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.
Given that adjectives are beyond our new friend, you’re not wrong, &cassandrakitty.
@cassandrakitty
If you say so. Give me your hardest math problem. I’ll give you one just like it, and we can measure away.
Our candles are going to smell of racism and linguistic fail, aren’t they?
Yes, that is what I’m saying. And that’s what you’re saying, too, although you may not realize it. Follow me; t1oracle couldn’t.
If all people behaved in the same manner, and that manner aligned with the stereotypical “feminine” archetype, would that be terrible? Would it be awful if men wore dresses and heels, and had to work out with their wives who gets to stay home to take care of the children, because men want to do that just as much as women do? If men were expected to provide elder care to aged parents and grandparents? If the word “family man” didn’t exist, because all men are just expected as a matter of course to have and nurture families?
If you think that would be a non-optimal outcome, then you need to explain why, in a way that does not devalue femininity. Saying, “Well, men and women are just different,” doesn’t cut it, because everything listed above is a social behavior, not a biological one. Men are perfectly capable of providing elder care. They just don’t do it, because it’s onerous and heartbreaking and it can be foisted off onto women. If femininity is awesome and amazing, why don’t you think it would be awesome and amazing for men to be feminine?
If you think this is a non-optimal outcome, you’re saying that “femininity” is not useful for men to adopt. It may well be useful for men if women adopt it, but there’s no utility in that for women. It’s going to be hard for you to argue that masculinity is useful if femininity isn’t, because masculinity is almost entirely defined as “this is the way women are not.”
If you agree that this outcome would actually be fine, then you’re again agreeing that gender roles are not useful.
What if you had to build a society, from scratch, and determine all of the racial, gender, social and economic roles from nothing, and you knew nothing about yourself. You have no idea if you are black or white or something else, male or female, rich or poor or middle-class. You could be anything. What rules would you set into place, knowing that there was an equal probability that you might land into any of them?
Would you just copy over our current society, and risk that you might wind up a poor black trans-woman?
t1oracle sure posts a lot but never answered my questions.
So what is everyone’s favourite scented candle?
I heard that Yankee’s recent scent “toxic masculinity” was a bit of a flop.
MY MATH DICK IS BIGGER
No toxic masculinity here, nope, none at all.
@weirwoodtreehugger
“And you’re still conflating racism with misandry.”
Welcome to the false dilemma fallacy.
I read the Wikipedia page about fallacies, I did. Didn’t understand it, but still, I read it!
“Exactly what part of basic human decency is challenging Exactly what part of basic human decency is challenging to you? Is it the part where you wrestle with your hatred of masculinity?to you? Is it the part where you wrestle with your hatred of masculinity?”
t1or
The challenge lies in you ignoring what’s said to play victim over the word “troll” and then refusing to acknowledge points made, and then accuse people of doing things they are not doing.
I don’t find basic human decency challenging, and none of my comments have lacked any basic human dececy. Since you don’t know what lack of basic human decency means, I suggest scroll up and read the tweets on this post.
I don’t have a hatred of masculinity, and I don’t think anyone else here does either.
PS, but by all means, if you can quote something I’ve said that implies hatred of masculinity, then please go get it, instead of vaguely referencing nothing.
@cassandrakitty
“MY MATH DICK IS BIGGER
No toxic masculinity here, nope, none at all.”
Evasion, insult. Are you sure you don’t want some adderall?
@jo
I have being bombarded. Regardless, people can wear whatever scent they want. They should be free to be as masculine, feminine, or whatever have you as they want without being ostracized for it. Does that answer your question?
Is trollacle a Pell sock? Remember our last visit from Pell when he said we were racist against French people for calling him Lacrap when he was using the name Lacroix? The claim that you can be racist against Irish people is similar.
What, you can’t even come up with a new insult? I guess creativity must be unmanly.
@t1oracle,
No, you do not get to snark about my reply. You are the the one who recommended, in the middle of a discussion, that a commenter here take adderall. YOU attempted to be deliberately offensive by implying that she had behavioural symptoms requiring medical intervention. That is deeply inappropriate.
If you’re going to avoid answering for that, fine. But I cannot believe you didn’t answer the seahorse question again. That is unforgivable. ‘Seahorses have different gender roles’ is not an answer to ‘How do seahorses have ascribed gender roles’.
Definitely smells a bit sock-ish.
@indifferentsky
You have been very mean to me and you are well aware of that. I don’t need to quote you.
Aww, t1oracle didn’t follow through with his promise to use blockquotes. I has a sad now. 🙁
@t1oracle:
Masculinity is not a sexuality.
Got some bad news for you, dear, but all children face identity crises and trouble fitting in with others. This is exacerbated by toxic masculinity, by the way, so congrats on the weird irony circle.
Where’d you get that idea?
*blink*
You don’t understand what social construct means either, do you? Masculinity itself is a social construct; toxic masculinity is a label for the harmful effects that an enforced narrow conception of masculinity has.
That’s trivial. The real question is, WHICH traits and WHY. Inherent traits should manifest uniformly across space/time, and correlate neatly with biological markers. The stuff we normally associate with masculinity and femininity… don’t.
I’m going to be out of signal for a while. Keep the popcorn warm for me.
Wait, wait. WHAT?
But earlier you said:
>->
Are you… learning? *hopeful*
@jo
I have a forest scented candle in my house right now, one that I purchased with my very own money. My wife enjoys it too. Are you saying I’m not a man!? How dare you, ma’am or sir! Ha. I really do have one, though.
@cassandrakitty
Am I the new friend? Oh I hope so! I do know the difference between gender and sex. Not sure where in my comments you might have gotten that I don’t. I explicitly state that traditional masculine/feminine roles should probably be redefined or scrapped altogether in terms of gender. But, I also state that some frameworks addressing the experience of living in either a male of female body are needed. So there you have it: the former referring to gender, the latter to sex.
If I am not the “new friend” you refer to, well, then I am sad, but at least you don’t think I’m confused on this point.
@ JV
I don’t make friends with people who bore me, sorry.
I don’t really go in for candles much but my husband brought home a bunch of pink “sweet pea” scented ones that are nice, and a “bacon” one that I’m… less enthusiastic about. I hate the ones that smell like food, though.
The only food-related candles I like are vanilla.
This is uncontroversial. The key is defining WHICH elements are truly unique to either gender, and that’s where you’re being vague.