It begins with simple threats. You know, rape, dismemberment, the usual. It’s a good place to start, those threats, because you might simply vanish once those threats include your family. Mission accomplished. But today, many women online – you women who are far braver than I am – you stick around. And now, since you stuck around through the first wave of threats, you are now a much BIGGER problem. Because the Worst Possible Thing has happened: as a result of those attacks, you are NOW serving Victim-Flavored Koolaid.
And Victim-Flavored Koolaid is the most dangerous substance on earth, apparently. And that just can’t be allowed.
The fact that I have to turn off comments on articles about the systematic abuse women receive from these low-life idiots on a small site like OSNews is all the proof you need. Until I no longer receive abusive comments for pointing out this issue, comments will remain closed.
Stop treating people like shit Internet, you’re 40 years old, time to grow up. That these spoiled children could have garnered this much attention is embarrassing.
Makes me sad to be a gamer, and a geek.
Edited 2014-10-08 18:40 UTC
That’s why I don’t think of myself as a gamer
Or play games online. It was terrible in Quake/TF in 1997 and it’s not gotten any better.
On the other hand the flipside is the “social justice warriors” and how anybody that doesn’t follow their beliefs is a “racist/sexist/homophobe/bigot”.
For a perfect example look at gamergate or the brown shooting. I saw people attacked for saying things like “reviewers really shouldn’t be talking on private channels and comparing notes, its too easy to add bias or steer discussion” and on Brown I saw those that even just asked for more information called racist and bigot and openly attacked.
I’m sorry if this takes anything away from women who are legitimately threatened on the net but like it or not there is a group of professional victims out there who use their race of sex as a shield to deflect criticism, look at how many were called bigots and sexist for daring to say they didn’t like “depression quest”.
I’m all for protecting women online from abuse but I’m ALSO for having free and open discussion, and having one shouldn’t require losing the other. Unfortunately there are social justice warriors that use such things as an excuse to push their political viewpoint, so make sure you aren’t pushing an agenda or stifling free speech while you are at it, ok?
Wow thanks for making my point social justice warriors, between you and the “everybody who disagrees with my ultra left beliefs condones rape!” below show why social justice warriors should be hated, and its because SJWs are lovers of totalitarianism and haters of free speech.
To a SJW the ONLY freedom of speech is the freedom to agree, if you don’t mainline their koolaid? Then you are a racist/bigot/rapist enabler/homophobe, and any other word they can use to try to derail any and all discussion because “how can their be discussion when I am right and everyone else is wrong?”.
Frankly as disgusting as the ones spewing hate because of race/sex/orientation/religion are I’d take a million of them over a group of SJW any day of the week because at least THEY aren’t trying to take away the right of free speech which is the end goal of the SJW, as the one below throwing labels while ignoring every word the other person says so aptly demonstrates.
Holy **** Batman! You clearly have not interacted with the first group to any reasonably long lasting period of time. Or you are one of them.
There. It’s the same crap from the other side. That you just proved to be true, by spreading misinformation/lies.
Gamers are mostly nice people. And those white “journalists” who generalize and shame us gamers are getting their ads pulled. TheVerge is pissed.
#GamerGate, the consumer revolt, is here to stay.
Funny how that works, eh?
Recent events have provided further and clear evidence of the pervasive levels of corruption/conflict of interests among the so-called tech “journalism” (using the term extremely loosely) sector. And voila… the narrative suddenly changes to “think of the women!”
It’s disgusting at so many levels and dimensions. But at the same time, it’s rather enlightening.
There are several independent causes here that should all be fixed. Gaming journalism is still fairly unprofessional[1], women are mostly decorations or passive plot elements in games[2], and anyone gamers dislike get disproportionate amounts of hatemail/threats/vitriol sent their way. [3]
Don’t let yourself be led into thinking that just because you are annoyed at the first one, you have to be opposed to the other two.
[1] Though nobody has actually produced any of those supposed good reviews she supposedly slept her way to, so this isn’t even a very good example of something I agree is a problem.
[2] Though not all. And this is also true of action movies, not that “we’re no worse than Hollywood” is a fantastic excuse.
[3] Being a woman seems to make it more aggressive, but ofc it’s not OK if the target is a guy, either.
Edited 2014-10-08 20:59 UTC
Likewise, you should not assume just because the red coat on your herrings is shiny that others would be compelled to entertain them…
Well yes exactly, that was my point. “Gamergate” is a red herring, over something that so far seems to be straight up lies from a vengeful ex – and a convenient excuse to ignore the actual issues re. women/games.
Edited 2014-10-09 09:20 UTC
Hilarious lack of self awareness on display; you can’t even pretend to apply your own earlier unwanted advice to yourself.
Sorry but the only red herring is the affair because we have conclusive proof that the reviewers of several major publications colluded to control discussions, decide what is reviewed and what is pushed aside, and what agenda they should be pushing.
How do we know this? Because we have their emails from their private Google group where they did all that and more, despite pretending that they were deciding these things of their own independent desire what we see is that they were being told to stay on message and push an agenda.
Sorry but no matter how this started the collusion has been exposed and that cat can’t be stuffed back in the bag, no matter how many screams of “that’s sexiss!” they throw.
So personally I don’t care if the author of depression quest slept with every reviewer on both coasts, that is her business and the only bad thing I’ll say about her is I think DQ is a shitty game. What I DO care about is reviewers pretending to be independent when they are not, reviewers lying and then other reviewers trying to cover it up, and the attempt at crushing free speech by playing the gender card. Its disgusting of the reviewers and the fact so many are throwing the word rape around in a blatant attempt to derail discussion, in effect turning it into another “that’s raciss” meme? Well you should all be ashamed of yourselves, you are trivializing a horrific experience just to try to push your agenda…shameful.
This is (a part of) the problem. There is no such thing as “gamers”. It’s just a brand people hide behind to do their evil. Real gamers do not need the label or care what they are called. In fact most older gamers would not even call the modern gamers gamers.
I think what I am saying is we need to stop calling these idiots gamers. They are fucktards and that is all. What else they may do with any of their time is irrelevant.
Word. Some people are just terrible. And, by coincidence, are also gamers.
It’s stupid to side with those people just because somebody would label himself as a gamer, sees “attack” on gamers and feels the need to save the breed. Here is the thing: We are all part of arbitrarily named “groups”!
There is one problem – a lot of those people identify as gamers. And too many of them are angry pathetic bastards.
Ya know maybe its just the genre I play (mainly FPS) but frankly there are just as many if not more “badass action chick” characters in the games as there is damsels anymore, if not more. Take the Borderlands series for examples, who is the more powerful character, so powerful that some have argued they need to be nerfed? The Sirens. Who needs rescuing? The commando. I would argue the only place you haven’t seen much of the badass action chick is the “realistic” war games because…well the US military hasn’t let women be special forces on the front so kinda hard to have the “badass action chick” meme there.
But what pisses me off personally is that so many are being obviously manipulated by the press WRT gamersgate, we have conclusive proof via email that several members of the press are getting together and deciding ahead of time what games to push, what to ignore, and even what discussions will and won’t be allowed, and the fact that they are trying to pull the bigot card to deflect away from their collusion frankly is quite offensive to me. I don’t give a rat’s as if its 2 dudes sleeping together or what, the fact is they have been colluding, accepting favors for reviews, and as far as I’m concerned their opinions are now worthless.
So don’t let ’em change the subject, keep slapping links to the emails, don’t let them get by with this crap #Gamersgate
So… Why are you associating GamerGate with criticisms of Anita’s work? And yet are complaining that somebody else is. Her work has literally nothing to do with ethics in journalism – NOTHING.
That is where you(GamerGaters) get your bad name and all the angry misogynists. And that is why I cannot reasonably support GamerGate.
The best of all this is the more of these types of articles comes out, the more #GamerGate amplifies.
It’s going to make a nice story for future gamers.
It was interesting how digging revealed the link between Polygon and Microsoft.
Edited 2014-10-08 20:54 UTC
All of the allegations against Zoe Quinn were fabricated, made up out of whole cloth, but it’s cool, feel free to continue absolving these dicks of any wrong doing.
There may be wide spread corruption in the game journalist community, but nothing about gamergate shows any of that.
They drove that woman out of her own home, using threats of sexual and other typed of physical abuse, published her person details to the net, they tried to destroy her.
What’s pervasive is the misogyny that seems inherent to parts of the internet.
Edited 2014-10-08 21:15 UTC
Oh boy! People who disagree with the distraction narrative must obviously support rapists, and an implication of misogyny thrown in for good measure.
Way to prove the point…
Edited 2014-10-08 22:53 UTC
It does prove the point, it’s not a distraction, it was the entire operation, the whole “controversy” was nothing more than an excuse to harass somebody to the point they had to flee their home.
In real life, adults are suppose to investigate wrongdoing, and then deal with it appropriately. Are you saying that threatening a person with rape and death, committing slander and massive privacy violations, to the point they need to run from their home, is a just punishment for some sort of nebulous corruption in gaming media?
Really?
Again with the “if someone does not agree with your specific opinion they must support rape” bullshit “argument.”
In any case, thanks for proving my point. Again.
Edited 2014-10-09 18:37 UTC
I’m not sure how, it’s not my opinion, it’s what happened. She was threatened with rape, physical harm, death, her personal information was posted online, she was forced from her home.
And I don’t know what you call such behavior, but it’s not right. How can it be. Come on, defend that behavior.
You can’t, can you? Because it’s indefensible. Regardless what sort of shit goes down in gaming media, treating anyone like that is wrong.
And again, and again, and again… You keep doing the same shit; trying to twist an opinion you disagree with into a supposed support for violence against women.
What you’re doing is both disingenuous and disgusting for multiple reasons. Mainly, it’s an attempt to manipulate others emotionally. Thus far you’re simply ignoring the gist of what I originally wrote and trying to turn it into something else, and worst of all you’re belittling the reality of other people’s actual tragedies by exploiting them in order to either silence or divert the attention from issues you don’t want to consider.
Although I must, once again, thank you for proving my earlier point…
Edited 2014-10-10 16:11 UTC
Well, maybe I missed your point. Is your point that the harassment of these women is “a distraction” from the “real” problem of alledged (and false, from what I read) corruption in gaming media?
because that is what you implied in your original post:
If that was your point, I disagree with it. Entirely. You can say I am “disingenuous and disgusting” but you sir, are the disgusting one, if you believe what happened to these women is “a distraction” from the real issue. Whatever corruption in gaming media does not trump these offenses against these women, not even close. As far as I am concerned, these concerted attacks against women for just daring to have an opinion is wrong
Clear enough for you? I hope so
I’ll invoke Godwin’s Law: It’s like saying “I support National socialists(Nazi) because they had proof that store-owners manipulated certain market, but focusing on attacks on jews is distracting the narrative”
However off-topic this is, it’s in that lane.
An no matter how good the ethics in journalism struggle is, you will have to defend against accusations of misogyny and will be attracting misogynists to #GamerGate. It’s an empty name that is just a sack of s**t.
I would like to point out that a lot of the bad behavior is NOT misogyny. They hate people pretty equally in my view with men getting as much crap from these people as women.
Do they make things up about these men in order to fan the flames and then reveal their personal location/contact details?
Would a male journalist get the same crap if they wrote that misogyny doesn’t exist in the community?
Actually Ted Tso ( a kernel hacker and conference speaker) was publicly and repeatedly flamed and labelled a rape-apologist for daring to question the methodology behind a study on rape. So yeah, it does happen to men too.
Flamed to the point of threats of harm and posting of personal location and contact details?
Not sure this was the guy’s home address, but that hardly seems relevant.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/popular-gamers-real-life…
Just because you can find examples of men being harassed does not mean women are not being harassed, are being less harassed, or anything else.
I’m pretty sure you can find examples of white men being beaten back in colonial days. However, that does not mean black slaves should shut up, be harassed and threatened with rape and violence for speaking up about their systematic abuse, not does it lessen, in any way, the horror of their situation.
You think that comparison is way off?
In large parts of the world, women have about the same status as slaves. I.e., none. There is no place on earth where the same is true of men. So, next time you think a man being harassed in any way negates the worldwide systematic psychological and physical abuse women receive – look at a map, and mark up every country where women are considered mere possessions, and then re-evaluate your life.
The narrative has changed after quite a few have decided to go after real people in a harassment campaign. Add to that chauvinism and you got a very nice platform for misogyny. Or do you really think that that is unfounded?
I’m all for cleaning up tech-journalism, but I refuse to do it under GamerGate tag.
Only thing #GamerGate proves is that gamers are a bunch of immature assholes who cant take criticism or have a constructive discussion. Yeah, these morons are a minority but they’re very vocal and their idiotic behavior isn’t helping the case of the sensible gamers.
And really, if Adam Baldwin and 4chan is on your side you should think very, very hard about what side you’re on and why.
That was a long read, but I’m glad you posted it Thom. I actually never really knew much about the whole thing – but I found that very enlightening.
I’m surprised how far some people will go to harass others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZAxwsg9J9Q
I don’t know why guys went after her with such vigor, but I understand why she pissed them off. Having women objectified in video games is part of the fun for a lot of guys, esp the damsel in distress thing. It’s a fantasy, you know? Kind of like women and their romance novels. You don’t see a lot of guys bitching about those, do you? Imagine if some MRA dudes came along and started talking about the objectification of men in these novels and publicly shaming the women who read them. Although I doubt they’d get death threats, they’d probably get a few strongly-worded letters from women asking, ‘Why are you trying to piss in our pool?’
Yeah, it’s a fantasy that denigrates women to mere objects, depicts them as willing slaves you can beat up and kill, and… oh, how dare she complain, right?
That’s the whole point, isn’t it? You and all the MRA gamers seem to think that games are for men, and it should stay that way. It’s your “pool”, right? Except that you have no fucking business deciding what’s “your pool” and whether other’s should stay out. That reeks of “white only” restaurants and beaches, to give one example.
Many games depict women in deplorable ways, and both women and men have the fullest of rights to point that out, and to call to shame those who make them. The fact that there are so many players of these games that come to the rescue of their “game providers” points out the problem in a most ironic fashion.
Yes indeed, it is OUR pool. We have been swimming in it alone for a long time. We’d be happy to share it with the girls if they want to come and swim, but not when they come and bitch that the water is too cold, there’s too much chlorine, etc. We like our pool the way it is and if you don’t, then go build your own damn pool and swim in it. Maybe we’ll come try yours out if you let us, but we won’t complain that the edges are pink and demand that you paint them blue to be more ‘inclusionary’. Just like we don’t read your romance novels and insist there should be some threesomes or girl on girl action because we find all this guy stuff repulsive. No, we go read our own books instead.
Edited 2014-10-09 18:05 UTC
Man, this is the most misogynist drivel I’ve read here so far. The sheer arrogance of claiming something THAT ISN’T YOURS to start with. What a load of sexist crap. Exactly the same tripe the white power advocates throw up. I’m astonished by the sheer lack of comprehension.
LOL, you’re like those dipshits who label things as ‘intolerance’ or ‘hate speech’ in order to try and censor opinions that you don’t agree with, because you can’t address the points that were raised. Just so that MAYBE your feeble mind can grasp what I am saying, I’m going to take females out of the equation for a moment …
A lot of people in my G+ circles are hardcore gamers, and they are CONSTANTLY ragging on phone games, talking about how Angry Birds sucks and is ruining the industry. They are convinced that phone games will never amount to anything, because you can’t play military shooters on a touch screen very well. And I’m like, ‘why the hell do you care? If you don’t like these games, don’t f-king play them. We have our games, and casual players have theirs. Everybody wins.’ In other words, they’re complaining about games that were never designed for them to begin with.
That’s kind of how I see the male/female gamer demographic. Women tend to not like the majority of games that guys have traditionally been playing, and for good reason. Not only are they violent, but also tend to portray women in ways that piss off feminists. And that’s just the way we like them! If girls want to play GTA and beat up hookers, I’ll be happy to play co-op with them. If not, aren’t there some ‘girl games’ they can go play? Maybe that Kim Kardashian one, or whatever the hell it is they like.
In other words, I don’t care if girls want to play ‘guy games’, but stop trying to neuter them because YOU think they’re offensive. You don’t see guys starting a campaign and demanding that there should be lots of explosions in chick flicks, do you? No, we’ll go watch football or something, and let you enjoy your romantic comedy.
And there you expose the core of the problem. You like to play games that portray women in a very negative, stereotypical, sexist way, and you like it! You like your “hardcore” misogynistic corner of virtual space, and you think that everyone should just shut up about it. It is very honest of you to say so, I have to admit (usually this kind of rethoric is packed with lame pseudo-excuses), but it’s very unsettling nonetheless.
It seems you have very strange, twisted ideas about women, liking “chick flicks”, reading chicklit, playing “Kim Kardashian” games. I can only guess you’ve been raised in a very traditional type environment, where women are home-bound doing the laundery, and real men are drinking beer, chainsaw logs and shoot deer. But in fact, women are really not that different from men once you take away the cultural brainwashing, and may even like to play GTA and FPSes containing extreme violence. They just don’t like that these games TREAT THEM LIKE SHIT, and portray them as filthy whores worthy of rape and murder. I appreciate you can’t grasp that, and I appreciate that many “hardcore gamers” don’t. But that doesn’t make them right, nor does that give them the right to claim a certain territory.
If you like games that treat women like pieces of property that can be exposed when done with, and especially if you like those aspects of such games, you are a blatent misogynist. You are then no better than a racist that “doesn’t want n*s pissing in his pool”. And I’ll celebrate the day when the likes of you will be marginalized and hated like the racists of today.
And why is this a problem, exactly? Liberals have traditionally defended all kinds of vile and despicable shit over the years, including these guys, whom the government tried to censor back in the 80’s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzt7Cp9ybEc
When Jack Thompson came along and told us our games were too violent, he got the same middle finger that the feminists are getting (minus the rape threats, I’m sure). I don’t treat women I encounter in person or online with disrespect, and I never will. Just like I’ll never jack a car after playing GTA, or pick up a gun and start shooting people after a marathon session of Call of Duty. Why? Because I understand the difference between video games and real life. To suggest that I don’t is both narrow-minded and insulting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pusyHn9S_L0
You know what? I’ll agree with you here… IF you also agree that anyone who plays military shooters is a violent psychopath in the making. And I guess we should ban horror movies too, as anyone who likes those is obviously a sick, twisted individual. I swear, liberals have become the very thing they used to fight against.
Yeah, okay. And I guess you can burn books you don’t like while you’re at it. And you’re still using the ‘misogyny’ and ‘racist’ labels, neither of which are true here.
Edited 2014-10-10 17:38 UTC
Because, no matter what you say, and no matter the faulty comparison with car jacking or shooting (see below), this means that your view of women is twisted.
“women I encounter in person” – you make that sound like that’s a very rare occasion, and I tend to believe you! Other than that, it is, again, the narrative of the racist: “I don’t treat blacks with disrespect, they’re just different, that’s all!”
You don’t go car-jacking after GTA because car-jacking is clearly a crime, and you probably don’t have the resources (e.g. a gun) to pull it off, and you know fairly well that in real life, you’ll end up in prison in no-time. Also, playing GTA probably doesn’t reinforce your stereotypical views on how dumb cars are, and that they deserve to get jacked! You don’t go shooting people after CoD for the same reasons, plus afaik CoD doesn’t have an urban setting, but is a war game – I would probably have objections to the game if its objective was a shooting massacre at a kindergarten, for example!
However, playing games that treat women as disposable objects mirrors everyday life way too closely. Women *are* treated like that all the time, and I guess even you would agree that in *real life* that’s really *not* ok. Also, if you’d decide to rape a women, you could very likely get away with it, given the rape culture we live in (at least in the US), as long as she wears sexy clothing and is drunk (i.e. asking for it!). Also, I’m pretty sure that most if not all teenagers (starting age of most gamers) know that shooting and looting is something that is to be avoided (for reasons I mentioned above), but those same teenagers may have denigrating thoughts about women (living in a rape culture, not “understanding” women, etc.), which are completely reinforced by these games.
I’d say they’re soldiers in the making. Military shooters are that, *military*. Now, if as I said above they were shooters with an aim to kill toddlers or school children, I would agree with you.
Strawman. I’m absolutely against book burning, and in favour of almost complete freedom of speech. However, even though I think one should be able to deny the Holocaust, I *don’t* think neo-nazi ideas should be portrayed in mainstream games (imagine a game where the objective is to kill Jews, or a sim-concentration camp, etc.). And equally so I think it’s fine if MRAs clump together somewhere and discuss their vile ideas, but I *don’t* think it’s fine if major software companies include those ideas in their games!
So I guess I’ll go beat up a hooker somewhere tonight, and if I happen to get questioned about it, I’ll just tell the cop she was wearing a mini skirt and the bitch had it coming. I’m sure the cop will let me go, because this kind of thing is tolerated in our society of rape culture.
/s (I’m putting in a sarcasm tag, because I’m sure you would otherwise think I was actually being serious.)
Right, you mean like in GTA V, where you take control of a group of psychopaths who’s very first mission is to shoot up a bunch of cops? And people have actually complained that there are no female leads in this game, as if we had at least one woman to assist us in the virtual murdering of police officers, that would somehow make everything okay. So no, this is NOT about misogyny, as Jack Thompson would attest. It’s about what it has always been about – weird morality, where people want to point out the speck of dirt in somebody else’s eye, and pay no attention to the plank in their own eye. Nobody wants to be told that their entertainment choices are ‘dirty’; it doesn’t feel so good when the shoe is on the other foot, does it?
It’s interesting that people like you who rail against sexism in video games will jump through all kinds of hoops to defend the violence. In other words, you can blow peoples’ heads off until your thumbs get sore, but beating up hookers? OMFG, we can’t have that!!!
In other words, you are STUNNINGLY and EMBARRASSINGLY full of shit.
These are some epic levels of pure nonsense that you’re reaching here.
Edited 2014-10-10 10:55 UTC
You are either deluded or stuck in the 90ies. It’s no longer our pool. The number of people that play video games is so high, that claiming that it’s our is just plain stupid. It’s mass media, where presenting women as mere toys and gays as exclusively flamboyant has affects on people in real life.
WorknMan,
Strongly worded letters are fine. If all that was happening to these critics was strongly worded letters, they sure wouldn’t be getting any sympathy from me (or, I suspect, from Thom). The issue is that they aren’t getting strongly worded letters. They’re getting death-threats and rape-threats accompanied by people revealing their home addresses and calling for action. In Europe at least, it is the nature of the response that is causing the outrage, not the fact that gamers are responding.
Except that that objectification results in lower sensitivity to violence against women. It works exactly the same for males(see the responses that men get if they are raped). Violence against women is seen as less of an issue(In your words ” I understand why she pissed them off”, because I don’t being a gamer). And as an example for males – gay men are raped more often and report rapes even less than women, because of the stereotypes.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/malamuth/pdf/81Jrp15.pdf
I see a lot of guys bitching about those, maybe your friends are not as honest with you.
But there is a difference between a romantic novel and video games – one is a targeted and tailored product that blatantly presents the lust, while the other is a mass media where objectification of women is background decoration that is nothing more than normal.
>>>Thom: The fact that I have to turn off comments on articles about the systematic abuse women receive from these low-life idiots on a small site like OSNews is all the proof you need. Until I no longer receive abusive comments for pointing out this issue, comments will remain closed.
Regardless of our positions (or not) on the matter, please don´t go Loli-Queru on us readers.
Thanks.
Women is the absolute majority (and arguably the only absolute majority) in the world as they are around 52% of the human species. If we really cared we would do something about it, for example vote everyone that does not support our view out of power.
That is a myth. There are actually more men than women in the world in pretty much every age group except the over 55s.
Overall, there are more men than women in the world.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx….
Edited 2014-10-09 06:44 UTC
Many women don’t have a right to vote… or no real choices among politicians.
Stop having forums. If all you get is grief, start pushing for the shutdown of forums. Advocate for the industry to stop using Twitter. The author of the article is right. Once the idiots start, they win. Time to take away their playground.
Just asking – what abusive comments are you talking about? Were there previously comments that were already removed? I didn’t see anything abusive, but I might have missed something that was taken down.
I’m just asking because I’d like to understand specifically what “abusive” means on this site. If abusive means name calling, posting threats, content-less blathering, or just generally being an a**hole than I’m perfectly fine with that.
On the other hand if “abusive” means having a healthy dose of skepticism about things like this, sharing an opinion (possibly unpopular), or failure to tow a political agenda – please tell me now…
I’m being serious. I posted something on one of the earlier threads on this topic that while I in no way consider offensive in any way, it definitely wasn’t pro-feminism either.
Was that one of the “abusive” posts you are talking about?
Edited 2014-10-09 02:39 UTC
Are you going to respond to this?
Id like an answer. Seriously.
I like this site, I like the community here, and I like your writing (even the stuff I don’t agree with). You can post anything you want to, its your site. I don’t recall me ever posting anything abusive towards you (although frankly I admit I can get a bit snarky), but when I don’t agree with something I’m going to say my piece.
That said, if it is going to become commonplace for you to post things like this and disable comments just because you don’t want to give voice to dissenting viewpoints than just say so. Because that is what it seems like you are doing.
If I’m wrong and there was a mountain of mindless crap and attacks towards you that were deleted than I apologize – really I do. I just want some context to understand what this is all about.
To put it bluntly, if your are going to routinely start posting things and disabling comments just to squelch opposing viewpoints you are going to soon find no one is listening anymore…
Really? Really?
Is it really the argument you want to make that requiring accuracy in reporting, disagreeing with news being reported to ideological biases agreed to via secret newslists and requiring accountability for same is a right-wing thing? That it is a ‘right-wing’ value to desire honesty? Wow.
And you wish to hold up that fraudster Anita Sarkeesian (whose videos not only seem terminally delayed but also lacking of substance, as if she truly did not play through the games she claims she has) as an example? A woman whose many claims of victimization fail to stand up to even cursory investigation?
Can I formally request my account in this site be closed? It is far from the place it used to be when I first began posting here over a decade ago and I am ashamed to be associated with what it has become. My account is marked as “Trusted user” and I’ve posted over seven hundred times with generally positive moderation (88% positive) but given the totalitarian bent of the site’s owners I no longer feel comfortable here and no longer trust in its moderation or reporting to be honest.
–bornagainpenguin
I agree with a lot of what Anita Sarkeesian has posted in her videos, and I disagree with a lot of it too, but regardless if you agree or disagree, she certainly has the right to say it, don’t you think?
So she should be threatened and harassed for her opinions? If she didn’t play every goddamn game on her list of games, then she deserves to be threatened with physical abuse, inundated with verbal abuse, and shamed for being a woman?
Stand up for what’s right, regardless of her politics, she DOESN”T DESERVE THAT. Who does? In my view, no one does.
Last time i checked, people should get a chance to defend themselves from allegations of fraud in front of a judge, not punished out of hand by a bunch of idiots on the internet.
What if it was your sister? Your Mother? What these cowardly bastards have done to these women, they could easily do to anyone.
Except, Mr. Penguin thinks that she’s “a woman whose many claims of victimization fail to stand up to even cursory investigation”. It’s like neo-nazi (Godwinned!) holocaust deniers – they’d really be delighted with 6 million dead jews, except it didn’t happen. So it is with Ms. Sarkeesian (and the many other haressment victims): she completely deserves to get doxed and get all those rape threats because of the lies she spreads about video games (and besides, even if they were true, she has no business pissing in the male gamers pool!), but she’s really making them up. Can’t argue with that, can ya?
Let’s just hope that all the attention that this subject gets nowadays will ring a bell somewhere with the large game development companies, so *they* can do something about it.
Dude, if you take video games THAT seriously, you should probably get out more. These ARE nothing more than toys, after all. You’re the type of person who probably whines like a bitch when he loses, and sends a SWAT team over to the house of the guy that kicked your ass.
He was saying that’s how it is, not that’s how it should be.
Indeed, I’m baffled someone could think otherwise, reading the entire comment…
I can’t speak for anybody else, but here’s my opinion.
I’ve watched Ms. Sarkeesian’s videos. I don’t believe that she should be silenced. I don’t understand why anybody is trying to. Her videos are badly researched, contain little to no useful commentary on anything and can be refuted in under 10 minutes by anybody that does any research on the subject. Subjecting her videos to critique isn’t an attempt to silence her. It’s subjecting her stuff to the type of academic analysis that she said she was going to subject video games to.
Which is the problem. She SHOULD have the ability to make whatever content she wants to. She SHOULD also have to tolerate that content being critiqued. While trolls and various Internet scum are a large problem, what touched off this whole mess is that there are certain groups that seem to be able to write and say whatever they want and then not tolerating any skepticism or critique.
Don’t mistake me. I do NOT in any way support what’s been done to her or anybody else, woman or man. But, there are a lot of holes in the narrative that she has provided.
Lastly, both sides are full of idiots right now. Milo Yiannopoulos’s Tweets suggest that he’s an unpleasant man. But Leigh Alexander’s (a woman who has also publicly called for the “doxxing” of those opposed to her, which should put her in the same sort of trouble as this Weev idiot) suggest that she is too. Both sides seem to want to scream past one another and neither wants to admit that they are both responsible for the quagmire that the “community” is in. Video game journalism needs some type of reformation because right now, even if they’re innocent (which I doubt they are), they look biased against, and hostile to, the customers that depend on them.
How about the loudest trolls on both sides of this shut up and let some rational people sort this out?
Like gamers?
There are two problems with the quip you just made.
One, “gamers” are not a unified group with a unified voice. “Gamers” are a collection of people that happen to share one hobby. Saying that “gamers” are the problem because of a few sociopaths and idiots is like saying that Christians are a problem because of the Westboro Baptist Church. One group is part of the other, but is not the representation of that group. This is a “biased sample” fallacy.
Two, “gamers” as a group do not have a consistent podium or audience. Game journalists and “media commentators” (ie. Anita Sarkeesian and Leigh Alexander) do. They can put forth whatever ideas they want and be reasonably assured that their voices will be heard. “Gamers” don’t have that ability. This leads to whatever rebuttals they make likely not being heard, or at the very least, not as well known as the initial arguments. Hence, the “gamers” are misogynists argument being accepted despite evidence to the contrary. (Yes, I know that this could be debated, but the fact that multiple outlets all had articles with extremely similar headlines, content and language indicates that there was some kind of collusion going on).
I’m in no way saying that Ms. Alexander or Ms. Sarkeesian (or anybody else) shouldn’t have the right to say whatever they want. What I am advocating for is that they both do accurate research and that they tolerate skepticism and critique without resorting to censorship. In short, they should be held to a higher standard of research and ethics because they have an audience.
Lastly, Trolls need to dealt with. I know that some countries are starting to examine laws against online bullying. I’m not sure if that’s the answer, but something has to be done to discourage trollish behaviour. As it stands, nobody, man or woman, should have to tolerate what the article’s author did.
That is a myth that her opposition has made up. Not once did she say that it’s going to be academic in any way, shape or form. She says that she is a pop-culture critic. The videos’ goal was to point out recurring elements related to women in games. It’s like standing in from of Picasso’s Guernica and complaining that it has no peer-reviewed research paper attached to it.
Except that there is not a single public critique piece that is more than nitpicking technical details or getting all anti-feminism.
This is highly disingenuous.
On her website Sarkeesian describes her videos an “educational resource to encourage critical media literacy” and promotes them for use as “educational tools in high school and university classrooms”. She promotes herself and her videos using her academic qualifications, and has lectured on the subject at various universities.
This separates her work from the average Youtube critic, who doesn’t pretend to be creating educational videos for classroom use, rather than simply presenting a personal opinion.
That being the case, and considering her resources, I don’t think it’s too much to expect Sarkeesian to properly research the subject and at least pretend to be objective. Instead she’s churned out blatantly biased videos full of glaring errors, pushed controversial claims as proven fact, and made it clear that she’s only interested in pushing an agenda.
This is typical of many Sarkeesian defenders.
Anyone debunking the specific examples she uses, e.g. by showing how they’re cherry picked and misrepresented, is simply hand waved away as “nitpicking technical details”.
Anyone disagreeing with her wider narrative, e.g. questioning concepts like “objectification”, or challenging her claims about a link between video games and violence, is dismissed as anti-feminist (and therefore misogynistic and anti-woman).
Never mind that much of the critique Sarkeesian has received is better researched and more balanced than her own “educational” work; anything that debunks her propaganda will simply be dismissed, using one excuse or another.
Oh, and if you want to leave, stop coming here.
Oh nice. Desire honesty and this in one comment? Not a single person has managed to conclusively prove that she is a fraudster. No one will miss your poorly informed opinion.
So when are you going to start running articles on men that have lost half or all of everything they’ve ever worked for?
When you are you going to run articles on how female aggression just basically doesn’t exist?
When are you going to run articles on judges predisposition to go with the woman’s story?
How about custody? Men can’t take care of kids, right?
How many men have been sexually assaulted by opportunistic women?
Of course, this is all a non-issue, right?
It’s not like they’ve impeached a goddamned president over something like this.
Go complain in the middle east or something, where you at least still have a case.
Edited 2014-10-10 10:06 UTC
Sucks about the internet. You get bigger exposure so the damage is potentially much bigger.
I think women are also a bit more sensitive to stalking. Men get pissed and super irritated by this type thing, I think women may tend to be more fearful and justifiably so.
It also means the criminal charges should be comparatively more as well. Defamation, fraud, endangerment, etc….