(At least the troll vomit was more succinct this time though, so points for that.)”
Yet another insult. Further proof that you are only interested in expressing your hatred of masculinity. You have no interest in understanding what I am actually saying.
“black men in particular”
Why black men in particular? Might it have something to do with toxic views about masculinity?
“Notice how that sort of violence is often committed by white men”
The crime is committed by the individual, not by the entire group. That same line of thinking is used to vilify black men to this very day. It is also being used currently to vilify muslims as well.
“Toxic masculinity values control over almost all things”
This is hate speech with no basis in reality. Masculinity is not about control. There are individuals who want control. There are even pathologies that explain this behavior, such as narcissism and megalomania. Neither of these things are masculinity. If you have ever met my eldest sister or my mother, you would know that women are fully capable of being controlling.
Just look at the definition: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/masculinity
1. pertaining to or characteristic of a man or men:
masculine attire.
2. having qualities traditionally ascribed to men, as strength and boldness.
3. Grammar. noting or pertaining to the gender of Latin, Greek, German, French, Spanish, Hebrew, etc., which has among its members most nouns referring to males, as well as other nouns, as Spanish dedo, “finger,” German Bleistift, “pencil.”.
4. (of a woman) mannish.
noun, Grammar
5. the masculine gender.
6. a noun or other element in or marking that gender.
Notice that absence of any mention of control. You are projecting your fears.
“Also epigenetics is just environmental factors that change the way genes are expressed without underlying changes in DNA structure, and also occur throughout life, not just prior to birth.”
I know what epigenetics is. Epigenetics do change after birth, however they are not choices. The latest scientific research has indicated that sexuality and even some forms of mental illness are most likely the result of epigenetics. There’s still much research to be done in this field.
@indifferentsky
Troll this, troll that. You don’t have an actual argument. All you have is hate.
Only if one has enough masculinity can one vomit giant walls of text in order to bore the crap out of people! So it is written.
There’s another numbered list.
Since our most boring troll of the repeated numbered lists decided so. Even though there is no benefit to masculinity (according to the all-knowing t1oracle, who still doesn’t grasp basic parts of speech) this masculinity must be defended!
I know, I know, if there is no benefit to something, why not just let it drift away? Why waste all this time defending it and clinging to it, if it doesn’t do any good to anyone? We just cannot comprehend the sublime logic wielded by people who don’t understand what a hypothetical is or how to use one.
Let’s set an auto-answer for t1.
They seem to be unable to understand the concept that we are not dissing everything masculine.
ok t1, take out the word troll then.
I kind of like the challenge of sanitzing comments so that you have nothing to grab on to, to deflect.
@Policy of Madness
What’s the benefit of femininity?
There is none. Gender roles are silly.
“ok t1, take out the word troll then.
I kind of like the challenge of sanitzing comments so that you have nothing to grab on to, to deflect.”
Exactly what part of basic human decency is challenging to you? Is it the part where you wrestle with your hatred of masculinity?
@cassandrakitty
“There is none. Gender roles are silly.”
Says the person with the feminine user name and profile picture?
No, it’s not – you forgot to ask the golden question: why are the poor overwhelmingly Irish?
It has to do with toxic masculinity (read TOXIC masculinity, not masculinity alone or in general you willfully obtuse shite) in white men making violence to keep control over black men (where the racism part comes in) justified and socially condoned.
Here you make clear that you have no idea how things like systemic racism exist, how in group behavior is encouraged by creating an ‘other’ and how one person’s act of violence can be encouraged by society as a whole. This conversation is starting to look like it’s over your head.
Really? Do you know what hate speech is? Do you understand the concepts we are talking about? You’re showing your ignorance here. You need to research “toxic masculinity” and how it differs from “masculinity” and why it is a problem. And why it is related to VALUES and SOCIALIZATION and not genetics, or male-ness or inevitable natural outcomes.
Here’s a good book to get you started (pdf version of Gender Knot if anyone wants it): http://www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters_1400/1780_ch1.pdf
So, you do realize that this means that personalities change after birth, right? Plus you’re ignoring the SOCIAL CONDITIONING part, which is huge. And not just because I put it in all caps.
Who knew that cartoon cats had a gender?
Trolls are also silly.
Eschewing gender roles means that we don’t need to shove men and women into narrow boxes. It does NOT mean men/women are forced to move away from masculine/feminine behaviors, only that they have the freedom to be themselves.
Just out of interest, how would I make my kitty a manly kitty? Should I give it a mustache and some suitably masculine phrases in a thought bubble over its head?