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.
t1oracle:
You don’t understand adjectives, do you? The phrase “toxic waste” does not imply that all waste is toxic; likewise for toxic masculinity.
@titianblue
Mocking is vitriol.
@kirbywarp
Actually it kind of does. Would you want to sleep in a bed full of waste?
Who will save us from the toxic duvet covers of which feminists so often speak?
Hear that, everyone? If you use recycled paper, you are wallowing in toxicity.
Also, skin flakes off constantly, so technically speaking everyone is sleeping in a bed full of waste, if you think about it.
Plays the world’s tiniest violin.
I wonder if t1oracle drinks or eats anything from a can. A lot of those cans contain some material recycled from post-consumer waste. We’ve just learned that all waste is toxic, because: adjectives.
I put fertilizer on my plants. It contains bone meal, blood meal, sometimes feather meal. TOXIC! I am dying a slow death because I eat the raspberries and lemons off those plants.
Don’t get me started on water! How much water do we all drink that has been through some animal’s metabolic cycle? WE ARE ALL POISONING OURSELVES EVERY TIME WE TAKE A SIP.
@Policy of Madness
Straw man. To imply something does not make it true. Furthermore, the word with the implied toxicity was “waste.”
Hey, did you know oxygen is a waste product of photosynthesis?
Ah, ninja’d.
@cassandrakitty:
Luckily I, as a pink wad of carnivorous bubblegum, am immune to criticisms of my masculinity! I am a machine that turns insults into superpowers!
@titianblue
That’s more mocking and vitriol. You’re just proving my point that you hate masculinity.
Protip: being wilfully obtuse is boring, and being boring is the fast track to being banned.
Aaaaaaand here we go again. He really doesn’t understand that ‘masculinity’ and ‘toxic masculinity’ are two different concepts, does he? Like, he really has no idea what is going on right now.
Read some of those google scholar articles, kay? Try looking up ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘hegemonic masculinity’. You’ll learn stuff.
@Policy of Madness
I see the word “imply” is not in your vocabulary.
When yeast metabolize sugar, alcohol and carbon dioxide are excreted as waste. Hope t1oracle consumes neither bread nor beer. That shit’ll kill you.
But kirbywarp, you cannot be masculine – your avatar is pink and everybody knows that pink is feminine. And masculinity means male heterosexual. And masculinity is not feminity. t1oracle says so. Witrh his impeccable manly logic. which he was born with, Erm…
I’m not going to explain adjectives to you again.
I dunno, does he have the potential to melt down in an amusing way?
(Watch him argue that I’m suggesting literally melting him down in some sort of feminist torture furnace, or possibly a cauldron.)
Oh, I get it now. You think that stupidity is a key masculine trait. So when I’m mocking your stupidity, you think I’m actually mocking your masculinity.
And I’m the one supposed to be the man hater.
Lots of men, conforming to society’s idea of the masculine ideal or rebelling against it, are clever, dearie. Your stupidity isn’t masculine or feminine. It’s all your own.
@cassandrakitty
Wishing suffering upon me is also vitriol. Maybe you should end your hatred of the masculine identity.
Ooh, ooh, I just watched a cracking video where a Porcupine ate a pumpkin for the first time. How do porcupines perform to ascribed gender roles, oh wise one? Or seahorses? The female seahorse impregnates the male, after all, and he’s left to give birth to and raise the young. How does that fit in with your ‘gender roles are a part of nature’ argument? Or sea slugs?
Boring troll is boring. Teddy Bear the porcupine is AMAZING!
Climb on in! The water’s nice!
I have to admit that I didn’t expect him to actually do it.
Aw, come on, I made the bait so obvious, even the most skill-free troll should have been able to step around it.
1/10, would not invite back to troll again.