Before this was cancelled, Utah State University police announced "enhanced security measures will now be in place, which include prohibiting backpacks and any large bags." But anyone who had a permit to carry a concealed firearm would be allowed to bring it to the venue.
I guess the theory is that anyone targeting Ms. Sarkeesian would have gone down in a hail of patriot bullets, but she wisely decided not to test this.
Yep; it was not the massacre threat but the refusal to deny concealed carry that prompted Anita to cancel her event. The title implies a wrong causality like that.
I can't imagine attending an event where people could carry concealed weapon, even as completely average dude.
> I can't imagine attending an event where people could carry concealed weapon
Have you ever been to America? If so, you have almost certainly already attended countless events where somebody in the audience had a gun. The staggering majority of the time there are no incidents, so it is easy to overlook this.
"Gun Owner Openly Carries Gun To Little League Game Without Incident" doesn't make for nearly as sensational a headline as "Thirty-Seven Massacred At Redbox Dropoff" and newspapers exist to tell us about sensational events.
I won't deny that there are responsible gun owners, but they're not a problem. The problem is that any nutjob can carry a gun and by the time he or she has demonstrated working knowledge of a safety and trigger, it's too late.
Even the nutjobs we know are nutjobs are allowed to carry.
And yes, there are people who carry as a condition of their job, even when they're not on the job. But they are somewhat answerable to some authority other than their own recognizance.
If someone can figure out how to spot the difference between an armed, responsible individual and an armed, irresponsible nutjob, that person will make a fortune.
"The problem is that any nutjob can carry a gun...."
If you mean legally, that turns out not to be the case. Or at least most states have prior restraint licencing requirements, which have done a great job of weeding out "nutjobs". Even those that don't, like Vermont (forever, never got into 19th and early 20th century anti-black/immigrant gun grabbing), Alaska, Wyoming, and populated Arizona, where you can carry concealed if you're not a criminal or an adjudicated "nutcase", have had no problems of this sort (if they had, you and I would have heard about them).
Per the GAO and scholar Clayton Cramer, as of the summer of 2013 there were 8 million licensed concealed carriers. If this is a problem, where's the blood on the streets?
Or is the problem rank bigotry by people who know nothing about these sorts of people?
>"Gun Owner Openly Carries Gun To Little League Game Without Incident" doesn't make for nearly as sensational a headline as "Thirty-Seven Massacred At Redbox Dropoff" and newspapers exist to tell us about sensational events.
I wish that 'Seemingly Responsible Gun-Owning Ex-Policeman/Soldier Accidentally Leaves Gun in Movie Theater Seat' informed the debate a little more. Happened twice to me while working as a movie theater usher in Arkansas.
Really, really depends on the state. If from a May-Issue state there is a good chance the only interaction a person gets with someone carrying is the police.
I'd say that even in NYC, you're probably around (illegal, in that case) concealed weapons more often than you would suspect. In most of the country, you will frequently be around many (legally) concealed weapons though.
The trick is concealed. The general public, even in cities in red-states, typically only sees guns when a policeman is carrying it. Open carry protesters provide exceptions to this, but most people are not particularly interested in open carry.
I'm guessing you don't know many folks who carry? Off-duty police, former military, parents and plumbers. Not a lot to fear. In fact lots of cases its been shown to be safer to have such folks around.
You're going to be hard pressed to get a real citation for the safety thing. The issue is just so complex you can't have a 1 to 1 relationship between concealed carry and crime rates. Some states release CCP numbers though and they're plenty of people doing it.
Any documented instance of concealed carry preventing a crime? Strictly using my imagination, I see far more opportunity for escalation of and accidental violence than for prevention.
> Confronted by a gunman just blocks from the state Capitol on Tuesday night, a Democratic legislator from Northeastern Pennsylvania pulled his own weapon and traded fire with a would-be robber.
Remaining question is to look up the legislator own voting record on the issue of gun control.
That makes the proposition largely unfalsifiable. That is---and this is a very minimal report---we can't know if someone who momentarily stopped shooting would continue.
However, continuing to extrapolate from this report, neither police (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_v._Garner) nor civilians are allowed to use lethal force on someone who's ceased threatening and is simply fleeing. If a case cannot be made that the threat was still there, guy who shot him should have been charged.
Safer only because the criminals also have guns. But not actually safer at all. I'd rather the UK where people don't carry. Much safer there. Just look at the number of gun deaths in the UK vs the US.
SO what replaces "gun deaths" in the UK? Bullying, physical violence? To call it 'safer' you'd have to talk about actual public safety, not just cherry-pick one stat.
Yes, a stat like people being shot and dying. 8.8k firearm related homicides in 2012. Plus 20k firearm-related suicides in 2010, the last year I can conveniently find numbers.
Your post may seriously be the stupidest thing I've ever read in my life.
There were 70,000+ cases of violent crime in the UK in 2014. Which of those replace the so-called gun crimes? Without knowing that, you've got nothing to compare to.
In what country do you live? In the US, I assume that 10-15% of adults are carrying a handgun wherever I go, and I feel perfectly safe with it. In some states, like New Hampshire, I think it's probably more like 1/3.
It's full of the warmest, most incredible energy. Lots of people hacking on incredible projects outside in the sun or under gazebos. Awesome local food. And lots and lots of guns.
This is much more of a state thing than a country thing. I've never seen a gun in real life (except holstered on a cop), living in New Jersey and New York.
Apparently Utah law would make it illegal for them to prevent people from bringing concealed firearms, which is basically a law to maximise casualties from campus shootings.
I legitimately cannot decide what scares me more, the thought of a mass shooting, or the thought of a bunch of "heroes" with a concealed carry cross-firing.
Mark my words, one day a mass shooting will occur, someone will pull out their concealed carry, and a second concealed carry person will come around the corner and shoot the first (or the police will).
Once there is panic and an unknown threat, adding more guns into the formula (particular without a uniform to go along with it) will only cause additional confusion.
You know, there's more than a bit of history with this, and it's never come to pass.
For example, of all the recent mass shooting events, only one didn't happen in an ironically official "No Gun Zone", the Arizona congresswoman shooting. Turns out a concealed carrier showed up just as the shooter was getting wrestled to the ground. Surprise, surprise, he didn't shoot.
So you're just libeling people like me. Who you clearly know nothing about.
I'd say the lack of basic gun safety skill among concealed weapons holders is sufficient evidence to be concerned. This is just in the last 3-4 months with a quick google search.
If I can't trust people with guns to reliably follow basic safety procedures [e.g. Both of these sound like someone had the safety off] with a weapon that can cause serious injuries why would I trust their fire discipline?
Out of 8 million licensees, plus anyone who wants to with a clean record in Vermont, Alaska, Whyoming, and Arizona, there's going to be people who screw up. Police do at a much higher rate, in my observation over the years (there are, after all, a lot less of them).
Years, as in the wave of "shall issue" concealed carry regimes started with Florida in 1987, and now includes 43 states and most of the population. Every time a state goes shall issue the usual suspects scream "blood in the streets", yet it never comes to pass, as they mean it. Here you're stretching quite a bit to go form "normal" accidents to postulated future bad actions in a shooting event, because you can't find any of the latter. (You can't because there aren't any, at least that I've learned about since the early '70s and my readings of prior modern history.)
There are going to have to be a lot more, and much more worse screwups, before the toll is a fraction of the massacres in NewSpeak "Gun Free" zones.
> Out of 8 million licensees, plus anyone who wants to with a clean record in Vermont, Alaska, Whyoming, and Arizona, there's going to be people who screw up. Police do at a much higher rate, in my observation over the years (there are, after all, a lot less of them).
Police also frequently have long shifts where they are exhausted and are carrying a firearm. Its not surprising they'd screw up more frequently than a population with relatively ideal operating conditions.
> Years, as in the wave of "shall issue" concealed carry regimes started with Florida in 1987, and now includes 43 states and most of the population. Every time a state goes shall issue the usual suspects scream "blood in the streets", yet it never comes to pass, as they mean it. Here you're stretching quite a bit to go form "normal" accidents to postulated future bad actions in a shooting event, because you can't find any of the latter. (You can't because there aren't any, at least that I've learned about since the early '70s and my readings of prior modern history.)
I didn't scream blood in the streets. I pointed out that questioning the competence of people who carry weapons as they've been shown to be injure themselves through carelessness...is very reasonable.
You are attacking other people and somehow relating that to what I said.
You've pointed out there was 1 event at which someone with a CCW permit and a weapon existed in recent history. Attempting to draw conclusions from such a small number of events is idiocy. But you go ahead.
> There are going to have to be a lot more, and much more worse screwups, before the toll is a fraction of the massacres in NewSpeak "Gun Free" zones.
Many very popular types of guns do not have "safeties" in the sense that you are likely thinking. They do not have a switch that can be toggled between "safe" and "fire". Glocks are one prominent example (they lack some sort of safety switch, although they have other sorts of safety features.)
Truly mechanically induced accidents are nevertheless exceptionally rare. The guns only fire when the trigger is pulled, which is why gun owners stress the importance of trigger discipline.
Another note on the glock, you have to pull the trigger to pull it apart.
All the more reason you follow the 4 rules of gun safety to a T with that brand. Especially the part about ensuring its not pointed anywhere it shouldn't be and unloaded check about a million times. (note, I own no firearms but have enough friends that do I gain a ton of knowledge on them.)
One exception to firearms going off on their own might be a misfire after trigger pull. That means you have a possibly live round in the chamber that could go off at any time. Need to be really careful on that one.
And you can't really follow Rules 2 & 4 when you holster it, unless you remove your holster first, which is often not a good option (like after the shooting appears to be over, but before others like the police arrive).
I will never willingly carry a striker fired weapon: no external hammer, so if something, like a windbreaker tie or finger catches on the trigger, you can't DTRT with your thumb on the nonexistent hammer to stop it from firing.
Flip side is what one of my instructors called manual safeties: "death levers". If you forget to flick it to safe....
Another side is that manual safeties make guns somewhat "proprietary" as Massad Ayoob puts it. Some police officers have avoided bad outcomes when their weapons were grabbed, as the criminal struggled to make it fire they could take effective action. Not so much of an issue for those who carry concealed.
That is why you wouldn't carry such a weapon as a CCW and hope for the best. You'd pick one with a safety if your goal was safety.
"Exceptionally rare" events that send you to the hospital should be minimized if you are acting rationally. Choosing an "unpopular" gun with a safety vs. a "popular" gun with a safety...well, that isn't giving up the gun now is it?
That is why I have an issue with gun enthusiasts. They don't think and they literally get people killed/injured because of it. Then go "well its rare..."
So fucking what. Cars have a ton of safety features to reduce fatalities too even tho such fatalities are "rare".
If gun owners continue to show poor judgement when they have time to think about it rationally, why should I think they'll do any better under pressure?
That makes little sense. Your counterpoint is that when a private citizen came around the corner carrying a gun, whilst civilians, cops and security were tackling the shooter to the ground, he didn't shoot, that means that it's impossible that two people carrying could confuse one another for the actual shooter at an MCI?
At least in my state, they beat it into you in concealed carry class that you must attempt to leave the situation, not doing so and opening fire puts you in hot water. Drawing your weapon should only happen when A. you can't escape (gunman blocking the exit and there is no alternate route), or B. You can't escape and you have been or are going to be directly harmed.
In the end, I'm not worried about concealed carry people, it's the people who don't care to be registered that are the issue. And as it's been said before, if someone is bent on causing an incident, a sign that says "gun-free zone" isn't going to stop them, it'll just make for a target rich environment.
Indeed, the nation's worst mass murders by far used arson. Worst school massacre explosives.
I seriously studied biology and chemistry, up to part way through MIT. If I wanted to kill a very large number of people ... I wouldn't even use anything I learned in those classes and labs, but stuff I in part picked up from the EEs I hung out with.
This is what happens when you extinguish a region's gun culture, as NY/NYC has done starting in 1911. You have
"leaders" who both hate and don't understand guns and their use, outfit their men with poor tools (the infamous New York Trigger), and and those men's only experience with guns is very very limited training.
Turns out citizens legally carrying concealed have a much better record. Given how anti-gun the MSM is, do you doubt for a second that if citizens had comitted such an atrocity it wouldn't be nationwide, probably world wide screaming headlines?
Your concern is perhaps legitimate, but not after I point out the above.
I'm sorry, but that's total nonsense. A much better record of what? Citizens legally carrying concealed weapons are rarely called upon to fire weapons in stressful situations with dozens of bystanders, so they only have a "better record" of doing so by virtue of having no record at all.
"Gun culture" has absolutely nothing to do with trained police officers. New NYPD recruits go through 13 days of firearm training, and submit to semi-annual requalifications[1].
People with carry permits are never faced with the kind of stressful situation that an active shooter would provoke. It's utter lunacy to think that they would be able to stay calm and diffuse the situation.
Look, NYC is infamous about cops handling their weapons poorly. I thought everyone who pays attention to current events knew this, but I guess I was wrong.
As for your claim that we never face these stressful situations, that's flatly false. Guns are used ~ 2 million times a year to stop crimes (probably more now, those figures are some years old), and there are a number of active shooters who've been stopped by citizen concealed carriers.
But you of course wouldn't know of them because the national MSM for some inexplicable reason doesn't report these incidents. If your Google Fu is up to snuff you can find them. Try including "mall" and "church" for starters
New NYPD recruits go through 13 days of firearm training...
Is that impressive? The cops in flyover country come to the job with quite a bit more experience than that. 10-15 years of hunting, target shooting, safety training in school at multiple grade levels, and the supervision of experienced adults probably doesn't completely transfer to open carry as a peace officer. However, this "13 days" figure will make me a little nervous the next time I'm around a young cop in NYC.
Could you detail what you mean by "poor tools" a bit more?
Everything I can find on the "New York Trigger" states that it was specially requested by law enforcement and designed by Glock so the trigger weight would more closely resemble that of the revolvers they were then transitioning away from. Were they more prone to failure or..?
OK, I haven't pulled the trigger on a Glock with a New York trigger. But the travel of the two are very different. A double action trigger moves a long distance, as it steadily pulls back the hammer (they're found in semi-autos, BTW, and I recommend them to people for whom a single action M1911 isn't right).
A Glock trigger inherently has a lot less travel, all it's doing is providing some travel and therefore physical feedback before it releases the already cocked striker inside the gun (cocked by the slide).
So I don't personally know, but what I know from first principles per the that they're different, and the above matches with the reports I've read from people who have used them that say it's ... suboptimal. NYC street police marksmanship certainly doesn't contradict this.
And here's a critical detail about "was specially requested by law enforcement": the whole exercise was not to make it feel like a revolver, but to decrease negligent discharges. Which almost every other law enforcement organization in the nation solved (as much as it can be solved :-) with training---see Rule 3 (Keep your finger out of the trigger...). Marksmanship was irrelevant.
Another example of "poor tools" was their "leaders" insistence on using Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) bullets instead of eeeeeevil Hollow Points. Eventually the resulting needless injuries and deaths forced them to get with the program. I can't recall a single other major law enforcement unit with this policy, at least not for long.
The 9 mm Europellet sucks, if you care about stopping people vs. killing them; much much MUCH more so with FMJ ammo. However I can understand law enforcement units going with it instead of .45 ACP before .40 S&W appeared on the scene, which I'm sure was some time after NYC adopted the Glock. Then again they've had many chances to upgrade caliber as they cycled through new batches of weapons.
And, BTW, I think Glocks suck, but obviously lots of people disagree with me. Going back to training, the manual of arms of a Glock is point it and press the trigger. No manual safety for a criminal to have to engage before he can shoot you after grabbing your gun, no death lever to forget to engage before you can shoot. That also bears on training.
Glock the company is pretty sleazy (hey, look at the brand new lawsuit, and there's been lots of other drama), not that this was necessarily recognized when they were first on the market. To my knowledge they've never had an official "recall"; let me assure you they're not that good, not with all the models and generations of models they've produced.
Firing when out of battery, i.e. before the slide has locked home and the brass is sufficiently supported (which is iffy to begin with, especially with their .40 S&W models at least as of some time ago), is another HUGE no no in my book. And pretty much everyone else who's not the Glock equivalent of an Apple fanboi.
As usual, take this with a grain of salt. The handguns I own and carry concealed were designed by John Moses Browning (PBUH), and adopted as standard issue by the US Army in 1911 (sic; the US military is still using a machine gun he designed 7 years later). With of course improvements, the trigger pulls are ~ 3.5 pounds. I carry one every time I walk out the door. I've never had a negligent discharge because I keep my finger off the #(*&$% trigger until I'm on target, and of course keep the safety on. Which from personal examination in detailed field stripping plus a century of experience shows it takes the super-magnet of an MRI machine to defeat.
But I'd shot well over those 10,000 times you're supposed to need to become an expert before buying them, and I don't recommend the model to novices.
> "Firing when out of battery, i.e. before the slide has locked home and the brass is sufficiently supported (which is iffy to begin with, especially with their .40 S&W models at least some time ago), is another HUGE no no in my book."
Is this done intentionally by Glock, or is this a failure mode for glocks? I was reading about open bolt firearms and different blowback mechanisms the other day, and learned about Advanced Primer Ignition which sounds like you are describing. It seems like it would be primarily useful for fully automatic sub-machine guns though; it seems too nuanced and prone to error for a gun is marketed with reliability claims.
Unintentionally. I'm pretty sure there's not enough mass in a normal handgun slide to slam the round home fast enough for that to work, and like pretty much all handguns of this class, Glock actions lock up before firing. I've certainly never heard of it being used for rounds with the pressure of 9 mm Parabellum. It would also be hard on the gun, and again there's less of a mass budget. And of course the Glock's frame is made out of durable plastic (which is not one of it's problems, although might cause problems upon occasion).
This is my understanding from memory: one reason .40 S&W is so popular is that it's a 10 mm diameter round, so it's easy to "bore out" a 9 mm design and in theory make it work (not an option with 11.5 mm .45 ACP). As I've been told, and this is common in handgun designs, the chamber does not entirely support the brass.
You can get away with this because the brass at the base is thick (at a point it has to be because the curve up into the base can't be supported) and this sort of gun design is generally allowed. Compare to the .38 Super, which is 1,500 PSI higher than 9 mm or .40 S&W, and about 50% more than .45 ACP. M1911's chambered for it have "fully supported chambers", the original John Moses Browning (PBUH) .45 ACP chamber isn't fully supported. Also do a search on glock fully supported barrel or chamber, there are after market ones.
However I gather that Glock cuts, or in the past cut the margin a bit fine for their .40 S&W handguns, which is not a good posture to start from for an out of battery discharge.
And then somehow, without warning or requiring lousy maintenance (or of course reloads, which cause a lot of "kabooms" that are no fault of the gun), some .40 S&Ws blew up in user's hands due to out of battery discharges. Which Glock fixed on the QT. Search Google for more details, I found out about this pretty randomly in the first place. It's consistent with many other reports of Glocks having problems and how the company dealt with them, including the NYC police as I recall.
And of course take this with a big grain of salt, I'm an anti-Glock type, due to the accidental discharge safety problems I identify above (no safety, no external hammer).
I would put a very large amount of money on any randomly chosen civilian CCW holder outshooting any randomly chosen NYPD cop.
This is partially the fault of the cop, CCW holders tend to spend more time at the range than cops, but to a certain degree it isn't: The NYPD has foolishly required all of their (normally single-action) guns have a 12lb trigger pull on all trigger pulls (http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/08/foghorn/nypds-choic...).
Then it should be easy to refute, right? Here's the scenario:
People are screaming, someone is shooting, you don't know who. You see bodies on the ground, they're bleeding. Then you see someone come around the corner holding a handgun out, they are dressed like a student, you draw your concealed carry and out of fear for your own life you shoot that person. Turns out both you and them are concealed carry. Opps.
Explain why that scenario is unlikely/won't happen/can't happen. If it is "fear mongering" that should be trivial for you.
It's fear mongering because it hasn't happened and is incredibly unlikely to happen. At least untog up there provided some sort of actual reporting of similar events, even though it's innocent bystanders getting caught up in the shrapnel from the heros trying to protect themselves from getting shot. That's not this hollywood blockbuster scenario you two have conjured up.
> It's fear mongering because it hasn't happened and is incredibly unlikely to happen.
Because, why? Again I see no refutement. Just empty words.
Two concealed carry owners shoot each other[0]. Concealed carry almost shoots a police officer[1]. Concealed carry shoots the VICTIM in a robbery[2] during a cross-fire with the robbers.
Again, none of these were actually two conceal carry shooters accidentally shooting eachother because one thought the other was the criminal. How would you like me to refute that? Shall I find an article titled "Two heros accidentally didn't shoot themselves thinking the other was the criminal." Because that's what I would need to find in order to "refute" your rediculous premise.
> Because that's what I would need to find in order to "refute" your rediculous premise.
That's what I want you to refuse, why my premise is "ridiculous." My examples clearly indicate that concealed carriers are prone to these kind of mistakes. I mean for crying out loud a concealed carrier shot the VICTIM in a robbery!
The OP said "Mark my words, one day a mass shooting will occur, someone will pull out their concealed carry, and a second concealed carry person will come around the corner and shoot the first (or the police will)."
That's fear mongering. It's an event that hasn't occurred, but is meant to drive fear into the witless.
All you've proven is that innocent people get caught in the crossfire on occasions. Who's to say the teller wouldn't have been shot anyway? And quite frankly, the only person responsible for that death is the armed robber. Very likely he would be charged with murder even though he didn't shoot the victim. The victim would be alive today if an armed robbery had not taken place. Here's some fear mongering for you, that shooter could himself have been shot if the robber didn't want any witnesses left behind. You don't think that happens?
> And quite frankly, the only person responsible for that death is the armed robber.
You don't think the person that actually shot the teller is the least bit responsible? Most armed robberies result in no deaths. This one resulted in one, and likely resulted in that one BECAUSE some idiot with a hero complex started shooting.
It is very likely had that person not been there the robbers would have got away with the money but everyone would be alive to talk about it.
Concealed carriers are dangerous. They're almost as dangerous as the "bad things" they seek to stop. More guns are more guns. Once a shot is ringing through the air it doesn't care who the good guys or bad guys are, so I'd prefer to be in a situation with less shots in the air regardless of motivations.
Concealed carriers are well intentioned fools. They turn a dangerous situation even more dangerous. Like throwing a match into a gas leak.
You know, if I were to take out my gun in such a scenario, that would be a risk I would be willing to take.
If you get instruction from police officers, as I did for my Missouri concealed carry license, they'll chill you with stories about they, or someone they know, almost shot a fellow officer. It's something everyone is concerned about, shooting a good guy.
In these sorts of scenarios, it's thought to be relatively easy to figure out who's a good guy and who's a bad guy. Which armed person is everyone running away from, or if downed, facing away from. In your scenerio, where it sounds like the shooter has been downed, is anyone still shooting? Etc.
I prefer the model where nobody has guns, including the police. Maybe specialist armed units, but your average street cop shouldn't have a firearm: they aren't well trained enough.
It is a proven model. It works. Plus even if you argue "people can just use knives instead," it still stops mass shootings.
Great. Then the relatively physically weak, the infirm, the elderly, the women, will be at the mercy of the strong.
A short look at mass shootings in Western Europe in the lat few decades, which are both more numerous and more deadly, suggests that intermediate restrictions won't do any good at best. History prior to that tells what government can easily do to disarmed untermensch.
I'll take an occasional mass shooting over everyone being at the constant mercy of thugs.
For that matter, sort of echoing the others who have commented prior to my starting this comment, such an attempt in the US would instantly spark a nasty civil war killing orders of magnitude more people.
> Then the relatively physically weak, the infirm, the elderly, the women, will be at the mercy of the strong.
Fortunately guns aren't the only weapons. Guns are more contentious than most because it gives a single individual the power to kill many others.
> A short look at mass shootings in Western Europe, which are both more numerous and more deadly, suggests that intermediate restrictions at best won't do any good.
More numerous and more deadly than, what? The UK hasn't had a mass shooting in several years. It certainly wasn't more deadly than the handful the US has had between then and now.
> For that matter, echoing the others who have commented prior to my starting this comment, such an attempt would instantly spark a nasty civil war killing orders of magnitude more people.
This just further proves that the very people who have guns are dangerous individuals who cannot be trusted with guns.
Guns are the only effective weapons that "the infirm, the elderly, the women" can use.
The U.K. != Western Europe, and I include the massacres prior to "several years" ago; you have to since these incidents are fortunately rare. Wikipedia has done a very good job of chronicling them, although you have to look at half a dozen entries because they're broken down by things like where it happened.
"This just further proves that the very people who have guns are dangerous individuals who cannot be trusted with guns."
Well, you're welcome to try to act on your prejudices (unConstitutional ones, I might add). Those of us who've read our 20th Century history know what such actions mean, and the only practical response.
It's not magic: Given a large, random sample of self-identified 'men' and 'women', pitting them against each other in one-to-one unarmed combat, the men will win an overwhelming majority of the time.
I enjoy working with women who are trained in self-defense - I have a female friend who has a devastatingly strong and quick round kick to the jaw. However, as with most people, most women aren't.
This is a great organization mobilizing around this topic (although their website is sorta crap): http://www.2asisters.org/
There's "misogyny", and then there's gross ignorance of human physiology. Unless you deny that compared to men, women have substantially less muscle mass and therefore in combat are severely disadvantaged, "relatively" less "strong", when denied a weapon that doesn't depend on that?
Which all things being equal, if you care about effectiveness, is limited to a firearm.
It's a nice idea, but absolutely impossible to implement in the US for political and practical reasons. We may as well discuss my plan to tear up all railways and replace them with canals deep enough for container ships. (Think about it; you could kayak to anywhere in the country!)
Is there evidence to support this claim? Many of the worst mass shootings have happened in regulatory environments of the opposite nature: where firearms are prohibited altogether. I suspect that complete prohibition is the formula for maximum casualties for a single, isolated event with a small number of sufficiently armed shooters.
using a throwaway account because ppl could easily find my twitter, my company, and harass me all day about this (and probably would).
GamerGate is very probably a hate group, with no other legitimate purpose. they're known to send people into forums like this to argue politely and coherently that the "movement" is 100% legitimate. typically the person who comes onto a site like this, to argue in that manner, also makes virtiolic sexist and racist claims elsewhere, typically 8chan (previously 4chan - yes, these people are so fucked up that even 4chan banned them).
the specifics of the GamerGate swindle are very, very interesting for understanding how social media works, and can be misused.
Would you prefer the New York Times?[1] Or maybe The Washington Post?[2] And let's not pretend that anyone has any evidence of actual problems at Gawker, only disproven accusations.
Yes clearly we hide in our rape caves and scheme in our Legion of Doom headquarters about which female dev to harass next.
Let's repeatedly ignore the countless people of every race, gender and creed who are sick of game journalists and instead focus on the bad apples within the group that GG has repeatedly reported and denounced because "they're all the same people." Then in the same breath claim you aren't responsible for the bad apples in your group who have done crap like send rape and death threats to Boogie's wife, doxx people and get people fired like one of the members of #notyourshield who was a genuine minority sick of having his racial background being used as ammo against gamers for somehow not being inclusive which is completely false.
Oh and FYI, people left 4chan and moved to 8chan because the talk was being censored just like everywhere else, they weren't banned.
I don't understand these people that hate her so much, even if you disagree with her. All she has done is create a series of videos pointing out what she thinks is wrong with the gaming industry and she gets death threats. Why is no one allowed to be critical of video games? If anything, they are just proving her point by responding with violence.
>Why is no one allowed to be critical of video games?
There's a lot of vitriol going back and forth by both sides of this latest iteration of the 'Battle of the Sexes'. I think abstracting back, a lot of very good points are being brought up that need to be discussed (lots of bad ones too, in the interest of intellectual honesty). It's not until you get a bit more granular that ugly heads start to rear up and we ultimately end up with this.
We're at an unfortunate point right now that dissent is a tacit admission of complicity with the various social ills that people like Sarkesian are trying to explicate on a large scale at best, and treated as an existential threat to 'progress' at worst. No, that's not an indictment of the entire movement of feminism, but it's also not hard to find for anyone who goes and looks for it.
I used to care about this, a lot. Now? I prefer to just sit back and let both sides of screaming ninnies tire themselves out so that the people who are willing to reach across the table, admit that their movements have baggage and are mature enough to look past that baggage can have a melding of the minds to get things accomplished.
I'm sorry, but this is a false equivalence. On one side you have people literally threatening people with violence to the point of being forced to leave their homes, cancel speaking appearances, etc. On the other side, you have people pointing out this unfortunate fact.
I ask this earnestly, but did I give some indication that the threats being delivered don't deserve scrutiny or should otherwise be waved aside as negligible? I guess I'm not entirely getting where you're coming from; my point was that there's a worthwhile discussion that needs to be had regarding sexism in gaming, but much of it has been muddled by participants from both camps.
The death threats here, just happen to be example of muddling of side "A".
Name calling, death-threats, "doxxing", there's mud being flung here, calling it a "false equivalence" when I've implicated both parties of not moving the ball forward seems rather obtuse.
Yeah, you did give that indication, you're constantly framing abuse and harassment of women as a "battle" between two equally positioned sides, incidentally sides where one would be arbitrarily placed in by accident of birth.
Obviously I do not intend to speak as if the social conversation about sexism in gaming, tech and other industries is an actually even battle where both sides have equal rhetorical or empirical firepower to "win" or "lose".
And if indeed the problem is that I called it a 'battle', then I'll conditionally accept correction on that (even if I think it ignores the larger point I was attempting to make).
I think now is a good time for me to step aside from this before we go off the rails.
My problem with the particular phrase 'battle of the sexes' is that invites a reduction in this context that gamergate holds a reasonable male position and Sarkeesian merely holds an equally reasonable female position, and that men can't be blamed for holding the gamergate position and that only women should reasonably hold Sarkeesian's position. I admit I'm ignorant of the game theory allusion you're making.
More generally I fear I don't understand the larger point you're trying to make if you weren't trying to do the "two sides, both have some good points and some bad points, let's ask the peope receiving death threats to sit down with their abusers and find a compromise" truth-is-in-the-middle thing.
let's ask the peope receiving death threats to sit down with their abusers and find a compromise" truth-is-in-the-middle thing.
Except I never said that. I never insinuated that, if you think that's the case, then it appears you're trying to force your interpretations into my statements, and that's not cool.
Instead, what I've asserted repeatedly is this:
1) Sexism in gaming, tech and other industries needs to be addressed. Absolutely and positively.
2) Many who carry the banner of "Feminist" and many who carry the banner "Gamer" have taken unfortunate and problematic stances, as well as have made unfortunate and problematic statements to get "their" side more validity to the point where taking a side either way carries many severe consequences in the interest of moving a conversation forward.
3) Instead of simply jumping to one side because of how the other side reacts, I personally have decided to abstain from participating further until I see an opportunity where I personally feel comfortable participating and not be accused of being sexist/misogynist/whateverist or otherwise chided for not expressing myself in absolute support.
Please break it down for me? I'm clearly not seeing it (we often fail to see the failings in ourselves, it's just human), I for my part tried to clarify my stance; repeating "false equivalency" doesn't help me understand your response any better.
As far as I can tell, there's the gamergate people organizing the harassment of people, posting their victims' private addresses, sending them death threats and all kinds of abuse, bullying people into withdrawing from their online identities, all under a propaganda screen of fabricated pretenses and smear campaigns.
Then there's the "feminist" crowd which wants that sort of thing to not happen, and also talk about videogames.
Your way of putting it implies that these two are equivalent in being "unfortunate and problematic", which in my opinion is a severe misrepresentation of the situation.
Your way of putting it implies that these two are equivalent in being "unfortunate and problematic", which in my opinion is a severe misrepresentation of the situation.
In your opinion then, what's a better way to present it? I'm trying to look at this as broadly as I possibly can without getting strung up in highlighting granular, "this instance" and "that instance" responses, effectively coming across as a 'single issue debater'.
A better way to present it would be, "I don't agree with all the points that people identifying as feminists in these arguments are making, for example XYZ. However, I strongly condemn calls for violence against them and think that the violence and threats of violence discredits any argument the GamerGate people may be making and reinforces the fact that we live in a patriarchal society and a rape culture where violence against women is all too common and normalized. Arguments against the content of arguments and counter examples are fine and okay, however the word of someone claiming they personally are being marginalized and victimized should generally be given more weight than someone else claiming that that person isn't. We can have civil and even enthusiastic discussions about how sexism manifests itself in the videogame industry (or doesn't), but misogynist violence is never okay and de facto reinforces how big of a problem sexism is in tech culture, and the way that both covert and overt violence is used to silence women.
Further: threats of violence used to silence anyone, are not anything like a valid argument form. They are the usual tool of a corrupt, authoritarian voice. The practice is to be condemned by all who support rational dialog.
however the word of someone claiming they personally are being marginalized and victimized should generally be given more weight than someone else claiming that that person isn't.
No it absolutely should not, and the applications that we've seen when this framework of thought is proof enough of what happens when we give the victim more legal weight than the accused.
Title IX is a perfect example of this flawed implementation of "justice" to the point where the victims receive all the benefits of due process, but the accused does not. Taking the victim at their word is preposterous and absolutely and wholly contrary to the way our legal framework was designed, and ought to work:
Quote:
"OCR’s language implies
that the rights of accused students at public colleges do not merit lengthy
discussion and further suggests by negative implication that accused have any rights at all.57 The Letter also states that “[w]hen taking steps to
separate the complainant and alleged perpetrator, a school should
minimize the burden on the complainant, and thus should not, as a matter
of course, remove complainants from classes or housing while allowing
alleged perpetrators to remain.” In other words, alleged perpetrators
should automatically suffer life-upending punishments like expulsion from
their residences upon accusation because they are likely guilty. The
writing on the wall from this treatment of due process rights is
unmistakable: it implies, “oddly and ominously, that the statutory rights of
the accuser trump the constitutional due-process [sic] rights of the
accused.”"
You can absolutely have a civil discourse on how sexism manifests itself in the video game industry and others, and misogynist violence is absolutely never okay. But once we get to the point where conversations depend on giving one person more credence than another simply because of their status, or role in the affair, we're entering very dangerous waters.
One such example of the treacherous possibilities comes from the events of October 2012 at Ohio University where two students publicly engaged in lewd acts, photographs showed the female participant smiling, engaging and interacting with the male participant, and still cried rape to the detriment of the male participant even when local law enforcement could not find evidence to indict;
It's ridiculous to say that that side is only "pointing out this unfortunate fact," especially after so many Gamergate supporters have denounced the doxxings and threats.
The implication (dubious as it is) is that the threats were made by people on her side in order to garner sympathy. I think that would make the threats "not real", if it were the case.
This is a shitty gamergate meme and has no basis in reality.
The evil "women in gaming" conspiracy would have to be very, very well organized to fabricate the amount of false flag abuse they're constantly subjecting themselves to just on twitter.
Because lying about death threats causes more problems. I honestly can't believe people take this woman so seriously. As I have commented before she has been shown to be a liar. Nothing she says has any credibility.
I'm sorry, I've been following this story for a while and every single one of the instances where she has been accused of lying that I know of has been debunked.
I'm not calling you a liar, merely asking for you to point me to what I've been missing. I run in circles that are pretty pro-sarkeesian and may have suffered from selection bias.
Do note, however, that simply stating that she's a liar is not an actual proof of anything. I'm asking for actual articles from reputable outlets, not quotes from Guest11743 on 4chan.
Maybe less direct lying and more by omission, but the one I always think of is but one of her videos points out a few supposedly misogynistic portions in the Hitman series of games - while forgetting to mention that the game penalizes you for doing what she's complaining about.
Right, I see where we misunderstood each other. You're talking about conclusions she reached that are debatable - and, indeed, debated rather a lot. I also disagree with some of them, but don't feel that qualifies her as a liar, just someone with whom I don't agree on everything. Possibly even someone that sometimes uses hyperbole to make her points. I'm most likely guilty of the same sin myself and don't begrudge her this stylistic shortcut.
I was talking about, for example, accusations that:
- she made the threats up
- she was the author of some of the threats
- she never actually did report the threats to the police
These lies have either been debunked (the police report was produced, for example) or "proved" by nothing stronger than "it stands to reason", which I read as "there is no proof and never will be".
We do not necessarily disagree on your points, just on whether that makes her a liar. Facts tend to show that, on average, she's much less of a liar than the people who attack her.
In my mind, intellectual dishonesty equates to lying; especially considering how she absolutely refuses to accept any kind of criticism or address the very real and concrete problems with her conclusions.
Some of these things aren't "debatable", she's completely ignorant (either willfully or not is another question, and i'm leaning towards 'willful' due to either the total lack of response or personal attacks that anyone disagreeing with her gets) of information that completely invalidates her arguments.
And saying "well gamergate is worse" is just a cop-out.
In case the "lack of response" was directed at me, for the very specific Hitman thing: yes, the game penalises you for killing the dancers (hookers?). I'm pretty sure the penalty is lifted if you hide the bodies, though. So, yes, you're penalised, unless you are not. One might almost think you willfully witheld that particular piece of information.
As for the "well gamergate is worse" thing.
It was not what I meant, although I see how it could come off that way. My point was: the people who accuse her of lying have been repeatedly shown to be lying themselves. On the whole, I'd rather trust the person who has not (yet?) been proven to be a liar than the ones who have.
Lastly, it's usually the case that when accusing someone of something, said accusation looses all credibility if its author is guilty of the same thing - regardless of the initial accusation's merit. If you want your argument that she lies to be listened to, then you need to stick to the truth, hard as it can be. If you want to accuse her of witholding information, make absolutely sure you're not doing the same thing.
And, and this should go without saying, if you want to have any credibility, do not willingly associate yourself with people who threaten to rape and kill someone over games (I realise that you haven't explicitly stated you were part of gamergate - you're using the rethoric, but I apologise is my assumption is incorrect).
Nono, the "lack of response" was directed at Sarkeesian - there is not one instance in which she or her supporters respond to criticisms of her arguments with anything other than silence or personal attacks.
You gotta realize that at the point where you observe a women fearing for her safety and having to manage her life around constant harassment and threats of violence and your public reaction is "clearly she must be making it up for attention and all those benefits she's getting from being a public target", you've gone so far off the rails of the process of forming conclusions from reasonable assumptions that your implicit agenda is showing really, really flagrantly.
"the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation..."
Her video series, which you can see on YouTube, is actually quite good and well-researched. You might disagree with her conclusions (I agree with them) but even if you disagree, you have to admit she's done a lot of legwork.
Even if they were poor or badly researched, death threats are just way out of scope. Like: NEVER, EVER, IN ANY INTERACTION ARE THEY OKAY, NO POINT TO ARGUE. They are also no joke.
(sorry for using all caps for once)
(I take explanations for downvotes)
Saying that death threats are bad is not something anyone disagrees with, as far as I know. It's just an applause light (http://lesswrong.com/lw/jb/applause_lights/) at best.
This very page has people arguing that death threats are par for the course on the internet and should be ignored as well as others trying to contextualize them.
There is a reason why I wrote this sentence on this very page.
You said that making death threats was bad, which everyone agrees on. Some people disagree that they are as significant as made out to be. Almost all controversial figures get death threats. Obama gets 30 a day, about 40,000 in total. Yet assassinations and mass shootings are extremely rare.
No. I said that they are never okay and no joke, which people disagree with (including you, just now, you argue that they are ignorable). Don't rephrase or interpret.
Yes, Obama gets 30 per day. What a sad world we live in, in which people are okay with that. Also, Obama can pay for bodyguards.
The goal of a death threat is not necessarily the killing, but insecurity and psychological effect.
The 'Women as Background Part 2' video was very well-made, and utterly disturbing. I've seen terrible videos and images - it is the Internet afterall- but it was painful to watch. There's a number of games on there that I no longer care to revisit, or even play for the first time.
(Also, what were the makers of God of War 3 thinking? Staggers the mind.)
Your comment provoked me to go and watch that video, and watching it clarified this whole issue for me. As someone who's done a reasonable amount of undergraduate-level film and literature analysis, I felt that the video fell quite nicely in line with that style of presentation, and it's clear that Ms. Sarkeesian has a strong background in that area. If this were for an assignment, she would've gotten a perfect score.
However, watching the video as a gamer, not as a student, there is one thing about her video which stands out to me as the reason why she inspires rage in a subset of gamers.
Ms. Sarkeesian doesn't highlight anything positive about gender roles in the games that she critiques. While she is under no obligation to do so, the indignant gamer might accuse her of cherry-picking her facts, forgetting that her video series is about "Tropes vs Women", not "when games do justice and injustice to women".
Her series really is like a homework assignment for a college class, where the professor has asked for a list of tropes. If she'd included a "full assessment" of each game, her paper would've been ten times as long, and the professor would've given her a lower grade for including a bunch of irrelevant information.
In other words, her series is so single-minded in its purpose (to identify tropes) that it bothers gamers who feel that it's unfair that she only talks about "Tropes vs Women in Video Games". They misinterpret this as a video series on "games that fail women and are therefore terrible", when she's just doing a series on "games that have these tropes."
They're enraged not by what she says, but rather by what she omits.
And as far as games journalism goes, the fully-fledged "feminist game ratings" YouTube series/website is a void still waiting to be filled.
> They misinterpret this as a video series on "games that fail women and are therefore terrible", when she's just doing a series on "games that have these tropes."
Except that I don't think she's even doing that. She seems to take pains to avoid implicating any single game, and including so many references actually serves to blunt the criticism of each individual example. Instead, the message seems to be that the conventions of storytelling in interactive media have some deep, fundamental flaws. The entire medium, therefore, must change dramatically for these flaws to be addressed.
I can understand a reaction of "I like my games just like they are, thankyouverymuch" (though such a response obviously does not justify the behavior Ms. Sarkeesian has been subjected to). Speaking for myself, though, I enjoy games in spite of, not because of, these tropes, and I can't imagine that removing them would do anything other than make future games more enjoyable.
Because it is easier. It's easier to be heard by making grandiose threats. It's easier to scare your target with such threats. FWIW, I've been getting death (and other) threats in my PSN inbox for as long as I've had my PS3 (just for winning games of Street Fighter). Threats are kind of a social norm for "gamers". I know that doesn't make it OK though, and I'm glad this behavior is finally getting exposed & chastised.
It's how immature people act. They feel threatened & don't really know why, so they threaten back. I wish it was just children engaging in that type of behavior, but I know that's not the case.
Yeah... and the worst part is, you kind of grow to ignore these tropes as you play these games. (And of course, this makes developers try to amp up the grit more and more.) Seeing them all at once is quite shocking. This is one of the reasons why I think these videos are very valuable.
I agree, it is painful to watch. I wonder about my gender sometimes -- it's not like misogyny is isolated to video games. Boys' clubs seem to allow it to blossom.
GAMES REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:
Assassin’s Creed 2 (2009)
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (2010)
Bioshock (2007)
Bioshock 2 (2010)
Dead Island (2011)
Dishonored (2012)
Dragon Age: Origins (2009)
Fable 2 (2008)
Far Cry 3 (2012)
God of War 3 (2008)
Grand Theft Auto IV (2008)
Grand Theft Auto V (2013)
Hitman: Absolution (2012)
Hitman: Blood Money (2006)
Kane & Lynch (2007)
L.A. Noire (2011)
Mafia II: Joe’s Adventures (2010)
Metro: Last Light (2013)
No More Heroes (2008)
Papo & Yo (2012)
Prototype (2009)
Red Dead Redemption (2010)
Saints Row (2006)
Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010)
The Darkness II (2012)
The Witcher (2007)
The Witcher 2 (2011)
Thief (2014)
Watch Dogs (2014)
You're not wrong - her message could be delivered with better impact if she omitted these examples (most of the "you get rewarded for killing women" examples are specific instances of "you get rewarded for killing npcs").
Still, she does have a point. Objectification of women in video games still runs rampant and does everyone a disservice. Just because there are some bad examples here doesn't invalidate the rest of her message.
Nice cherry you picked there. If you would leave a meaningful comment, I would be happy to talk.
I stand by my words. Her videos are full of lies. They are on a Columbine or Jack Thomson level of "objectivity". Someone please prove me wrong about Hitman otherwise.
> If her videos were well researched and fair, maybe there would have never such a shitstorm.
This isn't about her videos. It is about the shitstorm (death threats!) you say is somehow partially her fault. Coming from the same person who said she was "bathing in the outrage". This is beyond criticism of her work, this is an attack.
I don't think it's so much criticized for this, as people appealing to authority - witness upstream, where someone says 'you have to admit, there's a lot of leg work done, the videos look impressive' - which says nothing about the content or message - to which someone says "well, yes, but this isn't about 'how professional a video series can you produce given $160,000+?'.
In case you (the reader of this comment) are interested in what kind of person it is that races to articles to post this tidbit, try taking a dive through his comment history.
> hashberry 235 days ago | link | parent | on: My children’s book on technology raised 100k withi...
> The presentation and video was amazing. I immediately fell in love with her. She smiles non-stop. She jumps around with giddy excitement in a cute little dress. She's the perfect manic pixie dream girl trope. I want her to have all my babies.
I know hashberry's too far gone to change his mind, but to anyone else reading, if you're hearing about Anita for the first time and are on the fence about what's going on, realize that there is an army of sexists who swarm to all women-in-tech articles to push the same talking points over and over.
There's nothing wrong with what you're attracted to.
What's wrong is that you seem to think that commenting on your attraction to the female in the video is a worthwhile comment on the video. The video might have actual content, you know? It might be less sexist of you to actually pay some attention to the content, rather than to your attraction to the presenter?
I disagree. Her videos have been shown to cherry pick. She is also a liar and has no interest in video gaming. This has been shown in older videos of herself. Its a money making scam.
How is it a scam? People gave her money to post videos about video games, she is posting videos about video games. Are you saying she's not enthusiastic enough about the video games she's calling out to deserve the money people decided to pay her?
He's obviously using the colloquial definition of the word "scam", namely "a completely legal and ethical enterprise with a business model that I, personally, disapprove of".
Nah, the meme that she scammed their supporters by taking the kickstarter money and disappearing has been part of the harassment campaign against her since the beginning, before she published the first videos. People in the gamergate miasma just don't like giving up their talking points even if blatantly contradicted by reality, I suppose. :V
Do you think the police are being ignored and not trusted in cases of online violence? Perhaps this is why some victims don't follow what I would imagine to be the police advice to not publicise the threats against them.
Unfortunately police work takes longer than the time remaining before the event. Better screening and more security is the obvious option, but apparently Utah allows people to carry regardless so it wouldn't do much good.
> This made me wonder: has there ever been a death threat, that has actually been carried out later by the same person or group?
ISIS does it with Westerners on a near daily basis these days. The IRA would generally phone in bomb threats in advance of bombs. I'm sure there are other examples.
> Why would anyone announce a premeditated murder before it really happens?
Intimidation. Do it once and the next time you threaten to kill someone if they don't do what you want they're a lot more likely to take you seriously.
"But on Tuesday, the director of the centre and others received an email threatening a "massacre style attack" if the talk proceeded."
There is an inherit sexism even in the response to this. If this was an email threat targeting say, a kindergarden, or a presidential visit, there would be federal law inforcement coming down hard looking for the source of the email. The specter of "terrorism" would be most certainly be invoked.
Instead we have "enhanced security measures." Because apparently it's not terrorism if the target is women.
Patriarchy means womens' lives are worth less than mens' lives.
White supremacy means a black person's life is worth less than a white person's life.
Homophobia means a queer person's life is worth less than a straight person's life.
Capitalism means a poor person's life is worth less than a rich person's life (but they'll come right out and admit this, so it's not as shocking).
One day I hope humanity will grow out of its adolescence, burn away the waste that is GamerGate and the Westboro Baptist Church and weev and all the nazis, all the neckbeards, all the Koch Brothers everywhere, and become something beautiful.
Aren't most kindergarden workers female? Would there be no law enforcement if the president was female? I do not see any hint of the sexism you describe here.
>> I do not see any hint of the sexism you describe here. <<
Okay, more simply, in other cases of mass murder/"terrorist" threats, regardless of targets, the federal government gets involved at the drop of a hat. Not so in this case.
Kindergardens tend to host male children and the children of male people. That there has so far not been a female president of the US also demonstrates the sexism you're denying.
She runs a show called 'Feminist Frequency', dedicated to calling out sexist tropes in video games (amongst other things). She appears to have become one of the enemies of the movement known as "#GamerGate". Proponents of the movement will tell you it's about ethics in game journalism, but in reality it seems to have largely become corrupted by misogyny and the like. Several female game developers and journalists have received death threats; it's all rather ugly.
This is the first time I've seen the movement appear on the front page of HN. I hope the discussion can be kept as civil as things normally are on here.
I think calling it "corrupted by misogyny" is a bit misleading. As far as I can tell, it is as pure and uncompromising in its misogyny as ever, the journalism thing has been a smokescreen from the beginning.
"If you witness a group of issues, some relevant and some irrelevant, you will feel a need to respond to the relevant issues.
If you witness someone responding to the relevant issues of the group, you will think they are responding to the group of issues.
The exploit, taken from this, is then clear: Group up a bunch of issues (Apples, Oranges, Watermelons, Rat Poison) and then people who show concern about the Rat Poison will seem to be showing concern on Apples and Oranges. And people who are supporting Apples and Oranges could easily be mistaken for supporters of Rat Poison."
It's a bunch of things thrown together in a carefully calculated scheme to cover up an organized harassment campaign targeting women in the videogames industry. I appreciate that there's some decent people getting mixed up in a 4chan project with no ill intentions of their own, but that's not where the whole thing started.
Contains: a promotional poster of "boycott of the day", a pastebin full of "sample letters to use", a list of email addresses and twitter names to contact and talkint points when attempting to make Blizzard stop advertising at Kotaku, a site which is apparently "anti-gamer-gate".
From the beginning it has been an astroturfing op "orchestrated" by some geniuses at 4chan. An irc channel central to the movement is named after a sexist catchphrase from the rant of the bitter ex-boyfriend of their first target. Logs from that channel have been publicly posted. There's no doubts about this.
but in reality it seems to have largely become corrupted by misogyny and the like
Not any more than you'll find idiots in any movement - I would liken them more to the vandals that presented themselves during Occupy Wall Street.
I hang around the organizing points for the GamerGate stuff - people are remarkably level headed and respectful (and absolutely NOT driven by misogyny). There is no organized harassment happening, there is no corruption. Anybody attempting to agitate along those lines finds themselves massively downvoted/flagged/reported/etc.
Sarkeesian et. al. are quite intolerant of any kind of criticism or disagreement - the trolls are, frankly, being made out to be a bigger issue than they actually are (not that people making death threats is even remotely okay, I'm pointing out that those people do not represent the movement).
If you doubt this, I invite you to do the same. It really opened my eyes. Calling GG about misogyny or even about feminism has never been anything more than a form of well poisoning.
edit I'm getting the "submitted too fast" thing now, so I can't respond to comments directly. I will do so below.
--
I ask anyone that points out "harassment" to provide direct examples of organized harassment, preferably links so the rest of us can see them. Someone downthread brought up the git repo containing the markdown file - how is this harassment, again?
* Regarding the #burgersandfries IRC - absolutely bullshit and absolutely disgusting. The name is even a reference to Quinn's personal life. That channel is on Rizon, is still up, and can be looked at on your own, but you'll note that this is not the organizing channel for gamergate (which is #gamergate).
Perhaps GG started out of disgust for Quinn (and her professional behavior is hardly beyond reproach), but tying them together for the purposes of discrediting GG is a genetic fallacy.
I'm not denying that organized harassment campaigns exist - but I am saying that #GG ain't it.
* Regarding how the GG movement can only be defined by what is done under it's banner
This line of thought allows any movement to be trivially discredited. Quite literally any movement involving strong emotions will lead to people doing stupid things. If you simply discard the entire thing based on that minority of people, you have been manipulated.
This would allow people who disagree with such a movement to expend the slightest amount of effort to do something (or even fabricate doing something) distasteful in its name as a form of attack. Please recognize that this possibility exists. Your answer to "drop the movement" is not feasible as that is an untenable sequence of events. 10 Movement starts, 20 idiot does something, 30 movment discredited, 40 goto 10.
* Regarding how GG isn't going after the big publishers
GG is about games journalism, specifically the journalists themselves and their lack of integrity, not what the publishers do. We can't exert enough pressure to convince, say, EA to stop doing underhanded things - there are simply too many people who will buy their content on a schedule (like the yearly Madden rehash) for any kind of boycott to succeed. Seriously, gamers have been trying for years on outrages that are about marketplace behavior rather than social issues. It does not work.
In other words, it's a matter of picking one's battles.
Exerting pressure on the journalists is another matter entirely. A journalist is only as good as their credibility - and showing a pattern of anomalous reviews or undisclosed connections is a great (and tremendously effective) way of exerting negative pressure on that kind of behavior.
The well is not only poisoned by its originators but entirely made from poison. The whole original premise about corruption of games journalism is absurd; if that's what they were going after, it would look entirely different, because it's mostly a big-business phenomenon rather than an indie phenomenon.
Edit: no, you can't "no true Scotsman" your way out of this one. The movement is entirely mis-targeted by ignoring the big publishers. They also claimed the "success" of getting Intel to pull advertising from a site, which just pushes the whole games journalism business closer to an industry press release republishing facade.
Speaking of Scotsmen, the recent independence debate (which involved "strong emotions" over things that were actually important, unlike gamersgate) was far more civil than this. Tens of thousands of people somehow managed to campaign without death threats.
> Not any more than you'll find idiots in any movement.
Perhaps. But I am have been involved in (for example) movements around agile development, the Python programming language, and the need to hire more women in programming and other technical positions. None of these movements have, that I am aware of, generated fringe movements that have threatened people so they had to leave their homes, nor have they caused universities to cancel lectures over safety concerns.
If this "GamerGate" movement is, indeed, level-headed and respectful, then could we arrange for leaders of the movement to publicly and forcefully denounce the threats of violence? For instance, GamerGate leaders could organize a fund-raiser to provide a forum for Anita Sarkeesian to present her talk.
Any behavior like this would significantly increase my opinion of the movement -- of which I presently have an extremely low opinion.
There are no "leaders of the movement". There are a few Twitter/YouTube personalities that are popular and have been rallied around, but they don't control anything.
Most of the GG organizing takes place on anonymous imageboards and IRC, and most of it is through consensus along the lines of: "Hey, we should do X!" "That sounds like a good idea!"
..could organize a fund-raiser to provide a forum for Anita Sarkeesian to present her talk.
Counterproductive at best, considering that GG takes issue with Sarkeesian's presentation of the facts. Now, if she would agree to a moderated debate about same, that would be just about perfect. I would personally contribute resources to making that happen.
If there are no leaders and no control, then surely the GG movement can only be defined by what it does under it's banner and it can't in any sane way be called "level headed" or "balanced"? If there's no way to moderate the GG members beyond consensus then there isn't any organisation or even a coherent goal beyond attacking perceived threats.
I'm not even sure what GG is trying to do by sending death threats to Anita and harassing Zoe Quinn. It just looks like they are doing it for it's own sake.
People are doxing, harassing, and sending threats of various sorts in GG's name. All the cries of "false flag" are just making the movement look worse.
It doesn't even need to be a false flag. All it takes is one un-hinged idiot who thinks they're Doing The Right Thing, and by the standards that HN users apparently have, that's enough to discard the entire movement. Because, yknow, a group's most unhinged members only stand for the movement when it's GG, even when those members are denounced by everyone else, but that same standard doesn't apply to people on the other side because reasons.
You'll pardon me for refusing to take this kind of lazy, hypocritical, dishonest viewpoint seriously.
I fully expect this post to receive un-rebutted downvotes, too.
You write (sarcastically):
> a group's most unhinged members only stand for the movement when it's GG, even when those members are denounced by everyone else
I have missed the part where those members sending threats were "denounced by everyone else". (Certainly they have been denounced by a few.) Where are you seeing that?
Not at all. I can show you on pretty much every organizing point for GamerGate where there are rules in place about sexist or nasty comments, where people have been massively reported for trying to organize an invasion (on a chan board no less!) and so on.
Those leading the outrage train against gamergate are doing a fantastic job of cherry picking while ignoring this larger trend.
And by the way, lest you think that the concerns about "false flags" are just paranoid rantings, it is a thing that has happened before.
It's well documented that the whole thing started as focused harassment of Zoe Quinn. Now other women are being harassed. The effects of the campaign is that women are withdrawing from publishing indie games or writing about games. Nothing is being done that addresses "ethics in journalism".
Regarding your edits: Somehow the willingness of gamergate perpetrators to condemn harassment of women only manifests when people are bringing up that that's what gamergate does, and is conspicuously missing when actual harassment happens and goes unchallenged.
It's a very thin veneer of civility. Somehow all the "battles" you "pick" just happen to be against women in no position of authority, mostly not even journalists.
I feel like at this point, the GamerGate movement is hopelessly tainted. The leaders should realize that at this point, it would be best to abandon the struggle for a bit, and push for ethics in game journalism next year, when their (admittedly, self-proclaimed) members stop threatening to murder and commit violent atrocities against hundreds of people.
>If you doubt this, I invite you to do the same. It really opened my eyes. Calling GG about misogyny or even about feminism has never been anything more than a form of well poisoning.
In any case that well is poisoned now. You can either continue to argue in favor of misogyny, because that is what is associated with GamerGate and that is what it represents at this point, beyond anything anyone "involved" in the "control poitns" might want; or you can support human rights and women's rights.
It's irrelevant whether the harassment is organized or not. It's supported tacitly by the very existence of GamerGate at this point.
By supporting GamerGate, you are contributing in some small way to the inevitable death of one of these women. You are committing memetic terrorism. And you are just as culpable for the violence as everyone else involved: wholly. You are pulling the trigger, you are landing the blows. When the blood comes, it will be on your hands.
Wow, it's like McCarthy commission over again. Game companies and publications are labelled "anti-GameGate" or pro-GameGate. Boycotts are organized. You can get a Chrome Extension that will block anti-GameGate sites (who maintains the block list? apparently nobody knows; a user asks why some web comic is block and what anti-gamergate acts the user has done).
Bizarrely this means all links to anti-GameGate sites (like Kotaku) have to be posted via an archiving proxy, archive.me, as everyone on the subreddit apparently has the blocking chrome extension installed.
You're joking, right? KiA is an echo chamber repeating things that have already been debunked by the time they post them. Like the supposed ISIS bot thing that's currently trending there.
Why are people promoting harassment and calling people cunts in your movement's name, then? That comes off as the opposite of level-headed and respectful.
This might surprise you to know but there is no way to control who participates in a movement. GG has made clear from square one that this kind of behavior is totally unacceptable. If someone goes ahead and acts like a fool anyways, what exactly do you want everyone else to do?
The best that can be done is banning such people from participating in the discussion forums, but this doesn't control whatever they decide to do on their own.
You're mistaken if you think that decentralized movements cannot be trivially co-opted. By their very nature, they are controlled by those who speak the loudest and command the largest audience.
So I must ask, who on your side of the #GamerGate hashtag speaks louder and and commands more followers than Adam Baldwin?
If you do not possess the social capital to overpower the voices of unabashed harassers, then your continued association with the hashtag only damages your cause.
(Note that I speak as someone who once worked in games "journalism" and is completely fed up with how shitty it is (not that the games industry at large is really giving me much to hope for).)
Maybe it would be wise to stop participating in the movement if everyone outside the movement seems to agree it's about harassment and misogyny? It doesn't look like GamerGate could achieve anything useful at this point.
You don't have to be famous to elicit an extreme reaction, just well known to the right group of extremists.
In short, she has created a series of web videos discussing feminism in computer games, and how female characters are portrayed. This has led to her being target number one amongst a very odd "gamer" community that will seemingly stop at nothing to preserve their culture.
committed the "sin" of pointing out misogyny in the video gaming products and community, it seems. It riled up a few folks in 4chan and apparently Adam Baldwin who are taking malicious glee in some astroturfing campaign to essentially ruin her life.
She raised a bunch of money from a kickstarter to make a series of videos about women in video games. The videos got a lot of stuff wrong about video games and she really had to reach to get her point across.
More like people are reaching to paint her as not delivering. The most on-point criticism of her work I've heard is that it's a bit entry-level, but what can you do when even entry-level media critique is too harsh for your audience?
These days isn't receiving death threats on the internet kind of par for the course? How many internet death threats have actually resulted in deaths? I think the answer is zero. Why even pay them any attention?
Not only do these women receive orders of magnitude more death threats than your typical online celebrity, but people do in fact come to their homes, contact their relatives, harass them at work, mail them stuff, etc. Consider also that some studies have shown that more than a third of all women have been sexually harassed or assaulted at some point in their lives, which is mostly invisible to guys like me[1].
That must be a pretty terrifying place to be. If that was me in Anita's shoes, I doubt I'd be able to just wave off these death threats, especially if friends and family were being targeted as well.
The comment you linked was quite excellent and changed my perspective a bit. I read the whole thing.
However, I'm not sure I'm convinced that someone like Anita necessarily has gotten more death threats than someone like Jack Thompson, and I also don't know if her being a woman plays a significant factor. I'm willing to accept that's true with evidence, but there isn't really evidence (and no easy way to find or gather such evidence). Death threats are unacceptable but the kind that have been sent to Anita seem to be more of the Internet troll variety than anything else.
It would come down to who wants to be the first. Also the people making these death threats are not in a sane state of mind from the start, judging from the published samples.
there's a lot of really bad downvoting going on in this thread. how about you try to have a conversation with each other instead of trying to blanket censor people who you think have a different point of view?
The wording of the title sums up the current state of the debate quite good. I (and I'm sure many other as well) stopped reading and writing about it some time ago.
There seem to be endemic problems in all activist movements (you can call it something else if you like) such as the glorification/condemnation of certain individuals, participants being more interested in having it their way than finding compromises, and hype.
Effectively what that means is that people pick a thing, fight over it util the debate eventually reaches unforeseen (well, ...) levels of bigotry and hatred and then it stops. Nothing was accomplished* and everybody moves on to the next thing.
There were multiple debates about gender roles in movies that all went down a similar path.
* That's not entirely true.
---
I forgot something. Please stop (ab)using the word feminism. She talks about the representation of women in video games - and she actually calls it that. Feminism is about gender equality. If you'd like to have a debate about the role of men and women in video games, by all means, use the word feminism.
---
Also, how can you not see the irony in down-voting my post? Delicious.
Why do we care about this? She's been proven to be full of crap, so who cares if she isn't speaking? (I'm not saying that threats are acceptable in any fashion)
Zoe Quinn tweeted today: "couldn't you just fucking not play my games. Fucking boycott me, don't work with me, just leave my dad alone". She got a dead squirrel in her mailbox a few days ago. Remember: she made a free indie game about depression and had a messy breakup with an ex. This is literally all she did. This type of reaction is no longer uncommon.
No, that is not all she did. She traded sexual favors for favorable game reviews for with multiple people.
No, she didn't. This talking point has been repeated over and over despite the fact that it is factually incorrect - she did, it seems, sleep with a reviewer once. Who never reviewed her game, and only ever wrote anything about her months before they slept together.
The really laughable thing is that if this was really a campaign about corruption in games journalism then there is a ton of it to go around - numerous publications have deeply unhealthy connections to large game companies, like EA. But instead everyone goes after one independent game developer who slept with a guy who never reviewed her game.
Accusations aside — which to my understanding have mostly been the rantings of an immature ex[1] — it's a FREE INDIE GAME. About depression. That you don't have to pay money for. In what world does it make sense for someone to sleep with a handful of journalists to get coverage for her free indie game, for literally no financial gain? And in any case, why would anyone even focus on Zoe rather than the journalists, especially in an industry where big companies curry favors with "journalists" all the freaking time? Like, for realsies, and not in an angry, rumor-mongering kind of way?
[1] (Which is really none of my business and I feel icky even bringing it up.)
It's possible to be against trading sexual favours for game reviews (which, I'll point out, is not a proven thing that happened) and still not put dead squirrels in mail boxes. Maybe people should try that.
> No, that is not all she did. She traded sexual favors for favorable game reviews for with multiple people.
Nope. Get your facts straight. A disgrunted ex is the only source of those accusations. The guy who (very much allegedly) had sex with her did not cover her game.
According to the smear campaign? Its hard to know for sure anything about someone who's been attacked by internet vigilantes. I keep from leaping to conclusions when all I have is questionable internet sources.
The article is about a speaker who has received numerous death threats declining to appear in front of an audience after the police said they would not turn away people carrying firearms.
In my eyes, this is a simple issue of personal safety. I would not speak under those conditions and I doubt you would either.
There's a massive difference between being harassed by a single individual who doesn't really know who you are and a massive group of people who know everything about you.
The common rule on how to deal with stalkers is call the police.
When you got abusive messages it was one person, marginalised and removed from a community. I assure you these people get plenty of reaction by showing their messages to their community. They will not go away if ignored.
The common rules on how to deal with trolls or stalkers work a lot better if you're the middle class white male who got online death threats once in his life, and not the women who get them every day backed by an organized harassment campaign.
I'm not sure what kind of fair discussion you expect here.
> What I don't get is how they constantly counter-act the common rules on how to deal with trolls or stalkers.
"Common rules" along the lines of "just ignore it" tend to make it easy to pretend such things aren't happening and ignore those calling it a serious issue.
I think there's a difference about speaking out about harassment in general and going against the recommendations of the police who should be dealing with a specific threat. I agree though, it's certainly not "bathing in the outrage" at all.
Perhaps the added attention to a cause, perhaps the added news coverage is worth going against the advice of professionals when it comes to direct threats to the safety of oneself? Or perhaps the institutions and individuals there to deal with such threats are not doing their job properly? Or perhaps the level of fear of online threats is so great that no local, personal support is enough?
I don't know the answers not being in that situation. I can imagine it being very scary though. I'd want to trust someone, anyone, at the very least. Perhaps online social networks can give that level of reassurance for some, for those who depend on them?
Who is going against whose recommendations, and in what way?
Sarkeesian chose to not attend because she feared for her safety. Legally, the police could not prevent people from brining concealed weapons, and she did not feel safe. Your comment implies that she is somehow ignoring advice that would promote her safety, in order to gain more exposure. I don't see that happening.
Ahh, well the presumption is that the Police would say something like "please don't share these threats with the internet, just leave it with us". I would imagine that is what they would say. The logic being that it just gives the harassers more fuel. I'd hope that the police were being sensitive and helpful in this case.
I imagine that the police did not give any recommendations about the event, that they neither suggested she cancel or to go ahead.
My comment was asking questions about why someone would choose to publicise active threats against their person, assuming that police would have warned against it. I can imagine some scenarios where someone would choose to go against those recommendations - I imagine things must be very stressful and fraught.
Perhaps with Twitter, any threats are already public and so there could be no point not sharing them? Perhaps there is greater value in highlighting the online abuse and having a large amount of online support for ones cause than suffering in silence and trusting ones fate to the professionals?
I think our online networks are sorely missing effective abuse filters and controls.
> Middle class white male who once got online death threats after banning a sociopath from a site of his.
The problem is that you have a very narrow point of view. You're also limiting your viewpoint to just equality as opposed to going beyond it to ask 'what is fair?'.
"I've read some blogs during this whole thing that have made me enlightened to things I didn't know. This woman said how rape is something that polices women's lives. They have a narrow corridor. They can't go out late, they can't go to certain neighborhoods, they can't get a certain way, because they might get-That's part of me now that wasn't before."
"Halfway through the new special, C.K. starts talking about how dating is an act of bravery for all involved. “The male courage, traditionally speaking, is that he decided to ask” a woman out. (Note the careful caveat, 'traditionally speaking.') And if the woman says yes, 'that’s her courage.' That kind of courage, he says, is beyond his imagining. 'How do women still go out with guys, when you consider that there is no greater threat to women than men? We’re the number one threat to women! Globally and historically, we’re the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women.' A moment later he adds, speaking for all men, 'You know what our number one threat is? Heart disease.'"
> What I don't get is how they constantly counter-act the common rules on how to deal with trolls or stalkers.
Actually, the general advice is to tell everyone:
> Tell Everyone
> Report the incident to law enforcement. Notify the Commonwealth's Attorney and ask for help from your local victim/witness program. Let them know that you are afraid. Give friends, co-workers, and neighbors a description of the stalker. Ask them to document anything they see and record the time of the occurrence.
You don't solve problems by ignoring them and hoping that they go away, you have to expose and stop it before it gets worse or they'll just move onto the next person.
Funny how the default male response to a women's problem is almost always, "I will tell you a better way to handle this." Almost a cliché at this point.
Im sorry but that's just wrong. Let's change "default male position" and "almost always" to "feels like it after scrolling though this thread". I also think you confuse offering a second opinion with making an absolute statement. So "I will tell you a better way to handle this" becomes "I think this is a better way to handle this". Sound a lot better, doesn't it?
I don't want to put words in your mouth but I also think you're implying that the male in your example believes his way is better because he's a man and therefore smarter and all that nonsense. That's just unfair. The irony in phrasing it like that given the context is quite obvious though.
Fair enough. That's always been true for advice giving though. People usually don't really know what they're talking about and maybe that's okay. Even if the advice sometimes does more harm than good it's certainly almost always well intentioned and that's gotta count for something. Still, I think it's easy to see a double standard in what you said originally and that's just not fair.
Maybe I have to explain myself a little better. For the sake of this argument let's assume literally every time a women has a problem in this world a man talks to her and tells her what he thinks she should do. What exactly would be wrong with that?
Sorry for trying to help?! I did not realise that offering advice from personal experience of receiving online death threats (and what I thought was common professional advice from police and law enforcement) was sexist. No more sympathy from me.
I am a bit open minded to all of this, and I am trying to hear both sides in the debate.
Some of the critique that she receives is good, and is asked by intelligent people. But then she goes on to this event and only answer the assholes and trolls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah8mhDW6Shs
She would win a lot of respect to me if she answered some of the constructive critique rather than disabling comments on YouTube and only answer assholes. I can understand why she disables comments on YouTube, because YouTube comments are horrible, but she can address it in a video our an article, I think her videos are interesting and to the point but silencing good questions are bad in my opinion.
And since it have to be mentioned: Deaththreats are never acceptable, and criminal behaviour should be punished.
With how much bullshit she's already getting, why'd you think that if she had youtube comments enabled, there'd be anything but more abuse and harassment there? She doesn't owe it to anyone to let trolls make her videos' comments a platform for further abuse.
I'm sure she's dealing with ~critique~ she receives appropriately, she just doesn't make herself available as a target to trolls quite as much as the gamergate crowd might like.
This looks like a pretty weak attempt to try to turn around the harassment she's facing and portray it as a fault of her own.
Is it your contention that the large number of death threats, rape threats etc. being posted online are manufactured by the speaker for her own benefit?
I don't care to conjecture about the frequency or origination of the threats because I don't think there's enough information and, frankly, it's not that important.
I can tell you I'd happily endure electronic harassment for that much money, especially with experts telling me there's no risk of physical harm.
Really? $158k, minus kickstarter's cut, minus a bunch for the physical backer rewards, minus the production costs for the videos, probably minus some more for taxes, seems like that good a deal for a project that's been occupying years of her time already and basically forever ruined her ability to do things online without getting swarmed by abusive trolls?
I think you're understating the effects of continuous harassment and repeated death threats and so on against her, and overstating the certainty with which anyone can say there's no physical danger.
Seems like a pretty decent chunk of change (especially considering that she's still taking donations on http://www.feministfrequency.com/ and getting paid for speaking - both hinging on her continued relevance in the media)
I also think you're forgetting that she can simply change identities online if she wishes (anonymity protects the good guys too!).
Anonymous death threats made against celebrities aren't new (twitter is just a new, highly public, medium). No one can say with certainty she's not in physical danger, but no one can say with certainty she's not going to be struck by lightning either.
I love Internet logic. "She can always just change identities online." The flip side of anonymity everywhere: nobody is actually entitled to their identity anymore. How utopian.
The idea that I'm supposed to find more credible those people comfortably hurling innuendo from anonymous hidey-holes, rather than a person who actually signs their name to what they write. I don't even know how to end the sentence.
If I unwittingly hurled innuendo I sincerely apologize and ask you to point it out so I can avoid doing so in the future.
However, your other contentions don't make any sense to me. Everyone is entitled to their identity; rather, the contention was that devaluing her internet identity wasn't worth the financial gain. The internet makes new identities trivial to acquire and Sarkeesian's wasn't of any particular value before the controversy so I don't think there's any logic there.
Similarly, no one suggested that you should find credibility in anonymity. I tried very hard to make my argument stand on its own by excluding any evidence not verifiable through third parties.
If a threat was issued, did nobody tell the police? Per the quote above they don't appear to know.
I think threatening someone is vile. Our society is based on free speech, and free speech is most key when it is unpopular speech: popular speech doesn't need defending by its nature. That's why flag burning is legal.
However if the police are really unaware of the threats made, I wonder if this is another "Meg Lanker-Simons" incident[0] (feminist false-flag).
intentionally fueling controversy for financial gain
There are people that do this - rightwing talk radio and the goldbugs are the usual examples - but whipping up a hate campaign against yourself? That carries a risk of people believing it and murdering you? This is not a plausible thing.
People can spend what they want on kickstarter. Star Citizen has raised $55m and so far not delivered anything.
Oh, the same Anita that previously got caught with making fake death threat against herself, the standard feminist tactic these days.
Anita is a talentless hack who is trying to ride on the backs of the gullible male developers by whining about non-issues and nonsensical "violence-games-games-causes-real-violence" type of arguments.
> Oh, the same Anita that previously got caught with making fake death threat against herself
Being accused of something does not equate to "getting caught" doing something.
> the standard feminist tactic these days.
[citation needed]
> Anita is a talentless hack
She's consistently putting out a large volume of well-sourced content with a relatively high production value. You can argue that she cherry picks her sources (she doesn't) or that her conclusions are wrong (they aren't), or even that she's an ideologue (she is, but that's fine). It's a pretty hard lift, though, to argue that she's not competent and unerringly professional.
> who is trying to ride on the backs of the gullible male developers
Who is successfully riding on the back of an enormously successful Kickstarter campaign. Kickstarter doesn't publish demographic information on the gender or profession of its donors, but a lot of people showed a clear interest in exactly the
> by whining about non-issues and nonsensical "violence-games-games-causes-real-violence" type of arguments.
As far as I can remember, none of her videos argue that "violence-games-games-causes-real-violence". Instead, they seem to be arguing that certain types of violence are problematic in and of themselves. You don't have to agree with this assertion, but at least have the decency to engage with the argument she's actually making.
> Oh, the same Anita that previously got caught with making fake death threat against herself, the standard feminist tactic these days.
This is bullshit, there's not the slightest bit of evidence that she faked anything. Sarkeesian supposedly fabricating attacks against herself is a gamergate meme that's repeated as fact long before this thing happened and it's always been completely ridiculous.
At this point, she likely has a pretty good routine for screenshotting death threats. Click the notification (OSX notifies me on an OS level immediately, and I personally typically click immediately if I'm at my computer), see it's nasty, Command+Shift+4. 12 seconds is entirely doable and feasible.
I use Tweetbot as my client. When an OSX Twitter notification comes in and I click it, it takes me to Chrome, where I'm not logged in because I never use their web interface.
I probably watch too many shows, but wouldn't that kind of threat (real or manufactured) actually push the speaker further into the limelight? So if this an actual threat (most likely) the 'bully' is really playing into her hands, so to speak. If this threat is manufactured, well this would indeed be quite a Machiavellian PR stunt ...
> If this threat is manufactured, well this would indeed be quite a Machiavellian PR stunt ...
That's a common accusation by the GamerGate folks, but given the number of other women in the gaming arena receiving similar harassment it's pretty believable that these are real.
It's very easy to believe it's real given the fairly recent school shooting fuelled by a very similar brand of misogyny. I don't think less of her at all for backing out of the talk.
Notice I did not accuse her of anything, simply stating two facts. Why the down votes? All I am saying is that whoever made the threats clearly doesn't want the issue to go away ...
Come on guys!
Because you're not stating facts which are relevant. You're saying "If she did [x] it would be [y]". That might be objectively true, but you're not presenting any evidence that she's doing [x] and so it doesn't matter.
It's an incredibly obnoxious thing to do, and honestly in this context it's pretty disgusting.
>I was not trying to state any of the scenarios I presented as facts.
Oh, I'm sorry. I must have gotten confused when you said "Notice I did not accuse her of anything, simply stating two facts."; I took that to mean that you were simply stating two facts, and in fact you were trying to say literally the exact opposite of what you said. You should maybe work on saying things which are not one hundred percent false.
OK, so buy me a beer I will explain in person. Much simpler. I stand by my original comment, but this was never meant to be 'backed up' by any facts. Somewhere along this thread people are talking about conceal carry weapons, this is off topic. At least my comment had the merit of considering the topic at hand with a hypothetical scenario that got waaaay to much attention. I am always surprised by some reactions on HN, it makes for interesting discussions.
What? Why would I buy you a beer? You've done nothing but lie to me and skate around your words in what can only be either an attempt to spread doubt on the validity of a horrifying situation, or a manifestation of an appalling lack of self awareness.
How are you standing by your original comment?
edit: What I'm really looking for is any evidence at all that you're trying to debate in good faith. All of you've done is present a bullshit hypothetical that's entirely unrelated, try to claim that you're "just presenting some facts", write off everybody who disagrees with you as "emotional", and then handwave it away when somebody actually calls you on your crap.
Don't simply say "why the downvotes". Back up your argument with facts and reasoning, and if you're right, it should stand on its own. If you're getting downvotes...you aren't right.
I know this subject is emotionally charged for most people. If you read my statements objectively I hope to help you perceive a different perspective, no need to embrace it. I wish you well.
I read your statement objectively. You said that if she had manufactured this crisis, it would be a machiavellian stunt.
Can you present even a single shred of evidence that she's manufacturing the crisis? Because until you present that evidence, you're not actually presenting facts that are relevant to the discussion. You might as well say "If she were an alien, this might be part of her plan to take over the world". It's impossible to respond to that, because while it might be true (if she were an alien, maybe you've discovered her plan!) but to the best of our knowledge, she's not an alien and hypothesizing about her motives if she were is a waste of everybody's time.
What's even worse is that you're presenting hypotheticals as facts and then pretending not to understand what you're doing and claiming that people are disagreeing with you on emotional reasons, when the only emotion they're feeling is rage that you're wasting their time. This could be an opportunity for an actual discussion and you're just chucking garbage at the wall and then asking "jeeze you guys why don't you like my garbage?"
I do not know of any evidence, nor do I wish to investigate if there is any with regards to the 'manufactured' hypothesis. Reading the article, I had a flash of an interesting twist of events (as improbable as it is). This whole debate is not even about her, but how some people could use this scenario to manipulate the public's attention and polarize the discussion. I like considering things from different angles, which I thought was what Hacker News was about in some measure.
The last paragraph explicitly calls out your theory. You can consider things from different angles all you want, but when the angles you're considering are provably fiction, it's hard to see how they have a place in a discussion of facts.
Considering things from different angles is a useful thing to do, and may well be what Hacker News is about. Considering things from useless angles that have no bearing on the discussion doesn't contribute to anything and only serves to confuse the issue at hand. What is the benefit of discussing an arbitrary hypothetical that's so radical and unsupportable that even the individual who proposes it immediately backs off of the position instead of putting an ounce of effort into providing evidence?
Maybe the whole thing is manufactured by Putin. Maybe the entire chain of events is related to the Kennedy assassination. Maybe Anita Sarkeesian is actually the Lindburgh Baby. Maybe Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend is the son of the gunsmith who made the Magic Bullet. There are millions of hypotheticals out there, and no benefit to discussing all of them.
You're a literal conspiracy theorist; do you understand that you're equivalent to somebody posting that picture of the UFO and saying, "I believe!"?
I was not trying to make a case for/against the speaker. I worked in the game industry for 7 years and the best Game Directors that headed our team were women (by a longshot too.)
I do not know the speaker, and only wish her to find her way out of this mess. I did not really think such objective comments about a hypothetical situation would make me loose karma for the next 3 generations. Go forth and gameth in peace.
I think that's a bit cynical. The guardian story has some more detail[0]. Basically after the threat she asked "will there be guns allowed at this talk?" and the school answered "Well of course, this is Utah".
I really don't think anyone creates a marketing plan that involves fake death threats. That just doesn't make any sense, especially as she doesn't need to manufacture an outrage against her.
I dunno, opless. It would be a great coup for you to call in some death threats against Anita; nobody would believe you, because it wouldn't be out of character for her to make them up. So you get to harass her for free with no consequences.
I'm not saying you /did/ send death threats, but it wouldn't be out of character for the people who are harassing her online.
GG laid down that framework itself. If it feels like a PR stunt against gamers, that's because it really is turning a lot of people against gamers. The difference is, the GGers did it to themselves.
The "side" of this "debate" that is receiving death threats is very deserving of attention (to the extent they want it) and sympathy, and has no lack of credibility.
In the UK: at least half of all calls passed to frontline officers are related to online harassment / trolling / death threats. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-27949674
I guess the theory is that anyone targeting Ms. Sarkeesian would have gone down in a hail of patriot bullets, but she wisely decided not to test this.
From http://www.usu.edu/ust/index.cfm?article=54178