Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[Allison W]

More keeps happening on the Gamergate front, but the thought of making a new post about it gets awfully daunting, just because of the sheer volume of shit out there--I'm just up and making myself do it, here. The border skirmishes in the communities I'm in finally started to die down, but before they did, I got to see a whole lot people standing up against Gamergate. Also that fun thing where the folks on my side (myself included) provided evidence and sources and whatnot and the folks on the other side pretty much just whined and frothed, which I think contributed to the die-down. Seriously, though, it was pretty messed up for a while--there were people doing shit like calling me a TERF (is this real life?), and saying that feminists should shut up because if we're in a BDSM community (which was the locale) we must be hypocrites, and actually trying to draw false equivalence between WeHuntedTheMammoth (a site that tracks misogyny in the online "manosphere") to ReturnOfKings (a hyper-patriarchal PUA site from the bowels of the manosphere that does everything from teach men how to commit date rape, to engage in active rape apologism, to advocate for total male dominance of society). It was crazy and stupid, but thankfully it's cooling down. No telling when there might be another flare-up somewhere, but.

Before I continue, that site I mentioned. No, not ROK; don't go there unless you want to be sick with rage. I mean WeHuntedTheMammoth. I want to shill it to you. It's quickly become one of my favourite sites, and I believe it should be one of yours if you want to keep track of the new misogyny movement of the Internet "manosphere." Not only does David Futrelle tirelessly track the movements of these groups (including, more recently, Gamergate), but he breaks the news in a largely supportive environment where you don't have to feel like you're alone behind enemy lines when you're learning about this stuff. Highly recommended.

Now, some good news; you should absolutely check this out, especially if you've been worried about this lately--it'll help. Maybe you heard that Anita Sarkeesian appeared on The Colbert Report, maybe you didn't. This was a glorious development that sowed absolute chaos in the Gamergate ranks. The responses to it ranged from defeatist melancholy to an absolute spiral into delusion in which GGers went so full bullshit that they told themselves that this monumental blow against them somehow meant they were winning. Even better, it's just a milestone in a long list of entities coming out against Gamergate--virtually every non-gaming, non-reactionary media outlet has come out against Gamergate, and even the geek sphere is mostly against them. Geek heroes are coming out against Gamergate. GGers are starting to act like the world is against them because it is. Hell, even Playboy magazine (I won't link that one, but I'm sure you can find the article if you really want) published an article critical of Gamergate.

Let's have some more feel-good. Chris Kluwe ripped Gamergate a new one with some of the most brilliant and colourful profanity the Internet has seen yet. He also went on to summarise the reactions of Gamergate to Anita Sarkeesian's appearance on The Colbert Report, and it was funny. And this is probably the single funniest thing about GG on the Internet.

For about a month or two straight I was sick with anger. My limbic system wouldn't stop screaming about the enemies lurking in my own tribe and cutting off the blood flow to those parts of my brain that actually try to deal with things in rational terms. The fights were ugly, especially when these people were in communities I'm part of, and really laid bare the awful nature of those enemies. I don't want to get into further into the gory details of those clashes than I already have; I do hope that's all right.

But now, after all that's happened, there's a part of me that's hopeful--only part, granted, because Gamergate has been successful at driving far too many women out of the hobby, and I can only hope that they'll come back. But those gamers who stand against Gamergate's ideals really stood up. I got to see non-trans women and trans women (the latter, interestingly, are insanely common in both the hobby and the industry itself), and awesome allies, standing together against GG and doing great things: I can only hope the next is to reach out to those women who were driven out by Gamergate and draw them back in. Gamergate even succeeded at making feminism in games mainstream by catapulting Anita Sarkeesian all the way to The Colbert Report and exemplifying our society's misogyny problem so clearly even the mainstream media can see it. It brightens my day a little every time I hear someone say that before Gamergate they didn't understand why feminism is still important or that misogyny is alive and well, but now they're starting to see it. Even 4chan, the place where the conspiracy against Zoe Quinn that became Gamergate was originally hatched, wised up and banned Gamergate from its midst after years of tolerating all kinds of horrific toxicity, from misogyny to racism to anti-Semitism, on its boards. Gamergate called itself the "sleeping giant" that had finally been awoken by "feminist invasion," and then it provoked the actual sleeping giant.

I suppose I can only hope that something good comes of this in the end, and that it's not just the antidepressants talking.

I could continue in this post, but I want to finish this one off and post it. In the next post, the bad news. I'm not looking forward to this.

[Allison W]

Yeah, the bad news. Here I'm going to be putting Gamergate and some of its bullshit in context, and shedding some more light on who--and what--is behind Gamergate, and some major fears about what gotterdammerung may yet result from this.

To start off, you may have heard of Vivian James, the fictional young woman who has become the Gamergate mascot. Or perhaps you haven't. Either way, David Futrelle provides a little more context on her and how Gamergate uses her, including the rape joke meme built into the colour scheme of her hoodie (it's complicated, and needless to say, trigger warning), should you choose to follow his links to the details. Just wanted to put that out there for no particular reason. I don't even know why.

Now. I'm pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir when I say that the fundamental downside of Gamergate exposing the reality of modern misogyny even to the mainstream is obviously that the reason the mainstream can see it is because extreme misogyny really does exist and it's being vocal and going on the offensive. But the rabbit hole goes deeper. Way deeper.

Have any of you heard of Operation Lollipop? You probably haven't. How about #EndFathersDay, the so-called "feminist" campaign to end Father's Day? It was a false flag campaign, undertaken by misogynists using sockpuppet accounts to pose as feminists with the goal of making feminism look bad, which has been tied to Operation Lollipop. I suggest you read both of these articles, and bear in mind that Operation Lollipop is from the same community that later hatched the conspiracy against Zoe Quinn that went on to become Gamergate. Gamergate's antifeminist agenda precedes it; Gamergate is merely its latest incarnation. And already their work continues. Notice the instructions to (mis)use language used by feminists and other advocates of social justice in order to attack feminism and make the bizarre claim that a game having a female protagonist constitutes male rape of women's bodies. (Because Gamergate is about ethics in journalism and objectivity and honesty, don'tcha know.)

You should also see this. It's a list of tweets by one a_man_in_black (I like the work he's doing and wanted to make sure people saw it, OK?) arguing that Gamergate isn't a misogynistic movement unto itself so much as the latest outburst of a misogynistic movement that's been going for years. Like I say, Gamergate's antifeminist, misogynistic agenda precedes it. Here, he also argues that Gamergate "moderates" are a myth on the grounds that all Gamergaters benefit from the harassment committed by more aggressive Gamergaters. (Also, contains sadness about Gamergate driving a teenage girl who was passionate about gaming offline. )

TRIGGER WARNING JESUS CHRIST TRIGGER WARNING I DON'T EVEN HAVE TRIGGERS AND THIS FREAKED ME THE FUCK OUT! Now that I've shown you 4chan's involvement and just what kind of people festered there, I want you to see some other important communities behind Gamergate, including 8chan, which was created in response to 4chan banning Gamergate. TRIGGER WARNING!

I'd also like for you to have just a little look at who Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend who made the Zoe Post that begat the conspiracy against her, is. His name is Eron Gjoni, and this is him in a bite-sized nutshell.

I want you to know what kinds of people are connected to the Reddit board KotakuInAction, which is supposedly the "respectable" wing of Gamergate (spoiler: it's not).

TRIGGER WARNING! I want you know what the moderators of KotakuInAction--which, again, is supposed to be the "respectable," "moderate," "anti-harassment" wing of Gamergate--get up to outside of KIA. FNVG provides info here, including a link to an article on the subject and listing even more offenders than are listed in that article, including the note that KotakuInAction shared a moderator with a board called Philosophy of Rape. Which, unlike many of the other boards, makes no pretense of being about "fantasy," as the creator flat-out claims that he is as serious as a heart attack. If you have a strong stomach, WHTM goes into greater detail on one of the boards, "Break Feminazis," here. TRIGGER WARNING!

I want you to know what kind of people "lead" Gamergate, insofar as it has leaders--it claims to be leaderless, and yet many of these people are, in fact, major figures in the movement. Don't worry too much about the article being written by one "Poopsock Holmes"; "poopsocking" is just a joke about spending too much time playing video games (i.e., that someone is not even getting up to poop).

Here, have some more sadness about what Gamergate's prominent figures really think about women.

And some more sadness about what GGers think about "SJWs" and gender. Way to deride exactly the people this world needs. (Note: Gamergatetxt isn't the original poster of that awful comment; rather, Gamergatetxt is a feed that archives the worst statements made by Gamergate.)

You wanna know who else is jumping on the GG bandwagon besides MRAs, rape apologists, open racists, anti-Semites, and yada yada? Stormfront. I am fucking serious. Fucking Stormfront. Literal neo-Nazis. (Granted those are open racists and anti-Semites, but this is kicking it up to a new level when you get open and proud neo-Nazis involved.) Gamergaters still aren't asking themselves why the literal worst people in the world today think the GG banner represents their interests while virtually everyone who is not a complete piece of shit stands against it. Additionally, you may notice two terms commonly thrown around in GG's rhetoric, particularly when they're not running PR: "SJW" ("Social Justice Warrior," which now pretty much refers to anyone who opens their mouth in opposition to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc., despite some GGers making bizarre claims like "SJWs are known TERFs") and "cultural Marxism" (Marx's theories of class applied to race, gender, and sexuality). Both of these terms originated in neo-Nazi circles. "SJW" escaped from neo-Nazi circles quite a while ago, granted, but "cultural Marxism" is much newer to me, and leads me to suspect that Gamergate is even more strongly influenced by neo-Nazi thought than many of its members are willing to admit.

So yeah. This is all leading into one big clusterfuck at the centre: Gamergate isn't "just" inextricably linked to the harassment of women. It is also inextricably linked to an active agenda of misogyny and a desire to keep women disempowered in our culture that extends far beyond one harassment campaign--and also to the even more extreme neoreactionary movement. (If you wish to know more about the mouth-breathing degenerates behind the NRx movement, please read RationalWiki's article; it's depressing and I don't want to talk about it myself.) I fear that, with a lot of Gamergaters feeling like the world is against them--and the prominence of manosphere misogynists and neoreactionaries in GG--this is prime time for these foul movements to scoop up angry young men. This is a perfect recruiting campaign for the Men's Privilege Movement, for redpills, for neo-Nazis, for PUAs and other rape advocates, for neoreactionaries. Even if Gamergate has largely alienated most and awoken many to the need for feminism and social justice in general, it's still very convenient for the literal worst people in the world to bring more people into their particular folds. Ayn Rand's philosophy of pure greed was supposedly (I'm only 28, so my knowledge is limited) just a fringe thing for anti-hippies in college fifty years ago, and yet now that philosophy is actively corroding civilisation as we know it. I worry that in fifty years the NRx--something so heinous and blatantly evil that Ayn Rand actually manages to look almost tame in comparison--could pick up that kind of steam.

I'm upset. I'm angry and I'm scared and kind of want one of those strawberry daiquiris my grandmother picked up for me the other day even though I don't generally like to drink.

...But, before I go, I'm going to end on a tangent. Some Polish developer named Destructive Studios released a trailer a few weeks ago for a game they're developing called Hatred. (FNVG article here; critical Polygon article which includes the trailer--trigger warning, natch--here) It's a murder simulator in which a white male protagonist who hates the world goes out and hunts innocent people to kill, with a special focus on things like the victims pleading for their lives before you murder them in extremely graphic ways. The cherry on top is that someone actually looked into the political connections and affiliations of some of the developers and oh look they're neo-Nazis! And do you want to know what these neo-Nazis had to say about the game and why they were making it? They were making it because they wanted a counterpoint to today's "political correctness," and to make a game that was "honest" and not "political." We have officially reached such a fucking political nadir that there are people who can claim with a straight face that a neo-Nazi genocide simulator is the definition of "apolitical." But why do I bring it up? There's no direct link to Gamergate. It's just, this, right here, despite any actual connections, it just smacks of everything Gamergate is about. Teenage white male rage and entitlement. The idea that said teenage white male rage and entitlement is "apolitical" (see also: Gamergate's demand for an "apolitical" gaming press) and that anything else is a "political agenda." Hatred of everything from "political correctness" all the way on down to "basic human decency." And, y'know, actual neo-Nazis. That the trailer was released in the middle of the Gamergate shitstorm was just icing on the sadness cake.

I will say, I might be a hypocrite. I look at Hatred as a perfect example of what's wrong with gamer culture at the moment and something that should probably be kept out of respectable stores (not simply because of the violence, but because of the extremist political connections and implied agenda of the devs), but you know what? If someone were making a murder simulator about a woman venting her rage and hatred upon society in a horrific burst of ultra-violence, I would be all I'M THROWING MONEY AT THE SCREEN BUT NOTHING IS HAPPENING right now. But, of course, that would be "political." Also probably "misandry," somehow.

fuck it I need a drink

[Allison W]

A little update on GG again. Yes, I saw something new since my last post; there's just no end to this madness. That daiquiri tasted awful but I'm glad I had that drink anyway because seriously fuck this bullshit.

That Gamergate has been harassing women opposed to it into silence isn't news. But now, when male allies speak up against false-flag "feminist" Christina Hoff Sommers telling GG that everything they do is peachy and they don't need to change the way they treat women or think about women at all and that feminists are evil people for bringing their cooties into their treehouse, this shit happens. Yes, that is a graphic accusing male allies of being The Patriarchy for not buying CHS's claim that she represents feminism. This, after harassing anti-GG women into silence to keep them from speaking up against this. It's as a_man_in_black said: "moderate" Gamergaters are bullshit because they are still cashing in on the benefits of more aggressive Gamergaters harassing women into silence. I'd also like to take this moment to reiterate that appropriating and misusing language used by feminists and other advocates of social justice has been part of GG's plan from square one, and that this is just a picture-perfect example of it.

Gamergate calls Christina Hoff Sommers "Based Mom." It's fitting, seeing as they use her to wash the poop out of their collective underpants.

BONUS! Remember my mention of anti-Semitism, racism, and neo-Nazis in Gamergate? Here, have some brand new anti-Semitism and racism in Gamergate.

[Allison W]

Sorry about being a little quiet the past several days. Some goings-on in another thread made me feel a little uncomfortable/unwelcome, but the less said about it the better.

Gamergate hatched a plan to try to make a move on Tumblr, but I wouldn't be too worried about that if I were you. There aren't a lot of neutrals left for them to convert, especially on Tumblr. I'm not even sure why I'm reporting on this.

Gamergate's lawyer, however, is still a disgusting, sleazy fuck, and my god he needs to be moved to a remote island far far away before he actually does something, because he's already justified nefarious things to himself. That is not a good sign.

Here, wash that last link out of your brain (warning: peak Gamergate at 3:13-3:20).

Anyway, while they're pretty clearly in their twilight and there's not really much of anything they can do to make a comeback at this point, they're still going on with bizarre conspiracy theories. (Also bizarre: what qualifies as "creepy research" to them.)

But speaking of conspiracy theories, on to the reason I broke my hiatus to post this in the first place. Christmas came early this year, folks. One of the major players in GG, also an anti-Semite and MRA, abandoned the movement due to its infighting. It's gotten so bad that even their hero Milo doesn't see this going anywhere good. Because, as is to be expected from a bunch of conspiracy-theorist maniacs who see enemies everywhere they look, they are now eating their own.

I see a lot of GG's major female players (such as they are) on that shill list. I wonder if now they understand what the movement is really about, or if they've found some way to keep themselves in the dark.

[Kobi]

[Kobi]

[Kobi]

WITH the success of Republicans in the midterm elections and the passage of Tennessee’s anti-abortion amendment, we can expect ongoing efforts to ban abortion and advance the “personhood” rights of fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses.

But it is not just those who support abortion rights who have reason to worry. Anti-abortion measures pose a risk to all pregnant women, including those who want to be pregnant.

Such laws are increasingly being used as the basis for arresting women who have no intention of ending a pregnancy and for preventing women from making their own decisions about how they will give birth.

How does this play out? Based on the belief that he had an obligation to give a fetus a chance for life, a judge in Washington, D.C., ordered a critically ill 27-year-old woman who was 26 weeks pregnant to undergo a cesarean section, which he understood might kill her. Neither the woman nor her baby survived.

In Iowa, a pregnant woman who fell down a flight of stairs was reported to the police after seeking help at a hospital. She was arrested for “attempted fetal homicide.”

In Utah, a woman gave birth to twins; one was stillborn. Health care providers believed that the stillbirth was the result of the woman’s decision to delay having a cesarean. She was arrested on charges of fetal homicide.

In Louisiana, a woman who went to the hospital for unexplained vaginal bleeding was locked up for over a year on charges of second-degree murder before medical records revealed she had suffered a miscarriage at 11 to 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Florida has had a number of such cases. In one, a woman was held prisoner at a hospital to prevent her from going home while she appeared to be experiencing a miscarriage. She was forced to undergo a cesarean. Neither the detention nor the surgery prevented the pregnancy loss, but they did keep this mother from caring for her two small children at home. While a state court later found the detention unlawful, the opinion suggested that if the hospital had taken her prisoner later in her pregnancy, its actions might have been permissible.

In another case, a woman who had been in labor at home was picked up by a sheriff, strapped down in the back of an ambulance, taken to a hospital, and forced to have a cesarean she did not want. When this mother later protested what had happened, a court concluded that the woman’s personal constitutional rights “clearly did not outweigh the interests of the State of Florida in preserving the life of the unborn child.”

Anti-abortion reasoning has also provided the justification for arresting pregnant women who experience depression and have attempted suicide. A 22-year-old in South Carolina who was eight months pregnant attempted suicide by jumping out a window. She survived despite suffering severe injuries. Because she lost the pregnancy, she was arrested and jailed for the crime of homicide by child abuse.

These are not isolated or rare cases. Last year, we published a peer-reviewed study documenting 413 arrests or equivalent actions depriving pregnant women of their physical liberty during the 32 years between 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided, and 2005. In a majority of these cases, women who had no intention of ending a pregnancy went to term and gave birth to a healthy baby. This includes the many cases where the pregnant woman was alleged to have used some amount of alcohol or a criminalized drug.

Since 2005, we have identified an additional 380 cases, with more arrests occurring every week. This significant increase coincides with what the Guttmacher Institute describes as a “seismic shift” in the number of states with laws hostile to abortion rights.

The principle at the heart of contemporary efforts to end legal abortion is that fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses are persons or at least have separate rights that must be protected by the state. In each of the cases we identified, this same rationale provided the justification for the deprivation of pregnant women’s physical liberty, as well as of the right to medical decision making, medical privacy, bodily integrity and, in one case, the woman’s right to life.

Many of the pregnant women subjected to this mistreatment are themselves profoundly opposed to abortion. Yet it was precisely the legal arguments for recriminalizing abortion that were used to strip them of their rights to dignity and liberty in the context of labor and delivery. These cases, individually and collectively, highlight what is so often missed when the focus is on attacking or defending abortion, namely that all pregnant women are at risk of losing a wide range of fundamental rights that are at the core of constitutional personhood in the United States.

If we want to end these unjust and inhumane arrests and forced interventions on pregnant women, we need to stop focusing only on the abortion issue and start working to protect the personhood of pregnant women.

We should be able to work across the spectrum of opinion about abortion to unite in the defense of one basic principle: that at no point in her pregnancy should a woman lose her civil and human rights.

Lynn M. Paltrow is a lawyer and the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, where Jeanne Flavin, a sociology professor at Fordham University, is the president of the board of directors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/08/op...=fb-share&_r=0