By all rights, the furor over rocket scientist Matt Taylor’s cheesecake shirt should have died down by now. After being chided earlier this week for marring the celebration over the landing of a space probe ON A GODDAMNED COMET by doing interviews in a tacky shirt covered with half-naked ladies, Taylor offered a brief but heartfelt apology. You would have thought we’d all be able to move on.
Not so fast. Because these days apparently no controversy can ever be over as long as it serves someone’s interest to keep it going. And so a loose but very familiar coalition of reactionaries and antifeminists and angry techies have started flogging an amorphous cause they call #Shirtgate or, more popularly, #Shirtstorm, purporting to be outraged that Taylor was “humiliated” into apologizing.
So many of the angriest voices in this, er, conversation are #GamerGaters it looks a lot like a sequel. Call it GamerGate Part Two: The Straw Graspening. And it’s not just me making the connection: #GamerGaters and #Shirtstormers, often one and the same, are making the connection:
So radical #shirtstorm SJW have attacked my games my #gamergate revolt and now they are attacking #science. Am i allowed to be mad ?
— Anti-ProcrusteanBed ☀️🏴 (@antiprocrustes) November 16, 2014
I am a man. I'm sick of hearing that because of my gender, my opinions don't count and sexism towards me isn't real. #GamerGate #shirtstorm
— Lord Inquisitor Ineptus Astartes (@AstartesIneptus) November 16, 2014
https://twitter.com/Scrumpmonkey/status/533409838207078400
Heck, our old friend Milo is making the connection:
Note to those infuriated by poor Dr Matt Taylor and #shirtstorm: this is what #GamerGate has been fighting against. Are you getting it yet?
— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) November 15, 2014
Oh, it’s a veritable #GamerGate Old Home Week! GG mainstays Thunderf00t and Mundane Matt have rushed out videos about The Shirt.
People are making graphics covered with hard-to-read text:
There are giant complicated conspiracy theory graphics covered with red lines and angry red text. This one notes that Chris Plante, who wrote an article criticizing Taylor’s shirt, also wrote one of the now-notorious “Gamers are Dead” pieces.
https://twitter.com/Reyeko_/status/533482641774100480
Apparently there were a few dudes who were none too pleased with Plante’s story on The Shirt:
https://twitter.com/plante/status/533244307105648640
#Shirtstormers wrote angry “letters” in too-small-type. (Click here for larger, more readable version and here for one with angry graphics, too.)
https://twitter.com/Alpha_duck1/status/533698520100777984
While others tried to draw a parallel between Taylor’s alleged “humiliation” and … rape.
#shirtgate #SupportMattTaylor #GamerGate pic.twitter.com/L8s1GrOow7
— Mark 🐸 🗑 Samenfink (@MSamenfink) November 16, 2014
#ShirtStorm #shirtgate Matthew 7:1 pic.twitter.com/bRXr7bA1Si
— Be Just & Fear Not | Let None Survive (@SuperNerdMike) November 16, 2014
Neo-reactionaries and “Dark Enlightenment” types see opportunity in the #Shirtstorm hashtag.
https://twitter.com/voxday/status/533336186535030784
Don't judge me because of what I'm wearing – unless I'm a guy. Then you can define my personality and try to ruin my life. #shirtgate #NRx
— VDARE (@vdare) November 15, 2014
https://twitter.com/antidemblog/status/533341319184531456
https://twitter.com/BernardChapin/status/533628518077186049
As do MRAs:
https://twitter.com/deanesmay/status/533758421158227969
As does this familiar name:
Women do not face a hostile climate in science. And they can handle seeing a guy in an edgy shirt. #GamerGate https://t.co/8gvTyo0bg6
— Christina Hoff Sommers (@CHSommers) November 16, 2014
They’re all there, all hoping to turn a debate over a shirt into another endless internet Benghazi.
People have always profited off the stupidity and irrational fear/anger of others. This can not be attributed to tumblr SJWs and it is not an indication that you’ve won anything.
Define SJW leftism and Old Left please. When did one disappear and the other take its place?
@ saphy
Really? I’d think Wagner would be the obvious choice for a soundtrack with this guy.
The maker of the shirt is now “very rich”? Really? She’s a millionaire already as a direct result of this shirt?
Put up the evidence or shut the fuck up.
@cassandrakitty
In theory, yes, but in reality is his whining really worth more than a sad, lone violin? He doesn’t deserve an orchestra, not even a Hitler-approved one.
Is it possible that Hoff Summers has actually no idea what she is talking about? Supporting misogyny as a feminist is pretty stupid.
Is it possible that you actually think Christina Hoff Sommers is a feminist?
I’m guessing God Wotan went to a conference and was required to sign a harassment policy. I’m guessing everyone was required to sign it but he decided it was only white cishet males who had to sign it. I’m guessing he interpreted having to agree to a code of conduct as being accused of being a rapist. Either because he has an epic persecution complex or because he’s actually harassed or raped women in the past and is not pleased it will be harder to get away with now. He doth protest too much.
Funny how he complains about communism but fails to recognize that a con is a private event and due to freedom of association they are well within their rights to have and enforce a code of conduct for attendees.
Given the propensity of the manosphere to get all up in arms at the slightest perceived slight, I have to imagine we would have heard about it by now if an atheist conference made only white men sign a pledge that they would not rape anyone, we would have heard about it. Every day. For years.
What is it with the quality of trolls lately? They either do a drive by turd drop or they make a few posts and than flounce after getting some pushback. Why would you start an argument and then get mad when the other side joins in? What is this recent trend of these trolls coming in here and calling regulars trolls? That doesn’t just happen here. It’s been happening on Jezebel a lot lately too. If this is the brilliant new 4Chan tactic, to deflect by accusing others of trolling, it’s not working and it’s boring. They need to try harder.
CHS knows exactly what she’s doing. She had a safe, comfy, but boring career as a professor at a good but not well-known university (Clark University in Worcester, Mass, which exists in the shadows of the better-known and more highly regarded WPI and Holy Cross). Then she developed the anti-feminist feminist shtick and became a national figure. She is probably a feminist in her own private thoughts, but she is riding too high with her game to let her real self peek through. Stupid? Not a bit. Hypocritical. You betcha.
I’ve noticed the “how dare you actually engage in the argument that I attempted to start, you troll” pattern too. I’m not quite sure why they think it’s going to work.
I think Sommers buys into anti-feminism hook, line and sinker. I think she fully believes women are inferior, except her. She’s special. She’s a more articulate JB.
People who are actually feminists don’t throw other women under the bus for fun and profit.
I think Wagner would be more appropriate, but every time I read one of god_Wotan’s posts my brain plays a mash-up of The Firebird suite and Night on Bald mountain.
Adding a little bit of orchestral bombast makes the trolls so much more entertaining.
Lea, I think you give her not enough credit for intelligence and too much credit for honesty. I read one of her books before she became a big shot on the wingnut right. She’s understands feminism — she’s not the least bit confused about it. She knows that women aren’t dumb, but she’s playing to men, not women. Her line is that she is for gender equality but against female supremacists, which is how she mischaracterizes feminists. She knows very well that it’s a crock, but the men will buy it. She has just figured out how to become famous by “throw[ing] other women under the bus for fun and profit.”
Does she really believe that men are superior? I really don’t think so. In fact, the way she plays her game implies that she thinks men are superior in gullibility. I hate to say it, but she may be right.
You’re not understanding how feminism works. A woman who actually believes in feminism’s basis ideals would not treat other women the way Sommers does.
I think she is an opportunist who pretends to believe things that she does not really believe because it’s in her best interests. I think it is possible to be a feminist in belief and a misogynist in action. Believing in feminist principles does not automatically make someone a good and ethical person. (The idea that CHS was once a professor of Ethics is both amusing and disgusting.) We can quibble about whether belief in feminist principles = feminist. Your point seems to be that a sincere feminist would not deliberately throw other women under the bus, which is probably true. But all of us have some degree of difficulty matching our actions to our ideals; the things about CHS is that she probably has beliefs but not much in the way of ideals — or, to put it more bluntly, her ideals are for sale.
In others words, the fundamental issue is whether she believes her own line of crap. I say she doesn’t.
No. If a person actively seeks to prop up misogyny, they are not a feminist. They may call themselves a feminist for strategic reasons, but they are lying.
A feminist is not a person who believes that she, herself, should have rights, she is a person who believes that women in general should have rights. Sommers does not believe that women as a group should have very many rights at all, and she wishes to limit or remove the ones we have now, therefore she is not a feminist.
This is not complicated.
Hey, how do we do blockquote here?
NotActuallyHere:
“Event happens. Event could be a sentence said, a female character modeled, or what have you. Feminists/SJWs/Whatever ask people behind event to not do that. People behind event agree event could have been handled better. Both parties nod respectfully and hope better events happens in the future. And then throw in a horde of dudebros who WON’T LET IT GO. And THEN they blame FEMINISTS for making the conversation about nothing but the Event!
IS there a word for this? A term?”
Yes, propaganda. 🙂
Jenora Feuer:
“Though I’ve heard from others that vet techs have seen some of the same effects as teachers and nurses did generations ago: once a certain field gets a large number of women in it, it becomes ‘women’s work’, devalued, and men start being socially pressured not to go into it.”
Exactly — wages drop, etc., although some professions, like doctors, retain a higher status, (and vet techs never got paid well in the first place.) But the point is, if the biological theory about the social construct of gender was actually correct and that was why there was a shortage of women in STEM, then there should also still be a shortage of women as doctors, vets, dentists and their techs — fields that require a high amount of science, technology and mathematical ability and knowledge. Instead, there are tons of women in those fields. (And the reality is that in olden days, women were the doctors and nurses before those professions had names.) If it were true, the math test gap between girls and boys wouldn’t have closed, but it did.
By simple statistics, the theory is bunkum. It’s an old social bromide from centuries ago that was used to keep women banned from schools, universities and professional spheres. It was used on the law — that didn’t work. It was used on teaching — that didn’t work. It’s been used lots of times as part of trying to maintain artificial barriers. People still discriminate against female doctors a lot, and the expense of the training obviously still puts women at a disadvantage, but most of the barriers to women being allowed to become doctors are gone, at least in parts of the world, and consequently, we have lots of women doctors. So they don’t talk about how women don’t have a natural aptitude for becoming a doctor now, because they can’t. They can only say that women don’t have the natural aptitude to become a surgeon or other sub-field they want to keep them out of while they’re still rarer, and those barriers are being tackled too.
Fibinachi: Yep, money started pouring in to computers and women were increasingly shut out. That happened in Hollywood too. But the barriers are being tackled, the tide is being turned. And once that happens, and finance and politics too, who knows what women will be “biologically not inclined to do” next. Sports, still, I suppose. Mo’ne Davis must terrify them.
< blockquote > your stuff here < / blockquote >
GrumpyOldMan,
I did not know that.
Well, I did not think this could happen. I actually like her less now.
I’m sort of ashamed to admit this but as a young girl the shirt would have made me feel unwelcome in science. As I get older I have learnt to accept that men do weird things and you have to put up with them. Even as an adult it worries me slightly that nobody tried to lend him a jumper or something. Oddly I can’t hold him responsible in my head because if he is in an environment where nobody says anything how is he to know it is wrong. In a way, given that science, especially space science, is a field that requires working together and social skills, that is quite insulting to him. I still feel sorry for him- though. It was a silly mistake and while it is good he apologised it can’t have been fun.
A few guys on my Facebook are very angry this issue was brought up. Some of them in science. I find it hard to understand that opinion but I think they believe freedom of expression is more important than being welcoming and inclusive. Maybe it is a trade off between different ideals. After all not everyone has to believe women should be comfortable in science just because they are as capable as men.
To put it more simply – you seem for some inexplicable reason to believe that Sommers is a feminist pretending to be an anti-feminist. Most feminists believe that she is an anti-feminist pretending to be a feminist in an attempt to undermine the progress that actual feminists have made. By buying in to her insistence that what she promotes is a form of feminism you are helping her achieve that goal.
Kill the spaces.
—
Frown.
If my belief is X, and my actions are consistently and repeatedly Y, then my beliefs are not, actually, X. If my beliefs were actually X, I would not consistently do things contrary to what I actually believe in. No matter how many times I say that I believe X, if I do not actually do the things that X entails, and, more so, do things directly contrary to my stated belief in X, then I am not, ipso facto, a believer in X. I’m a liar who is using my profuse pretensions of a belief to mask, hide or otherwise obfuscate my actual set of core principles.
Revealed preference.
CHS calls herself an “equity feminist” because she believes women should have strictly legal equality, and criticizes what she calls the “gender feminists” for trying to address the social/practical sides of gender equality.
Modern feminism doesn’t split itself along those boundaries, it cares about both. So by all accounts she is not a feminist anymore than someone who thinks “micro evolution” exists but “macro evolution” doesn’t is an adherent to evolution. Both have the same historical background as well; with opponents creating a false divide between components of an ideology so they can claim the label but still nix the parts they don’t like.
No, CHS is not a feminist. She’s not stupid, and she’s not a grifter. She’s just yet another anti-feminist who thinks legal equality is the be-all end-all, and that any social imbalances between genders must be natural, unchangeable, and good.
@Pear_tree:
There’s nothing shameful in that! The shame belongs to anyone who would consider that appropriate to wear.
Sometimes ignoring it and moving on is the right choice – like if you just don’t have the goddamn energy or you might lose your job – but one of the wonderful things about feminism is we don’t have to just put up with the shitty things men sometimes do 🙂 we can try to work together to change the culture.
Although I don’t entirely know who Sommers is (I’m not American), so maybe I’m missing a nuance of the conversation here. It just seems an odd statement that you can believe in one thing while making a professional career out of arguing for the direct contrary. It’s not exactly how I’d go about believing in things, I guess.