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Old 10-21-2014, 09:20 AM   #541
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Anya and Kobi already posted two articles here about GamerGate, which kind of shames me, because it occurs to me that as someone who's been playing video games for the past 25 years or thereabouts and who is actually in communities where GG and anti-GG factions are clashing, I should have been on the ball about posting GG-related news here. It's just, there's so much that has been written on it, and most of it in the gaming press rather than the mainstream press, that I wasn't sure where I'd start. Still, that's no excuse on my part.

So yeah, I'm someone who's actually part of the subculture where this conflict is raging. That, and as a lifelong gamer whose first memories of the medium are flitting visions from before the onset of childhood amnesia and who was one of the many children who had crazy nightmares about enemies that keep coming even when you pause the game(!!), I also feel that video gaming is fucking well my hobby to "invade" with feminist values. So for those reasons, I'm going to offer not just links and articles but also a bit of commentary, at the risk of meandering somewhat from the original purpose of the thread, and some of the following links will be from small-time bloggers and other non-mainstream sources that those of you who aren't part of the gaming subculture (or, well, who don't follow wehuntedthemammoth) might have missed. I hope this is all right.

Part of the issue is--as was touched upon in Kobi's post--that GamerGate is a dual-layer movement, built upon a core of original agitators whose motive is right-wing anti-feminist backlash, surrounded by a humongous shell of useful idiots who actually think this is about journalism, despite the fact that the movement's biggest "accomplishments" thus far have been driving numerous women out of the industry and making gamers look like psychopaths to outside observers. That core hides behind the nebulousness of this leaderless movement and uses the outer shell as a shield to deflect criticism and disown responsibility for their actual goals and deeds.

Some links related to the last paragraph:
this exposé of the conspiracy at GG's core is comparatively bite-sized, so I'd recommend starting here
What GamerGate's manifesto really means
An example of the deflection of responsibility: one of the "anti-harassment" GGers is actually the same asshole who created the "Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian" flash game a few years back
L. Rhodes writes an open letter to GamerGate's misguided outer shell.
More detailed evidence of the GG conspiracy follows:
Evidence of core GGers using sockpuppets to pad their outer shell and get the ball rolling, and further links to articles that pissed them off
Zoe Quinn posted screenshots providing evidence of the motives of core GGers
Further evidence of the conspiracy at GG's core, from their own IRC logs
Good golly more evidence

This is about more than just video games: video games are a major cultural institution now, bigger even than television, music, or movies, and thus the medium is a major fortress in the cultural war between feminism and patriarchy--and supporters of patriarchy, even outside the gaming press, are absolutely treating it as such and fighting to maintain patriarchy's hold upon it. GamerGate has gotten a fair bit of right-wing--and also specifically MRA--support from outside that gamer press. That right-wing garbage mill Breitbart (to think a movement allegedly about journalistic ethics was happy to receive support from fucking Breitbart) was one of the first non-gaming-press outlets to write in support of GamerGate--the author of the piece even thinks gamers are losers, but supports GamerGate because he and GG share the goal of defending patriarchy. False-flag "feminist" Christina Hoff Summers wrote that GamerGate is a reaction against feminists trying to, allegedly, destroy male culture (if the behaviour of GamerGate is representative of this male culture, maybe it's about fucking time it get destroyed). And even carnival-of-misogyny A Voice For Men has jumped on the bandwagon, apparently defending video games as an alternative to marriage for men (what the christ).

Some links for the last paragraph:
On Milo Yiannopoulos, the guy who wrote the Breitbart piece
On Christina Hoff Sommers's piece on GamerGate
I was serious about A Voice For Men defending video games as an alternative to marriage and oh my god you have to see this image
Because it really is about misogynists trying to keep video games a patriarchal stronghold
MRAs appropriating the concept of "safe space" to declare that entire swaths of culture, like video games, are supposed to be "safe space" for male nerds who are apparently traumatised by women's refusal to give them sex or some stupid shit

A further observation: the "corruption" that was used to justify GG was the allegation that Zoe Quinn had traded sex for positive reviews (check out the very first link in this post for some very gross defenses of this position), and the fact that major games-press sites deleted such accusations, which was supposedly censorship. Thing is, it later came out that no, Zoe never traded sex for reviews, and her game was not actually reviewed by people she'd slept with (one of them mentioned it in passing in some article or another). And moreover, the journalists in question knew she never traded sex for reviews, meaning that they rightly saw these accusations as baseless harassment and not a legitimate indictment of anyone's journalistic integrity, and that the deletion of these accusations was thus a normal response to harassment and in no way censorship or corruption. And yet, despite this original accusation being found false, the GamerGate ball keeps rolling. (Because it was never about corruption.)

Another observation: Anti-"social justice warrior" gamers who line up in defense of GamerGate on the one hand whine and moan about how games aren't taken seriously as art, and on the other hand the moment someone critiques games as cultural artifacts rather than simply meaningless entertainment, they start screaming about how THEY JUST WANT TO PLAY VIDJA GAMES KEEP YOUR SOCIAL JUSTICE BULLSHIT OUT OF IT. hypocrisy much

I'd like to thank Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, and Anita Sarkeesian for standing their ground against GamerGate. I'd also like to thank David Futrelle for making wehuntedthemammoth.com and doing such a good job of tracking GamerGate; it made providing sources much easier. I'd also like to thank the headwiz of one of my other Internet hangouts for putting his foot down and telling GamerGate supporters that they can get the fuck out because he wasn't going to be "neutral" about a movement orchestrated as an attack on women. And I'd also like to thank all the journalists who act like grown-ups and accept that it's time for the medium they love to grow up, and don't straddle that hypocritical fence mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Lastly, here's an MSNBC video in which Zoe Quinn herself is interviewed and gets to speak on the subject.
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Old 10-21-2014, 10:37 AM   #542
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Allison, thanks so much for your explanation of what GamerGate really means, your links, and, in general, providing context for those of us (like me) that did not know enough to know what we did not know!

Much appreciated!

PS: I am sorry I left out the "i" in the spelling of your name in my rep comment!
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"...I'm deeply concerned by recently adopted policies which punish children for their parents’ actions ... The thought that any State would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable."

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Old 10-23-2014, 08:55 PM   #543
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I don't think anyone here had any delusions that Republicans are anything but moustache-twirling villains that hate women for rebelling against old white male dominance, but:

Right-Wing Media Discourage Young Women From Voting

Conservative media personalities have discouraged young women from voting as the midterm elections near, claiming that they are "too dumb to vote."

Fox's Kimberly Guilfoyle: Young Women Shouldn't Exercise Civic Duties Because "They Don't Get It." During the October 21 edition of Fox News' The Five, the co-hosts discussed the impact of women voters in the upcoming midterm elections. After co-host Greg Gutfeld suggested that young women lack the wisdom to vote as conservatives, Kimberly Guilfoyle suggested that they should be excused from jury duty, because they lack life experience and just "don't get it." Instead, she said, they should "go back on Tinder or Match.com." [Fox News, The Five, 10/21/14]

Fox's Tucker Carlson: "Do You Want Your Government Run By People Whose Favorite Show Is Say Yes [To The Dress]?" During the October 2 edition of Fox News' Outnumbered, network host Tucker Carlson criticized a Republican campaign to encourage young women to vote Republican by asking whether or not the young women targeted by the ad should vote at all:

CARLSON: I don't think as a general matter you should be encouraging people who don't know anything about what they're voting for to vote. That's what the Democrats do, giving Newports to the homeless to get them to the polls. That's literally true. Republicans shouldn't follow suit on that. You shouldn't pander to people. Tell us what the candidates are for, what they're against. Attack the other guy, that's fair too. I'm all for attack ads, but you're targeting people -- you're targeting people who are watching Say Yes To The Dress? You want your government run by people ... who's favorite show is Say Yes To The Dress. [Fox News, Outnumbered, 10/2/14]

National Review Online: Five Reasons Young Women "Are Too Dumb To Vote." In a September 28 post challenging Lena Dunham for encouraging young women to vote in an article for Planned Parenthood Action Fund, NRO's Kevin D. Williamson provided his "Five Reasons Why You're Too Dumb To Vote." Calling voting a "shallow gesture of citizenship" which women use to say "I want," Williamson urged those who do not agree with his political values to not vote at all:

I would like to suggest, as gently as I can, that if you are voting as an act of self-gratification, if you do not understand the role that voting in fact plays in a constitutional republic, and if you need Lena Dunham to tell you why and how you should be voting -- you should not vote. If you get your politics from actors and your news from television comedians -- you should not vote. There's no shame in it, your vote is statistically unlikely to affect the outcome of an election, and there are many much more meaningful ways to serve your country and your fellow man: Volunteer at a homeless shelter; join the Marine Corps; become a nun; start a business. [National Review Online, 9/29/14, via Media Matters]

Fox's Harris Faulkner: Do We Want Young People To Vote "If They Don't Know The Issues?" On the October 8 edition of Fox News' Outnumbered, co-host Harris Faulkner responded to Rock The Vote's "#TurnOutForWhat" campaign by questioning whether or not young people should vote "if they don't know the issues." [Fox News, Outnumbered, 10/8/14]
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Old 10-25-2014, 05:30 AM   #544
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Ted Bishop Resigns as PGA President After Making Sexist Remarks

Ted Bishop was ousted Friday as president of the PGA of America over a sexist tweet and Facebook post directed at Ian Poulter.

Bishop was unhappy with comments Poulter made in his book about the Ryder Cup captaincy of Nick Faldo in 2008 and Tom Watson last month at Gleneagles. Bishop was with Faldo at The Greenbrier on Thursday when he tweeted to Poulter, "Faldo's record stands by itself. Six majors and all-time RC points. Yours vs. His? Lil Girl."

In a separate posting on his Facebook page, Bishop lamented that athletes who had "lesser records or accomplishments in a sport never criticized the icons." He mentioned Watson's eight majors and 10-3-1 record in the Ryder Cup, and Faldo's six majors and record Ryder Cup points getting "bashed" by Poulter.

"Really? Sounds like a little school girl squealing during recess. C'MON MAN!"

He deleted the tweet and the Facebook post later Thursday evening and said in an email to The Associated Press that "I could have selected some different way to express my thoughts on Poulter's remarks."

But he never apologized.

In removing Bishop as president, the PGA of America board said the remarks were inconsistent with association's policies.

"The PGA of America understands the enormous responsibility it has to lead this great game and to enrich lives in our society through golf," PGA chief executive Pete Bevacqua said in a statement. "We must demand of ourselves that we make golf both welcoming and inclusive to all who want to experience it, and everyone at the PGA of America must lead by example."

Bishop, a head golf professional from Indiana, had one month remaining on his two-year term as president.

Derek Sprague, expected to be voted in as the next president at the Nov. 22 annual meeting, was appointed the interim president. Paul Levy will handle the roles as vice president and secretary until the election.

Golfweek magazine reported earlier this week that Suzy Whaley, a teaching pro in Connecticut, was getting a lot of support to be elected secretary. That would put her in line to be president in four years. Whaley did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press.

"The members and apprentices of the PGA of America must uphold the highest standards and values of the profession, as well as the manner in which we conduct ourselves at all times," Sprague said. "We apologize to any individual or group that felt diminished, in any way, by this unacceptable incident."

Bishop has been one of the most outspoken presidents of the PGA of America, which has 27,000 members and runs the PGA Championship and Ryder Cup when it is held in America. But his social media venting, and what the PGA described as "insensitive gender-based" comments, got him in trouble.

Poulter was traveling to China and was not aware of Bishop's comments until he landed and found his phone filled with messages.

"Is being called a `lil girl' meant to be derogatory or a put down?" Poulter said in a statement. "That's pretty shocking and disappointing, especially coming from the leader of the PGA of America."

Bishop's boldest move as president was to pick Watson as the U.S. captain, saying he was tired of the Americans losing. But the move backfired when Watson's heavy-handed style didn't mesh with a younger generation. Watson, 65, was the oldest captain in Ryder Cup history.

Poulter in his book said that Watson's decision-making "completely baffles me." He was referring to benching Phil Mickelson and Keegan Bradley for both sessions Saturday.

Faldo stirred up the European team on Friday when he said during his Golf Channel commentary that Sergio Garcia was "useless" in 2008 during the European loss at Valhalla and that he had a "bad attitude."

"Faldo has lost a lot of respect from players because of what he said," Poulter said in his book. He noted that it was Europe's only loss in the last 15 years and Faldo was the captain. "So who's useless? I think Faldo might need to have a little look in the mirror."
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Old 10-28-2014, 03:22 AM   #545
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Default One in six female MIT students a victim of sexual assault -survey

BOSTON (Reuters) - One in six female undergraduates at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who responded to a survey has been sexually assaulted, but fewer than 5 percent reported a sex crime, MIT said.

Five percent of female undergraduates said they had been raped and one in five knew a perpetrator of unwanted sexual behavior, according to the MIT poll, which had a response rate of 35 percent from undergraduate and graduate students.

"Sexual assault violates our core MIT values. It has no place here," MIT President Rafael Reif wrote in a campus email Monday accompanying the survey results.

MIT, which urged all its students to take the survey on attitudes towards sexual assault, is one of the first U.S. schools to release wide-ranging data on sex crimes on campus.

Lawmakers, activists and students across the United States have been urging a crackdown on sexual assaults on campuses.

MIT emailed the survey to all of its 10,831 undergraduate and graduate students on April 27 - two days before the White House called on colleges and universities to ask students about these matters.

The White House has declared sex crimes to be "epidemic" on U.S. college campuses, with one in five students falling victim to sex assault during college years.

The survey also asked students about how widely unwanted sexual behavior occurs on campus, and how likely victims were to discuss it with friends or others.

"We are interested in learning about the problem, measuring it and solving it," MIT Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart said on a teleconference call with reporters.

She said the school was expanding prevention and education efforts as it continued to mine the data, and that it planned to conduct follow-up surveys.

Barnhart noted a certain sense of confusion about what constitutes sexual assault and said the school released the poll to intensify the discussion about it while seeking ways to curb such incidents.

According to the poll, nearly two-thirds of respondents who had encountered an unwanted sexual experience said they had told someone about it, but less than 5 percent reported the incident to an official.

Barnhart said only a small number of sexual assaults were reported at MIT and that the school was adding new resources to help students who had experienced an assault.

Over the past few months, more incidents have been reported, she said, noting that raising awareness about the problem was paying off.

MIT began taking steps after an alumna wrote anonymously in the student newspaper, saying she had been raped on campus.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/one-six-fe...--finance.html
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Have to wonder how many surveys, how many times women have to address this issue before they are believed. Male sexual violence against women is rampant on college campuses.
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Old 10-28-2014, 10:31 AM   #546
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Default Registered Sex Offender Emerges as Star College Football Player

A registered sex offender has emerged as a star player on a top tier college football team, resuming his athletic career after being expelled from the Air Force Academy where he was court-martialed for sexual assault.

No NCAA rule prevents a person with a criminal conviction from playing college athletics, a spokesperson told ABC News. It is left up to the individual college or conference to determine eligibility.

Jamil Cooks, 23, enrolled at Alcorn State in Mississippi, a Division One NCAA school, after being found guilty in April 2013 of abusive sexual contact in a court martial proceeding at the Air Force Academy, which required him to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Cooks' lawyer, Richard Stevens, says he is appealing the conviction.

The ability of Cooks to continue his football career despite being a sexual predator is only the latest example of distorted priorities that involve sexual violence, said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York.

"I think it’s wrong that they’re allowed to continue to play," she told ABC News.

Officials at the Air Force Academy said the court-martial and dismissal of Cooks was part of an effort to end a culture in which sexual assault had gone unreported or tolerated.

“It’s disappointing,” said Air Force Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Michelle Johnson about the ability of Cooks to continue to play high-level college athletics. "That’s not what we tolerate here.”

Cooks was one of two members of the Air Force Academy football team court-martialed for sexual assault as part of a sweeping, controversial investigation that also led to the resignations or dismissals of 15 other cadets. Johnson was appointed superintendent after the investigation.

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Old 10-31-2014, 05:01 AM   #547
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Old 10-31-2014, 03:15 PM   #548
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Default Military sex survey draws complaints

WASHINGTON — Shocked and offended by explicit questions, some U.S. servicemen and women are complaining about a new sexual-assault survey that hundreds of thousands have been asked to complete.

The survey is conducted every two years. But this year's version, developed by the Rand Corp., is unusually detailed, including graphically personal questions on sexual acts.

Some military members told The Associated Press that they were surprised and upset by the questions, and some even said they felt re-victimized by the blunt language. None of them would speak publicly by name, but Pentagon officials confirmed they had received complaints that the questions were "intrusive" and "invasive."

The Defense Department said it made the survey much more explicit and detailed this year in order to get more accurate results as the military struggles to reduce its sexual assaults while also encouraging victims to come forward to get help.

The survey questions, which were obtained by The Associated Press, ask about any unwanted sexual experiences or contact, and include very specific wording about men's and women's body parts or other objects, and kinds of contact or penetration.

Here is a sample question, one of a series of 11 graphic questions out of 34. Some are even more detailed:

"Before 9/18/2013, had anyone made you insert an object or body part into someone's mouth, vagina or anus when you did not want to and did not consent?"

"We've had a number of complaints," said Jill Loftus, director of the Navy's sexual assault prevention program. I've heard second- and third-hand that there are a number of women, officers and enlisted, who have gotten to the point where they've read the questions and they've stopped taking the survey. They found them to be either offensive or too intrusive — 'intrusive, invasive' — those are the words they used."

About 560,000 active duty, National Guard and Reserve members were invited to fill out the questionnaire — about five times the number the survey was sent to two years ago. Officials will not say how many responses they have received so far.

Early last year, a report on the 2012 anonymous survey results set off a furor when it estimated that 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted or subjected to unwanted sexual contact. Exasperated members of Congress complained that the Defense Department wasn't doing enough to combat sexual assault and tried, largely unsuccessfully, to force changes in the Pentagon's legal and command procedures.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who has pressured the military to deal with its sexual assault problem, said changing the questions could skew the study over time.

"I am concerned the new survey was done in a manner that not only prevents comparing apples to apples from previous years. ... I hope this isn't a case of, 'If you don't like the answer, change the question.'"

In addition to the Rand questions, Loftus said the Navy sends its own survey to sailors and Marines that doesn't get as specific. She added, "We think we've done a very good job of trying to make people aware of what sexual assault is."

But Rand analysts say the more detailed questions are necessary. So does Nate Galbreath, the senior executive adviser for the Pentagon's sexual-assault prevention office.

"This is a crime of a very graphic nature," Galbreath said. "For us to improve our understanding, it sometimes requires asking tough questions."

He said the Defense Department hired Rand to develop and conduct the survey this year, based on new direction from Congress that the effort be fully independent of the Pentagon. He was aware of the complaints but said that he more succinct the questions are, the more accurate the results will be.

"Research has told us, if I ask someone, 'Have you ever been raped?' they will say, 'No,'" Galbreath said. "If I ask that same person, 'Have you ever been forced to engage in sexual activity against your will?' they might say 'Yes.' It's because of the loaded terms like rape and sexual assault, that it's not very clear to a lot of people what we may be asking about."

The survey begins with questions about sexual harassment, asking about jokes, "sexual gestures or sexual body movements," requests to take or share sexually suggestive pictures or videos or efforts to establish "an unwanted romantic or sexual relationship."

Kristie Gore, one of the project leaders at Rand, said participants were told they could skip questions they found upsetting, or simply not take the survey. In the end, she said, Rand received a "relatively small" number of complaints.

She said research suggests that "the discomfort from being asked about prior trauma in a confidential survey is temporary and that such questions cause no additional long-term harm to previously traumatized persons."

Andrew Morral, the other project leader, said the questions were based on the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

"If you don't use precise language to describe different types of sexual assault and harassment, people define those terms for themselves in different ways, which leads to ambiguous results," he said.

The report on the 2012 survey, which was released early last year, showed sexual assault incidents rose from about 19,000 in the 2010 survey to 26,000.

Those totals far outdistance the number of sexual assaults that are actually reported by members of the military.

According to the latest report, the number of sexual assaults jumped by 50 percent last year as the military worked to get more victims to come forward.

Over the past two years, the military services have tried to increase awareness. Phone numbers and contact information for sexual assault prevention officers are plastered across military bases, including inside the doors of bathroom stalls. And top military officers have traveled to bases around the world speaking on the issue.

In the 2012 anonymous survey, about 6.8 percent of women who answered said they were assaulted and 1.2 percent of men. There are vastly more men in the military; so by the raw numbers, a bit more than 12,000 women said they were assaulted, compared with nearly 14,000 men. (Statistical math is apparently beyond the scope of the military)

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pb...039924/-1/NEWS
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Sexual assault is not that complicated a concept. Seems to me, some man speak military people without a clue are getting their jollies at the expense of the very people they are supposed to be protecting.
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Old 11-02-2014, 12:12 PM   #549
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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.
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Old 11-02-2014, 03:22 PM   #550
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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
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Old 11-02-2014, 05:58 PM   #551
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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.
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Old 11-07-2014, 03:34 PM   #552
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Default Christmas came early this year

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.
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Old 11-09-2014, 06:57 AM   #553
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Old 11-10-2014, 04:45 PM   #555
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Default Pregnant, and No Civil Rights

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
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Default Rape and death threats are terrorizing female gamers. Why haven’t men in tech spoken out?

They’ve taken down women I care about one by one. Now, the vicious mob of the Gamergate movement is coming after me. They’ve threatened to rape me. They’ve threatened to make me choke to death on my husband’s severed genitals. They’ve threatened to murder any children I might have.

This angry horde has been allowed to wage its misogynistic war without penalty for too long. It’s time for the video game industry to stop them.

Gamergate is ostensibly about journalistic ethics. Supporters say they want to address conflicts of interest between the people that make games and the people that support them. In reality, Gamergate is a group of gamers that are willing to destroy the women who have invaded their clubhouse.

The movement is not new. Two years ago, when Anita Sarkeesian tried to crowdfund a series of videos critiquing the hypersexualized female characters of video games, they threatened to kill and rape her. The movement reached fever pitch – and got its name — when a jilted former lover of indie game developer Zoe Quinn published transcripts of her life online. Gamers who were outraged over charges that Quinn’s game Depression Quest had received favorable reviews due to an alleged romantic relationship with a journalist, seized the opportunity to shame and terrify her into hiding. Now, Gamergate is a wildfire that threatens to consume the entire games industry.

The fact that Gamergate supporters went after Quinn and not the journalist says everything you need to know about the movement.

I became Gamergate’s latest target when I tweeted this joke about supporters of the movement. (Unable to copy the image. See article directly.)

The next day, my Twitter mentions were full of death threats so severe I had to flee my home. They have targeted the financial assets of my company by hacking. They have tried to impersonate me on Twitter. Even as we speak, they are spreading lies to journalists via burner e-mail accounts in an attempt to destroy me professionally.

We’ve lost too many women to this lunatic mob. Good women the industry was lucky to have, such as Jenn Frank, Mattie Bryce and my friend Samantha Allen, one of the most insightful critics in games media. They decided the personal cost was too high, and I don’t know who could blame them.

Every woman I know in the industry is terrified she will be next.

The culture in which women are treated this way by gamers didn’t happen in a vacuum. For 30 years, video games have been designed by men, marketed to men and sold to men. It’s obvious to anyone outside the industry that video games have serious issues with the portrayal of women. It’s not just oversexualized examples, such as Ivy of the Soul Caliber series. Games are still lazily falling on the same outdated tropes involving women. Princess Peach, of Nintendo’s Mario games, has been kidnapped in 12 separate games since 1985. Perhaps the most disturbing of all is the propensity of games to have women thoughtlessly murdered as a motivation for the male hero, such as Watch Dogs.

The consequence of this culture is male gamers have been trained to feel video games are their turf. In stopping Gamergate, the men who dominate it – not just women — must address the culture that created Gamergate.

Some have. But many more have been silent. In the male-dominated video game media, many have chosen to sit by and do nothing as Gamergate picks us off, one by one. IGN has not covered Gamergate. Game Informer has not covered Gamergate. Ironically, the people who most need to hear this message are not hearing it, because of an editorial choice to stay on the sidelines.

There are many straightforward steps we can take to change this.

First, major institutions in video games, which happen to be dominated by men, need to speak up immediately and denounce Gamergate. The dam started to break this week as Patrick Klepek of Giant Bomb broke the silence at their publication on Monday. Last week, the industry’s top trade group, the Entertainment Software Association spoke out against Gamergate, saying “Threats of violence and harassment have to stop. There is no place in the video game community for personal attacks and threats.”

Secondly, I call upon the entire industry to examine its hiring practices at all levels. Women make up half of all gamers, yet we make up only a fraction of this industry. While it’s possible to point to high profile women in the field, the fact remains. Women hold a shockingly disproportionate number of high level positions in game studios, game publishers and particularly in leadership roles. There are just 11 percent of game designers and 3 percent of programmers, according to The Boston Globe.

Game journalism also plays a critical role. It doesn’t matter how many women we get into game production. If the only people evaluating the work we do continue to be men, women’s voices will never be heard.

My friend Quinn told me about a folder on her computer called, “The Ones We’ve Lost.” They are the letters she’s gotten from young girls who dream of being game developers, but are terrified of the environment they see. I nearly broke into tears as I told her I had a folder filled with the same. The truth is, even if we stopped Gamergate tomorrow, it will have already come at too high a cost.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/postev...ch-spoken-out/

--------------------------


The feminist analysis of this would be, GamerGate is another tickle down effect of the real problem. The real problem is we live in a patriarchal world, made by and for males based on the concepts of male superiority which cannot exist without female inferiority; male dominance which cannot exist without female submission; male entitlement which cannot exist without female lack thereof. All of this is reinforced thru ritualized, systemic, and institutionized methods to keep women, oppressed, victimized and objectified. The biggest weapon used is the threat of violence and "corrective rape" to those who dare expose the system for what it is.

The system, from time to time, allows things to occur which appear to be "progressive" and "empowering" for females. Nothing is allowed to happen in an oppressive system which does not enhance or reinforce the power or whims of the oppressors. Nothing. The oppressed may be operating under the illusion they have gained something or made headway but in the final analysis, the benefit to the oppressor far outweighs the crumbs the oppressed mistake as progress.

Much time, energy, and resources are wasted by reinventing the wheel, issue after issue in the trickle down effect. GamerGate, the rape of females, domestic violence, wage inequity, and every other trickle down issue comes from the same source. These issues will remain until the source of these horrors inflicted on females is dealt with with.

The silence of males on these issues and the use of "not all males" are both methods of distancing oneself from the reality and responsibility. Silence implies consent and agreement. "Not all males" is saying there is a difference without demonstrating there is a difference. To expect those who benefit from such a system to speak to the inequities of such is not exactly realistic. It takes strength and courage to stand apart from the protection afforded by the whole.

Feminism is about always keeping the bigger picture in mind when looking at the trickle down effects. It is about speaking to the truth over and over. It is about living the truth and modeling the truth to others. It is about not being complicit in ones own oppression and educating others about this as well.

Feminism is not a laundry lists of trickle down issues which are wholly unsolvable at the trickle down level. It is a way of seeing the world for what it is and being committed to changing it 24/7/365. It is also about feeling you are banging your head against the wall.....cuz you are.

And, you know you are doing a damn good job as a feminist when people attack you and threaten you for speaking out, for telling the truth, and for being committed to the truth. Being threatened means you are speaking to something that is very threatening to the person(s) who are threatening you. Thats a crapload of threatening.

It is stone age mentality but threats and violence are all about instilling fear and forcing people to be silent because they are paralyzed by fear. Threats and violence are just methods of control, like any other methods of control females face every single freakin day.

History has proven over and over the methods of the oppressors. It has also shown the methods the oppressed have used to lessen their burden including bargaining, colluding, appealing to higher senses, using logic etc.

History will keep repeating itself until the oppressed finally say no and back up that no with appropriate, definitive action.







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Old 11-13-2014, 01:51 PM   #557
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Default Is the world starting to turn against Bill Cosby?

The man once known as “America’s Dad” is too radioactive for daytime television.

Bill Cosby, who was scheduled to appear as a guest on “The Queen Latifah Show” to promote his new comedy tour, is no longer going to be on the show.

TMZ initially reported producers rescinded the invitation, but updated the story with a statement from the show’s spokesman saying Cosby’s appearance was “postponed at his request.” The change came just days after the Daily Mail published Barbara Bowman’s account of the alleged sexual abuse she said she suffered at Cosby’s hands.

These allegations have been reported for years — before Bowman spoke to the Daily Mail, she spoke to Newsweek in February. Cosby has said almost nothing about the accusations. His publicist told Newsweek: “This is a 10-year-old, discredited accusation that proved to be nothing at the time, and is still nothing.”

Tamara Green spoke to Matt Lauer on the “Today” show in 2005 about her alleged experiences and in February to Newsweek. In 2004, Andrea Constand filed suit against Cosby for battery, assault, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, alleging that Cosby had drugged and raped her. Thirteen women came forward with their own allegations and agreed to testify as witnesses if the suit went to trial. Cosby settled in 2006.

In recent years, Cosby has executed something of a career revival: He did a special for Comedy Central, “Bill Cosby: Far From Finished.” He is developing a new show for NBC slated for summer or fall of next year.

But it seems actor and comedian Hannibal Buress’s willingness to openly criticize Cosby finally tipped the scales against him.

Buress is on tour performing a new stand-up act. In it, he calls Cosby a rapist while voicing disagreement with his more recent role as public scold to black people.

“Bill Cosby has the f—ing smuggest old black man public persona that I hate,” Buress said. “He just gets on TV — ‘Pull your pants up, black people. I was on TV in the ’80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom.’ Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby. So, brings you down a couple notches.”

During his act, Buress expressed incredulity at what he calls Cosby’s “Teflon public image.” “I’ve done this bit on stage, and people don’t believe me. People think I’m making it up,” Buress said. “If you didn’t know about it, when you leave here, Google ‘Bill Cosby rape.’ It’s not funny. That s— has more results than ‘Hannibal Buress.’”

What was strange was the mushroom cloud of controversy Buress set off repeating something he had said before — not about new allegations, but about the same 13 women who signed on as witnesses in Constand’s 2004 lawsuit.

Without intending to, Buress became a perfect example of the conundrum of male allyship: It wasn’t enough 13 different women accused Cosby of drugging, raping and violently assaulting them. It was only after a famous man, Buress, called him out that the possibility of Cosby becoming a television pariah became real.

Last month, Cosby was a guest on the “The Colbert Report.” Colbert remained in character, but was unambiguously deferential. In August, Cosby appeared on “The Tonight Show” and got similar treatment from Jimmy Fallon.

Author Mark Whitaker omitted rape allegations from his new biography of Cosby, and the book was still widely praised for giving a comprehensive look at Cosby’s life. When HuffPost Live host Marc Lamont Hill asked Whitaker why he failed to mention the rape allegations in the book, for which he had Cosby’s cooperation, Whitaker answered: “In these cases, there were no definitive court findings, there were no independent witnesses, and I just felt, at the end of the day, all I would be doing would be, ‘These people say this, Cosby denies this.’ And as not only a reporter but his biographer, if people asked me, ‘What is the truth? What do you think?’ I would be in the position of saying, ‘I don’t know,’ and I just felt uncomfortable.”

Cosby is hardly an outlier when it comes to popular figures given the benefit of the doubt when accused of abusing women. When fired CBC host Jian Ghomeshi posted on Facebook Sunday night he was being targeted by a “jilted ex-girlfriend,” fans and even those unfamiliar with Ghomeshi immediately rallied around him. The post drew more than 100,000 likes.

Owen Pallett, a friend of Ghomeshi’s, pulled a Buress: He chose to publicly condemn Ghomeshi, who is accused of sexually assaulting and battering women. “Jian is my friend,” Pallet wrote in a rather damning Facebook post. “I have appeared twice on Q. But there is no grey area here. Three women have been beaten by Jian Ghomeshi.”

Pallett chose to speak while only two of nine women who came forward to accuse Ghomeshi — actress Lucy DeCoutere and lawyer and author Reva Seth — were willing to reveal their identities. The others requested anonymity out of fear of harassment, threats and retaliation. At the time Pallett published his post, only four women had come forward. Since then, four more have spoken to various Canadian news organizations. Many Ghomeshi supporters dismissed them as liars, as has Ghomeshi.

But somehow, Pallett’s willingness to speak bolsters the women’s claims. The problem, argued Salon’s Katie McDonough, is that people were shocked Pallett chose to believe women:

Is there anything that scandalous about Pallett’s decision? After all, what Pallett is doing is what a lot of people have already done — taken sides. Pallett just happens to have taken the side that says that women are not vindictive. Women are not liars. Women are not out to destroy men for sport.

On one hand, having male allies such as Buress and Pallett, who are unafraid to speak up, has been instrumental in amplifying women’s voices when they make accusations against men more powerful and famous than themselves. On the other, there’s a question why this is necessary at all — and why there’s such a reflexive reaction to dismiss them.

The sexual assault allegations by Bowman, Constand and Green were all over the Internet when Queen Latifah’s show decided to book Cosby. Quite possibly, it took Buress’s words to make Cosby so unpalatable the best decision for both parties was to cancel.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/m...st-bill-cosby/
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Old 11-17-2014, 03:16 PM   #558
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Anchor sexism in Australia.
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Old 11-18-2014, 06:10 PM   #559
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Default Your Irregular Gamergate Update

I've been putting this one off, but I think there's sufficient mass for another update on what GG has been up to.

First off, on entities (and men) in tech condemning Gamergate, Blizzard's CEO, Michael Morhaime, did so at the start of Blizzcon on November 7. It was fairly gentle as condemnations go, but still. For some further context on Blizzard: Blizzard is the company behind World of Warcraft, whose playerbase is now like 60% women, because Blizzard actually punishes harassment on WoW servers. Because they were smart and realised that letting dudebros drive women away was leaving money on the table. (And that's what Gamergate is angry about: women's money is green and game developers are starting to look for ways to get women to buy their products. Which involves putting the interests of women ahead of the interests of toxic little boys who want to keep "cooties" out of what they mistakenly believe to be their treehouse.)

Some more good news: one of Gamergate's early successes, such as they were, that wasn't harassing women out of vidya was getting companies like Intel to stop advertising on sites they don't like. Like getting Intel to stop advertising on Gamasutra. So what's the good news? Intel reversed its decision and is advertising on Gamasutra again. So not only is Gamergate stalling out, but it's actively losing ground it once held.

Video game critic and cultural commentator Jim Sterling of the Jimquisition left The Escapist (an online entertainment magazine, mostly about video gaming) to go independent. I don't think he actually declared a specific reason aside from getting enough support on his Patreon to be able to safely go independent, but I wonder how much of it has to do with the fact that Alexander Marcis, general manager of the Escapist, gave preferential coverage to Gamergate by actually getting his sources for an article on Gamergate from 4chan. The writers Alexander Marcis invited to comment included Slade Villena, a guy who previously had actively advocated for "black hat" (criminal) tactics against Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian, and James Desborough, whose Gor RPG (about a massively misogynistic setting in which women are sex slaves, I wish I were making this up) Alexander Marcis was financially backing at the time (I actually saw that kickstarter and promptly donated all of my NOPE). Because it was never about ethics in gaming journalism. Jim Sterling, on the other hand, has ended up on the anti-GG side by virtue of people accusing him of being a "social justice warrior" because he's stated that better representation of women and minorities in video games is both morally and financially the correct course of action. (His response to this accusation was to ask if he's allowed to be a social justice bard. Thank God for him.)

Now for some half-assed "bad news" that doesn't actually seem to mean anything positive for Gamergate:

Gamergate lost Milo, but it picked up a new sad excuse for a champion, who, as David Futrelle says, looks like a wax replica of Patrick Bateman and thinks gamers are a bunch of dateless nerds (and Gamergaters don't seem to be disagreeing with him very hard on this point).

Roosh V (who one of my friends nicknamed LR1, for "Literally Rapist 1") started a "gaming site" for Gamergaters called Reaxxion (presumably a reference to "neoreactionary"). Of course, he openly declares that his stake in this is 'protecting the interests of heterosexual Western males,' but that gay men and 'attractive women' are still allowed. One of the first articles up on the site ended with the note that in further columns it would explore how video games are a fundamentally male activity. I'm not even kidding. I wish I were.

Remember that thing with Matt Taylor's shirt covered in half-naked ladies? Gamergate is jumping on that because the #Gamergate hashtag is losing steam, and of course they're talking about how this is the exact thing they've been fighting all along. (Because it was never about ethics in gaming journalism.)

The guys making The Sarkeesian Effect, who are, of course, Gamergaters, decided to bring on Jack Fucking Thompson as a source. I'm old enough to remember when Jack Thompson was actually trying to destroy video games, and so I always found the comparisons of Anita Sarkeesian to Jack Thompson to be ridiculous and disingenuous. But now, Gamergate has passed comparing Anita Sarkeesian to Jack Thompson and actually progressed to inviting Jack Thompson--who not only actually did seek to destroy video games, but also got disbarred for severe ethics violations--in to call Anita Sarkeesian a "censor." (Because it was always about attacking feminism, and not about ethics of any kind, or even really about video games, particularly for the open misogynists behind The Sarkeesian Effect.)

Now, this next one is a fair bit heavier--trigger warning, definitely a trigger warning for this link. Remember how I mentioned in an earlier post that /r/KotakuInAction actually had to drop several moderators from its board for their extremely inconvenient connections, like that one moderator they happened to share with /r/PhilosophyOfRape? I didn't go into more detail on that board at the time, but if you actually want the messy details, here they are, from The Mary Sue. Again, TRIGGER WARNING.

Here, wash that out of your brain. Have a nice picture of Vivian James being liberated from being Gamergate's mascot and getting some good pro-woman games and even a new hoodie so she doesn't have to wear a dogwhistle rape joke.

Now. Lastly, some shitlord told Brianna Wu that "respects is earn." You know, that thing where dudebros claim that it's OK to disrespect women because women haven't "earned respect" but men supposedly have. The way this guy butchered the phrase, however, invited a delightful new meme. Enjoy!

PS: on women in STEM fields, and computer science and vidya specifically, god dammit Mattel

Last edited by Allison W; 11-18-2014 at 06:30 PM. Reason: GOD DAMMIT MATTEL
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Old 11-20-2014, 06:48 PM   #560
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UVa Fraternity Suspended Over Rape Allegations

Also, this struck a chord with me.

#FeministHackerBarbie

smh
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