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.
Read “Delusions of Gender” by Dr. Fine. In short, yes. In reality, probably not 100%, probably more like 99%.
Ooh, (un)subtle threats now. Such a charmer.
A very civil troll indeed.
@Misha:
My question is, distribution channels to where? Screen caps for whom? Who is seriously going to care if someone goes up to them with a “Waaah, someone was mean to me on the internet, and here is extensive documentation to prove it!”
I guess it could be an Onion article. “Breaking news: Wanker Treated Rudely in Comment Section”
(waiting for t1oracle to point to my use of “wanker” as proof that I hate masculinity, because masturbation is masculine)
4chan maybe? “Look, I got these feminists to bat me around like a toy for 600 comments!”
“Feminists laugh at man who doesn’t know what gender roles are. More news at 11.”
What has anyone said hear that would be damning if brozo here shared screencaps of it with the wider world?
@vaiyt
Male humans do the same thing. Next argument.
Policy of Madness
It seems I still have much to teach you: http://www.businessinsider.com/could-virginal-birth-be-possible-in-the-future-2013-11
Policy of Madness
We could always refer to the statistics that you like to bring up. It’s not about the truck being masculine, female humans develop language understanding at an earlier age. Male humans develop and interest in inanimate objects at an earlier age. That leads to boys with trucks and girls with dolls. The only social conditioning necessary is that they understand the doll was made to represent a living thing, and the truck was made to represent an inanimate thing. Of course, not every boy is masculine and not every girl is feminine. There is a whole spectrum there.
There is a difference between being the first line of defense and being the last resort. Regardless, human beings are not cats. We are much closer to primates. If a threatening animal enters the territory of primates, a male would be the first one to confront the threat. The female (the feminine female) will only act when she is the last resort.
TIL that the future is now, and now is also the past, and temporal indicators are just as baffling and mysterious as adjectives. Also that maybe humans are aphids or lizards.
And even closer to sea horses.
Learning to talk earlier naturally leads to having dolls. I mean, obviously.
@kirbywarp
It’s also deliciously ironic that if trolly were to show the comment section from this thread (I’m going to assume this is what they mean by ‘screencaps for months’ although I’m pretty certain, unless a Tardis has been involved somehow, that this discussion with t1oracle has not in fact been going on for months, although it bloody feels like it) to the general public, the reaction they’re going to get isn’t the one they’re clearly hoping for.
I think I can summarize the probable reaction of the general public.
“Huh?”
@emilygoddess
I would hope that you do, and include the context in which they were originally written. Although I can certainly understand if you find the task daunting as there is an incredible amount of text. Regardless, I am trying and I hope that you see this.
You know, if I’d gotten my ass handed to me this badly in a debate, screencapping it and showing it to other people is the last thing I’d do.
Not to mention that there’s evidence that early socialization and confirmation bias is the actual cause of this, not immutable biological traits. But that’s a whole different rabbit hole and we still haven’t gotten troll to the point where words mean things.
Yet, stuffed animals are meant to represent a living thing and they’re coded gender neutral. Action figures are meant to represent a living thing and they’re coded male. Easy Bake ovens are representative of inanimate objects and they’re coded female.
You know who we’re even more closely related to?
Humans.
Which is why comparing us to animals is not really very useful.
Self-sacrificing? I thought anti-feminists were against the concept of the disposable male. This one must be some variation of tradcon.
(Today marks the end of the third week I’ve had no home internet. Just an hour ago it was finally diagnosed as a connection problem, not a computer problem, but nobody yet has any idea of what to do. I predict at least another month of fun visits to the library.)
WWTH and katz, I like your new gravatars. I haven’t read the troll’s many paragraphs so I’ll just say, shut up, Woody.
katz, did you change your pic recently? Hail the Furrinati.
@weirwoodtreehugger:
Not to mention Chuck, the talking truck, which to t1oracle must be some hideous amalgamation that would cause C’Thulu-level mind-meltiness in a young toddler’s mind.
Ninja’d!
@Misha
Because suggesting that someone may have a very common condition for which there should be no shame, is worse than being called stupid repeatedly?
At some point the behavior of an individual needs to be assessed at a deeper level. You may declare that as some uncrossable line, but in doing so you only suppress that understanding from the discussion.