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.
@ Lids
While psychopathy is technically a personality disorder, people usually aren’t thinking of autism or schizophrenia when describing killers as ‘insane’. They’re thinking of Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter. All spree killers are sociopaths, which most modern psychologists believe are beyond curing.
While a positive upbringing (and some medications) can pacify their more violent impulses, it’s impossible to guarantee. History has proven time and again that they’re remarkably talented at at hiding their true face, and immaculately petty. There’s really no way of knowing what will push them over the edge, if they ever reach it all. In most cases, it all comes down to recognizing them early.
fxc,
Trolls will be here whether we acknowledge them or not. People have been saying “don’t feed the trolls” for decades and the problem hasn’t gone away. If anything it’s gotten worse. Expecting women to sit down and shut up about the misogyny directed at us is victim blaming and misogynist. Do not tell people how to react at the hate directed towards them. That is so fucking offensive.
No, it’s not like that. Not at all. Twitter is giving the trolls a platform. The Internet is giving the trolls a platform. She’s just exposing them for what they are: sexist louts who pick on women, and pick on visible women all the more BECAUSE they are visible.
Personally, I find it disingenuous how all these Anita detractors are saying “she’s making this about herself, wah wah wah”. No. No, she isn’t. This is shit that any woman who says anything gets on the internet all the fucking time. The first time I ever ventured an independent opinion on the ‘net, 20-odd years ago (back when it was all done by either e-mail or BBSs), I got abuse heaped on my head by trolls, too. Some of them (at least purporting to be) female, ALL of them grossly sexist. And I wasn’t famous, and I wasn’t trying to “make anything about me”. All I had to do was be visibly female and have something to say, and boom! I was “fair game” for abuse.
Explain that to me, if you can. (I bet you can’t.)
OK, so let’s talk about mental illness. Considering the gender distribution of mass shooters, one of the following must be true:
– Far more men than women are mentally ill, or men are mentally ill in dramatically different ways from women.
– Women’s behaviors caused by their illnesses are different.
If the latter is true, we need to ask what influences mentally ill men to act out violently in wats women do not.
If the former is true, either there are mysterious biochemical causes that decades of research has not revealed, or, well, see the previous point.
So it makes more sense to discuss a tragedy when it’s NOT ON PEOPKE’s minds?
No. They’re choosing to behave this way.
Orrrrrrr maybe it’s because men and women are socialized differently, from the moment the new parents hear “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl”. Boys are allowed to play with toy guns while girls are directed to play along more housewifely, submissive lines. Gun ownership is normalized for men in a way that it is not for women. It’s even considered an outright “man card”:
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s–OR0YGfHg–/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/188nlw8plo7xdjpg.jpg
(link is here, in case that image doesn’t embed.)
I seriously doubt that there are such drastic biochemical differences between the sexes as to account for THAT. But it sure explains a lot about toxic masculinity and its connections to gun crime!
Pan ponders when would be a good time to talk about toxic masculinity and gun culture, given that by the time one tragedy goes from “too soon to politicize” to “old news” with nary a blink in the middle, another shooting has already occurred, starting the clock again.
Or possibly he is pondering how to get me to give him more noms.
http://i.imgur.com/nP5VLHV.jpg
(What are you talking about? Of course this wasn’t a stupid excuse to post a picture of my cat. Why could anyone think that?)
@CherryChanga
All of them, most of whom die at the scene of their devastation. And the evidence? They’re a spree murderer.
FFS, stop with the internet diagnosing. It’s full of confirmation bias, for starters.
No, I do not think you are intelligent for managing to fit the words “sociopaths” and “psychologists” into a sentence.
Noms.
He’s definitely pondering noms.
He’s also pondering the best pose for getting you to take his pic and post it and further his fame.
@fxc
I guess we are all aware by now that she’s spoken of (and also showed) the harassment and threats she suffers everywhere… outside of her YouTube channel where she publishes her work.
As I said…
“She hasn’t mentioned the harassment and threats she suffers herself on any of her videos so far.”
Again, I was referring to her work. I thought I was clear about it.
In her videos she doesn’t speak of herself, she speaks as a critic and a sociologist. Like I said, I may agree or disagree with her about tiny things, but she makes some really valid points.
This is insanity. I can’t even read all of the responses she got without feeling ill. I cannot believe, CANNOT believe how people have treated her. I love her last response — what graciousness and eye-opening words she uses. As someone who used to be anti-feminist and now am very much feminist (ironically coinciding with my transition away from Christianity), my heart goes out to not only Sarkeesian, but to all of the haters because it reveals a depth of brokenness in our society that deeply pains me.
To a brighter, more equal future for my baby girl.
http://www.tealtomato.com
-closet atheist
Pan is a gorgeous cat. I want to rub my face in that furry belly.
Pan is a beautiful fluffy boy.
It’s always too soon to talk about a mass shooting. The last one hasn’t even over long enough, and then the next one happens, so it’s too soon again.
Awfully convenient, that means it’s never okay to talk about them, never okay to look for the real reasons. We’ll have to stick to “mentally ill!!!1” and leave it at that. Toxic masculinity or gun laws? OF COURSE NOT JUST POLITICAL POINTS. Got to be a mental illness issue.
Which IS weird, since oddly, it seems to happen mostly on one continent. And surely, US-Americans are not more mentally ill than other people? Ah, damn, I’m making a political point and profiting from tragedy again. I should just wait till it’s ok to talk about it.
One day.
Requisite Onion article.
@Elektra
Excuse me for not noticing the distinction, you’re correct, the videos she made a year ago (or more?) were not about the harassment she has faced, they were made before she got any of that. Many of the arguments in the videos were strong and the thesis was solid, however there were many examples she used in the videos that were presented in somewhat manipulative ways that I believe is where much of this fervor sprouted from.
@Bina
I’m not saying that the abuse people get online is fair game or that it should be allowed or tolerated. I am just saying that bringing attention to it draws more people to that. It’s the nature of trolls in general to gravitate towards people they believe they will be able to get a reaction out of. You are not alone in getting harassing comments online, I have a youtube channel with a few thousands subscribers and get sent horrible things on a regular basis. The more attention I give to people like that the more they seem to come and as the view count grows the more the nasty comments come.
@weirwoodtreehugger
I’m not saying the problem will go away, unless you are able to somehow enforce every website with a comment section to not allow anyone to create an account anonymously. I would also contest that it hasn’t much gotten worse, rather that there are far more people on the internet and who are technologically savvy so there are likely more people engaged in that behavior. I’m also not suggesting that this is a problem unique to any demographic as internet harassment is leveled at all people for a number of reasons. I’m not telling anyone to “sit down and shut up”, she can react however she wants to react. But it’s pretty straight forward thinking to say that if you are reposting their trash they spew, the ones that are trolling are going to look at that as a trophy (they do, they screen cap it themselves and share it on 4/8chan and shit).
They’re thinking of Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter. All spree killers are sociopaths, which most modern psychologists believe are beyond curing.
Bates and Lecter are both fictional, and neither are spree killers. The reason why they fit so neatly into our “just so” stories about good and bad people is because they are fictional.
There is a “sociopathy” test, but it depends on a long history of crime and is only 80% accurate. It is unlikely to have caught any of the recent mass murderers.
The rates of identified mental illness among individuals who later commit mass murder of some sort is the same as the rate of mental illness among the general population. The rate people with mental illnesses commit crimes is lower than the general population. The rate they are targets of crime is higher than the general population.
There is an enormous false positive and false negative issue with any sort of psychological text, and the ability for psychologists to predict future crime is incredibly poor.
Wrong. Sit down, I’m willing to give you a brief history lesson for free. Anita Sarkeesian has (so far) made 6 videos exploring misogynistic tropes in video games, and she made these with the money she raised in a Kickstarter campaign, that was originally only asking for $6000 to investigate and compile one video on harmful video game tropes.
This Kickstarter seemed to ramp up the frothing fury of anti-feminist gamerbros everywhere and abuse (along with other things, such as a flash game that similutated beating her bloody) poured in. (The fevour also brought non-abusive attention to her kickstarter and people chose to donate 150K to the project, and lead to her making more videos and going more in depth with her analysis, but that is neither here nor there.)
So, no, the abuse has been going on LONG before the videos were made, and not one of those videos mentions it, or anything other than the topic she claimed to cover.
If someone could fix that post…. yeah… links… how do they work?
*simulated, not similuated. Bah.
Adding to Deoridhe’s comment above:
Emphasis is mine. From http://www.mendeley.com/catalog/taxometric-analysis-levenson-selfreport-psychopathy-scale/
@Catalpa
You took the words out of my mouth XD I was going to respond exactly the same.
Lots of feminists believe in such thing as toxic masculinity. Feminists such as… one Christina Hoff-Sommers: http://imgur.com/XiGKX24
Whenever a woman says anything on the internet, especially if it relates to violence that she and other women experience on a regular basis, the go-to responses are always:
It’s not appropriate right now.
Don’t be political about this.*
You didn’t phrase that in an acceptable way
Your well-researched and commonly accepted opinion is baseless.
It’s not about X issue (toxic masculinity), it’s really only about Y issue (Mental health red herring).
You’re drawing attention to yourself.
It’s somehow the fault of your own gender/ race/ oppressed group.
If you keep saying these things, it’s inevitable that people will target you with rape threats.
Talking about racism/ sexism/ homophobia, etc, is racist/ sexist/ homophobic.
But the underlying message is always, always: SHUT UP AND REMAIN SILENT.
Be honest – Are you trolls really too uncomfortable to talk about the social factors that lead to gun violence, but fine for 30 gun deaths A DAY in the US to sit with your conscience?
*People think the default state is apolitical, but that’s a nonsense. In the immortal words of Skunk Anansie – “YES, IT’S FUCKING POLITICAL; EVERYTHING’S POLITICAL!!”
(Lyrics NSFW and possibly triggering, but the chorus is basically my Internet war-cry).
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcaUer4fuU8&w=420&h=315%5D