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.
BTW, tinyorc, did I mention that I love you and would totes invite you out for drinks if you lived closer.
But not, you know, in a sexual way, because women don’t want to sex all of the people all of the time, because feminism/femininity/same difference, right?
No, no, nope. This is incredibly wrong and, whaddya know, a great example of toxic masculinity. Congrats on bringing us back around to an original topic.
@fromafar2013
Totally agree. It’s why I qualified it with “in general.” I believe it has to be accounted for. I don’t agree that one’s sex drive is the result of the patriarchy. One’s sex life may be heavily influenced by it, but not one’s sex drive.
WRONG
JV:
You do realise that we can… read comments you posted further up in this thread right. Because above statement does not gel with:
“Shit, this means my boyfriend is broken. Where do I trade him in?”
Contact FHC and they will inject him with nanobots carrying little blue nanopills. If *that* fails, then we will set you up with the penis exchange program.
Shhh, doodbro is explaining sex drives to the ladies, who clearly have no experience with actual men or actual sex drives.
I’m sure he’ll have a winning explanation for you too.
Excuse me, fromafar, the original topic was cats. I decided that once Oracle Man left. Why are you trolling the troll??
@fromafar2013
Is that your experience as a man? If so, then like I said earlier, we’re all different. It’s only “toxic masculinity” if a man acts like an asshole or abuses people.
Sad face. Mine too. Yesterday he said no because he wasn’t feeling well! How dare he! Men always want sex, right?
“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.”
False dilemma fallacy.
“Do you have any idea how many black women and girls get killed, too, for much the same reasons?”
I addressed this. You should try reading.
“Go fall in a Jacuzzi full of Legos, you turd.”
How are you not getting official moderation notices?
Oh yes, because you hate masculinity. Continue your misandry.
cassandrakitty:
Aw, that’s lovely of you! I would enthusiastically accept that invitation!
Anyone remember that case where the pretty boy from Tokio Hotel took too much Viagra and ended up in the ER freaking out about his sudden case of unwanted priapism? I wonder if JV was sitting there going “Why would you go to the ER? Erections that last 30 hours are perfectly normal! That’s every man’s dream!”
@Puddleglum:
I doubt it. Looks like the explanation would be “your personal experience is a deviation of the norm, whereas my grandfather’s sister’s brother’s second niece’s twice removed husband’s male friend’s experience is the definition of the norm. The world is a rainbow of different sexual drives, it’s just nearly all one color because reasons.”
Oh! I’m sorry. Back to cats then! Here, is this okay?
http://birthdaysongswithnames.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/cats-celebrate-birtday-party.jpg
Puddleglum:
Slightly OT, but whenever a dude takes it upon himself to mansplain my sex drive to me, all I think is “this dude is almost certainly rubbish in bed.”
Because anyone who has actually seen a real-life woman enjoying herself during sex doesn’t need to cling so desperately to the myth that women just want it less.
I like oracle better than JV. “I don’t understand adjectives” is way more amusing than “everyone’s experience is identical, except they’re all different.”
Kitty birthday party!
I’ve been in more than one relationship with a dude in which arguments about sexual frequency arose repeatedly and I’m here to tell you: that’s just totally, totally freakin’ wrong.
It might be true that men-in-general have a higher sex drive than women-in-general if you somehow lumped everyone’s sex drives into sex-segregated boxes, figured out how to strip out the the pesky social variables and then charted them on a graph… even then I have doubts!
On an individual level, though, it’s just flat WRONG. Guys may not tell you that their female partners are unhappy with the amount of sex going on– I think it’s a “masculinity” thing never to admit this in public! but it is a NOT some rare situation.
“Oh yes, because you hate masculinity. Continue your misandry.”
Says the actual misandrist.
I do have an actual question, though. Is your name derived from the Terminator Franchise? Actually curious, not mocking, not sarcastic.
JV:
No dude. What you said is:
Words. They mean things.
@tinyorc
You’re right on that one, I should have included “generally” or some such qualifier. Sorry, didn’t realize I had written it that way.
I’m not trying to mansplain anything, just stating my opinion. Many of the things said in this thread regarding men don’t ring true to me, but probably ring true to other men. At any rate, it’s been fun, truly. I have learned a couple things. And it’s nice to know the internet is still as cantankerous as ever.
@t1oracle
http://grza.net/gis/Animals/Cats%20Kittens/Cat%20Above%20Toilet.jpg
When a man claims that men just naturally want it more than women I always assume that it’s because a. he’s ugly, b. he has such a repellant personality that even women who think he’s hot end up running away, or c. he’s so bad in bed that it kills even the most energetic libido after a while.
Too honest?
Is JV a dude or not? Cause they did seem to have to refer to an outside party to describe male sexuality, and used the word “apparently” in its description, yet they’re invoking the “are you a man” defense.