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.
By the way, it seemed to me that the major issue with t1oracle is that he equated “maleness” with “masculinity” and seemed to seriously believe that gender roles were biological and not cultural constructs. If you believe that “masculinity” is determined by biological sex, then I suppose “toxic masculinity” is an insult — you can’t be condemned for what you have no control over. Now I myself seem to have a rather extreme position in this group — I tend to believe that most if not all of what is traditionally considered masculinity is toxic and destructive. I would say the same about what is traditionally called femininity.
I hope this doesn’t wind up too big.
http://imgur.com/ldnu78A
@tinyorc
Same here. Mikey’s definitely going to be Troll of the Year at this rate.
@katz, love that dunny wall haiku, and your new gravatar. 🙂
@cassandra
By being EATEN bwahahahahaha!
@trollacle:
I’m a mod here too, and am reading your comments, and there’s nothing civil, let alone intelligent or worth reading, in any of them. You’re just a bog-standard troll with more than the usual allotment of stupidity. You don’t get to call the shots and you’re wasting your time trying to call regulars here trolls. Keep up with the personal attacks and you’ll get yourself banned.
Sometimes when I’m eating Cheetos and drinking wine from a box I just read comments from posters like JV and laugh a lot until I pass out.
Thanks, Grumpy ^_^
I’m not with you on the traits themselves being destructive, I think it just gets destructive when people try to pretend that everyone doesn’t have all of them, to some degree.
Okay, I’ve seen this typo multiple times in this thread and my inner proof-reader needs to make a PSA:
It’s rein in, not reign in. It’s about riding, not monarchs.
Geez, I dunno, you kids always wanting to adopt trolls. You know they just yowl all night if they’re kept in a cage, they won’t stay under the bridge, they just break into the house and shit all over the carpet. Then they whine when you don’t pet them and feed them all day long. No, no, we’re not adopting any more, sorry, just no.
Plus there aren’t enough vaccines in the world to deal with all the cooties they’re carrying.
What if we promise to feed them to John the vampire if they won’t behave? I feel that this would aid in the training process.
Cassandra, I don’t know, trolls tend to feed off each other.
We could sell tickets. I mean, David has hosting fees to pay, they might as well make themselves useful.
Well, a staged fight between John the vampire and the trolls might be good, but what if he won and ended up stronger? That would be no fun at all.
Troll versus vampire sounds like a bad SyFi original movie. They should make it. It could be the next Sharknado.
If only the trolls of yore were still around we could one day aspire to Deep Blue Sea levels of awesomely crap monster movies.
Aw but kitteh I’m *certain* that Terminator troll (I need hom to sound a little bit cool mmmmmk/) is not cootie infested…stupidity builds immunity. And I’ll make him wear the ball gag every night!
Wow that’s a lot of typo’s even for this time of night.
Yeah but Shaun, *you* have to change his litter (or his nappies, given I don’t think he’s house-trained). I’m not doing it!
I’ll just sell it as fertilizer. That’ll pay for his feed and all his toys.
Although I might make more if I find the tanners…this will require some planning.
LOL!
I sadly read the bit that the terminator troll has a wife. But then I thought that maybe he uses the vacuum to inflate her, and then I felt less bad for her.
Question: who cleans the sex dolls of MGTOW? I have bad thoughts in my head and they won’t go. 🙁
I recall a video of some dude doing it himself with a brush on a stick that looked a bit like one you’d clean a toilet with? Which is an excellent metaphor for what they think of ladybits in general, really.
I think the MGTOW’ers are waiting for self cleaning sexbots who also do the laundry.
Can we keep his wife, too? She can have her own room and all the bonbons! And I will make her a blanket with love!
Actually I will make it with yarn, but I will inject love (not the liquid fucking gold corollary kind the emotional good kind just to be clear because no matter how I say it after the sex doll comment it’s all creepy and wrong now) into every twist.
Dammit, has t1oracle gone now? Did they not get enough attention after JV swanned in and waxed lyrical about his boner? Still never gave me a satisfactory answer to the seahorse question *scowls*. Oh well, the seahorse memes and links are awesome.
Both t1oracle and JV are infinitely better than Creepy John. Yeesh.
Straight out of your head into mine. Thanks. I remember a time when that thought was not there…
If I use my feminine wiles to steal his wife away from him I get extra misandry points for that, right?
cassandra, yes, and I will lose my title if you continue to misander this well. *steps up game*