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 missed most of his classes, too busy hanging out in the wardrobe smoking weed.
@fromafar2013
“The ‘primary’ factor is the rate at which mutations arise”
Wrong, reproduction is the primary factor in evolution. Only the mutations that occur before an organism reproduces will have no impact on the evolution of it’s species. Mutations that occur after a species is no longer capable of reproducing will not affect the next generation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection
vaiyt: In fact, looking at that word count graph, men appear to talk more than women, albeit not statistically significantly so.
Ahahahahaha!*gasp, wheeze, “Cat posts are trolling…!hahahaha. Haha. Haaaaa. This is brilliant.
t1oracle: HOW DARE YOU BRING UP A TOPIC OF DISCUSSION THAT IS NOT OF MY CHOOSING! RESPECT MA AUTHORITAY!!
Now t1oracle, let’s be serious, is this really about ethics in game journalism?
Masculinity is not toxic.
http://i.imgur.com/5ZSxGdO.png
A typhoon in a soda bottle raged
Against the plastic walls that had contained
It’s fury. Spinning round until it drained
Into the darkest depths within its cage.
And soon, much like the turning of a page,
The prison tilted, flipping end to end.
A violent shake provoked the waves to rend
And gnash again; another war to wage.
This endless cycle o’er and o’er repeats
In pointless struggle collapsed on itself.
No motion and no crashing wave unseats
The soda bottle sat upon the shelf.
A slug upon backwards-faced treadmill
Will advance more than discussion will.
Did you guys take Introduction to Calormene studies? Really blew open the whole issue of xenophobia in Narnian-Calormene relations.
t1oracle, your ability to quote wikipedia is noted.
Bets on how many more times he’s going to use that shitty graphic during the course of this thread?
The reason I don’t respect you is not that you’re male. It’s that you think your fragile feelings are more important than people getting shot. You believe that your desperate need not to have your male ego challenged in the smallest possible way trumps other peoples’ right to live, to live unmaimed, unabused and unoppressed. Guess what, arsehole? That makes you selfish, pathetic and indecent. It does not engender respect.
@ t1oracle
Hence the phrase TOXIC masculinity. If we meant all masculinity was toxic, we wouldn’t need to state the qualifier.
Holy shit. My sonnet could not have been more perfectly placed in the thread of conversation. t1oracle, thank you, from the depths of my heart, for posting your image for the third time.
And also, “Wrong, reproduction is the primary factor in evolution.” Called it.
I totes respect Aslan, or I would if he wasn’t an allegory for Jesus. Does that count, or is his masculinity invalid on account of being a kitty?
AGH OH MY GOD THAT GRAPHIC IS UGLIER THAN EVER.
Also, did our troll just quote Wikipedia at one of our actual resident scientists?
(dangit, put a “this” before “discussion” in the last line)
Survival. And not even survival of individuals, mind you, but survival of genes. If a gene makes you sterile but more useful in helping your immediate family reproduce, then it can be a success.
That said, natural processes are a bad model for morality anyway.
Some masculinity is toxic. The masculinity that is toxic is, surprisingly, known as “toxic masculinity”. To differentiate it from the masculinity that is not toxic.
And we’ve come full circle.
Mornington Crescent! Do I win?
(and a “a” before “backwards” in the second to last line… why words, why do you disappear?)
I believe I bought a hotel there earlier. It’s OK though, you can make the troll pay instead of you, because of gender roles.
In my first lecture with Aslan, everyone was all “Are you shitting me? A fucking patriarch?” and he was like “Ladies, clunky Christian symbolism is going to be the least of your worries when you’re out there in the real world infiltrating male spaces and being professional victims. The University of Feminism believes in challenging its students.”
Damn, ninja’d.
Did we get round to measuring the lengths of our metaphorical mathematical dicks yet?
Oh fuck OFF, you idiotic moron. They were shot and killed for being BLACK. And blackness is equated, at least in the very racist US, with CRIMINALITY. Not with GENDER. Do you have any idea how many black women and girls get killed, too, for much the same reasons? Clearly you don’t. You’re so married to masculism that you literally can’t see anything but cocks.
Go fall in a Jacuzzi full of Legos, you turd.
I apologize for the size if it embeds & is too large.
http://pussingtonpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/BreadedCat.jpg
“Masculinity is not toxic.”
Dude did you know that thjere is a substantial difference between “masculinity” and “toxic masculinity”? It’s like the difference between “water” and “radioactive sludge”. I suggest you actually *read up on what toxic masculinity is* and then work to address the problem and stop being a fucking misandrist.
I fucking hate misandrists.
IS THAT YOU ASLAN