Another one for the HUGE GIGANTIC IRONY file: A panel on online harassment, scheduled for the 2016 SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, was cancelled today due to threats of violence.
The panel organizer, Caroline Sinders, got an email from SXSW organizers explaining that the panel wouldn’t be happening because
we have already received numerous threats of violence regarding this panel, so a civil and respectful environment seems unlikely in March in Austin.
The note went on to explain that “[f]or this reason, we have also cancelled other sessions at the 2016 event that focused on the Gamergate controversy.”
By “other sessions” SXSW actually meant only one other session, a putative discussion of “the Gaming Community” featuring a panel of Gamergaters.
The panel on harassment, while featuring Gamergate critics/targets Randi Lee Harper and Katherine Cross, was not intended to be an anti-Gamergate panel as such, but a wider discussion of harassment online.
SXSW’s public statement on the cancellation of both panels, which echoed some of the language of the email sent to Sinders, had a weird, victim-blamey tone to it. Declaring that “SXSW prides itself on being a big tent and a marketplace of diverse people and diverse ideas,” the statement went on to explain why SXSW had tossed both panels out of the tent:
[P]reserving the sanctity of the big tent at SXSW Interactive necessitates that we keep the dialogue civil and respectful. If people can not agree, disagree and embrace new ways of thinking in a safe and secure place that is free of online and offline harassment, then this marketplace of ideas is inevitably compromised.
Of course, the “marketplace of ideas” is also compromised if harassers can shut down discussions they don’t like with threats.
THIS IS OBVIOUSLY AN ATTACK AGAINST GAMERGATE (#ETHICS) PUT TOGETHER BY JEWKEISSAN AND HER FEMENAZIS!!!!!!!!!!1!1!!!!!!11
But really, the irony and lack of self-awareness here is just beyond belief.
@itsabeast:
That may be (and I doubt it) what they intended to mean by that statement. However, when you cancel a panel about the very subject of harassment and people who ruin things for everyone with threats, that taints said statement in very clear ways.
So I just got through a few different comment sections.
Wanna guess how many of them had Gators blame this on SJews?
Yea.
Another fucking win for the Heckler’s Veto.
I’ll be honest–I would have understood the basic decision. The con staff has to worry, not just about the safety of the panelists, but also the guests. Yes, it sucks, but I could comprehend a decision that you don’t want con-goers getting caught in literal crossfire. (These days, especially, someone who shoots up a panel is not likely to put their gun down and go quietly after shooting the panelists–they’d just keep going until the cops or security took them down, which means violence would likely spill into the corridor outside the panel room, at the least. And I don’t even want to think about a bomb.)
However, in order to do this ethically, it is incumbent upon the staff to make their announcement in way that puts the blame on the side using threats and violence in the most aggressive and condemnatory fashion possible. “Cowards” and “bullies” should be considered acceptable language. The bland, mealy-mouthed, white-washed corporate statement that they came out with is what really loses my sympathy.
Here’s a link to the comic: http://www.jimchines.com/2013/08/sexual-harassment-conversations-in-comic-form/
http://www.sff.net/people/jchines/Pics/Harassment.jpg
Level Up, the panel about harassment, was selected by the official SXSW panel voting system. The SavePoint panel, the one with with GomerGroper connections, was somehow shoehorned in after voting was closed.
Yup. GomerGate was all about how women are “invading” men’s so-called spaces, “gaming” being one (never mind that we’ve been playing computer games too, for as long as they’ve existed, and that the original ones were all genderless in terms of both content and marketing). Of COURSE men aren’t going to “give” us space. And when we insist on being there anyway, they’re going to actively try to drive us out. And uncivil, disrespectful “discussion”, full of gendered slurs, is their first line of “defence”.
So all I know about sxsw is Burnie has been going to speak at it for the last few yeara. I can’t imagine he wouldn’t go because of this, (because he would see that as a disservice to fans and stuff) but I want to see what him and other panalist say about it.
This could be a dession that hurts them alot, I never even knew it was a music festival, just alot of tech panels.
Thanks, deniseeliza! I bow to your superior Google-fu.
Huh, my gravatar went wonky. Weird.
Basically. That, or “Our image as ‘inclusive’ is more important to us than your safety (and actual inclusion in places where the dominant crowd will fight tooth and nail to exclude you).”
SXSW should just change its initials to CYA. Or WDGAF.
Wait? The Goobergate panel lost and was only included so misogynists could have their safe space?
I thought that they hated safe spaces and “the peoples will” being circumvented for reasons of political correctness?
test
KiA was involved in the SavePoint panel planning… of course:
http://www.donotlink.com/h5o0
Translation: ‘Bouncers are expensive.’
Since, once again, I seem to disagree with just about everyone, I worry that there may be something I don’t understand, but here goes.
The mealy-mouthed public statement notwithstanding, I support SXSW’s decision for the same reasons I supported Anita when she cancelled an appearance in Utah, and Briana when she left her home for a period in response to the threats. Both decisions were criticized by Gaters as overreacting, but I felt at the time that no one else has the right to judge someone else’s need to be safe, and that’s how I feel now.
I don’t think it’s that clear that this is a victory for the Gaters, since it makes them look like criminals and thugs, and since it tends to validate the reaction to situations mentioned above that they’ve sought to minimize, but the bottom line is that everybody has the right to do what they need to to do to be safe. Safety in the primary concern. It’s the festivals responsibility, and its their their call.
@freemage
>>However, in order to do this ethically, it is incumbent upon the staff to make their announcement in way that puts the blame on the side using threats and violence in the most aggressive and condemnatory fashion possible. “Cowards” and “bullies” should be considered acceptable language. The bland, mealy-mouthed, white-washed corporate statement that they came out with is what really loses my sympathy.
Yep.
Anyone see this? Nice to see that there are those who don’t tolerate this crap.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnashrulla/buzzfeed-threatens-to-withdraw-from-sxsw-over-canceled-gamin?utm_term=.tlqXqqdmoP#.pkL499mVN7
I sense a great fail in the Force.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the majority of the people who run SXSW are white dudes.”
Isn´t that prejudice?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/27/this-is-not-a-game-how-sxsw-turned-gamergate-abuse-into-a-spectator-sport.html
Here’s some more info regarding this whole mess. It seems SXSW have handled this poorly from start to finish making this even more of a shit show. Hell, some of their actions can kinda be looked at as SXSW just flat out being pro-GG.
@Felix Ray:
I don’t think those situations are entirely comparable. If the panelists had backed out for their own safety, I’d agree with you. But as near as I can tell, the panelists were ready and willing to move forward. It was SXGW who cancelled their panel on them. That makes it a rather different scenario in my book.
@Felix and Jarred:
Also, it’s not just that SxSW cancelled the panel. It’s that they did so with wording that made it seem as if it was less about safety and more about the fact that the “two sides” couldn’t get along, so nobody would take part. Despite the fact that the two panels weren’t “two sides” and that if they were, one side was anti-harassment and the other would be pro-harassment.
If SxSW had just left it at safety concerns, things might be a little different. As it stands, it’s as if SxSW were treating the subject of harassment like a philosophical exercise between two children shouting “they hit me first!”
@Lisa C, then again they ask for *both* panels to be reinstated, so I am not sure how sincere they really are here. Seems more like a hollow PR trick to me
But they intend to look like criminals and thugs.
yeah this is all standard Gater MO. Paint targets on their favorite hates, let their thugs pour in with abuse and threats, scream “THIS IS OBVIOUSLY SJW FALSE FLAG TO RUIN OUR REPUTATION,” snow everybody with “both sides” garbage.
And the “both sides” bullshit works. “How terrible,” whines SWSX, “that these women have brought their war with Gatergate to our nice convention. They should have known better than to endanger everybody like this with their very controversial and dangerous habits of Being Women Who Once Did Something Gatergate Didn’t Like and, even worse, Not Just Shutting Up And Going Away.”
Their pearl-clutching apologists have the same attitude. They’re the kind of people who totally think Gatergate must have a point, but it just has “too-enthusiastic” elements, and really it’s terrible you’re being targeted by threats but clearly you’ve been kind of asking for it and you should have been more careful, goodness we didn’t have death threats back in my day, what did you do to set all these people off, it must have been something terribly improper, good on the very adult and venerable and Serious SWSX to have made their very mature and considered statement on all this dreadfulness like they did, let me adjust my monocle.
I agree with Katz. GamerGoaters don’t care if they look like criminals or thugs. They spend most of their time trying to be criminals, by doxxing and harassing people. They got their victory; they shut down a panel they didn’t like and silenced people (mainly women) just like they always do.
The panelists were completely willing to deal with the harassing comments and all; they didn’t want to share a space with the people openly harassing them and that was what was going to happen. Instead of being granted the right to NOT deal with their harassers (and SXSW seems to have all the evidence they needed to deny the Gamer panel), they were instead shut down under the pretense of being uncivil and unrespectful.