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On Friday, Anita Sarkeesian called out "toxic masculinity" on Twitter. Here's what happened next.

Anita Sarkeesian's Twitter notifications (Artist's conception)
Anita Sarkeesian’s Twitter mentions (Artist’s conception)

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:

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:

Google Chrome 4Google Chrome 5

And the implicit threats:

Google Chrome 39

And the sexual harassment:

 

Google Chrome 3

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And those who merely expressed their hope that Sarkeesian would kill herself:

Firefox 12

Firefox 13

Google Chrome 13

Google Chrome 18 Google Chrome 19 Google Chrome 20

Or die a horrible death:

Firefox

Or simply die :

Google Chrome 42

Google Chrome 28

 

But not everyone wished violence on her. Some just told her that the threats and/or harassment she’s already getting is totally justified:

 

Google Chrome 17

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Google Chrome 29

(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.

Firefox 18 Firefox 19 Firefox 21 Firefox 22

Firefox 32 Firefox 23 Firefox 24

Firefox 9

Google Chrome 21 Google Chrome 22 Google Chrome 23 Google Chrome 24 Google Chrome 25 Google Chrome 26 Google Chrome 27

Google Chrome 47

Firefox 15

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:

Firefox 26

Google Chrome 6

 

Firefox 28

She was called a “bitch.”

Google Chrome 7 Google Chrome 8 Google Chrome 9 Google Chrome 10 Google Chrome 11

Google Chrome 44

She was called a “whore.”

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She was called a “terrorist.”

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And a Nazi:

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Firefox 39

One fellow said that he thought Sarkeesian’s tweets were actually worse than the shooting itself:

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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.

Firefox 31

To add insult to injury, a few reported Sarkeesian herself to Twitter for various imaginary infractions:

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Another asked why she wasn’t in jail for her, er, crimes:

Google Chrome 35

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.

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.

 

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pallygirl
pallygirl
10 years ago

Leave him a little love package of scented fucking candles to remember her by. 🙂

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

Not the good candles, though, the ones we got as gifts and thought they smelled funny.

Shaun DarthBatman Day
10 years ago

Great. Just great. Now the only way I can retain my title as President and Dictator Misandrist for Life is to bathe in the blood of slaughtered men. And when you slaughter too many even a quite large tub will overflow and my cleaning staff are union. Thanks cassandra.

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

Well, I have many years of misandering practice. With time your skills will improve, young padwan.

grumpyoldnurse
10 years ago

@ Puddleglum –

OMG, you mean Aslan is also an owl???? Heresy!

And now I cannot unsee the owl.

I know this is late, so sorry everyone – I can’t see Aslan! I can see the owl, now that you’ve mentioned it, but mostly I see a chipmunk eating a potato chip. My brain is broken, isn’t it?

titianblue
titianblue
10 years ago

Hi, Kittehs, *waves*.

Been pretty good, thanks. Just found all the misogyny was getting me down for a while so took to lurking occasionally ’til my sense of humour reasserted itself.

And yourself and Mr K?

PS. Am I the only one who somehow reads “Mr K” as “Mr King” rather than “Mr Kittehs”? 😉

kittehserf - MOD
10 years ago

It gets like that sometimes, doesn’t it? I haven’t been that active on the blog either, mostly because I’ve no investment in gaming and that’s very much the main news at the moment. Glad to see you back here, though, and hope you’re feeling refreshed.

Mr K and I are good! Nothing much to report along those lines, but all’s well.

Mr King reminds me of how George III and Queen Charlotte called each other Mr King and Mrs King. I like it. 🙂

Falconer
10 years ago

How many of those crappy “vilify masculinity” signs have I seen today?

http://media.tumblr.com/7f9e6607b705f4917303e2bc1d24955e/tumblr_inline_n7e8u519XD1rfrhvr.gif

Newt
Newt
10 years ago

@Falconer: MRA strawman illustrated by Horns of Nimon gif? I love you guys. Will catch up on 3 days of t1awful in due course.

strivingally
10 years ago

I can’t wait to see the gamebros lose thier shit over this. 😀

https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/527601124992638976

Policy of Madness
Policy of Madness
10 years ago

No way.

thebewilderness
thebewilderness
10 years ago

Hee Hee Ha Ha and as we used to say back in the day Hardy Har Har!

Puddleglum
10 years ago

@grumpyoldnurse, I tried really hard to see the squirrel, but the owl kept glaring at me, so I stopped.

@strivingally, ooooooh…..!!!!

grumpyoldnurse
10 years ago

@ Puddleglum – is OK. The owl probably ate it. Also, I suspect my brain might really be broken, as I really can’t see Aslan.

Robert
Robert
10 years ago

The shtik about masculinity reminded me – an old college friend visited me a while back. After meeting my husband and our two sons, she has since referred to my ‘overwhemingly masculine household’ with amusement. Apparently, heterosexuality is not a prerequisite to masculinity.

A while back, our older son (despite having not seen the movie) referenced the ‘This is Sparta!’ meme. I assured him that, by contemporary standards, he WAS in Sparta. He has since, after seeing the movie, commented on how it would have been nice if the Spartans could have been great warriors without being such buttheads.

Falconer
10 years ago

@Newt: That serial never gets old. It’s just so awesomely cheesy, Nimon be praised!

contrapangloss
10 years ago

So, still catching up on troll in thread, because work got busy and I just got back to it. Did he seriously issue a math challenge!

I LOVE MATH CHALLENGES!

After Calc 3, it suddenly gets really, really hard to decide which type of advanced mathematics is actually the most advanced mathematics, so his “Show me your problem and I’ll show you mine” is kind of silly at the outset. I know some people who are fabulous mathematicians and far smarter than I, but I can run circles around them in geometric applications.

Nevertheless, since he seemed to have the most problems with logic, we’ll start with a “simple” proofs exercise. Proofs are the foundation of pretty much all theoretical mathematics, and the proofs course is generally about midway through any undergraduate mathematics program.

Hey, let’s even be snarkier! Let’s specifically deal with equivalence relations. Bwahahaha.

Troll, if thou still be lurking… despite probably having been banhammered by now since I’m still 3 pages back in comments… your problem is thus:

Prove the following:

Suppose A is a set and F is a partition of A. Let R = UX ∈ F(X x X). Then R is an equivalence relation on A. (Specifically, R is the equivalence relation determined by F)

(crosses fingers and hopes that my meager html-ing skills don’t bork the “is an element” sign or the subscripts…)

contrapangloss
10 years ago

Well, bork the subscript. And the italics.

X ∈ F should be subscripty.

Fibinachi
10 years ago

I’m just going to write another poem and not think too hard about that one, because I understand the words, but not what it means.

grumpyoldnurse
10 years ago

@ Fibinachi

Silly little troll
Pooping on-line because troll
Can’t grok adjectives

contrapangloss
10 years ago

Hahahaha! Apparently we’re at the “All you need to know evolution is Wikipedia!” and the “Wiki-GOTCHA” phase.

Why did I waste all those hours in my senior year taking that class! It’s as simple as a wikipedia quote! REPRODUCTION REIGNS AND MUTATIONS ARE IRRELEVANT! NATURAL SELECTION IS ALL OF EVOLUTION! THERE CAN BE NO EVOLUTION WITHOUT NATURAL SELECTION! GENETIC DRIFT IS TOTALLY NOT A THING! OR ANYTHING ELSE! IT’S ALL NATURAL SELECTION AND REPRODUCTION, BABY!

…eh-hem. Sorry, lost myself in troll dearests flails.

This thread is so amusing. I’m so many pages behind though.

weirwoodtreehugger
10 years ago

I just watched Anita Sarkeesian on the Colbert Report. Oh how I delighted in the misandry! I look forward to the gamergater rage tears and wanks that will be forthcoming.

strivingally
10 years ago

How was it, WWTH? I live in Oz and we’re not likely to get it here for a few days at least.

M. the Social Justice Ranger
M. the Social Justice Ranger
10 years ago

@strivingally

No need to wait, it’s been uploaded already.

The #Gits are flipping the hell out out; equal parts denial, cries of “Sellout! Boycott!” and crises of faith. It’s glorious.

M. the Social Justice Ranger
M. the Social Justice Ranger
10 years ago

*Sans one of the outs. Not sure how that happened. =P