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.
Cassandrakitty:
Well, we know that she does hold some basic feminist beliefs. She was, first of all, a philosophy professor, so she holds the basic feminist belief that women can work, women can have professional careers, women can go to university, women can go to graduate school, women can be professors — just like and equal to men. So that’s one.
And she has professed, whether with full honesty or not, that she believes that women should be equal under the law. Which would in fact be a necessary concept for belief #1 — being a female professor — to be allowed to take place. And that’s a basic tenet of feminism — that women should be equal under the law. So that’s two.
Now, does she believe the rest of it — true, actual equality? We don’t know. She’s paid to say that she doesn’t believe it. She may or may not believe it. She may believe that eventually fuller equality will come for women in North American-European society, just as it came for her being allowed to be a professor, and so why not make money over saying the opposite in the meantime. She may believe that as an educated, professional level white woman, she’s protected from the discrimination that poorer and non-white women will experience — discrimination that creates a lower wage, desperate labor pool, which is what the organization that pays her is working for, on behalf of corporations which want to beggar those economies as much as possible.
Or she may actually believe that women are not discriminated against in certain areas, like science, that the wage gap isn’t real — I’ve met lots of men and women who believe this — or that government interference in the social sphere is always bad, so there shouldn’t be laws that conscript businesses and organizations regarding sexual discrimination, etc. There are a lot of conservative women who believe in equality of the sexes, but believe weird things about gender and about society, who buy into the idea of a minority of hysterical women, an idea that Sommers exploits for her job.
And that’s because feminism is an idea, not an identity. Feminists are people who advocate the idea that women are innately equal and should be equal in the society, economically and under the law. But there’s a fair amount of variety in how they advocate for that. Does that mean that Sommers is a feminist? For me, she is not and works against feminism in the law, etc.
But, as we so often point out to folk, there are no feminism police who dictate what you get to call yourself. She does express support for part of the idea (above), she calls herself one which rather unwittingly supports feminism as a good idea, even if she then advocates against the idea. Her sheer existence as a working woman and a professor advocates for the idea of feminism, even as she advocates against feminist policies. She is damaging to feminism, to advances in equality; at the same time her life involves feminism. This is the conundrum of anti-feminist women. It actually is complicated. We’ll never know if she actually believes she should be fully equal or not, if she believes there’s discrimination or not; she isn’t an honest person. We do not have to accept her as a feminist advocate, anymore than we accept a man who says he supports the idea, but then works against putting it in practice. But that she espouses some of the idea of feminism — an idea that has helped her — in trying to advocate against the full expression of the idea, shows the power of the idea itself.
What you run up against it that some women think they can because they are the exception that proves the rule that women can’t. That appears to be the basis of her beliefs.
It is also important to remember that if you want to be published by the corporate media you need to be anti feminist.
At this point in history I really don’t think that thinking women should be allowed to get an education and hold a job counts as holding feminist beliefs. Almost everyone believes those things, at least in the US, where Sommers lives.
I think it’s incredibly naive to take Sommers at her word that she’s a feminist, not just because her actions don’t reflect feminist ideas, but because the part of the right wing that she’s involved with has a history of appropriating social justice terms and twisting them in an attempt to justify reprehensible ideas and policies. When they claim that left is right and up is down it’s important for us to push back and point out that no, that is not what those words mean.
Feminism isn’t just an idea, it’s a movement, and it involves doing, not just saying that you believe things. Talk is cheap. If a person is actively working to undermine the rights of other women then no, they are not a feminist, no matter what they call themselves.
I mean, women are allowed to be professors in Saudi Arabia, ffs, and we can’t even drive there. “Women should be allowed to have jobs and go to university” does not a feminist make. There’s not policing words, and then there’s allowing words to become completely meaningless.
Well, not really. One can have beliefs about equality and not be a feminist. Egalitarianism is a thing. Gonna echo Cassandrakitty here; actions speak louder than words.
Someone please tell me it’s not just me who feels like I’m in the Twilight Zone right now. People arguing that Sommers holds feminist beliefs, and that thinking women should be allowed to get an education is a sign that someone holds feminist beliefs? On a feminist blog, in 2014?
@kirbywarp
OMG WITH THE MEGAMIND SPOILERS
…
…
@proxieme
And also that. Any movie that can work Guns and Roses “Welcome to the Jungle” into it’s climax can do no wrong. (Okay, it can totes do wrong, but at that moment I would have forgiven it anything. “PRESENTATION!”)
Pompous ass says WHAT?
I think the word you were looking for there is AWFUL. That shirt is awful. A polyester rag with a tacky print that belongs on the side of some old creeper’s van. Butt-fugly at best.
Oh, fuck OFF. The Old Left wouldn’t have worn that shit either.
Feminism is a political movement, not a belief system.
Oh, poor oppressed white males. The most picked-on people on Earth!
http://i.imgur.com/Iz9Hwe5.jpg
@ Kim
http://lovemeow.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/acid_picdump_08-500×370.jpg
Bina – to any reasonable person, signing a statement that you will not rape anyone should have the same emotional impact as a statement that you will not eat the giraffe. Why would you be distressed by affirming that you won’t do something you wouldn’t do anyway?
That is assuming that the underlying premise is, in fact, correct.
That depends on how you define ‘belief system’. I mean, feminism is also an ideology and that can have a belief system. By which I mean, you can believe in the goals of feminism, but you can’t believe in Feminism. Though an altar to the Feminist Hivemind would be kinda awesome.
Aaaand that’s about as much of this seriousness as I can manage. Will go back to lurking until more trolls arrive.
Grumpyoldman, did you actually just flounce? Like for real? Because you didn’t explain yourself well enough and people called you on it? Wow.
Sommers is one of an odd, interesting (if destructive) species of woman — the godmother is Phillys Schlafly, who led the opposition to the Equal; Rights Amendment. She ran around the country organizing and giving speeches about how women should stay out of politics and stay home with their families. Sommers ACTS like a feminist, in that she has clearly rejected the traditional feminine role, but she TALKS like an anti-feminist. In effect she and a small group of women like her live in a fundamental state of perpetual cognitive dissonance — a Twilight Zone if you will. I’m not sure how anyone lives like this, but apparently some do.
The best portrait of a woman like this (that I know of) is that of Connie Marshner, now a colleague of Sommers’ at Heritage Foundation, in Susan Faludi’s marvelous book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.
Cassandrakitty, what you’re dealing with with somebody like Sommers is something that walks like a lion and quacks like a duck. Possibly the Twilight Zone metaphor is the most appropriate one. I am as puzzled as you seem to be how a strong, intelligent, well-educated woman could spout the sort of crap Sommers does, but she’s not the only one. I guess it pays — what’s that old line — it smells but it sells.
Part of our differences may be that I’m old enough to remember the time when there was a real argument as to whether women should go to college at all, and some of the people who thought they should justified the opinion on the ground that boys needed well-educated mothers. I really think you and I are in fundamental agreement except for a couple of semantic issues — basically the precise definition of feminism vs feminist ideas — and I think we’ve taken this as far as we should at the moment..
Sorry I didn’t manage to stick the flounce. I’ll try again.
@ququasar:
Yeah, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not, but meh. They were at least thinking about it. Maybe some day what I thought was going to happen in the Lego movie will actually happen and we won’t have to end the movie with the guy getting the girl. (I’m not sure where I got that idea, but boy was I disappointed in an otherwise awesome film).
And yeah. “Presentation” actually got be super-hyped, which isn’t that easy. What an awesome moment.
No. I’m with you. Even admitted anti-feminists will mostly still tell you that they think women should be able to hold jobs and get an education. Most racists also will claim they don’t think that slavery should come back. The entire premise of contemporary bigotry is the notion that now it is illegal to discriminate against someone based on sex and race, therefore we don’t need to talk about social justice anymore and everything is fine.
I’m all for not strictly policing who gets to call herself a feminist. I once saw a Jezebel commenter say that you’re not a real feminist if you haven’t taken a women’s studies course. That was an idea I found to be classist, elitist and just all around wrong. You don’t have to be perfect all the time to be a feminist. You don’t have to agree with every other feminist all the time to be one. However, there’s a limit to my open mindedness on the issue. Women like Christina Hoff Sommers and Sarah Palin actively oppose everything feminists say and do and I don’t buy it when they call themselves such.
No, she acts and talks like a woman who thinks she is the shining exception to the rabble that is women. Nothing she says about women in general is meant to apply to her, because she doesn’t put herself in the same category. No cognitive dissonance needed.
WWTH – basically you can call yourself a feminist until and unless your actual actions start being counter to working toward the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
Just FYI, I’m 41, not exactly a young girl with no memory of the bad old days.
I’m not puzzled by Sommers at all and never have been. To me it’s perfectly obvious what she’s doing and why, what confuses me is why it’s not obvious to everyone else.
Also, thanks, wwth. I’ve been sitting here for the last couple of hours going a. what the hell is going on? and b. did Mr C slip me some really good drugs at some point without me noticing, because that’s the only thing that I can think of that would explain this conversation having happened on a feminist blog.
Well, I imagine what she’s doing is trying to kick the ladder down after she’s at the top. I tried to find a gif of that, but this is the best I could do. Possibly better because it shows the cat at the top losing and running away.
http://www.gifbin.com/bin/092011/1316540585_epic_cat_battle_on_a_ladder.gif
A big woo! woo! for everything WWTH wrote.
Having an open mind is great, but when cities, comets, and entire solar systems stars falling through it may be time to tighten things up just a little.