Scott Kaufman watched Christina Hoff Sommers’s latest video, which is nice, because it means I don’t need to.
Sommers says the GamerGate people are “a voice for moderation in today’s fevered debates over sex and gender.”
According to Sommers, GamerGate is merely a group of gamers who either “believe there is too much corruption and cronyism in gaming journalism” or “are weary of cultural critics who evaluate video games through the prism of social justice.”
Why is that a bad way to evaluate video games or any other cultural artifact? Why are we not supposed to think and talk about the ways cultural artifacts shape our thinking about anything and everything, including about kinds of people who are seen as inferior or objectionable in some way? Why would that be a bad thing to do? What is this insistence on saying “No no no no do not probe or interrogate The Artifacts, just lie back and let them wash over you, that is the only acceptable way to receive them”?
“Now, many men — not all of them, but many — do like images of sexy women,” she says. “But why shame them for this? Traditionally, women, gays, trans people have been policed and humiliated for their sexuality. That is wrong. Today, it’s open season on the sexual preferences of straight males. That’s also wrong.”
That’s such a dishonest piece of crap. She knows why. She knows that comparison is ridiculous, and she knows why it is. (Colbert made fun of the whole trope when he talked to Sarkeesian.)
She does address the death threats targeting those who oppose GamerGate, but claims that there’s no proof that GamerGaters are responsible for them. “Now, I deplore the fact that female critics and game developers have been threatened,” she says.
Moreover, she claims that she’s “learned that several people inside of GamerGate, including two women, have received death threats too. Many in the media are treating GamerGate as a ‘damsel in distress’ story. Well, damsels are in distress, but they’re on both side of the controversy.”
That’s another trope, that “damsel in distress” sneer.
D.J. Grothe@DJGrothe
@thunderf00t Well, here’s hoping. But that damsel in distress narrative is so compelling and seductive to most people.
Hoping what?
thunderf00t @thunderf00t Oct 29
my money says @femfreq on @StephenAtHome will be the last nail in her coffin,just like it was for Ketchup with occupy http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/d4hmi3/colbert-super-pac—stephen-colbert-occupies-occupy-wall-street-pt–1 …
The verbal destruction of Anita Sarkeesian, for the crime of being a culture critic who evaluates video games through the prism of social justice.
It’s about as powerful as “bitches are stealing our fun with their wanting to not be harassed!”
But I don’t expect Grothe or Thunderf00t to attack that one. They’re not brave enough.
Since when was being ‘weary of of cultural critics who evaluate video games through the prism of social justice” any kind of justification for harassment or grounds for dismissing that critique? She should be perfectly capable of mounting an opposing critique if she thinks the ones being levelled by ‘SJWs’ is so inadequate, but instead she does this ‘boys will be boys’ stuff? Anti-intellectual crowd-pleasing nonsense.
“Traditionally, women, gays, trans people have been policed and humiliated for their sexuality… Today, it’s open season on the sexual preferences of straight males. ”
‘Traditionally’, yes, in that fabled period we all remember from about 3 seconds ago. Got that. It’s her ‘Today’ I’m having trouble locating.
Yes, it’s those darn women and their audacity to suggest maybe games should depict women more respectably that are the fevered ones in the debate, and it’s the men who send death threats and rape threats under the guise of “protecting journalistic integrity” that are the voice of moderation. Apparently Bizarro is real, and he makes a living ghost-writing. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for a statement that completely backwards.
They’re the moderates? Holy fuck. Who’s on the other side of them then?
And focussing on a few women, a majority of whom are not gaming journalists helps tackle corruption and cronyism, how?
How easily wearied are these kids? Exactly how long do they think this terrible evaluation has been going on publicly? My own estimation puts it at about a year and a half. Maybe I’m missing important details that put it back to 1805, and if so I apologise, but I don’t think that less than two years of cultural criticism that you are free to ignore if you don’t seek it out is cause for weariness.
Hi. I like images of sexy women. Asking me to maybe refrain from having images of sexy women everywhere I go, getting them all over everybody else’s spaces is not shaming me. I have a right to put some sexy images up in my home if I want to, but I certainly don’t have a right to put them up in your home. I don’t understand why people are struggling with this?
So there’s a thing here… I have to check my sources, but it’s rather… thingy.
According to my token facebook thunderf00t fanboy, the Utah threat was the last nail in her coffin.
Which one is last again? I thought it was the one after which no others were needed, but I must be wrong about that, surely?