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.
JV:
PLEASE GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF ONE OF THESE SUPER NECESSARY SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS I AM DYING TO KNOW AND THERE IS NOT MUCH WINE LEFT
Ok, I’m going to break all the FHC rules and point out that I personally know men (plural) who have been raped by women.
JV, how do you explain that based entirely on your assfax of “high sex drive causes rape” and “men are the ones with high sex drive”.
@katz:
Oooh ooh ooh, I know! LAWS! And they have the added benefit of not (necessarily) being gender biased!
JV, and his behavior right here, the attitude that he is demonstrating, is the reason why women don’t hit on every random man they find attractive. Irony!
@JV:
It is when your only evidence for your claim is personal experience. And those men are contradicting the causal mechanism you are suggesting rather than a simple difference in statistics.
OTOH, reading creepy sexist bullshit like this does tend to lower my libido temporarily, so maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
JV: “Men have totally extreme sexual urges! Which need to be CONTROLLED! By masculinity! Which is in no way toxic but good! And why historically gender roles exist, so men don’t rape! Except the very roles assured men could legally rape their wives, but that’s different! Lalalalalala!”
Toxic masculinity in action.
And more misandry than I’ve seen at all feminist meetings I have ever been at combined. The way you talk about men… You could take your sentences elsewhere and talk about chicken like that. Or species of insects.
You know how anti-feminists are all like “Feminists think men are rapists and that natural masculinity needs to be carefully controlled and regulated, so misandry!”
Maybe they thought JV was a feminist.
Wait, you mean they thought he was feminine? Because those are so similar, it takes a real expert to parse the difference.
The irony is that, historically, in Europe, women were believed to be the ones with the higher sex drive. There was a lot of handwringing by men about how to control women’s raging libidos and prevent women from indulging in continuous sexy-times.
Along with how to control everything else to do with women, obviously.
@cassandrakitty:
I’ll admit, I basically just tossed a coin between the two. Real esoteric language, those two words.
Actually, absolutely no sarcasm whatsoever, the MRM would totally actually conflate the two.
In addition to taking facts about human nature out of their ass, JV also lacks historical perspective. Color me surprised.
Then Freud stepped in and tried to control women by comparing them to castrated men –and many Europeans still thought he was a tool. Funny enough, he had more popularity in America. Gosh, isn’t that weird?
@Cassandrakitty: Feminist and feminine sound so similar, the first letters are the same! How can you expect MRAs to understand the difference?
They have enough difficulty understanding how adjectives work, or grasping that we can look at previous pages and see what they wrote there.
The funny thing being that castration doesn’t necessarily remove sex drive, if the lives of the castrato singers are anything to go by.
Hey tinyorc! Cheers from here in delicious tea. Hope you’re well and good :]
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Ahem.
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Is that your experience as a man?
‘Cause I’ve got a measure of mind that’s part of my plan
you need to understand, see
it ain’t about toxic masculinity!
What Anita posted, post the wails for the dead
is an affront to my psychology
you bet that if she wanted better relations
instead of vague protestation
she’d offer true demonstration
of her claims sociology
’cause men wanting women is just just flirtation
Every moment of every day across every nation
it’s barest, base anthropology
I offer no apology for my dick’s delight in female physiology!
Anyone’s frustration with lack of satiation
and carnage wrought from a lack of fornication
has no bearing on the topic of masculinity
their expressions of dampened affinity and empathy
is not a male pathology
that’s feminist hatred expressed in purest misandric ideology
your assertions is but mythology
in the face of my renditions of evolutionary biology
Men display aggression! They’re sometimes in formation!
For a given temptation, they’ll often display inflation
and it’s their highest aspiration ( in my estimation)
to have consensual deviation with a member of the female persuasion
That’s what makes manly men, I ken, their noble concentration
on arts of exploration, domination and penetration!
And you might think it a topic of conversation
that these concepts are not a steelclad regulation
remain but vague articulation of my personal opinionurbastion
It’s a construct of artificial speculation?
It’s a claim of biased proclamation?
It’s not borne out by real world observation?
Not all men are slavering manbeasts ready fuck at slightest insinuation?
BUT THAT’S MEN! That’s MASCULINITY!
Haven’t you read a word I’ve got to see?
When you make claims of toxicity
it angers me
for I don’t understand your claims, what are they to be
do you somehow think that mere social iconography
is somehow to fault for our obsession with pornographic anthropophagy?!
It’s just a framework of masculine ecology
their minds in set frames of neurology
that’s why they make our technology
while women just work in deparments of female sociology
If I don’t have a way to make claims of bold motivation
How do I do any reality navigation!?
Without the guiding light of my own male/female segregation
I have no way to other those damn objects of my fascination
I can’t claim they’re different if I’m not a superior phenotypic combination
and how do I then perform feminine degradation!?
IF I had to accept the claims of cooperation
I’d not be a swag example of masculine operation
You can’t fool me, feminists, with words like
“Socially stratified and organized situation”
I’m a man, dammit, I live for propagation
and procreation
it’s my evolutionary right by way of pre-fixed confirmation
( Meanwhile, all the rest of us are laughing at the protestation
and quite aware of the fixation
on endless twisting word ejaculation
I’d offer more concentre faslfication
But both examples of tonights trolls show typical commeration
of binary states – a fabrication
their pretzel logic a haphazard fortification
against considering women more than mere objects of glorification )
http://media3.giphy.com/media/jShr8wkP38XTO/giphy.gif
That is beautiful. *Standing ovation*
Agreement fallacy, or some shit like that!
I want the ridiculous troll back, he was more fun than creepy boner update dude.
Ugh, I need to go make food and have tea and a shower and stuff.
Trolls made the work day go faster, so thanks trolls!
Me too cassandra!
I was going to clean his cage every day, even! Someone make him come back forever!
Cassandra, is “ridiculous troll” the same as “Just a guy asking questions” troll? “Creepy boner update dude” reminds me of this freshman boy back in college that I once humiliated during a sociology class.
I was even considering putting a little bridge in so he could hide under it.
@Fibinachi:
Ah poop, my embed did not work. Here is happy manul!