Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[Kobi]

[Kobi]

[Violette]

Originally Posted by Kobi

That is just astounding!

[Gemme]

Colombia Women's Cycling Team Uniforms Cause Controversy

I'm not sure if I'm more upset by the person who's idea it was to put them in a uniform that made them look half naked or the responses of the people.

[Gemme]

itsonus.org

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by Gemme

Colombia Women's Cycling Team Uniforms Cause Controversy

I'm not sure if I'm more upset by the person who's idea it was to put them in a uniform that made them look half naked or the responses of the people.

This is BEYOND disturbing. I can't imagine any of these women are happy about ONCE AGAIN being turned into sexual objects, rather than athletes. Makes me sick. I can't even imagine what they are thinking. They spent their lives focused on using their bodies for sports, working them as machines, and yet, here they are being REMINDED that what is MOST important about their bodies is that they are sexually appealing to others.

I am blown away by how obvious this is.

[Gemme]

Rape Tee Shirt Pulled From Store in the Philippines

It should never have been produced at all.

[Gemme]

Iceland Running a Gender Equality Conference---Without Women

Innovative or business as usual?

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by Gemme

Iceland Running a Gender Equality Conference---Without Women

Innovative or business as usual?

Business as usual. It is the male perspective on what ails females and how best to address the male perspective of the female experience. It's called male-centric feminism or liberal feminism.

Nice explanation of this can be found here: Liberal Feminism.

[Kobi]

Many breast cancer survivors say a crop of pink-ribbon campaigns have hit a new low -- by sexualizing breast cancer.

An online porn site this month has been using breast cancer to increase its Web traffic by offering to donate 1 cent for every 30 views of its videos. The intended recipient for the donation, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, rejected the offer and instructed the site to stop using its name.

Yet pornographers are only the most extreme example of a disturbing trend: using sex to sell breast cancer -- or simply get attention, say Gayle Sulik, author of Pink Ribbon Blues. Sulik, who recently lost a friend to the disease, notes that magazines and advertising campains now routinely use topless young women to illustrate a disease whose average victims are in their 60s.

"I don't see the porn site to be much different from the 'Feel your boobies' T-shirts," says Sulik, referring to the Pennsylvania-based Feel Your Boobies Foundation. "It sexually objectifies women, trivializes breast cancer . . . and uses the objectified woman as window dressing for the profit-making machine."

Newer cancer groups are embracing slogans such as "Save the Ta-Tas" and "I Love Boobies" in the name of humor and reaching out to a younger, less conservative audience. Other groups say they're trying to stand out from the crowd of public service announcements that arrive every October, during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

A poster for the "Save 2nd Base" fundraiser at Tao restaurant in Las Vegas last month, for example, depicted a curvy model in a string bikini, noting "everyone in pink bathing suits receives open bar." An online version of the ad went viral, spread by outraged cancer survivors. The Las Vegas restaurant did not return phone calls for this story.

Although proceeds were to benefit Komen, the cancer group's spokeswoman Andrea Rader says Komen hasn't heard how much was raised, and won't accept the donation. Rader says the Las Vegas restaurant was supposed to get Komen's approval before launching the ads, but did not. "We would never have approved that," Rader says. Rader notes that Komen, which has been criticized for its "cause marketing" partnerships with companies such as KFC, disapproves of coy language for body parts. "We just say 'breasts,'" Rader says.

Breast cancer survivor Kathi Kolb used her skill with computer graphics to create an alternative "2nd Base" poster on her blog, the Accidental Amazon. Kolb's version makes the bikini model look more like a real cancer patient: with a catheter port in her chest, a prosthesis in her bra and a compression sleeve on her arm to prevent swelling.

"It's thinly disguised prurience," says Kolb, 58. "The average guy may be moderately obsessed with breasts, but any guy who's ever known any woman with breast cancer, the last thing he thinks is that breast cancer is sexy."

Kolb says she's been disgusted by sexy breast cancer campaigns for years, noting that many companies are manipulating customers' compassion for commercial gain. But this year, she says, "is worse than ever."

But Kimmy McAtee, spokeswoman for the Keep A Breast Foundation, says its "I Love Boobies!" campaign aims to "speak to young people in their own voice about a subject that is often scary and taboo." T-shirts and bracelets "speak directly to our target audience in a way that is authentic, inspiring and refreshing. We always want to take a positive approach to breast cancer awareness, rather than a funny or sexy one."

Even mainstream groups, such as the American Cancer Society, are using humor to get their message across. "It's OK to look at our chests," the society announces, with videos showing close-ups of women's chests. On a site called makingstrideswalk.org/boobs, the society announces that a fundraising walk "was created to focus on breasts, and women are glad their chest has our undivided attention."

The American Cancer Society says the "boobs" video was created to get people's attention. In a written statement, the society said, "People are exposed to a wide variety of breast cancer information during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, and this video was intended to break through the clutter to capture the attention of social media users, who we want to encourage to spread the word about an important message: empowering women to take control of their breast health and fight back in their communities."

Breast cancer survivor Lani Horn, 41, from Nashville, says these groups are missing the point. "All of us are really fed up," Horn says. "Save the tatas? No, save the women. A lot of us had to give up our tatas to live."

Karuna Jagger, executive director of Breast Cancer Action, an advocacy group, says, "The implicit message in these campaigns is that it is breasts that are sexy; sexy is what is important; and we should care about breast cancer because it takes those lovely, sexy breasts out of the world . . . Every October, the stunts just gets more bizarre and further removed from what's needed for this epidemic."

Horn, who blogs at chemobabe.com, scoffs at the notion that campaigns such "Feel Your Boobies" educate women about breast self-exams.

While many women with cancer do find breast lumps themselves, that tends to happen more by accident, such as while getting dressed, than during formal self-exams. Medical authorities such as the American Cancer Society and U.S. Preventive Services Task Force no longer promote monthly breast self-exams.

Overall, teaching women to do structured monthly self-exams causes more harm than good; it doesn't save lives, but does cause needless worry, says physician Virginia Moyer, chair of the federal task force. "This doesn't mean women shouldn't be 'breast-aware,' but it does mean that we know that clinicians spending time teaching the techniques of breast exam and promoting its uptake is a poor use of time," Moyer says.

Yet ogling-as-fundraising isn't limited to the USA.

A British group, Coppafeel!, urges women to do a "boob check." In an imitation of Janet Jackson's infamous Rolling Stone cover, Coppafeel has been promoting its campaign with images of a topless member of the Spice Girls, Mel B, and her husband, Stephen Belafonte, who clutches her breasts.

A French website called Boobstragram encourages women to post photos of themselves in a bra, advising, "showing your boobs on the web is good; showing them to your doctor is better."

Writer Peggy Orenstein, who has been treated for breast cancer twice, says she's appalled at what is being marketed on behalf of "women like me."

The new campaigns do real harm, she says, by reinforcing the image that breasts are a woman's most valued asset. That only increases the pain suffered by women who undergo mastectomies, Orenstein says.

"On one hand, women with cancer are told -- or have to learn -- that we are not our breasts, that our sexuality, our femininity are not located in the mammary gland," Orenstein says. "That's a complicated, sometimes painful reckoning. Then these organizations come along and reinforce the notion that boobs are the most important things about us, particularly if they're hot and apparently most particularly if they're actually fake."

When diagnosed with aggressive cancer at age 38, Horn says, saving her breasts was the last thing on her mind. All she could think about, she says, was staying alive for her three young children. "Every time I thought, 'I can't climb back into that chemo chair,' I thought, 'I have to be able to tell my kids, 'I did everything possible.'"

The new breed of ads is especially cruel, Horn says, because breast cancer strips women of many features associated with femininity and beauty. Chemotherapy and surgery to remove the ovaries can both improve a woman's odds of survival, but at the cost of plunging her into instant menopause.

Chemo can make women lose their hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. Radiation can leave women's chests feeling, as one survivor has described it, like "a raw piece of meat."

And beyond the chemo-induced nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, Horn says, long-term hormonal therapy can cause severe vaginal dryness, making intercourse too painful to contemplate. While many cancer survivors want more information about preserving their fertility and alleviating sexual side effects, very few get help, Horn says.

Cancer "doesn't make you feel terribly sexy. Pain is not terribly sexy," Horn says. "There's a cruelty to this, when you're in danger of losing the very sexuality that they're selling."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...ancer/1630911/

[Kobi]

Discuss gender in the workplace and there it is, stubborn, infuriating, impossible to avoid: the pay gap. For every dollar a man earns, professional women earn only 78 cents.

The pay gap holds across and within professions, including some of the highest-paying. It is real, and it is persistent.

So at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing—a conference on women in tech in Phoenix, Arizona—it was likely to be a common topic of conversation. And when Maria Klawe, the president of Harvey Mudd College, interviewed Satya Nadella, the recently installed CEO of Microsoft, it was bound to come up.

And, indeed, it did. Klawe, academic, asked Nadella, CEO: How should women handle the pay gap? How should they secure fair and equal pay?

Now, before continuing, let us review some statistics.

We know first of all that there is that stubborn, shocking pay gap. It persists across jobs and careers.

And we know, what’s more, that however bad things are in the workforce generally, they are particularly bad in tech, where women hold just 25 percent of the jobs. (They make up 57 percent of the entire workforce.)

Ann Friedman recently (and excellently) compiled all the dismal numbers about the state of women in tech. Hunt for the root cause, she writes, and you have to “look at who’s holding the purse strings”:

" Only 4 percent of senior venture capitalists are women, and 19 percent of U.S. angel investors are women. Is it any wonder that men are 40 percent more likely to be funded by venture capitalists, and only 4 to 7 percent of startup founders are women? (Well, that number is disputed, but almost everyone agrees it’s single-digit.) Software developers, the darlings of the tech gold rush, are only 20 percent women. A third of female tech entrepreneurs reported facing “dismissive attitudes” from their co-workers. […] Even when women break into tech, they don’t stay. More than half — 56 percent — end up leaving the industry."

That’s right. Even once they get to tech, most women don’t linger:




So. This is the state of things. Sound and well-sourced data suggest that women face additional hurdles in tech at every juncture: in college, as an entry-level employee, as a manager, as a VC—and as a CEO (only three tech CEOs in the Fortune 500 are female).

One might even say that something, something big, something systemic is biased against women.

How should women handle that systemic bias, Satya Nadella?

“It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise,” he told the attendees, according to Selena Larson of ReadWriteWeb.

“That might be one of the initial ‘super powers,’ that quite frankly, women (who) don’t ask for a raise have,” he added. “It’s good karma. It will come back.”

Larson continues, with delicious detail:

Audience murmurs suggested confusion and displeasure with career advice that both goes against everything women are told in the Lean In era, and seems woefully out of touch.

And how.

So out of touch, in fact, that Nadella quickly walked the comments back. In an email to all Microsoft employees last night, he wrote:

Toward the end of the interview, Maria asked me what advice I would offer women who are not comfortable asking for pay raises. I answered that question completely wrong. Without a doubt I wholeheartedly support programs at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap. I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work. And when it comes to career advice on getting a raise when you think it’s deserved, Maria’s advice was the right advice. If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask.

And that’s good advice for everyone—not just women. Still, though, the story remains remarkable. You can omit the specific gender element of this, view it as abstractly as possible, and you get this story:

A powerful CEO was asked how individuals should act in a system stacked against them, and his literal answer was, have faith in the system.

If you think he’s the only person who sometimes thinks that way, well, I have a raise to give you. But only if you don’t ask for it first.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...inable/381312/

[Kobi]

Under the banner of free speech, companies like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have been host to rape videos and revenge porn—which makes female users feel anything but free.

[Kobi]

In its English-language magazine, the organization argues a religious justification for its treatment of the Yazidis.

n the newest issue of Dabiq, the English-language magazine published by ISIS, the extremist group for the first time confirmed and justified the capturing, enslaving and selling of Yazidi women and children. The article surfaced as a new report from Human Rights Watch said that hundreds of Yazidis are being held captive in makeshift detention facilities in Iraq and Syria, including forcing some young women and teenagers to marry the group's fighters.

“The Islamic State’s litany of horrific crimes against the Yezidis in Iraq only keeps growing,” said Fred Abrahams, special adviser at Human Rights Watch. “We heard shocking stories of forced religious conversions, forced marriage, and even sexual assault and slavery—and some of the victims were children.”

In the article, "The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour," the magazine stated that "the enslaved Yazidi families are now sold by the Islamic State soldiers," adding that, "the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the Shariah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations."

"May Allah bless this Islamic State with the revival of further aspects of the religion occurring at its hands," the article says.

Referring to the Yazidis as "pagans" and "infidels," the article said, "Their creed is so deviant from the truth that even cross-worshipping Christians for ages considered them devil worshippers and Satanists, as is recorded in accounts of Westerners and Orientalists who encountered them or studied them."

Publication of an article like this is obviously part of an intimidation effort. Elsewhere in the magazine, ISIS spokesperson Mohammed al-Adnani threatens, "We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women."

But ISIS is also boasting about what they see as the revival of important institutions, such as slavery. "Before Shaytan reveals his doubts to the weak-minded and weak hearted, one would remember that enslaving the families of the [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of Shariah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Quran and the narrations of the Prophet, and thereby apostatizing from Islam," the article says. "... May Allah bless this Islamic State with the revival of further aspects of the religion occurring at its hands."

The United Nations estimates that at least 500,000 Yazidis fled their homes in northern Iraq after ISIS waged a major offensive in August on Sinjar, pushing tens of thousands into Mt. Sinjar where they were stranded for weeks.

Researchers with Human Rights Watch, who interviewed 76 Yazidis that fled to the Kurdish region of Iraq and 16 Yazidis who manage to escape ISIS detention, said that none of those who had been detained said they had been raped, although several said they had fought off violent attacks.

"As much as we could, we didn't let them touch our bodies," said one young woman who had been abducted but managed to escape. "Everything they did, they did by force."

However, fully disclosing assault may be curbed by social norms among Yazidis.

"The biggest taboo is not being captured, it is being [sexually] assaulted," Tirana Hassan, Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch's Emergencies Division, told Vice News. "The Yezidis are a small, conservative community and women will go great lengths to ensure this is private, to make sure they are not ostracized by the community. Virginity is a very important concept."

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...rticle/381394/

[Allison W]

I would have posted this in another thread, if not for the fact that the previous post in this one is kind of what prompted me to post this.

http://www.alternet.org/world/isiss-...women-fighters

ISIS's Nightmare: Fierce Kurdish Women Fighters
In the battle for Kobani, Syria, Kurdish women warriors are said to terrify ISIS.

DailyKos / By gjohnsit
October 10, 2014

On Monday the Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said that the isolated Kurdish enclave of Kobani was "about to fall" to a massive, sustained assault from ISIS.
Also on Monday, Rooz Bahjat, a Kurdish intelligence officer stationed in Kobani said the city would fall within "the next 24 hours." By now ISIS was expecting to be slaughtering civilians by the score.

Instead, something totally unexpected happened - ISIS has been forced to pull back.

A local Kobani official, Idris Nahsen, told AFP that fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) had managed to push ISIS fighters outside several key areas after "helpful" airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition

"The situation has changed since yesterday. YPG forces have pushed back ISIS forces," he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, confirmed that ISIS fighters had withdrawn overnight from several areas and were no longer inside the western part of Kobani. They remained in eastern parts of the town and its southern edges, said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman, whose group relies on a network of sources inside Syria. The number of dead in the overnight fighting was not clear, but Mustafa Ebdi, a Kurdish journalist and activist from Kobani, wrote on his Facebook page that the streets of one southeastern neighborhood were "full of the bodies" of ISIS fighters.

Kobani has been under attack by 9,000 ISIS jihadists, armed with tanks and heavy artillery for nearly a month. This is the largest manned assualt by ISIS in its short existence.They are being opposed by just 2,000 Kurdish fighters with the YPG, the armed wing of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), without access to any heavy weaponry and short on ammunition.
To put this into perspective, 800 ISIS fighters routed 2 divisions of the Iraqi Army, totaling 30,000 heavily armed soldiers, in June.
In other words, the Syrian Kurds of Kobani weren't supposed to stand a snowball's chance in Hell.

My father used to say, "It's not the size of the dog in the fight that matters. It's the size of the fight in the dog that does."

And now, here we are. Two days after Kobani was supposed to have become just the latest victims of ISIS terror. The difference is obviously the motivation of who is fighting.

"We either die or win. No fighter is leaving," Esmat al-Sheikh, leader of the Kobani Defence Authority, told Reuters. "The world is watching, just watching and leaving these monsters to kill everyone, even children...but we will fight to the end with what weapons we have."

Some people have more motivation than others. Those people include women. A very large percentage of the YPG fighters that have been so good at killing ISIS jihadists are women.

I asked her about YPG’s women’s wing, the YPJ (Women's Protection Units), and the women fighters coming from Turkey. She said Kurdish women were as equally involved in defense affairs as in social services. “We have set up training camps for women in all three cantons. Women are active in all fronts,” she said. “Of the first 20 martyrs we had when IS attacked Kobani, 10 were women. Last year, of our 700 YPG martyrs, 200 were women...

I reminded Nimet of the legends we hear of IS militants fearing to encounter women fighters. She replied, “This is not a myth but reality. I personally met IS fighters face-to-face. Women fighters infringe on their psyche. They believe they won’t go to paradise if they are killed by women. That is why they flee when they see women. I saw that personally at the Celaga front. We monitor their radio calls. When they hear a woman's voice on the air, they become hysterical.”

Kurdish women have traditionally been part of the resistance forces. At Kobani, one woman in particular, Arin Mirkan, showed just how far they are prepared to go to defeat ISIS.

The woman, who is reportedly a commander in the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit, known as the YPG, broke into an Isis (also known as Islamic State) bastion on the eastern outskirts of Kobani and clashed with militants before detonating herself with a grenade, a monitoring group said on Sunday.
Mirkan, a mother of two, is rumored (but not proven) to have killed 23 ISIS fighters.

Another female YPG fighter, Ceylan Ozalp, killed herself with her last bullet rather than be captured by ISIS.

It's still far to early to determine how this will turn out. The Kobani defenders are running short on ammo, while Turkish tanks sit just a few meters across the border doing nothing. Instead, the Turkish military is arresting Kurdsfleeing the fighting in Kobani.

18 ethnic Kurds have been killed in violent protests in Turkey, demanding that the Turkish army help the brave defenders in Kobani.

The Pentagon still expects Kobani to fall, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is more concerned with ISIS marching on Baghdad.

Speaking specifically about cities in western Iraq, he said, “There are places where [the Islamic State] continues to make gains in Iraq. We talked about Hit. We talked about Ramadi. We talked about Fallujah, which is still in contention right now. That’s worrisome, because it’s close to Baghdad.”

8:46 AM PT: It's complicated.

Kurds insist that Turkey should allow Kurdish fighters, supplies and weapons to enter the encircled town through its territory. Turkey refuses to do so unless the Kurds meet certain demands, including distancing themselves from their allies in an outlawed Kurdish separatist party in Turkey.

As an indication of the complex political currents, however, she made it clear the Kurds would not welcome military assistance from Turkey, asking instead for free passage of Kurdish fighters from Turkey to reinforce those in Kobani.

“We would view Turkey sending its troops without an international decision as an occupation," she said.

Anwar Muslim, a lawyer and the head of the Kobani district, echoed those sentiments, saying it was illogical to ask the Kurds to denounce Mr. Assad and join Syrian insurgent groups fighting against him.

9:12 AM PT: Meanwhile in Anbar, Iraq:

Iraq’s restive western province of Anbar is on the verge of completely falling into the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) unless urgent action is taken to address military failures, the Anbar Tribal Council warned on Wednesday...

“It is strange that while ISIS is developing its presence and capabilities on the ground in Anbar, military and security leadership are not doing anything new to address this. As a result of this, most parts of Anbar province are now completely in ISIS’s hands, including Ramadi city center,” Ibrahim told Asharq Al-Awsat.

It was Anbar’s police force that was protecting citizens from ISIS, he said, adding that military forces were actively hindering efforts to combat the extremist group. “Unfortunately, the military has become a source of assistance for ISIS because for the most part ISIS is able to attack and defeat the military, taking control of their arms and equipment,” said Ibrahim.

11:10 AM PT: Dramatic new development

It appears that the Kurds have finally picked up an ally.

Kurdish sources inside Kobane say that the YPG (Syrian Kurdish Popular Protection Units) have advanced in the east and that a group of Free Syrian Army fighters moved behind IS lines causing heavy losses.

---

I think this is really important. I keep hearing people talk about the world needing women's peace and harmony and blahdy-blah, but--at the risk of saying something batshit insane about this whole "violence" thing--I often find myself thinking that what the world (and particularly women) need is women's force.

[*Anya*]

14 October 2014 Last updated at 12:55 ET

GamerGate: 'Press must tackle misogyny,' says developer

By Kevin Rawlinson & Leo Kelion

BBC News

More video game news sites must place a spotlight on the misogynistic abuse that could drive women from the industry, a developer has demanded.

Brianna Wu, whose firm is behind the Revolution 60 game,who said she faced death threats after speaking out, said the sites could help change the industry's culture.

A debate is raging in the sector about claims of corrupt relationships between some developers and reviewers.

But it has also regularly veered into the issues of feminism and misogyny.

"Every woman I know is terrified that what happened to me will happen to them next. And this is a true campaign of terror on women in the field," she told BBC News.

Ms Wu fled her home on Friday 10 October after graphic sexual threats were made against her.

The next day, she shared screenshots of tweets from one user who had threatened to murder her and her family, and had posted her home address to prove they knew where she lived.

The abuse came after she shared pictures on Twitter mocking players with sexist attitudes, who had used the Twitter hashtag GamerGate.

'Drive women out'

Her latest comments coincide with Ada Lovelace Day, an annual event celebrating women's feats in technology and science.

Ms Wu, head of development at games company Giant Spacekat, also said that internet services needed to do more to help police trace those who posted abuse.

"As it currently is, when crimes occur, law enforcement frequently cannot locate the people that are doing it," she said.

"We need to get more serious as a culture about making it possible for law enforcement to act in very serious situations like this.

"GamerGate could very seriously drive most women out of the industry. I realise that's a very strong statement and I absolutely mean it. I don't know a single woman in this field who is not asking herself if she wants to stay."

Ms Wu's experience was similar to those of games reviewer Anita Sarkeesian and developer Zoe Quinn, who were also on the receiving end of abuse.

Allegations about Ms Quinn's personal relationships with journalists were presented as evidence of "possible corruption" in the industry.

Ms Sarkeesian was hounded after releasing the latest in a series of video blogs that criticised bestselling games for propagating sexist stereotypes.

In response to the treatment meted out to Ms Sarkeesian, thousands of people signed an open letter calling on the gaming industry to change.

Ms Wu singled out IGN and Giant Bomb as two popular websites that she said had not drawn enough attention to the abuse aimed at women.

"They are choosing not to cover this story, or Zoe's story, or any of these stories. This has a real silencing effect," she told the BBC.

"These are video game sites that are tailored towards men, so the people that most need to understand the harassment and culture that's being created, the sites that speak to them are not covering this."

While Giant Bomb has not covered the debate in depth, it did report Ms Wu's story on Monday. Readers of both IGN and Giant Bomb have also discussed the wider debate on their forums.

Neither of the two sites was able to comment when asked for a response.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29616197

[Kobi]

Prominent feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian has officially canceled a speaking engagement at Utah State University after a threat was emailed to the school promising a mass shooting targeting her and anyone who attended the event.

The email said there would be “the deadliest school shooting in American history” if Sarkeesian’s speech was not canceled by the university, and goes on to detail exactly how the attack would be carried out.

“If you do not cancel her talk, a Montreal Massacre style attack will be carried out against the attendees, as well as students and staff at the nearby Women’s Center. I have at my disposal a semi-automatic rifle, multiple pistols, and a collection of pipe bombs.”

Originally, despite the threat, Sarkeesian was still planning to go ahead with the speech, but after learning from campus law enforcement that Utah’s concealed carry laws meant it would be possible that guns would indeed be at the event, she changed her mind.

The threat is the latest in a series of escalating attacks targeting prominent female game critics and developers. Anita Sarkeesian and developers Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu have fled their homes in recent weeks after their personal addresses were posted online and death and rape threats were made against them. Sarkeesian has endured these kinds of attacks for years ever since her “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” video series was attempting to raise funding on Kickstarter. Recently, matters have escalated however, culminated in this exceptionally graphic and detailed school shooting threat. The “ Montreal Massacre” mentioned in the email refers to the crimes of Marc Lépine, who killed 14 women, injured 10 and also killed four men in order to “fight feminism” in 1989 before committing suicide.
Fanboy Wars: The Newest eBook From Forbes
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The obvious elephant in the room is that these threats and attacks against specific female developers have escalated as the popular #GamerGate movement has gained traction in the gaming community. The #GamerGate community is exceptionally defensive when being tied to “fringe” elements who directly threaten and harass women in this way, but it’s getting borderline impossible to extract what the movement claims to want to be with what it actually is.

Zoe Quinn was the figure who in effect spawned the hashtag movement, who accused her of sleeping with members of the games press for positive coverage for her game (when in reality the press members in question barely mentioned her game in passing, and did not review it). Developer Brianna Wu, who fled her house as recently as this week, was targeted by 8chan, the 4chan spin-off ousted from the site, because of her harsh words for #GamerGate and those who claim to march under that banner. And Sarkeesian has been a consistent target for years, and her repeated and public disdain for #GamerGate has escalated attacks on her as we see today.

While it’s true these threats aren’t being signed with a #GamerGate hashtag, we’re past the point of pretending that it’s a complete coincidence these threats have increased as #GamerGate members have gotten more fervent. The stated goal of #GamerGate, a movement concocted on Twitter TWTR -4.08%, Reddit and 4chan, is the pursuit of a more “ethical, professional and unbiased” video game press. Yet, whatever reasonable elements of the group there may be, some members have taken it upon themselves to threaten “unethical” females in the industry and everyone who supports them. This has happened so often and the threats made are so personal, graphic and unsettling, that it’s overshadowed anything that could have ever been productive about the movement. Whether or not the “goal” of #GamerGate was to literally chase prominent women out of the industry, that’s the effect its now having. Each day seems to bring a new low, and it seems like only a matter of time until a woman is physically harmed when someone follows through on one of these hundreds and thousands of threats. In Sarkeesian’s case, she wasn’t willing to risk speaking at an event that allows concealed weapons after the looming threat of a massacre. It’s hard to find fault with that logic, unfortunately it comes with the side effect of the person who made the threat getting exactly what they wanted.

It’s no longer possible to defend #GamerGate. For every member that unequivocally condemns these sorts of attacks against women, there’s another explaining why it’s completely unrelated from the movement, while yet another is cheering the harassers on. #GamerGate is an amalgam of a million different goals raging from the valid (better disclosure!) to the insane (death to feminists!), and it’s become bloated and grotesque with hate. Perhaps it’s too bad the sane members of the movement are caught in this tidal wave, but there’s no avoiding getting swept out to sea at this point.

The police need to be heavily involved as these threats escalate. The games press needs to unite with fans to condemn this sort of thing outright, and not pretend that ethics in games journalism has absolutely anything at all to do with…whatever it is this has become.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertco...at-utah-state/

[Gemme]

Australian Family Feud

Family Feud is a fun show, right? Sometimes they tip the hat one way or the other but the Australian version just fell off the deep end.

What would YOUR top 8 responses be to these?

Name a woman's job.
Name a man's job.

Yes, in 2014.

[Kobi]

It happened on a Russian television show.

"I was at the Olympics and saw Maria Sharapova play her… him…," said Ivan Urgant, the host of an aptly named nighttime interview show, Evening Urgant.

"…One of the Williams brothers," Shamil Tarpischev finished.

This would just be ugly if run-of-the-mill sexism were it not for the fact that Tarpischev is head of Russia's Tennis Federation and the director of an annual professional tournament in Moscow. Now, he faces a one-year ban and a $25,000 fine from the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for his comments.

"I am sorry that the joke which was translated into English out of its context of a comedy show drew so much attention," he has said since in a statement. "I don’t think this situation is worth all the hoopla because those words were said without any malice." He later added the event "was hyped to an absurd level."

Serena Williams will kick off defending her WTA Tour Finals championship in Singapore this week. The WTA's swift action seems to have kept the comments from becoming a distraction.

"I think the WTA did a great job of taking initiative and taking immediate action to his comments. I thought they were very insensitive and extremely sexist as well as racist at the same time," Serena Williams said in a press conference Sunday. "I thought they were in a way bullying."

Even Maria Sharapova, a Russian who had her share of run-ins with Serena Williams, spoke out against the comments made by the man who has been her team captain in Federation Cup competition.

"I think they were very disrespectful and uncalled for, and I'm glad that many people have stood up, including the WTA," she said. "It was very inappropriate, especially in his position and all the responsibilities that he has not just in sport, but being part of the Olympic committee. It was just really irresponsible on his side."

Part of the reason Tarpiscehv's comments stood out is because of how the WTA has led the way for women in many other sports. Indeed, thanks to Billie Jean King and her allies who pioneered the modern tour, women's professional tennis went from a fledgling, ad-hoc affair to a global business that offers players a pick of tournaments nearly every week of the year. At this year's U.S. Open, each singles champion took home $3 million with the potential for bonus money—a long way from when Wimbledon and the U.S. Open first began in the 19th century without a women's event at all.

But sexism—sometimes institutional—has still reared its head recently in the sport.

During Wimbledon this year, when Andy Murray hired his second female coach (the first was his mother, Judy), Australian player Marinko Matosevic said, "For me, I couldn't do it since I don't think that highly of the women's game."

At last year's Australian Open, French tennis star Jo-Wilfried Tsonga said the reason that the women's tour, with just a few exceptions, is so topsy-turvy is because, "You know, the girls, they are more unstable emotionally than us. I'm sure everybody will say it's true, even the girls… No? No, you don't think?" He added: "But, I mean, it's just about hormones and all this stuff. We don't have all these bad things, so we are physically in a good shape every time, and you are not. That's it."

In 2012, Gilles Simon, another French tennis player, told reporters at Wimbledon that he thinks "men's tennis is ahead of women's tennis," that they "provide a more attractive show," and that they "spend twice as long on court as women do at Grand Slams." And because of all that, he intoned, nothing justifies equal prize money.

When Ernests Gulbis, a Latvian player who has reached the top 10 in the world tennis rankings, was asked earlier this year whether or not he would like any of his sisters to join him on the tour, he seemed to think he was doing them a favor by saying: no.

"Hopefully they're not going to pursue a professional tennis career. Hopefully," said Gulbis. "Because for a woman, it's tough. I wouldn't like my sisters to become professional tennis players. It's tough choice of life. A woman needs to enjoy life a little bit more. Needs to think about family, needs to think about kids. What kids you can think about until age of 27 if you're playing professional tennis, you know. That's tough for a woman, I think."

But tennis journalist Lindsay Gibbs, who developed a guide to keep sexism out of tennis coverage ahead of Wimbledon this year, says that the media is just as much to blame as anybody else. Ironically, she was inspired by Gilles Simon, who said, "What got to me was finding myself in the big press conference room at Wimbledon facing media that were asking me to justify myself, while they themselves had been writing six pages on men's tennis for every two pages on women's for years."

"C'mon guys, take some responsibility!"

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...tennis/381645/

[Kobi]

[Gemme]

Originally Posted by Kobi