We Hunted The Mammoth
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Anita Sarkeesian’s assorted haters frequently demand “proof” that she’s really been harassed. Sarkeesian regularly provides proof, in sickening detail; her haters resolutely ignore the evidence.
Men’s Rights provocateur and bow-hunting enthusiast Janet Bloomfield — a.k.a. JudgyBitch — has not been shy about sharing her fantasies of violent retribution against feminists.
Several months ago, you may recall, she begged her Patreon supporters to send her $800 so she could buy a “beautiful angel of death crossbow with which she could, as she giddily explained, “shoot … feminists in the face” if they showed up at her door.
Today, inspired by her colleague Jack Barnes’ threats against me, Bloomfield has reiterated her desire to shoot her enemies dead. In a post on her blog, archived here, she writes
The University of Toronto is on edge in the wake of online comments urging a mass shooting of feminists.
Last week, an anonymous online commenter on BlogTO urged men to “rent a gun from a gang and start firing bullets into these feminists at your nearest Women’s Studies classroom.”
Here’s one of the threats, screencapped by a woman who posted it on Twitter and alerted police:
Last month, police say, University of Mary Washington student and feminist/LGBT activist Grace Mann was murdered — bound and asphyxiated by a male housemate and fellow student.
An antifeminist blogger is blaming her death on feminist jokes about misandry.
Men’s Rights activists are the only ones asking these tough questions about the recent threats against Anita Sarkeesian and other outspoken women in gaming.
Utah State University has just announced that Anita Sarkeesian has canceled a talk she was scheduled to give at the school tomorrow after receiving a threat of a “Montreal Massacre-style attack” by someone promising ““the deadliest school shooting in American history” if the cultural critic was allowed to speak.
Here’s the official announcement:
Anita Sarkeesian has canceled her scheduled speech for tomorrow following a discussion with Utah State University police regarding an email threat that was sent to Utah State University. During the discussion, Sarkeesian asked if weapons will be permitted at the speaking venue. Sarkeesian was informed that, in accordance with the State of Utah law regarding the carrying of firearms, if a person has a valid concealed firearm permit and is carrying a weapon, they are permitted to have it at the venue.
Emphasis added. That’s right: the school received threats from someone promising to shoot people at a public event, but because of Utah’s gun laws, authorities would not be able to prohibit audience members from BRINGING GUNS to the talk.
The screencap above shows a discussion on the still-active #burgersandfries IRC channel about the media coverage of the recent death threats directed at indie game devveloper Brianna Wu.
Apparently any publicity is good publicity, even if your “movement” is getting media attention for being the likely source of death threats against a female developer.
Before some stray GamerGater comes by to inist that this guy “isn’t really a #GamerGater because that’s on IRC,” this seems to be the guy’s Twitter account. As you can see, @Thidran regularly Tweets and retweets comments using the #GamerGate tag or the abbreviation GG; he’s also obsessed with Zoe Quinn. BUT IT’S NOT ABOUT HER WE’VE ALL MOVED PAST THAT.
H/T — r/GamerGhazi for the screencap.
The memes above? A fan of indie game developer Brianna Wu made them, using the text from some of Wu’s acerbic tweets about #GamerGaters. Wu thought the memes were funny, and posted them to Twitter.
So what do you do when a fondly held fantasy crumbles? That’s a question that both Davis Aurini and Jordan Owen have had to ask themselves this past week, when something they both desperately hoped was true – that Anita Sarkeesian had lied about contacting the police about death threats she’d gotten on Twitter – was shown convincingly to be false.
