Butthurt white guys, an Asian virgin and an angry lesbian walk into a bar...

Tanoomba_sl said:

You understand that words have slightly variable interpretations in different contexts, right? That's the whole reason dictionaries give multiple definitions instead of a "one size fits all" definition. If you call in a bomb threat that forces a plane to land, you will be accused of terrorism even if there was no bomb. No violence at all. the definition you quoted doesn't "override" the one I quoted. they are both right depending on context.

When you try to make someone fear for their life in order to get them to do something (in this case, to get someone to shut up about women in video games), you are using terrorism (hence the "terror" interrorism).

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"Terrorism" has a context based definition in the same way "Assassinate" does. You don't get to use it here unless you're a fan of hyperbole

Tanoomba, one of the problems I have with people labeling it "terrorism" is that the easiest way it seems to get sympathy from the media is to claim you are getting death threats. Death threats happen all the time over the internet, constantly, to everyone that presents any kind of information that might be controversial.

Clearly though, there are lines that take it beyond that. Is it true or were you joking when you said that people went through her trash? If that is the case, that is fucked up and some definitely some actionable shit though.

khalid_sl said:

Tanoomba, one of the problems I have with people labeling it "terrorism" is that the easiest way it seems to get sympathy from the media is to claim you are getting death threats. Death threats happen all the time over the internet, constantly, to everyone that presents any kind of information that might be controversial.

Clearly though, there are lines that take it beyond that. Is it true or were you joking when you said that people went through her trash? If that is the case, that is fucked up and some definitely some actionable shit though.

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This is the thing that Tanoomba can't seem to understand. It's completely possible to agree that the situation is totally fucked up, but not exclusive to females online. He can't separate the two

The word 'terrorism' has a more significant impact on the feels of the reader, so that is the word these hacks are going to use. Feels before reals.

That kind of hyperbole is a positive feedback loop. It starts because the group is desperate for attention for "their cause" and it results in less attention being paid to the cause of that group.

Enjoy your death spiral!

That kind of hyperbole is a positive feedback loop. It starts because the group is desperate for attention for "their cause" and it results in less attention being paid to the cause of that group.

Enjoy your death spiral!

I dunno that you can ramp up the rhetoric any stronger than "terrorist". I anxiously await being proven wrong by the next round of foundational retardation.

Tanoomba_sl said:

My complaint is not that people disagree or argue with her points, or even that some accuse her of being a "scam artist". Whatever it is she's doing and for whatever reasons, she's not researching people's addresses and families so she can make them fear for their very lives. On the other hand, there are PLENTY of people just just that to her and many other females (and yes, males too, albeit on a smaller scale). Maybe you guys are OK accepting that as "just the way things are", but I say fuck that.

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Tanoomba_sl said:

You understand that words have slightly variable interpretations in different contexts, right? That's the whole reason dictionaries give multiple definitions instead of a "one size fits all" definition. If you call in a bomb threat that forces a plane to land, you will be accused of terrorism even if there was no bomb. No violence at all. the definition you quoted doesn't "override" the one I quoted. they are both right depending on context..

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So Terrorism would be bringing a plane down.John Smedley'splane was literally brought down from a hacker group targeting him and Sony because of business decisions they were making. But somehow, you believe men do not receive attention on this scale (Despite the fact that even one of your articles links to a story about how endemicgeneralharassment is in this culture.). Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming men are harrased less, or more, or anything--I'm just saying I don't know, and neither do you...but you should be worried that you use such absolutist language, even if the face of such nebulous and anecdotal information. But, since all we have are anecdotes--lets compare two anecdotes of a similarly deplorable nature.

Lets examine these cases in the context of how they were reported. PolygonSmedleyvsAnita

First, lets look at the Smedly article. Smedley,his projects and company, have been the target of actual, physical harassment now for weeks. They've been DDOSd, server breach attempts, personal information distributed and finally a real life bombing threat which forced his plane from the air. Notice, however, that the ONLY mention, within this story, are SOME of the hackers exploits which haveverifiable links to support them. It doesn't list his work, or any reason for the hack attempts or any desire by the group to "silence" or "harass" Smedley. In fact, they don't even mention the worldharassmentonce--in theentirearticle...Much less using the term "abused" or anything implying the guy might actually be suffering due to this. It's merely a story about the event, the fact that Smedley was involved--and a small list of things they have done to him (Again, carefully avoiding harassment AND carefully avoiding any insinuations that the goals of the hackers are to do X or Y to Smedley. Heck, they don't even comment on or describe the hackers beyond their actions,)

Meanwhile, the language in Sarkesian's article is much moredefensiveandillustrativeof thedamageshe is actually suffering, and more precise on the REASON she is receiving it, despite the fact that the actualthreats make NO mention of her work. As per the language in the article; she has received awallof abuse and harassment, even though, the article does not list them, nor link to them (As it did for Smedley). So why the stronger harassment/abuse language but less actual examples? (I know they are out there.) Sarkesian received a plug for her latest episode in the end (Praise, literally) and the articleCLEARLY pinned the "abuse" on how she enraged her critics with detailed reporting of misogyny. Meanwhile the origination of Smedley's harassment are left ambiguous and undefined (They don't say, for example, this hacking is due to his enraged critics because of how awesome is new video game was. They don't comment much, at all, on their reasoning, in fact.)

Anyway though, that's possibly a fluke...Lets check out Kotaku...SmedleyvsAnita.

The stark contrast here is almost mind boggling. Notice how in Smedley's article, there isn't even a mention of the two major MMO's he's producing, or the dozens he's managing. There is no mention of why these hacker groups are operating (Although they produce grievances like rain.)--there is certainly no attribution of the grievances to harassment or any particular work of Smedley and not mention how this harassment is meant to end his work, or his productivity or "scare" him off the proverbial field of gaming.

Meanwhile, Sarkesian's article jumps right into her latest video as the primary reason for her harassment. It goes on to praise her work in a way that makes it seem absurdly beyond reproach; and actually twists it to make it seem like the only reason these trolls have come out is because of how profound and unassailable her position is. Look at this line..Sarkeesian's call for more thoughtful portrayals of women's roles in the plots of video games arehonest,salientones.Despite the fact that many of the rebuttals are meant to show how she takes things out of context, or outright lies in her assessment (Like her infamous Hitman highlight--where she went asgainst the goal of the mission, JUST to kill two women on the level.)...The article then cherry picks some terrible tweets and passes off the criticism as vitriol (I say cherry pick, because from everything I've seen, 99% of the replies to her range from either support, to rational criticism.) Again, compare the level of "added" detail to Smed's article. Compare how badly the two articles bias their readersFORthe victims in question. With Smed, you feel like he's dealing with some terrible people that are crossing the line, but that's it, a group of isolated incidents from bad apples. With Anita, you feel like there is a whole campaign out there to silence herbecauseshe is bringing thetruth.It's an ABSURD amount of extraneous narrative added to the Anita story. Imagine that story, rewritten the same way as Smedley's--essentially saying "Anita was threatened. Have been other threats. Police investigating. Done. (Justtryto imagine it. The narrative would be completely different.)

Finally, The Verge.AnitavsSmedley

Once more. Smedley is mainly illustrative of what happened. Other recent events. No mention of harassment, or anything--or how this would affect his work, or any attempt to silence him. This article does actually mention that the group MIGHT have demands, but they haven't been noted yet (This is GOOD, but I'll illustrate why this is biased by comparison below.)

Now, the Sarkeesian article. Surprisingly the journalist here does try to paint somewhat of a parity between men and women receiving threats--and even links to one of the few articles, from Poly no less, that illustrates how endemic harassment is REGARDLESS of gender. However, once more, you can see the bias in the language and context used to report the threats here. It paints the critique of her work as an "incessant, deeply paranoid campaign" --when, in fact, there are hosts and hosts of good, extremely rational, rebuttals. As far as I can see, FAR MORE rational rebuttals than irrational, hate filled ones. Yet, it's the irrational, hate filled ones that get brought into the news. And, what's worse, is that articles like this attempt to color all dissent in this brush of misogyny and irrationality. (Kudos to this author though on attempting to stay to the middle, at least a little, they do mention, in the end, there is a chance that SOME of the criticism of her work is legitimate and not deep seeded, irrational, hatred.)

(Note: In most of these Tan, I don't take the authors to task for claiming the threats were sexist or sexual in nature. Mostly I take them to task for attributing said threats to recent work [Which there is no evidence of], while praising that work and grouping all criticism in the sexist light of this one threat.)


Anyway, though--the main point you can see in those articles is the difference in the LANGUAGE of harassment and abuse; and/OR the context by which the harassment is reported in. Women who receive this kind of negative attention are considered abused, harassed or worse--terrorized. ALSO, even if harassment isn't directly mentioned, the "abuse" is taken as a kind ofcampaign against their work, or an attempt to silence them--it's never merely attributed to how awful the trolls are, it's always about an"incessant, paranoidcampaign"(Toss in narcissism or other derogatory words for effect, but you get the idea) that vaguely accuses the community as a whole of a kind of terror enforced censorship. When men receive this kind of abuse, and I assure you Tan, they do (As you can see in the other article), it's either taken as "ho hum, just trolls"--OR if it gets particularly bad, it's considered "my god, those trolls are AWFUL!"...Rarely is it ever attributed to the desire of the trolls or, worse, the community to "terrorize" the men.

Once more, the above illustrates how this stuff biases opinion. These articles give NO middle ground. They take the threats and assume all negative attention can be grouped under the same umbrella; rather than categorizing it (As they do with Smedley above) as a contained incident, produced by a small group of assholes. The fact is, I have seen, even on this board (Or FOH) developers harassed horribly. I have seen people attempt to post real life info, the locations of their homes and a host of other nasty shit. The mods here have ALWAYS had to be on guard--and this place is like baby-time frolic land compared to some of the actual "bad" communities. Yet, against men (Which nearly 100% of developers were up until a few years ago), this was all brushed aside as just a consequence of notoriety+art; it was always considered "bad", but it was "bad" because of a small, select group of assholes. All other criticism against these guys did not all of the sudden become invalid because said assholes were being assholes.

Yetwhen a woman is harassed--it calls into question "game culture", the deep seeded "misogyny" of gaming fans and ahost of other affectations that some journalist pulls out of his rectumto provide some weight to his moral position. It also delineates such aclearus vs "them"narrative, while leaving "them" nebulous, that it makes it almost impossible for major news outlets to criticize her work forfearof enjoining themselves with the "them" and therefor being on the other side of that clear line being drawn. (And now, let me pontificate like Anita)...The reason they do this is toelicitachauvinisticresponse from well meaning men. The IRONY here is that the very trope Anita is complaining about in her "women as background" decorations, is being employed in these articles. You see, in that trope, Anita is saying that because violence against women is used more rarely than against males; it's meant as a weak narrative attempt to build the antagonistic nature of the main villain in the story. It puts the suffering of women up on a pedestal, preying on the deep seeded nature of patriarchal society to punish those who hurt women. It's a quick and lazy way to make the male gamer dislike the villain and engross himself in the story (Which is about the dislike of the villain)

This is thesamereason why these game journalists flourish and "signal boost" any attacks on women--because they realize that many men out there are willing to rush in andprotectthem. This draws men to their article, much like it draws a player into the story of a game. The only difference is that theantagonistic"Villain" is "misogynist game culture", rather than an actual tangible villain (Which would be, you know, the asshole or group who did it?), and much like the U.S. government uses "terrorism", or the Church uses "the devil", this nebulous and intractable "villain" can be used as an almostendlesswellspring of support. Whenever "it" is on the verge of defeat, all that's need is another reminder that thedarktendrils of this nebulous foe lurk deep withineveryman (Like sin in every human)--and we should all be terrified and turn to the local morally impeachable (insert ideologue here) toabsolveus. For only they hold the morale compass which preserves through the onslaught of thePrivilegeTM...The irony here, Tan, is that Anita is the Damsel, these journalists are the game developers producing a lazy buteffectivenarrative and the outraged followers are the "heroes"--except they don't have a sword and shield, instead their keyboard is their sword and their shield is the bulwark of righteous indignation they can muster.

Now, I'm not saying those threats are NOT deplorable--they are. I'm also NOT saying women don't face abuse, they do. However, if we ever want women to be equal--true equals. They we need to look at their opinions, and their claims with the same scrutiny and skepticism as we would a man's. This goes BOTH ways--it means we can't dismiss a woman's opinion JUST because they are female (Which does happen, I've had to deal with it in work when one of my aids was getting shot down)...AND it means we can't put their opinions or ideas on pedestals just because they are female. It's a tough line to walk, we won't always get it right. Someday, maybe.

For now though, I think the biggest goal is to just focus on how we interpret events. That's the key--skepticism, critical analysis--using words like terrorism silences these things and that is almost always the first volley in any campaign to push some agenda (It doesn't really matter what it is.) Lets take Anita again--How many times have theLEGITIMATEcriticisms of Anita's work--like her Hitman boondoggle--been brought up in the "big online media"?Theproblem with agenda based reporting is that it eventually prevents the media from ever actuallycriticizingthe people it hassaintedwithin it's agenda. (Edit: And I say agendas above--it'snotsome "grand" feminist conspiracy, mind you. Rather, like I linked earlier in this thread from the escapist editor. Many of these news sources have agendas to promote women in gaming. And while that is anoblegoal--I believe we tend to see the effects of it in the bias shown above, especially in the apprehension of criticizing certain females associated with feminism. Might just be me though! )

Great post Lithose.

Didn't know what you were talking about with the "Hitman debacle", almost didn't trust you because I hadn't heard about it before anywhere. So googled and watched..


By itself, it is pretty damning. Not sure if the rest of her stuff is this made up.

She is a con artist, plain and simple. She uses her gender as a weapon, undoubtedly because that's how she was raised. Like religious zealots, the arguments of many women retreat into nebulous indefinable nonsense when confronted with facts which make their position untenable. Eventually all goalposts become metaphysics and feels, unassailable by reason.

Lithose, do you mind if I use your post if I need to without attribution? I won't claim ownership of it, just that it might be easier to pull it out of the context of rerolled. It is very well written argument with supporting examples that I personally could not have done a better job of writing. I don't have a specific target in mind, this stuff comes up from time to time for me on social media and if I were to post it I would like to get permission ahead of time.

We're supposed to ask? Shit, I've been spamming lithose posts all over RMT sites for years as sort of a personal outreach project.

khalid_sl said:

Great post Lithose.

Didn't know what you were talking about with the "Hitman debacle", almost didn't trust you because I hadn't heard about it before anywhere. So googled and watched..
By itself, it is pretty damning. Not sure if the rest of her stuff is this made up.

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It's a mix, just like any youtube critic. She has legitimate views, somewhat biased views and then completely out of context, purposely biased views. I'd be committing the same BS as her if I grouped ALL of her messages as garbage, just because of a fewegregiousanecdotes--she haslegitimateideas/views too and plenty oflegitimatelygood examples of male bias. It's not different from what most male Youtube commentators do. My main gripe isn't her, actually. It's the spin she is allowed to put on her stuffbeyondthe strength of her argument due solely to her association with "girl power" in gaming. Because of that association, her mistakes are not censured, her poor opinions not critiqued and her censorship of any feedback is supported (Where other authors would be taken to task.) In addition, improper negative feed back, as well as her "good" points, are "signal boosted" (Which is my biggest pet peeve). The problem, really, is with the (male) journalists who are using her for click bait; or because they really are slaves to some obtuse chauvinistic ideological position (I can't tell). I only had half my tongue-in-cheek when I said Anita is the personification of her Damsel/Woman-background trope within the media. It's so ironic it'salmosthilarious. .

Denaut_sl said:

Lithose, do you mind if I use your post if I need to without attribution? I won't claim ownership of it, just that it might be easier to pull it out of the context of rerolled. It is very well written argument with supporting examples that I personally could not have done a better job of writing. I don't have a specific target in mind, this stuff comes up from time to time for me on social media and if I were to post it I would like to get permission ahead of time.

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Sure, I don't mind. There are references to FoH in there, so if you want to avoid associations here, just look for it.

Mist_sl said:

ITT: Views that *I* can agree with are legitimate, all others are illegitimate. Context and perspective are irrelevant.

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No, views that are based on examples either illustrated dishonestly or completely taken out of context are illegitimate (So, in essence, I was saying context was extremely important, both for me--and the views I critique.). I gave you an example of one of the views I consider illegitimate; are you going to say it's intellectually honest to say a game glorifies the sexist murder of women because it hasonestage, in which the player may kill two women, by taking amore difficultpath and specifically going against the goal of the game (As in losing points) and disregarding multiple mechanics that could easily let you pass? If I build a tit statue in minecraft and then destroy it, is minecraft misogynistic?

Despite what you believe Mist, some opinions can be illegitimate if they are based on a dishonest appraisal of events, passed off as a honest interpretation. But please, enlighten me on that example--illustrate how you believe she is correct, or even making a legitimate criticism of said event from her portrayal. I think I was pretty even handed in my comments, she is just like any other critic with a specific agenda--she has some bias.