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.
Anita is a true videogame hero.
I don’t get how she just can continue on, but she does. If she took breaks and let others take care of FemFreq for a while it would be natural and understandable. But no she just keeps on trucking.
Btw thanks for using my tweet I would like to clear up that my tweet was saying that criticism was justified not death threats. However that still does not negate the fact that using a national tragedy to promote her sickening misandriest agenda and promote a book was just inexcusable and disgusting.
Seriously? Seri-fucking-ously? Do you really think that she’s getting death threats because she worded her arguments poorly?
“*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!!”
”
I want to scream this from the rooftops because it’s so right – there is NOTHING THAT ANY HUMAN DOES THAT IS NOT POLITICAL. THE FOOD YOU EAT. THE AIR YOU BREATHE. THE WATER YOU DRINK. WHERE YOU SHIT. WHERE YOU FUCK. EVERYTHING. FUCK. THERE IS NO FUCKING SUCH THING AS APOLITICAL. IT DOESNT EXIST.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure it’s been said below but the concept of “apolitical” anything is a false concept designed to prevent discussion of the status quo, because if an issue is political, then by definition it’s open to discussion. So the more things you can declare “apolitical”, the more you can restrict what things are acceptable to talk about in society.
Fuck off, troll.
It’s not just misandrist, it’s the misandriest.
@solarisltp
How is pointing out the obvious – “Mass shootings are perpetrated mainly by men. We need to look at that” – promoting a vile, misandrist agenda?
No, really. I want to know.
I feel I should point out that when Anita talks about ‘toxic masculinity’ she probably isn’t talking about ALL men. She is talking about what I know as ‘lad culture’. Usually, but not always, teenage males with a “Pull all the birds! Drink all the beer! Wahey!” kind of attitude. That kind of ‘masculinity’ is toxic.
To me (and most men I know) masculinity is about being a man. Being a man isn’t about being stronger or faster, that’s just dick waving. Being a man is about standing up to injustice and prejudice and saying, “This is wrong.” Being a man is protecting those who are vulnerable (only when they need protecting, no-one should be made to feel like they are helpless) and letting them know you are there for them. A real man will provide comfort and reassuring to friends and family in times of need. That’s what being a man is (you can swap the word ‘man’ for ‘woman’ or ‘decent human being’ and it still reads the same).
That’s the way I was brought up and these little boys who threaten women online are an insult to masculinity.
Bullshit. “The hate is justified” does not mean “the criticism is justified.” Those two statements are not equivalent. “The hate is justified” in the context of Sarkessian getting hateful death threats means “the death threats are justified.”
People have reading comprehension. Your statement was clear. Don’t whine because people understood what you said. You’re not only a troll, you’re a shitty little coward, just like most trolls.
Giving people book recommendations on a topic you are talking about = evil and misandrist.
Sounds about right…
Honestly, even if these shooters were mentally ill…where do they pick up these ideas? Mentally ill people don’t exist in a vacuum – we’re all a part of this culture, mentally ill or not. And if the ideas of toxic masculinity lead to shooting people over the shooter’s entitlement issues, is that not worth addressing? Really, this will keep happening until we talk and do something about it.
On the other side of the coin, then, are all of the people who believe in toxic masculinity mentally ill? How about the garden variety sexist? People who like to shoot hookers in video games?
Oh, and for those trolly naysayers, you do realize that violence against women is really, depressingly commonplace, don’t you? That the guy who slaps his girlfriend, the man who constantly yells at his wife, the dude who rapes his stepdaughter. Generally, none of these people are mentally ill, actually, many people defend these cretins as poor victims and their victims as harassers. Sound familiar…?
It’s amazing: Ms. Sarkeesian posts something… and in just a few minutes time, people show up to provide evidence of exactly what she’s talking about.
It’s exactly like if she black and was posting information about racists and racism, and immediately Aryan Nation and KKK people showed up to call her racist slurs and threaten her with lynchings and with burning her house down.
Here’s the odd thing in that comparison: violent racists rarely take on black people posting about racism (although plenty of less-violent racists do) in large *public* forums—they tend to keep their extreme gutter slurs and threats of graphic violence to their own little enclaves. Yet, violent sexists who oppose a woman talking about sexism *immediately* jump on her with gutter slurs and truly horrible threats of violence, IN large public forums.
In comparing the two situations, I have to conclude that the violent sexists feel less threatened by social censure and by laws against what they’re doing; in short, while our society is still incredibly racist, we’ve actually done a better job of making extreme social and legal racism socially-unacceptable, than we have of making extreme social and legal sexism socially-unacceptable.
Granted, as events around the country prove that we’re rolling back the clock on racism—especially in regard to police, courts, and prisons—it shows that our stance against extreme racism is eroding… but my point here is, our stance against extreme sexism never really got to the point of widespread societal shunning and censure, and with laws that protect against it (in theory if nothing else).
Both situations are getting worse as rhetoric mounts against compassion and understanding in general: it’s my opinion that this general wash of refusal to identify with and care about other people is further fueling extremists who are racist, or sexist, or religious fanatics, or classists.
Hang on, does Sarkeesian have a book coming out or something? Because this is literally the first I’ve heard of it, which kind of implies that she’s doing a really bad job of cashing in on her gullible supporters by creating controversy.
Ok, so as far as I can see, Sarkeesian recommended two books during her series of tweets on the Seattle shooting. One is The Will To Change by bell hooks and the other is The Gender Knot by Allan G. Johnson. Sarkeesian wrote an endorsement for the third edition of the latter, which the troll army seems to think some kind of inexcusable conflict of interest. They do know that people don’t get paid for writing endorsement, right?
OH NOES SARKEEESIAN RECOMMENDING A BOOK SHE ALREADY PUBLICLY ENDORSED! CORRUPTION! HOW DARE SHE SHARE HIGHLY RELEVANT ACADEMIC RESOURCES TO BACK UP HER STATEMENTS. BIAS! ETHICS!
I seriously do wonder if any of these people have ever gone outside sometimes.
Don’t mind me. I’ll just be over here holding hands with this quote. We’re going to braid each other’s hair and give one another nicknames later because we’re best friends now.
Like you assholes need any excuse to harass her.
If you’re so into seeing misandry everywhere, you should at least learn how to use the “word.”
So in the midst of all these tweets, this person can say,
“However that still does not negate the fact that using a national tragedy to promote her sickening misandriest agenda and promote a book was just inexcusable and disgusting.”
I know something more disgusting…
And another thing. why is everyone always “using” something. They’re not talking about it, they’re “using” it. They’re crying wolf about people “using” things all the time.
There was nothing wrong with Anita talking about toxic masculinity. I think a lot of those people didn’t realize she was talking about a concept. They acted like she pointed at the shootings and said MEN! TOXIC aren’t they?
They don’t care to know anything about what they’ve already decided to hate.
@vaiyt
You can cool your hysteronics, let’s talk rationally please. It’s not that she “worded her arguments poorly” it’s that she essentially lied about some of her examples, had to take others completely out of context in order to appear to represent her thesis, and falsely represent scenarios that fit her narrative. I definitely believe that many people were upset with these and were also upset that when the issues were brought up, they were immediately lumped in with the crazy sexist comments she was receiving from trolls, deleted and ignored, which ramped everything up and caused the people with legitimate criticisms to feel more strongly opposed to her. It’s to the point now that you can not say that you have issues with Anita’s arguments without instantly being placed into the category of a misogynistic, neck bearded, anti-feminist, troll. As a PR strategy it’s brilliant, but as a way to actually convince people that there is a problem and make a difference, it seems incredibly disingenuous.
i fucking love you people. A THOUSANDMILLION THANK YOUS DAVID!
Hello, clean-up required. Tone troll in Aisle 5!
That’d be you, fxc, in case you’re too dense to realise we see through you and your “oh you hysterical, over-acting females, you should be all male rational like me” garbage.
Did she? Prove it or it never happened, you piss-pot of a death threat apologist.
Where’s Inigo Montoya when I need him?
Hello, ableism! My troll bingo card is filling up rapidly.
Yes, because every decent person’s response to their critiques being ignored because the person they’re critiquing is drowning in rape and death threats is to be upset not at the threateners but at the person being threatened.
Humanity 101 – you fail at it.
What PR strategy? Really, you’re saying that Anita has generated the trolling herself as a PR strategy? Yep, you really are a piss-pot of a victim-blaming death and rape threat apologist. Fuck off, now, will you. You add nothing to this thread but the stench of troll droppings.