So a couple of days ago, as you probably have heard, Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn testified at the United Nations about online harassment of women. The two, along with a number of other victims of/experts on online harassment also paid a visit to Google Ideas to share their thoughts on the matter.
This is, in essence, what #GamerGate has achieved over the past year: By launching an unprecedented wave of organized harassment, mostly aimed at women, the Gators have brought about a new awareness of the seriousness of online harassment. And they’ve given the women whose lives and careers they’ve tried most energetically to destroy an influence they never would have had otherwise.
Naturally, Gators have been losing their shit over all this.
And so, as a public service of sorts, I would like to share with you the 13 most ridiculously hyperbolic pronouncements from Gators I have seen thus far in response to Sarkeesian and Quinn’s recent adventures. (On Reddit, anyway; I have not (yet) ventured into the wilds of 8chan or the Twitter hashtag to collect further examples, and I’m not sure I will.) Major props to the folks in the BestOfOutrageCulture subreddit, who have been energetically and hilariously documenting the man-steria, and who found a number of the examples below.
1) “We are literally fighting to save the world from an international alliance targeting the most fundamental human rights.“
In a KotakuInAction post with more than 300 upvotes, someone called frankenmine declares:
Make no mistake, we are literally fighting to save the world from an international alliance targeting the most fundamental human rights. …
The problem is not the UN panel and report itself. The problem was not the Google Ideas meeting. The problem was not the Congressional hearing. …
The mere ability to get access to these platforms shows that McIntosh and his ilk is building up a progressively larger and more influential network fairly quickly. At the rate he’s going, he might be able to infiltrate actually influential organizations, at the corporate and/or governmental levels, fairly soon.
The McIntosh in question is Jonathan McIntosh, Sarkeesian’s video-making partner. Unable to believe that a mere woman could actually be in charge of her own life many GamerGater’s believe that McIntosh is the evil puppetmaster pulling Sarkeesian’s strings.
2) “Now GamerGate has to save the world from authoritarian, women-infantising control freaks?”
In another KotakuInAction post, this one with more than 1600 upvotes, _Mellex_ makes, well, basically the same assertion:
So now GamerGate is being mentioned in the same breath as the United Nations, and apparently KIA is at the forefront of stopping unnecessary government overhaul of internet protocol. What in the actual fuck? …
Ethics in games journalism: That’s what this was all about. And now GamerGate has to save the world from authoritarian, women-infantising control freaks?
These guys do an awful lot of world-saving for dudes whose greatest accomplishments basically consist of being belatedly banned on Twitter for harassing women.
3) “It’s amazing that it falls to gamers to play a key role in this pushback against authoritarianism.”
LEGALIZE-MARINARA gets a hundred upvotes for this comment, made in response to _Mellex_’s post:
It’s amazing that it falls to gamers to play a key role in this pushback against authoritarianism.
Not big upping myself. I ain’t even a gamer, and I’m pretty late to this whole thing, and nor do I think it’s fair that so many politicians have abandoned their responsibilities in this manner. But that’s the reality we’re faced with.
So humble, these guys.
4) “If they win, if they get what they want, they kill free speech. For good. And the foregone conclusion is THX 1138 or Demolition Man.”
Ok, I cheated a little. This is evidently a rant from 8chan, which I found reposted on TheBestOfOutrageCulture subreddit. It’s a bit tl;dr, so I’ve edited a little and bolded the best bits.
Media is a tool. And corporations like to co-opt every single format for one purpose; to sell you sub par shit that you don’t need.
And the biggest threat to that is your ability to have just as big a soapbox to criticize their product as they do to push it.
That’s why they want to take away your ability to say mean things on the internet. It isn’t about poor little Anita. It’s about poor little Pfizer. Anita is a patsy. She’s a tool. Get everyone to rush to the defense of the damsel, take away the right to criticize and now you’ve got people going to jail for saying anything but “Coke is it! Coke is the best! Disney is the greatest! Nike totally doesn’t rely on third world child labor! Apple is an ethical company!” …
SJWs are useful idiots, savvy at narrative with their communications degrees, with social access to trend setting cliques. Those SJWs are the innoculation against those in the media who might break the narrative. They got Patton Oswalt. They got Sarah Silverman. They got Louis CK. They got the video games industry under lockdown. They have everyone in Hollywood except Eli Roth. …
The final result? Draconian control of THE most valuable social tool since Guttenberg. …
Gamers are the only thing holding the line right now, and I’m telling you, we can’t stop. Because if they win, if they get what they want, they kill free speech. For good. And the foregone conclusion is THX 1138 or Demolition Man. Then we all have to live in the subways, or live like them. And we ain’t got the cash to live in the good parts.
Well, someone’s got a vivid — if somewhat derivative — imagination.
5) “Not being a cuck is harassment.”
In a r/KiA comment with more than 900 upvotes, SinisterDexter83 sarcastically suggests that Sarkeesian and her allies are trying to declare everything and the kitchen sink to be a form of harassment.
Asking for evidence of harassment is harassment.
Questioning harassment is harassment.
Criticism is harassment.
Disagreeing with the harassing tactics of radical feminists is harassment.
Holding an opinion that contradicts the dogma of radical feminism is harassment.
Voicing an opinion that contradicts the dogma of radical feminism is harassment.
Holding an opinion that contradicts the dogma of radical feminism without voicing it is an especially sinister, underground form of harassment.
Continuing to have your own opinions after you have been informed of the official radical feminist dogma is harassment.
Not being a cuck is harassment.
He continues on for some time in this manner, but, really, what can beat “not being a cuck is harassment?” It’s Peak #GamerGate.
6) “Corporate enterprise is pushing this brand of feminism to isolate countries and decimate societies for profit.”
More conspiracy-mongering from this r/KiA comment. Sarkeesian and Quinn are puppets of an evil corporate plot to “decimate the public” because apparently decimating customers is a great way to make money?
Google Ideas, a think tank in NY, allowed the harassment to get high profile…
Google changes their monetization and wants more profit…
A new narrative (which is old to us) is put before the UN to spread worldwide.
What people should realize is that we’re seeing the rise of the corporate feminist which is a different type of feminism. This thing was okayed by a think tank to influence rates of growth for corporate enterprise. …
People are focused on fighting SJWs, they missed the bigger story and the article… Corporate enterprise is pushing this brand of feminism to isolate countries and decimate societies for profit. They mislabel gaming to justify cultural imperialism (we’re telling you what to make for our sake) and enact corporate friendly laws that decimate the public.
I’m not quite sure how the evil folks at Google secretly convinced a battalion of angry gamers to send multiple death threats to Anita Sarkeesian over the course of several years, but I’m sure there’s some perfectly reasonable explanation for it.
7) “This is only the beginning. … If this … spirals out of control from here I could see a full blown revolution down the road.”
A comment in KotakuInAction, with more than two dozen upvotes, suggests that if Gamergate and other “free speech” movements like it don’t succeed, the masses might ultimately have to resort to revolution:
More and more it’s becoming evident that movements like Gamergate are necessary. If no one fought for the rights these people are trying to take away we probably would have lost them long ago.
I’m gonna make this prediction, so mark my words.
This is only the beginning. Between the authoritarian right and authoritarian left and whatever group has an agenda to push we’re going to start seeing more and more attacks on our rights.
Privacy and free speech are going to be constantly attacked and they’ll use whatever excuse they can to try and legitimize their cause. Harassment, terrorism, sexism, bigotry, criticism, you name it and they’ll use it to try and take away your rights.
Gamergate will just have been the precursor, eventually I think there’ll be more movements based around fighting for freedom of speech ethics. If this only spirals out of control from here I could see a full blown revolution down the road.
Well, of course you can. Because you clearly have no understanding of history and only a tenuous connection with reality.
8) “When the lunatic horde comes knocking, we stand up, stand strong, arms linked and spirits high, voices joined in harmony, millions of different pitches mingling into a rising crescendo of unity and strength.”
In an r/KiA comment with more than a dozen upvotes, Ferlion123 gets all inspirational:
Where do we go from here?
We go to our families and we go to our friends. We go on with our jobs and our lives. And when the lunatic horde comes knocking, we stand up, stand strong, arms linked and spirits high, voices joined in harmony, millions of different pitches mingling into a rising crescendo of unity and strength.
We will go on with our lives until the call comes, and when it does we will stand before the tide upon our shores and before our fires will they disperse. We will stand before any rush and we will not break or fall.
What we do is EXACTLY what we’ve been doing. We stand on our own legs, allies at our side, and we finish this fight.
Is this plagiarized from somewhere? I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure Ferlion123 means it all quite sincerely.
9) “Now we are the only things that stand between them and world domination.”
In an r/KiA comment with 70 upvotes, Neo_Techni seems to have a hard time telling the difference between anime and reality.
It started with censorship, and the censors won. It was inevitable that they’d get drunk on that power and try to censor the world. Now we are the only things that stand between them and world domination.
It’d make a great anime so long as funimation doesn’t get to touch 1984 it up
No, I’m not quite sure just what that last, er, “sentence” is supposed to mean either.
10) “I can imagine SJWs one day coming up with a reason to defend diseases from being cured.”
In response to a comment in which someone called deathonwingz suggests, at least half seriously, that “I get the feeling this won’t be over until we’ve cured cancer, stopped world hunger, colonized mars and done many other things,” commenter FiveThou writes
Now you say that, but I can imagine SJWs one day coming up with a reason to defend diseases from being cured. “Viruses are living things that share our planet. How dare you be so cruel to them.” “Don’t go to see the doctor – he’s only going to AIDS-shame you.”
11) “You weren’t necessarily sent to the gulags for criticizing Brezhnev, but you never worked again.”
Tigers_ suggests that the power of Sarkeesian et al is comparable to that of the Soviet authorities in the era of Brezhnev. I suppose we should give him half a point for not going with a full-blown Stalin comparison.
I’ve been wanting to find a way to address these issues in an entertaining and accessible fashion for a few years now. Real life issues hold me back, but there’s also the incessant fear of something like that destroying any hopes I have at a career of my chosing for engaging. It’s not like there isn’t a massive risk. You weren’t necessarily sent to the gulags for criticizing Brezhnev, but you never worked again.
12) “Think feminism doesn’t kill people? Fucking yes it does, Srebrinca was possible because of feminist mindset.”
Xyluz85, meanwhile, gets no points for reining in rhetorical excess with this comment, not specifically referencing Sarkeesian but made in the wake of her UN visit.
It’s not about the fear that they can win this, it’s more about how big the damage will be when the time comes feminism goes away. And it get’s more horrifing by the day. I learn more and more about this mindset, and what it does to people. Think feminism doesn’t kill people? Fucking yes it does, Srebrinca was possible because of feminist mindset, Haiti women-only food pretty sure killed some people, lynchmobs killing innocent people surley happend.
I think I’ll just end this post here.
Oh, wait, I almost forgot TREASON.
13) “Don’t listen to the leftist lies: both Zoe and Anita (assuming she is a citizen of the United States) have committed a felony by explicitly and directly lobbying foreign governments for the abolition of Net Neutrality and the “licensing” of internet content providers.
HonorableJudgeHolden provided “evidence” for this assertion in the form of a meme-enhanced “info”graphic.
This is the only Reddit comment or post I’ve quoted here, in this Gamer’s Dozen, that #GamerGaters considered too ridiculous to upvote.
If you want to see what Sarkeesian and Quinn actually said at the UN, here’s a video of their testimony, courtesy of Laughing Witch.
“Draws a distinction between content in film (which viewers are forced to watch) with content in games (which players choose to play)”
I, um, what? If anything I’d rather walk out of a <$10 movie than give up on a $50+ game, but the purchasing of both is the same level of choice.
@argenti,
I meant that while playing a game you have some choice about what content to see, but while watching a movie you don’t.
@Orion: With most games, I really don’t have much of a choice. Even heavily modular games still feature many situations and characters that you always or usually encounter. If Shephard’s armor from Mass Effect was designed as a cyber-bra with space panties, you’d always have to look at it. You cannot chose NOT to view it without boycotting the game entirely, just like a movie.
Also, just because you can in some cases not look at sexist scenes (or play around them) doesn’t mean the stop existing.
Experiencing disturbing content in a game affects me far more than watching it in a film. It’s why things like Spec Ops: The Line are as effective as they are.
Yep, and this is actually something Sarkeesian addresses in her videos. Like, okay, you don’t NEED to brutally murder the strippers in Hitman, but the game is set up in such a manner that you MAY do so. This means that the game designers anticipated that possibility, and created the framework for players to do it, knowing that some would be delighted by it. You don’t NEED to hire a sex worker to restore health in GTA, and you don’t NEED to shoot her afterwards to get your money back, but you *can*, because the game developers know that people would want to, and so they gave them the tools to do it.
And yes, you brutally murder all kinds of people in both of those games, but there is a super problematic degree of titillation that is designed into the senseless, intentional murder of women (especially, but not only, of female sex workers), that you never, ever see with male NPCs.
All that Sarkeesian says in her videos is that this is pretty messed up, and that it plays right into existing societal prejudices against women. Which I find hard to argue with—especially since she doesn’t even call for boycotts of those sorts of problematic games, much less blanket bans. She’s pointing and essentially saying, “That’s gross,” and people are howling about it like she’s calling for some sort of virtual book burning.
You know what? I might just need to bring Rosie back to Reddit for this sub right there.
“Ugh”, indeed!
It’s some of the most nonsensical character design I’ve seen, next to the latter-day Final Fantasy games.
To be honest, besides Snake-Eater, I don’t really like the MGS series that much and Hideo Kojima’s creative choices are a big reason. His plotlines are pointlessly convoluted, his characters are either one-dimensional or reworked archetypes than anything unique or complex. those same characters interact as if they belong in either a daytime soap opera or a straight-to-video 1980’s action movie, and he seems incapable of blending the contrasting tones of being a realistic “war is hell” drama and an over-the-top action anime. It’s difficult to take it seriously on any level, which Kojima wants you to, when you’re also witnessing characters who can summon whales and flying unicorns made out of flames.
MGS3, being a prequel done right, was fairly accessible as a stand-alone story (even when referencing events that take place after it) and thus vastly more enjoyable as a result.
It’s also something of note that one of the main antagonists is properly attired female super-soldier but does show off some skin…to reveal a very unpleasant-looking scar she got on the battlefield. Even the other prominent female character, who shows off for titillation, is a Mata Hari-type spy using “honey pot” tactics to infiltrate and gather information. It’s weird to know these two characters were made by the same guy who created Quiet and defends her appearance using emotional blackmail…
Kootiepatra:
The more reasonable she is, the louder the howling. If she were a book-burner, she’d be easier to dismiss. But someone making such measured points, while taking care to point out that it’s still possible to enjoy media which has problematic elements? That gets listened to by people who matter, and that’s a real threat.
Orion,
As far as I’m concerned, the point of the first amendment isn’t that everyone can say what they want and be an asshole anywhere, anytime. The point is that you can’t have democracy if the government is shutting down dissent of those in power. It’s not there to stop internet or workplace policies. It’s not oppression to get banned from Twitter or have a subreddit shut down.
Crowstaff,
Could you please try to read me a little more charitably? Yes, I’ve played games, I know that there’s a lot of mandatory content; some games are *all* mandatory content. I noticed the grammatical ambiguity and considered revising my paragraph to emphasize that only *some* content is optional, but this is an informal conversation and I hoped that people would do me the honor of not taking me for an idiot. I don’t want to get tl;dr’d so I do trust readers to cut me some slack.
The point is: some content is optional, and it demands a different critical approach than content in other media does.
Speaking of which: it’s pretty condescending to preemptively rebuke MRA arguments that I’m not going to make. I was never going to say that optional content should be exempt from criticism, because that is ridiculous. Of course optional content should be criticized; it just presents an interesting new set of critical questions.
GTA infamously lets you murder sex workers and arguably rewards you for doing so. That’s not good. But if Tony Stark murdered a prostitute in Iron Man 2 and it was never mentioned again, that would have been much worse. I think it’s clear that making content optional is mitigating, though not exonerating.
Anyway, the questions that interest me are not about bad, skippable content, but about choices that fork narratives and how to analyze them. Consider a fantasy adventure game in which the protagonist has a girlfriend (the protagonist can be male or female, but they have a girlfriend either way). The protagonist also has a younger sibling of opposite gender. Early in the game you make a choice which has nothing overtly to do with gender: ally with elves, dwarves, or dragons. Later in the game there is a kidnapping plot. If you sided with the elves, your girlfriend is kidnapped and you have to rescue her. If you side with the dwarves, you are kidnapped and your girlfriend rescues you. If you side with the dragons, your sibling is kidnapped and you team up with your girlfriend to rescue them.
If you were a critic, how would you review this game? Would you average out the storylines and say something like “this game has an admirable commitment to gender diversity, allowing all genders to appear as rescued and rescuers”? Would you treat the 3 paths as separate works of art, and say something like “the elf campaign is a tedious rehash of tired damsel tropes?” Would your opinion be different if your player knew the consequences of their choice? Would it be fair to use footage from the elf campaign in a TvW video?
Kerzner just assumes that Sarkeesian doesn’t understand or respect this issue and uses it as a club to bash Sarkeesian with, which is wrong. But I think they’re interesting questions and I’m glad she raises them. I would be genuinely interested to find out what Sarkeesian thinks about them, not as a “gotcha” but because she’d probably have something interesting to say.
I agree 100% with this.
A lot of the worst things people say about Sarkeesian stem from, I think, the knowledge that she’s making the public conversation about games more thoughtful and insightful; and this makes it harder for them to be oblivious, selfish assholes.
That’s ridiculous. It might or not not be oppression to be banned from Twitter. You can’t say without knowing the details. Banned for tweeting death threats at journalists? Not oppression. Banned for being a member of the communist party? Totally oppression.
If Twitter chooses to be an anti communist site, that’s their right. You don’t need a Twitter account to have a decent quality of life or to have freedom or participate in democracy. I would argue it’s assholish for them to ban communist accounts. It’s not the same as the government ordering Twitter to shut down communist accounts. To argue that it is is completely disingenuous.
Poor little MRA trollsickles don’t even understand that ‘radical feminism’ is actually quite a specific term, and doesn’t mean their strawman notion of ‘bad-nasty-cruel-fanatical-feminists.’ Seems MRAs know nothing about the history and key concepts of gender and gender critique. Now why doesn’t that surprise me!
Good thing that I never said they were the same, then.
You say “assholish, ” I say “illiberal, undemocratic, contrary to free speech principles.” 6/Half dozen?
Orion, you’re an intelligent person who has said many smart things in their life. Please don’t go down the road of “I never said X” because it’s not going to end well.
@Orion: but Twitter does not have to be democratic or devoted to liverty, since it is not the government.
EJ,
What would you recommend I do when people attribute things to me I don’t believe I said or implied? I am honestly interested in your opinion, because the responses I have tried in the past have not worked out well.
… *blinks*
The idea of somebody dismissing the entire concept of objectification out of hand then claiming to be a feminist is so bizarre, misses the definition of feminism so fucking hard, I can’t even think of a humorous simile for it.
SFHC,
Well, technically she agrees that objectification exists. In movies. But there’s no objectification in video games. Because reasons. Look, there’s a lot of stupid stuff in those articles, and maybe my tolerance for bullshit is too high. I just thought that she had some cool observations and an enjoyable prose style and figured I’d pass it along. Actually, my bullshit tolerance is definitely too high. I do cringe that I ever described it as “compassionate.” On my first readthrough, I did notice some of the stuff Kootiepatra flagged (personal attacks, insults, sexism), but completely failed to see how pervasive and vicious it was.
Why is democracy good?
@Orion:
My own rule of thumb is to assume that if people attribute such things to me, then it’s because I fucked up my communication. When we write something on the internet, we hold opinion A, mean to express view B, write thing C; then the reader reads it as D and believes you hold opinion E. If A and E are too far apart, that’s because we were unclear when we wrote it.
This is why posting quick rebuttals when you’re angry is a bad idea, because our ability to consider it and think “what will the E look like if I write this” becomes distorted by our desire to defend ourselves. If in doubt, disengage and reconsider.
It isn’t good in and of itself. It’s just that we’ve never found a workable alternative that raises the total human utility by the same amount. If we find said alternative and can see that it works in the wild, I’ll happily support it.
I really can’t figure out how anyone could describe Anita Sarkeesian as a “radical” feminist. Even using the incorrect definition that anti-feminists like to throw around (they seem to think it means “extremist”). How does someone decide that mild criticism of video games is extreme? I guess if you can be tricked into believe that “good” feminists are women like CH Sommers who make whole careers out of telling women to shush up and obey their male superiors…
@megpie71
I actually think that there’s a case to be made that ‘censorship’ can come through unofficial channels. To put it in pre/non-internet terms: Imagine there was some guy writing – I don’t know – pro-Catholic editorials for the local paper, and a neighborhood group of staunch anti-Catholics decided to put an end to it. So, they break down this guy’s door, burn all his manuscripts and reference books, smash his typewriter, and tell him that if they ever see another pro-Catholic editorial around here, there will be some even-more-serious consequences. Now, this example doesn’t involve anything happening in any official capacity, but if it’s not ‘censorship,’ well, what is it? It could be referred to as ‘silencing,’ ‘intimidation,’ etc., but since it involves a group exercising its power to prevent someone from creating a type of media, ‘censorship’ feels like an accurate description. And then, there are also many real-world examples of powerful, non-govermental organizations exerting control over media (i.e. the MPAA) – maybe not technically ‘censorship,’ but it makes sense to view it through that particular lens.
So to come back to the discussion at hand: it’s always super-ironic to see GamerGate yelling about ‘censorship,’ since if anyone in the whole GamerGate fracas has been implementing something that can reasonably be called ‘censorship,’ it’s GamerGate themselves with their myriad silencing tactics.
@Kootiepatra
Yeah, well-put. I’ve tried to internet-argue the Hitman: Absolution thing several times now (to which one might say “Gee, Mike, is that really the best use of your time?” to which I might say um… yeah… shut up and stuff). What it always comes down to is: people insist that you can’t hold the developers responsible for those in-game actions, because those are just a few of an endless array of choices open to the player. Of course, the truth is that the options open to the player in a game like Hitman: Absolution are not endless at all – they’re actually profoundly limited, with most aspects of the experience having been carefully engineered by the game’s designers. I think that this actually speaks to something kind of, well, scary about the ways interactive media can affect perception, with people treating a somewhat-open in-game scenario as if it has the same degree of potentialities and possibilities as any real-world situation; it’s something that I hope some people are actually looking into…
Orion,
You didn’t explicitly say it, but you sure are implying it by saying that a website should be democratic. Twitter is not a democracy. It’s not a great business model for a social media site to restrict account holders to people with certain points of view only, but they want to, they can. Because again, they’re a social media site. Not a nation. Not a democracy. A website is under no obligation to provide a platform for everyone who wants one. Not providing a platform does not equal censorship.