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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

When we show up, we win.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

We will not go back.

Republicans do not trust women.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

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You are here: Home / Popular Culture / Gamer Dork / Late Night Open Thread: Team SJW

Late Night Open Thread: Team SJW

by Anne Laurie|  October 24, 20142:27 am| 80 Comments

This post is in: Gamer Dork, Open Threads, Vagina Outrage

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And for the record, none of you fucking #Gamergate tools tried to dox me, even after I tore you a new one. I'm not even a tough target.

— Chris Kluwe (@ChrisWarcraft) October 23, 2014

A little follow-up to the epic rant TomL wrote about earlier. Of course, Chris Kluwe looks like what the #GamerGaters believe to be a “real” gamer, i.e., a young white male. Kat Stoeffel, at NYMag‘s ladyblog The Cut, explains why “It’s Not Censorship to Ignore You“:

…There’s something obviously illogical about free-speech panic among white Americans in 2014. Thanks to online publishing and social media, the barrier to entry for free public speech is lower than ever. What I suspect truly bothers free-speech reactionaries is that the same, democratized new media that allows them to publish free-speech rants has opened public discourse up to a lot of people they’re not used to hearing from — women, people of color, and those Gamergate calls “social justice warriors,” in particular. Some of the people who historically controlled the media uncontested might not like what these people have to say, but these newcomers are nonetheless very popular. And when a “social justice warrior” chooses to wield the “block” button against a troll, it’s not his freedom of speech that’s in danger, it’s his entitlement to be heard…

I can only imagine the embarrassment it would cause lawyers for Edward Snowden, Pussy Riot, and Ai Weiwei to see the First Amendment taken up by rando amateurs rationalizing their misogyny. But suppressing free speech is also an ironic charge for feminists to encounter. For them, free speech isn’t a privilege to be defended to its pathetic death. It’s a risk they’re willing to take at the cost of critical invective (much of which they engage) and violent threats (which they shouldn’t have to engage). Feminists take the risk of speaking up in order to call attention to problems that would otherwise go unaddressed, like rape and sexual harassment and discrimination. These problems are so real, grave, and empirically widespread they force women to overcome their own long-standing self-censorship. “Maybe there’s nothing scarier to white dudes than censorship,” a friend recently mused, “because they face so few actual problems.”

Asking men to be quiet long enough to listen to women still feels like a tall order. Perhaps we could start by agreeing that it’s not censorship for women to say, “That blog post about your ex was vile.” Or, “Your video game sucks.” And, especially, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

Many, many years ago, brilliant cartoonist Jules Feiffer had one of his skittish male characters explain to his about-to-be-ex, “Men don’t hate women! Men need women! Men hate needing!” Whenever I see (mostly at second hand) a self-described MRA [men’s rights activist] ranting about SJWs [social justice warriors, aka, people — especially women — by whom the MRA feels threatened] I think of that character.

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Reader Interactions

80Comments

  1. 1.

    The Dangerman

    October 24, 2014 at 2:42 am

    Occasionally, I watch Fox News (and peruse Red State) to try and figure out how in the fuck people can actually vote for Republicans (it remains a mystery)…

    …but Fox News is all in on this hatchet thing in NYC being a jihadist attack and ISIS has arrived in the USA. If this thing turns out to be some whacked out Dude that has nothing remotely to due with Islam, well, maybe, just maybe, enough people would stop watching that shit that they’d have to actually become journalists.

    Yeah, a guy can dream…

    ETA: BTW, props to Cole downstairs on comparing Dallas to NYC; the contrast was stark. Bellevue’s been training for months; Dallas wasn’t training at all, apparently.

  2. 2.

    heckblazer

    October 24, 2014 at 3:00 am

    “Social justice warrior” is supposed to be an insult? Huh.

  3. 3.

    Villago Delenda Est

    October 24, 2014 at 3:11 am

    “Men’s Rights Activists” are wussies who have serious problems getting laid.

  4. 4.

    Another Holocene Human

    October 24, 2014 at 4:19 am

    @Villago Delenda Est: They have problems treating women as human beings.

    One would only wish they had more problems getting laid, as some of them blog about their date rapes and others are trying to enlist useful idiots in their cause to relitigate a court battle they lost against the mother or custodial parent of their natural children.

  5. 5.

    Botsplainer

    October 24, 2014 at 4:45 am

    Jesus – I just looked at Kluwe’s twitter feed and got lost in the world of GamerGate again.

    Every time I wade into anything GamerGate, I want to renormalize routine school bullying; those dorks really needed the benefits of mildly corrective peer pressure towards social conformity in adolescence, along with dads who’d kick them in the ass and tell them to go outside and throw a goddamned football or chase a girl or steal something or commit some vandalism.

    Too much helicoptering is bad, and caving to sensitivity on a constant basis does no favors. Little Jeremy needed to be pressured into doing stuff, not coddled and “empowered”.

  6. 6.

    Chris

    October 24, 2014 at 4:45 am

    @The Dangerman:

    Occasionally, I watch Fox News (and peruse Red State) to try and figure out how in the fuck people can actually vote for Republicans (it remains a mystery)…

    I think a lot of it simply comes from having been raised in a certain worldview and having never learned to question it, in large part because the worldview discourages that kind of thing. In other words, their beliefs are founded on bullshit.

    C. S. Lewis had this line about how if there really were such things as witches – demonic entities with supernatural powers and malevolent intentions towards all humankind – then the paranoia of the witch-hunting days would’ve made a lot more sense. The problem being that, well, there’s no such things as witches. But try getting THAT into the heads of the Salem believers of the era, or modern right wingers with their causes.

    There’s a reason the French republic went in for universal education, and sent public schoolteachers to every corner of France explicitly as a counterweight to the village priest. (Same reason our Republicans are all about privatizing education, religious education, home schooling and, when all else fails, corrupting the public curriculum with “teach the controversy.”)

  7. 7.

    A Humble Lurker

    October 24, 2014 at 4:56 am

    @Botsplainer:

    those dorks really needed the benefits of mildly corrective peer pressure towards social conformity in adolescence, along with dads who’d kick them in the ass and tell them to go outside and throw a goddamned football or chase a girl or steal something or commit some vandalism

    My experience with gamergate indicates that this is probably exactly what they had. Hence gamergate.

  8. 8.

    Baud

    October 24, 2014 at 5:39 am

    Dox?

  9. 9.

    Baud

    October 24, 2014 at 6:02 am

    @heckblazer:

    It’s all in the sneer.

  10. 10.

    raven

    October 24, 2014 at 6:03 am

    Now all of the sudden Morning Joe is all about being calm and there is no threat in NYC??

  11. 11.

    Baud

    October 24, 2014 at 6:08 am

    @raven:

    Hmm. I’m trying to see the political angle to the difference in attitude. It’s escaping me.

  12. 12.

    raven

    October 24, 2014 at 6:11 am

    @Baud: I wonder if someone got to him and said, “hey asshole you need to back off”?

    It’s good to see him shift to “this is the craziest election EVAH!!!!!!!!”

  13. 13.

    Baud

    October 24, 2014 at 6:15 am

    @raven:

    Yeah, since he’s in New York, maybe this time he was afraid someone would actually kick his ass if he tried to bring the hysteria there.

  14. 14.

    raven

    October 24, 2014 at 6:20 am

    @Baud: I like the cut of your jIb!

  15. 15.

    The Raven on the Hill

    October 24, 2014 at 6:25 am

    @Botsplainer: I think most of the leaders were the bullies.

    I wrote a piece on GMRG8 and censorship a few days back. GG8 itself is censorship directed at women, but I also fear that the unholy alliance of sex-negative feminists and right-wing Christians may make a reappearance in response, backed by the power of the state.

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    October 24, 2014 at 6:26 am

    @raven

    Joe’s gonna get severe whiplash one of these days.

    Now that there’s an ill person in NYC, where studios, staff and production facilities abound we can expect to be inundated with all Ebola all the time, crowding out or relegating to squibs stories about the upcoming elections, international non-Ebola news, etc.

  17. 17.

    Joey Maloney

    October 24, 2014 at 6:27 am

    @Baud: It means publishing private information of the target, like their home address, personal phone, POE, whatever. Derived from “documenting”, I think.

  18. 18.

    sharl

    October 24, 2014 at 6:33 am

    @Joey Maloney: Yep. (Also, too.)

  19. 19.

    Botsplainer

    October 24, 2014 at 6:33 am

    @The Raven on the Hill:

    I was just digging into the leaking septic tank of scribblings from the rotting hunk of rancid meat that masquerades as Mike Cernovich’s brain.

    The guy is actively ‘roid raging. I’d fuck with him for kicks, but he’s apt to buy a plane ticket to show up to my door and I’d have to kill him. I’d hate having to hose blood and bone and brain matter from the porch – it’s an old hose and leaks where it fits into the faucet, spraying my arm when I turn it on, and sprays when I turn it off.

    With fall being fully “on”, that damned water is cold.

  20. 20.

    Bystander

    October 24, 2014 at 6:33 am

    My guess is that if Hatchetguy is just Crazyguy…and let’s face it, really, a hatchet is the best you can come up with?…no more need be said. A few weeks from now, vague allusions will suggest that he was in fact a disciple of Isis.

    When the AG announced his departure, I heard a report on NPR about how Justice had been rocked by scandals during Holder’s tenure, among others, Fast and Furious. It was left at that. No mention of the fact that every one of the manufactured “scandals” turned out to be nothing but republican-ginned up b/s. That liberal NPR!

  21. 21.

    The Raven on the Hill

    October 24, 2014 at 6:36 am

    @Chris: @The Dangerman: Last election year I wrote a rant directed at a conservative woman that I gathered up and put on my blog. At the time I commented:

    You ignore Romney’s appalling lack of integrity to set up your equivalence between the two candidates. He is sexist, racist, and homophobic—again, why any woman would support someone so sexist, I do not understand. Romney has a record as a businessman and a politician. He has repudiated all of it to win the Presidency and then repudiated his repudiations. He has changed his positions not just once, but multiple times. The only policy goals he has reliably supported are lower taxes for himself and his class, and less regulation on his business activities, and those of his class. I see no indication of political courage in the man, and if he has any honor, it is reserved for his small group of peers. As someone from a military family, why would you want to see someone with so little honor and integrity as commander in chief?

    It went on in that vein.

    But also, these people are quaking in their boots. Fox News and all the other right-wing propagandists have worked long and hard to push the country into this vast sink of fear and with many people they have succeeded.

    I fear the terrorists are winning.

  22. 22.

    Baud

    October 24, 2014 at 6:36 am

    @Joey Maloney:

    Thanks.

  23. 23.

    NotMax

    October 24, 2014 at 6:42 am

    @The Raven on the Hill

    I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
        – Frank Herbert, Dune

  24. 24.

    danielx

    October 24, 2014 at 6:46 am

    I have to admit Kluwe’s description of “paint-huffing shitgoblins” does paint a vivid picture. Wish I’d come up with it.

    Edit: “slopebrowed weaseldicks” has a lot to be said for it too. Dude has an ear for invective.

  25. 25.

    The Raven on the Hill

    October 24, 2014 at 7:12 am

    A Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday found that as many as four in 10 adults have been subjected to online harassment and that men and women suffer from different forms of harassment…Young women, those 18-24, experience certain severe types of harassment at disproportionately high levels: 26% of these young women have been stalked online, and 25% were the target of online sexual harassment. In addition, they do not escape the heightened rates of physical threats and sustained harassment common to their male peers and young people in general.—http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/10/pew-survey-says-online-harassment-rampant-impacts-genders-differently/

    We really need to start enforcing the laws against stalking.

  26. 26.

    Baud

    October 24, 2014 at 7:35 am

    I guess everyone is out doxxing.

  27. 27.

    raven

    October 24, 2014 at 7:49 am

    @Baud: We walk in the morning!

  28. 28.

    Aimai

    October 24, 2014 at 7:59 am

    @The Raven on the Hill: no. Just no.

  29. 29.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 24, 2014 at 8:01 am

    @Botsplainer:

    Every time I wade into anything GamerGate, I want to renormalize routine school bullying; those dorks really needed the benefits of mildly corrective peer pressure towards social conformity in adolescence, along with dads who’d kick them in the ass and tell them to go outside and throw a goddamned football or chase a girl or steal something or commit some vandalism.

    Yeah, then they’d grow up to be jock date-rapists instead. MUCH better.

    The whole lesson of this is that the jock v. nerd dichotomy is useless as a predictor of misogyny.

  30. 30.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    October 24, 2014 at 8:03 am

    The Amazing (But True) Tale of Tootie The Fax Cat

  31. 31.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 24, 2014 at 8:04 am

    @The Raven on the Hill:

    I also fear that the unholy alliance of sex-negative feminists and right-wing Christians may make a reappearance in response, backed by the power of the state.

    “reappearance”? Did it ever exist? Maybe in the sense that there were two different groups that didn’t like porn. (Or, in the case of the right-wing Christians, claimed not to like porn.)

  32. 32.

    Betty Cracker

    October 24, 2014 at 8:07 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Or, in the case of the right-wing Christians, claimed not to like porn.

    Quoted for truth.

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 24, 2014 at 8:12 am

    Anyway, I think the danger of reaction to this crap turning into some sort of specter of state censorship is very low. The games industry has so much money sloshing around in it that the big boys can probably buy members of Congress. Meanwhile, online harassment of women needs more involvement from the law at this point. It’s difficult to prosecute in part because of legitimate constitutional concerns and fears of abuse, but making credible violent threats against people is in no way protected speech.

  34. 34.

    Baud

    October 24, 2014 at 8:21 am

    @raven:

    Good way to relieve that Morning Joe stress.

  35. 35.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    October 24, 2014 at 8:21 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    The whole lesson of this is that the jock v. nerd dichotomy is useless as a predictor of misogyny.

    ’twas ever thus.

    Can’t find the link now under the onslaught of GamerGate plus breast physics, but a pretty typical story circulated not long ago about a pen-n-paper group who had a new guy join them. The game soon degenerated into an argument between the one woman in the group and the new guy. He had insisted in describing his character, a female drow, in loving detail. The fight started when he insisted that the character’s large breasts didn’t bounce because she was so fit and muscular.

  36. 36.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    October 24, 2014 at 8:23 am

    BTW, I have an earlier post in moderation. Not sure what bad word was in the link.

  37. 37.

    Cervantes

    October 24, 2014 at 8:28 am

    @Botsplainer:
    @The Raven on the Hill:

    Read what each of you wrote but understood none of it. Or rather, to the extent I understood it, I am mystified by the argument.

  38. 38.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 24, 2014 at 8:32 am

    I do think the one shred of anything other than fear-of-girl-cooties in this mess is that gamers were primed to respond apoplectically to any general criticism of their subculture by the moral panics against videogame violence in the ’90s and ’00s, and specifically by Jack Thompson’s litigation crusade. Thompson, who was a right-wing Christian in the Donald Wildmon vein, was actually trying to use the power of the state to shut down the games industry, and he managed to stir up some “murder simulator” media panic in the process.

    But he was never in any kind of alliance with feminists, to my knowledge. And he was pathetic; eventually ended up disbarred for abusive and stupid behavior.

    I think you can see some memory of that in the reactions to Anita Sarkeesian. But they’re not paying attention; Sarkeesian is clearly conscious of all that, and bends over backwards to not be Jack Thompson.

  39. 39.

    currants

    October 24, 2014 at 8:36 am

    @Chris:

    I think a lot of it simply comes from having been raised in a certain worldview and having never learned to question it, in large part because the worldview discourages that kind of thing.

    Yes, especially if the worldview is some version of Christianity and you’ve grown up in an entire (even if small) isolated area where EVERYONE is some version of Christianity, such that the Baptists are certain the Catholics are going to hell, for example.

  40. 40.

    currants

    October 24, 2014 at 8:36 am

    @Baud: Docs.

    ETA: What Joey Maloney and Sharl said (with more actual information).

  41. 41.

    debbie

    October 24, 2014 at 8:41 am

    Christie does it again:

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/chris-christie-minimum-wage-misunderstood

    “I don’t think there’s a mother or father sitting around a kitchen table tonight in America who are saying, ‘You know honey, if my son or daughter could just make a higher minimum wage, my God, all our dreams would be realized,” he told the audience. “Is that what parents aspire to for their children?”

    All the poise of Mitt with the sensibilities of Trump. Perfect together.

  42. 42.

    Chris

    October 24, 2014 at 8:45 am

    @debbie:

    No, but there are probably quite a few of them saying “you know, if my son or daughter could just have a higher minimum wage, she might be able to afford a roof over her head AND food AND health insurance, maybe even start putting aside a little money for her retirement.”

    And yes, there are tons of parents who aspire to their children having a baseline like that that they needn’t fear fall below.

  43. 43.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    October 24, 2014 at 8:45 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Yeah, then they’d grow up to be jock date-rapists instead. MUCH better.

    This isn’t the real world we’re talking about – on line everyone looks the same and gender is meaningless.
    “Sexy” on line is who has the best imagination and that tends to be older males. Older males tend to be attracted to women, therefor to a twenty something virgin gamer dork women are competition for the desirable cyber sex partners (I mean it’s not like a twenty something gamer dork is going to up their own game, that requires work)

  44. 44.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    October 24, 2014 at 8:49 am

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: The internet: where the men are men, the women are men, and the kids are cops?

  45. 45.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 24, 2014 at 8:49 am

    @debbie: The thing is, what Christie was doing there is something that has historically worked pretty well in the US. You convince people that social-welfare programs and regulations like the minimum wage are for the most pathetic losers of society, and then they won’t think of them as something they will or should hope to benefit from, because who wants to be a pathetic loser?

    Then the next step is to convince them that the losers are robbing them, and you get political motivation to erode these protections–meaning that the only people who can be helped by them are even more pathetic, and continuing the cycle.

    I think we’re starting to see its effectiveness diminishing, maybe because of the Great Recession and the dawning realization that, averaged over time, the mass of Americans haven’t been getting much out of the booms and recoveries either.

  46. 46.

    Cervantes

    October 24, 2014 at 8:49 am

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    Good Lord.

    I remember back in the day watching undergraduates playing Star Trek on (what must have been) a Sigma 7. The only thing mildly risqué about it was their off-line conversation about Uhura and Kirk.

    I guess that conversation was subversive in its way and a good thing. Perhaps exposing under-developed young men to the subtleties of “breast physics” is a good thing, too, if it gets them past bare titillation.

  47. 47.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    October 24, 2014 at 8:51 am

    @The Raven on the Hill: meh, most adult content in games these days are modding in by the users Not to mention most game purchases are done on line and the Japanese will be more than happy to rush into any bizzero sex practice void American game developers self censor themselves out of.

  48. 48.

    SRW1

    October 24, 2014 at 8:53 am

    @debbie:

    All the poise of Mitt with the sensibilities of Trump.

    Nailed it in one stroke.

  49. 49.

    Cervantes

    October 24, 2014 at 8:54 am

    @debbie: He’s either divorced from reality or giving a good impression of it.

  50. 50.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    October 24, 2014 at 8:56 am

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Welcome to the intertubes.

    And the punch line – the homophobic rage of a twenty something gamer dork who just realized he had cyber sex with another guy while aforesaid gamer dork was pretending to be a woman is something to behold.

  51. 51.

    debbie

    October 24, 2014 at 8:57 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think we’re starting to see its effectiveness diminishing.

    Oh, I think the attitude’s going strong; it’s just that the current breed is either too lazy or too ignorant to express these things well. “Where’s Buckley when we really need him??”

  52. 52.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 24, 2014 at 8:59 am

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Actually, though, it is the real world we’re talking about, because this whole “Gamergate” thing is just a tiny twig of the larger problem of misogyny and sexual harassment in geek/con/fandom/rationalist/tech/engineering/science culture. I see it as basically of a piece with Kathy Sierra being hounded offline, and Richard Dawkins going off on Rebecca Watson about the elevator incident, and probably Isaac Asimov pinching any female butt he saw 40 years ago.

    Now Botsplainer thinks it’s proof of the menace of dweebs, and if someone had just beaten some sense into those dweebs and turned them into normal manly men, we wouldn’t have these problems. And it’s not just Botsplainer; around both this and the Elliot Rodger case I’ve heard a lot of “if only we’d gotten Nerdlinger laid.”

    But that just turns it into a bad joke. The abuse that goes on in every frat house in the universe, to me, says that’s wrong. Our constructions of masculinity and sex are doing all this damage regardless of which side of them you end up on.

  53. 53.

    BubbaDave

    October 24, 2014 at 9:10 am

    @debbie:

    “Where’s Buckley when we really need him??”

    In Hell where we really need him to be?

  54. 54.

    Chris

    October 24, 2014 at 9:12 am

    @debbie:

    I don’t know if it’s laziness or if it’s just living in a bubble.

    I think one of the big differences between the Nixon/Reagan generation and this one was that the last generation grew up in an America shaped by eighty years of progressive/liberal reforms and knew that they were pushing back against something that had a hell of a lot of momentum. Today’s crowd has grown up in a world shaped by conservative victories, and to quite an extent inside the alternate reality bubble created by the previous generation (think tanks, right wing mediasphere, church networks after the right wing takeover, et al). Plus an ideology of “we’re real/traditional America” that reinforces the notion that their ideology is how Americans have always thought, and only commies could possibly disagree.

    I think modern conservatives (at all level, from presidential candidate to the voter next door) find it much harder than their predecessors to grok the simple notions that 1) not everyone agrees with you and 2) you can’t simply ignore, insult, and dismiss as a communist everyone who disagrees with you: you’re never going to get anywhere if you don’t learn to work with at least some of them.

  55. 55.

    Howard Beale IV

    October 24, 2014 at 9:45 am

    @Botsplainer: And I’d be willing to bet that 99.999% of these eejets aren’t bothering to use Tor to hide their tracks, either.

  56. 56.

    Paul in KY

    October 24, 2014 at 9:54 am

    @Botsplainer: Good points on the problems with killing him.

  57. 57.

    different-church-lady

    October 24, 2014 at 10:21 am

    @debbie:

    “I don’t think there’s a mother or father sitting around a kitchen table tonight in America who are saying, ‘You know honey, if my son or daughter could just make a higher minimum wage, my God, all our dreams would be realized,” he told the audience. “Is that what parents aspire to for their children?”

    No, you blob of useless gubernatorial protoplasm: there’s a mother and a father sitting around a kitchen table tonight in America who are saying, ‘You know honey, if I could just make a higher minimum wage, my God, we’d be able to feed the kids better.'”

    Fuckin’ jackass.

  58. 58.

    Lee

    October 24, 2014 at 10:28 am

    For being a gamer for so long, I find it surprising that he is still feeding the trolls.

    There is a percentage of those involved with GamerGate that are just trolling because they have nothing better to do.

    My guess is that it is a significant portion of those involved.

  59. 59.

    JR in WV

    October 24, 2014 at 10:31 am

    @danielx:

    I envy his ability to be creative in his invective. If I didn’t know better I would think he was a senior Petty Officer in the USN for many years, as that is the only comparable invective I have heard.

    What a gift! He should go into politics, and use exactly that invective for his opponents, who would be soft targets for him.

  60. 60.

    Seanly

    October 24, 2014 at 10:50 am

    That same entitlement to be heard is the exact same as the bigots’ entitlement to discriminate against LGBT weddings. Both are a perverse reading of the 1st amendment.

    The GamerGate is very troubling. I am very active in an online forum for over-21 gamers – our site is geared towards mature gamers who don’t cheat, glitch or grief. Luckily, we don’t see any of the reprehensible opinions and tactics. While there might be some members who are active in that stupidity, they haven’t posted about it (we’re more focused on console gaming). Unfortunately, not many women are signed up at the site (it’s probably 10 or even 20 to 1). Most of the members are young white males in IT fields and hold moderate to conservative political opinions. However, they are mostly pretty pleasant guys to game with.

    I work in an industry (civil engineering) that is still heavily male-dominated. My own employer is now helmed by a woman which is a rarity for an engineering firm (and Fortune 500).

    So while GamerGate is showing a hideous reaction to a changing industry, there are other industries that still don’t have near enough diversity (in every measure). To me, the larger issue is that there is still so far that society has to go so that everyone can participate equally. I may be a white, hetero male, but I do want inclusive, diverse, accepting and welcoming workplaces and communities. The issues of immigrants, of women, of LGBT are my issues also.

  61. 61.

    Belafon

    October 24, 2014 at 10:54 am

    @Lee: They stopped being trolls when they started threatening the women to the point that they cannot stay in their homes. He’s pointing out the fact that they aren’t going after him for doing the same thing. Will it change them? No. But it might change someone’s mind.

    And, as with all trolls, ignoring them won’t make them go away, and it won’t help the women they’ve threatened.

  62. 62.

    The Moar You Know

    October 24, 2014 at 10:57 am

    “Men’s Rights Activists” are wussies who have serious problems getting laid.

    @Villago Delenda Est: Never met one that wasn’t. Always the most pathetic specimens of manhood out there.

  63. 63.

    Seanly

    October 24, 2014 at 10:58 am

    Ooops, in the last sentence of my previous post, please imagine that I included the the issues of minorities. My wife & I have some older friends and 10 to 15 years ago, they wondered why I was always fuming about racial issues when America had been so good to black people since the 90’s. I think the events of the last 7 years bear out my feelings that there is still so much good works left to be done.

  64. 64.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 24, 2014 at 11:01 am

    @The Moar You Know: A lot of them are scarily bitter ex-husbands of the sort who get restraining orders against them.

  65. 65.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 24, 2014 at 11:10 am

    @Seanly:

    Unfortunately, not many women are signed up at the site (it’s probably 10 or even 20 to 1). Most of the members are young white males in IT fields and hold moderate to conservative political opinions. However, they are mostly pretty pleasant guys to game with.

    It’s quite possible that they would become less pleasant if the ratio of women started to increase, or if a woman became an extremely popular poster on the site.

    That last seems to be a common pattern: Kathy Sierra recently described it as “the Kool-Aid point,” the threshold at which a woman seems to be getting enough attention that people think she might have some kind of following or personality cult. A lot of guys just completely flip out at that point and start lobbing grotesque attacks, often implying that she’s whorishly banking on sex appeal.

    (Women basically cannot win on this point: if they’re conventionally attractive, dress up or wear makeup they get mashers and slut-shaming, and if they’re not and/or don’t, they get picked on for being ugly. Often they get both at the same time. You can probably point to examples of men getting the same kind of attention, but usually they’re professional entertainers of some sort or are extreme cases. For women there is no neutral middle ground.)

  66. 66.

    The Moar You Know

    October 24, 2014 at 11:28 am

    A lot of them are scarily bitter ex-husbands of the sort who get restraining orders against them.

    @Matt McIrvin: They start out as punk-ass youngsters whose favorite sport is calling cheerleaders whores, lead online lives where they think griefing fellow gamers and doxxing people is fun, go to a college where they try to join the College Republicans, are rejected by them plus every woman and frat in the bargain, drop out, finally find a woman so desperate she’ll hook up with him in spite of the unmistakable stench of “lifelong loser” oozing off of him, and then when even the doormat he’s married finally has enough walks away, end up as you say.

    They then start working the “date a Russian girl” sites and work their way through various third-world nations as they’re rejected by woman after woman when they find out he has a weekly income of $100 after child support payments, and finally end up with a Thai or Filipino chick who will have a few more kids with him, and end up taking said kids and all the rest of his money a few years later and waltzing back to their home country, where he can’t follow.

    The arc of justice is long and slow.

    ETA: one of my points being that you can usually tell who these losers are by junior high, and assuredly by high school. Knew a kid in fifth grade who became one, and we all knew he would, even though we didn’t have the vocabulary for it at the time.

  67. 67.

    Lee

    October 24, 2014 at 11:36 am

    @Belafon: I would still submit that they are still trolls if the reason they are making the threats is solely for the attention & reaction (just a larger more noxious variety). If they actually have intent with the threat, then they are no longer trolls.

    Even if you want to say the threats means they are no longer just trolls, how many of the total are making the threats? And how many of those are actual different individuals versus singles with multiple accounts.

    I feel a bit sorry for the law enforcement on this case the amount of effort that is required to sift through the credible threats versus non-credible is going to take a significant amount of work.

  68. 68.

    Gex

    October 24, 2014 at 12:02 pm

    @The Moar You Know: and it’s so much easier and satisfying to keep women down to feel good about themselves than to do the hard work of bettering themselves as people.

  69. 69.

    kc

    October 24, 2014 at 1:00 pm

    @heckblazer:

    Thanks in part to Suey Park . . .

  70. 70.

    kc

    October 24, 2014 at 1:03 pm

    @Botsplainer:

    @The Raven on the Hill:

    I was just digging into the leaking septic tank of scribblings from the rotting hunk of rancid meat that masquerades as Mike Cernovich’s brain.

    The guy is actively ‘roid raging. I’d fuck with him for kicks, but he’s apt to buy a plane ticket to show up to my door and I’d have to kill him. I’d hate having to hose blood and bone and brain matter from the porch – it’s an old hose and leaks where it fits into the faucet, spraying my arm when I turn it on, and sprays when I turn it off.

    Um . . .

  71. 71.

    polyorchnid octopunch

    October 24, 2014 at 1:16 pm

    @Lee: so much wrong here. The cops don’t need to figure out whose threats are serious and whose aren’t; threats are criminal in their own right. The only thing they need to do is find the person at the other end of the account.

  72. 72.

    Bob In Portland

    October 24, 2014 at 1:45 pm

    Want to know what you’re eating?

  73. 73.

    Roc

    October 24, 2014 at 5:33 pm

    This GamerGate stuff is still just clickbait, at best. It’s been perpetuated from the beginning by people with something to sell. Be it ads, or books, or movies, or youtube views, or MRA membership cards, or whatever.

    And the notion that it’s about “ethics in journalism” is beyond laughable and well into intellectually offensive.
    The supposedly-offended market is still buying games from the publishers that *are* the corrupting influence. The AAA publishers are both the primary corrupter of the gaming press and primary advertisers in the gaming press. Why would anyone badger individual gaming sites for accepting the devil’s strings-attached-access deals, but not the devil itself for using its ad-buy and control of access to ensure that these sites couldn’t possibly exist unless they played ball? Why would anyone harass a minor advertiser like Intel for advertising on sites posting material they find offensive, but ignore a major advertiser like Activision?

    There are legitimate concerns on both sides (Gaming *does* need to broaden its artistic range; Games journalism *is* fundamentally broken) but the hangers-on and toxic extremists make productive engagement on the issues a mine-field that reasonable people aren’t going anywhere near. The inevitable result is that both issues are effectively “dead” for real discussion and “gold” for selling ads.

    Honestly, it looks like nothing so much as a release valve — harmlessly venting frustration and energy — all to *protect* the status quo from any build-up in pressure that could effect change. You couldn’t possibly generate more noise while guaranteeing less chance of any actual change, than proceeding exactly as the GamerGate situation has done.

  74. 74.

    Matt

    October 24, 2014 at 6:20 pm

    Turn over some rocks in the GG universe, and you quickly discover that what they mean when they whine “we want politics out of our game journalism” is actually “we want what we think are ‘progressive politics’ out of our game journalism”.

    Parsing further, turns out that “progressive politics” includes anything from pointing out that this year’s edition of “Jiggling Tits and Rocketlaunchers: Modern Wankfare” might be a tad sexist to asserting that non-white non-men might not be getting an entirely fair deal.

    GG is the exact same reactionary assclowns that have been congregating under the Tea People banner; Mike Cernovich is a PRIME example of this – he’s not just furious about women, he hates atheists and “political correctness” too. Once that clicks into place, all the tactics start to make sense:

    * if you point out how X we are, you’re the real X
    * accurately quoting our previous public statements is a personal attack
    * sure, we came with the guys wearing the hoods but WE’RE totes not like that despite having all the same viewpoints

    We’ve seen all these before, from the GOP.

  75. 75.

    The Raven on the Hill

    October 24, 2014 at 7:37 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: @Cervantes: Back in the 1980s, I remember an alliance between Catherine Mackinnon and some fundie group or other. A similar alliance made an appearance with anti-pornography activism in the UK in 2006, and prompted the foundation of Feminists Against Censorship.

    Most people who know women’s history are deeply skeptical of attempts to protect women with censorship, remembering that feminist literature and information about contraception have invariably been censored and this justified as protecting women, and lesbian literature doubly so. In one of my GMRG8 posts I wrote:

    I fear a backlash; an expansion of the existing game ratings board that suppresses a broad range of sexual and violent content, making impossible engagement with these subjects. One may imagine something like the 1930s Motion Picture Production Code, which for many years prevented the showing, even, in movies distributed in the USA, of a married couple just sleeping together. Homosexuals were unpersonned in US movies of that period—they were never even shown. And all the while the enormous hypocrisy of the period, with all its covert sexual relations, conceived as evil, a source of pride for men, a reason to blame women.

    This is very much alive. If one follows radical-right Christian literature—an influential political faction, remember—one finds that the extensive restrictions these groups place on women are invariably justified as protecting women.

    Enough of an explanation, folks?

  76. 76.

    The Raven on the Hill

    October 24, 2014 at 7:45 pm

    @Botsplainer: “I was just digging into the leaking septic tank of scribblings from the rotting hunk of rancid meat that masquerades as Mike Cernovich’s brain.”

    So I went and looked him up. Guh! Matt Driscoll without the fundamentalism.

    @Matt: I suspect there is some actual support from the radical right. Like Kyle Wagner says, The Future Of The Culture Wars Is Here, And It’s Gamergate.

  77. 77.

    The Raven on the Hill

    October 24, 2014 at 11:23 pm

    As a final thought on this, due mostly to the uncomprehending reactions here, I think what I am writing about in this context is law. We have, in GMRG8, one kind of law: the law of the jungle. In the response I fear, I see another kind of law: the law that suppresses visible conflict, while enforcing oppression. I would like to see a third kind of law: one that penalizes the gamergators, while protecting and encouraging freedom of expression and women’s rights.

    There’s a longer piece to be written here.

  78. 78.

    The Raven on the Hill

    October 25, 2014 at 12:14 am

    Brianna Wu:

    I also found this statement troubling. “Many at IGN feel additional visibility only encourages those who want to use the Movement as a means to stop rather than start discussions.” IGN prefers silence. They say they don’t want to “signal boost” Gamergate. What IGN doesn’t understand is ignoring these people isn’t working. They are going after any woman in the industry that speaks up about representation of women in the games industry. They went after Samantha Allen, they went after Jenn Frank, they went after Zoe Quinn and they went after me. —Brianna Wu, About IGN’s Statement on Gamergate

    Me, upthread: “The law that suppresses visible conflict, while enforcing oppression.”

    Told ya.

  79. 79.

    Cervantes

    October 25, 2014 at 1:06 pm

    @The Raven on the Hill:

    Thanks for elaborating.

    I am not as hostile to MacKinnon’s arguments as I think you are.

    Also, I am “deeply skeptical” of arguments that take the following form: “Policy Y, ostensibly aimed at improving the lives of people in Group G, cannot be a good policy because Obnoxious Policy X was justified in the same way and we all know how that turned out.”

  80. 80.

    The Raven on the Hill

    October 25, 2014 at 2:51 pm

    @Cervantes: I’ve written more. We are perhaps less in disagreement than you think.

    Mackinnon’s arguments were very persuasive, but they were also grounded in false-to-fact conclusions about the effects of erotic and pornographic literature and a failure to study the history as well. I think Samantha Field’s analysis, though less studied, is closer to the truth. And if the only way Mackinnon could get her ideas made into policy was to make a deals with the radical right Christians, the result would be horrors. The result has been horrors, whenever it has been tried.

    “Policy Y, ostensibly aimed at…” My take is, we’ve tried this with other media multiple times and it has failed every time, in ways that made us wish we’d never even tried.

    I do have some sketchy notes on policies that might work and still preserve freedom of thought and expression. They can mostly be summarized as, “Let’s have some real law enforcement, damnit.” You can read them here. I continue to be horrified by this eruption of anti-feminist terrorism, but I also have no wish to turn terrorist to combat it. The terrorists have won when terrorists lead both sides.

    In any event, this thread is old and tired. See you in the next thread!

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