If that’s fantastic, what would execrable look like?


I’m curious about what standards Christina Hoff Sommers relies on to call a piece at Breitbart.com “fantastic,” so I’m reading it. That tweet, just in case you don’t believe me:

Christina H. Sommers ‏@CHSommers 3h
Fantastic article by @Nero on #GamerGate, feminist melodrama, lazy journalists. http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/11/27/An-open-letter-to-Bloomberg-s-Sheelah-Kolhatkar-on-the-delicate-matter-of-Anita-Sarkeesian …

I’m finding it not fantastic. I’m finding it very bad. I would find it bad even if I agreed with the politics of it.

Milo Yiannopoulos, the author (“Nero” on Twitter), is addressing Sheelah Kolhatkar, who wrote a profile of Anita Sarkeesian for Bloomberg Businessweek.

Since you have failed to perform a basic survey of the literature surrounding the GamerGate controversy, or, worse, purposefully elected to exclude it from your reporting, and since you have placed your critical faculties on ice in the manner the “listen and believe” feminists are always so insistent on—largely, it turns out, because their claims don’t stack up—allow me to sketch out the real reasons Sarkeesian is controversial in the video games industry, and, to fill in the blanks in your writing, to explain why her ideas are so universally loathed among gamers.

That’s not a promising start. It’s tendentious, it pretends “GamerGate” is a serious academic subject with a serious literature that journalists are supposed to survey, it’s rude, it’s horrendously badly written, and it ends up in just vulgar abuse.

Sarkeesian, however, believes in an old social-science myth, long since debunked, that culture creates behaviour. This idea is on its way out in academia, having been mortally crippled by the “cognitive revolution” epitomised by the works Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt and Daniel Kahneman, which emphasises the innate drivers of human behaviour.

Nope.

Sarkeesian, like many of her followers, believes gamers create an environment in which “women are excluded”. But the facts tell a different story. GamerGate, lazily stereotyped by the media as the highest expression of misogyny in gaming, successfully green lit a female developer’s game on the Steam marketplace via a Twitter campaign while opponents of GamerGate want to boycott her, just because she has “the wrong opinions.” GamerGate has also contributed over $20,000 to the Fine Young Capitalists, a feminist movement.

Feminists say they want to help women, but it’s always someone else—in the gaming world, usually a man—who gets their wallet out to do it.

In reality, it’s not women that some gamers have a problem with: it’s people like Sarkeesian and McIntosh. They have claimed hatred of them and people like them is tantamount to hatred of women. But it isn’t. People don’t hate Anita Sarkeesian because she’s a woman: they hate her because they see her as a disingenuous, divisive, sociopathic opportunist.

That’s enough; I don’t need to read the rest. It’s garbage; trashy, hack-y, MRA-ish garbage. It’s beneath the notice of a serious academic and philosopher – yet Sommers calls it “fantastic.”

Comments

  1. says

    I’ve read Pinker, and I’m currently reading Haidt’s The Righteous Mind, and, whether they’re right or wrong, I’m pretty sure they don’t say anything so simplistic as Yiannopoulos attributes to them here.

  2. says

    Culture doesn’t create behaviour? Really? Then why do people from different cultures behave differently? Unless of course Yiannopoulos has a rather more narrow definition of culture than I do.

  3. says

    FailGaters/anti-SJWs and creationists both share an extraordinary ability to analyse individual or collective writings on a given subject and draw opposite conclusions than those intended (or explicitly expressed) by the writer/s, as well as to simply hold up a mirror and present the reflection – the complete opposite scenario – as reality. They also share the propensity to attribute either rank ignorance or sinister motives to those who don’t subscribe to their official talking points – because it’s of course obviously entirely impossible for a feminist/scientist to actually have a salient point (much less be right) about something they’ve spent a great deal of time observing, studying and analysing (in a far more honest way than someone who starts from the position that it’s all lies and that it’s their job to Tell The People).

    It dismays me that someone like Dawkins signs on so willingly to bafflingly dogmatic contrarians like Sommers, who appears to go out of her way to find anti-fem screeds to endorse. Well, correction: it would dismay me if I had the slightest respect for him as a public intellectual anymore. He broke a champagne bottle over that ship (The SS Dear Muslima) and sent it on its merry way a long time ago.

  4. karmacat says

    I find it rather ironic that someone from breitbart.com calling another person a sociopathic opportunist. But then projecting one’s negative attributes onto another is an immature defense mechanism. CHS is not very good at logic if she thinks that piece of writing makes any sense. I would have failed college if I had written essays like that

  5. Anthony K says

    Culture doesn’t create behaviour? Really? Then why do people from different cultures behave differently? Unless of course Yiannopoulos has a rather more narrow definition of culture than I do.

    There’s a kind of cognitive bias we have in which we kind of assume everyone around the world sees the world pretty much the way we do and is motivated by the same values, but simply use weird words to describe it and wear funny clothes while saying so. Most people have no idea just how varied human cultures can be. But the general idea that I’m just a straight up normal human being and other peoples are essentially versions of me with strange food, is fairly common. It’s fairly true about basic aspects of life—we all solve the question of “How can we not starve?” by shoving food in our faceholes, though what we count as food can vary dramatically, but when we get to the more difficult questions, like “What is the appropriate way to live?” and “What are my obligations to my people and how do I fulfill them?” shit goes all over the map.

    It’s a kind of ethnocentrism, much like how moderate believers will say “We all believe in the same god, we just call it by different names” and omit the coda “…but my priests have the details down correctly.”

  6. Jeremy Shaffer says

    GamerGate… successfully green lit a female developer’s game on the Steam marketplace via a Twitter campaign while opponents of GamerGate want to boycott her, just because she has “the wrong opinions.”

    Yeah, just like all the people that would eventually be known as GamerGaters tried to get people not to support Sarkeesian’s kickstarter campaign to raise money for her project. Ultimately, from what I could gather, someone pointed out the game was developed by a supporter of GG and not to support it. I couldn’t find any demands it not be allowed or anything like that. Beyond that, he sort of forgot to include stories about what happens to women developers who have earned the ire of GG. I guess Yiannopoulos was too busy patting himself on the back for calling out lazy journalists who “failed to perform a basic survey of the literature surrounding the GamerGate controversy” that he couldn’t prevent himself from being one of them.

    I’m just playing with Yiannopoulos. We all know he’s not a journalist.

    Feminists say they want to help women, but it’s always someone else—in the gaming world, usually a man—who gets their wallet out to do it.

    Because money is the only way to help, right?

  7. Anthony K says

    Feminists say they want to help women, but it’s always someone else—in the gaming world, usually a man—who gets their wallet out to do it.

    Because money is the only way to help, right?

    Well, women are all golddiggers, right guys?

    ‘Cept CHS. She’s alright. Practically one o’ the boys. She worked for her money. Not like all those other women.

  8. Rob says

    Feminists say they want to help women, but it’s always someone else—in the gaming world, usually a man—who gets their wallet out to do it.

    Because money is the only way to help, right?

    Well, women are all golddiggers, right guys?
    ‘Cept CHS. She’s alright. Practically one o’ the boys. She worked for her money. Not like all those other women.

    Well, as SCOTUS reminds us, money is speech and, from what I’ve seen of the USA, it speaks mighty loudly.

  9. says

    Curious about Fine Young Capatalists, I googled.
    http://cathodedebris.tumblr.com/post/97997079313/gamergate-exposed-the-corruption-of

    There is a corruption at the centre of #GamerGate – an alliance of manipulation intended to reap financial benefits.
    This has NOTHING to do with Zoe Quinn or any of #GamerGate’s secondary targets. The corruption lies within the heart of the #GamerGate movement itself, and can be found with the barest research.
    TheFineYoungCapitalists – lauded by #GamerGate as a pro-feminist game jam sabotaged by Zoe Quinn – is a crowdfunding shell designed to get work for Autobótika, a Bogotá-based transmedia design company. Also, it’s run by a man.
    Essentially, TheFineYoungCapitalists ARE Autobótika.
    Thanks to an obliquely designed website, it’s hard to find out just who TheFineYoungCapitalists are. Their staff page is essentially Autobótika’s minus any male staff, falsely suggesting that TheFineYoungCapitalists is run by women. However, due to his Soundcloud confession, an interview and a surreal tumblr post adressed to his father, we can clearly prove TheFineYoungCapitalists is run by Matthew Rappard, Autobótika’s Canadian producer.
    image
    While Matthew has claimed on Twitter to have never been paid or to have owned stock in Autobótika, he is clearly listed as their Canadian producer. He is affiliated. He benefits.
    Matthew Rappard has been complicit in the harassment of Zoe Quinn, claiming that she DDoSed his website and that she is still formally with Dames Making Games. This is not true.
    What IS true is that Matthew would NEVER have hit his crowdfunding targets without the systematic and criminal harassment of Zoe Quinn – he asked for $65,000 and is sitting at $69,058 as I link this, with 4chan claiming donations of $23,500. Charity funding and royalties currently ONLY kick in once Autobotika’s salaries are paid – and Autobótika are running the show.
    Follow the money. The main beneficiary of #GamerGate is Autobótika. The representative of Autobótika in Canada and #GamerGate both is Matthew Rappard. They have benefited from a crusade to destroy Zoe Quinn. Incidentally, Autobótika do not list full game development on their services page, only aspects, which seems somewhat dubious – is all this money going on a first effort?
    I am NOT affiliated with Zoe Quinn. This research took about ten minutes to put together.
    Please, do not consider TheFineYoungCapitalists to be a victim of Zoe Quinn. The truth seems to be the reverse.

  10. says

    “Innate drivers of human behavior.” Oh, dear dog.

    Is it just me, or do others find this focus of CHS and others (like Andrew Sullivan!) on “innate differences” between men and women to be strange? They repeat things like this over and over, often trying to claim that feminists believe there to be no difference at all between the genders. I have not personally encountered a feminist who has ever expressed this belief. I think everyone acknowledges that men and women exhibit differences, both biologically as well as sociologically/culturally, and indeed many men enjoy “traditionally female” pursuits, and vice versa, as well they should have the right to do. There’s a spectrum of behaviors, and nobody I know is trying to reduce that spectrum to a single model, but rather we’re trying to focus on behaviors that are harmful in some fashion, and pondering ways to go about addressing that harm. The problem is not the behavioral spectrum, it’s the stupid, hidebound, and ignorant thinking that “boys will be boys” and that there is something real behind the notion of “women’s work.”

  11. says

    Al Dente @ 12,

    One thing these fools have in common with the rightwingers that the likes of Dawkins et al. have also chosen to align themselves with is that they’re chumps and suckers, and so attract scammers like the phoney FYC. It’s like the gold sellers and survivalist supply sellers who swarm around Fox News and other rightwing outlets.

  12. says

    Some of it is to do with thinking we’re all adamant eyes-closed fingers-in-ears evo psych denialists, aka yes people who think there are no differences.

    But hey – they have the deep sophistication of Sam Harris’s claim that maybe women don’t go to his talks because we don’t like being critical of bad ideas, so, you know…don’t expect them to make a whole lot of sense.

  13. says

    Sam Harris goes off like a siren if we object to HIS bad ideas

    I get the feeling from Harris that he has adopted the mantle of Wise Holder of a PhD and pushes back against any objections to his ideas. Which, to me, means that his research advisor failed him. I’m sure that he would object to anyone trying to correct him about his area of research expertise, which he presumably studied for 4-7 years. So why does he try to explain to women who have lived their entire lives experiencing life through their eyes why they must not like skeptical groups/movements? (Obvious answer is obvious.)

  14. says

    an old social-science myth, long since debunked, that culture creates behaviour

    Oh, really? So internet trolling is an evolved-in behavior? Are internet trolls’ parents also internet trolls? Have they isolated that gene, yet?

    It is, however, nice to see that “gamer culture” doesn’t exist – because it must really be a “gamer gene” since culture doesn’t create behavior.

  15. chigau (違う) says

    Randomfactor
    yup
    google definition
    fan·tas·tic
    fanˈtastik/
    adjective
    1.
    imaginative or fanciful; remote from reality.
    “novels are capable of mixing fantastic and realistic elements”
    synonyms: fanciful, extravagant, extraordinary, irrational, wild, absurd, far-fetched, nonsensical, incredible, unbelievable, unthinkable, implausible, improbable, unlikely, doubtful, dubious; strange, peculiar, odd, queer, weird, eccentric, whimsical, capricious, fantastical, Seussian; visionary, romantic; informalcrazy, cockeyed, off the wall

  16. John Morales says

    [meta]

    Well yes, my first reaction was to sarcastically employ the semantic shift.

    chigau, you left out the second Google sense, which is the one obviously intended:

    2.
    informal
    extraordinarily good or attractive.
    "she's got a fantastic body"

  17. Forbidden Snowflake says

    “We’re not sexists! We hate her because she’s an asshole, not because she’s a woman! But look at them! Boycotting that woman because they think she’s an asshole! They’re the real sexists!”

  18. =8)-DX says

    From the article:

    a basic survey of the literature surrounding the GamerGate controversy

    *snorflechortlecough*

    Cultural studies is rightly mocked as a junk degree

    Wait, so there’s some “literature” on the subject – as in results of methodical study of GamerGate (a cultural phenomenon) and that should be rightly mocked?

    Oh I get it, you only get to mock feminist writing. Anti-feminist writing is all serious literatury stuff.

  19. Athywren; Kitty Wrangler says

    Sarkeesian, however, believes in an old social-science myth, long since debunked, that culture creates behaviour. This idea is on its way out in academia, having been mortally crippled by the “cognitive revolution” epitomised by the works Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt and Daniel Kahneman, which emphasises the innate drivers of human behaviour.

    Right! Because, look, if there is an innate driver for some human behaviours, then it stands to reason that all human behaviours are innate. Obvs. Certainly, there’s no possibility that culture could have any influence over our behaviours, which is why humanity is such a homogenous set which marches in lockstep. Multiculturalism? It’s not bad because it mixes diverse groups, making racists and xenophobes afraid that the monsters will eat them; it’s just nonsense, because there are no diverse groups. Advertising doesn’t work, because our behaviour is innately driven, and cannot be influenced by outside elements. Peer pressure? Nope. No such thing. You were only pretending to have different preferences in order to appear cool (which also never happens, because culture doesn’t influence us).

    Seriously, much as I hate the idea that “the truth is always somewhere in the middle,” there actually are times where the truth is in the middle. Yes, there are going to be innate drivers that lead us to act in certain ways, but culture also influences us. It’s like looking at a river’s tributaries and asserting that they exert no influence over the main river – I’m pretty sure that a particularly silty tributary is going to raise the silt levels in the main river. Just sayin’.
    No, playing Doom won’t, by itself, originate the desire to shoot up a school. But uncritically consuming games that contain sexist messages when you associate with sexist peers in a sexist society actually could nudge you toward considering sexism normal, reasonable, and not a problem because, even if we really are meat robots, we’re not read-only. Our minds are plastic to some extent, and that means that we can be influenced; it means that education actually takes, it means that debate can change our minds, and it means that cultural artefacts can and will influence us.
    Even if we ignore his strawmanning of Sarkeesian’s views regarding culture’s influence over our behaviour, simply flipping to the opposite position – that we’re somehow preprogrammed by our genetics and cannot be influenced by the things by which we’re constantly surrounded – is fucking irrational nonsense.

  20. chigau (違う) says

    John Morales
    [more meta]
    It was deliberate.
    I don’t believe in teaching the controversy.
    My way or the highway.

  21. says

    Is it okay if I repost my Facebook comment?

    I’ll do that.

    —————————————————–

    No no no no no! That behavior is *cultivated, refined, and reinforced* by culture (which was always the claim), has never been debunked by Evolutionary Psychology (which is what he’s talking about but won’t say, for some reason). Instead, what’s been learned is that behavior has roots within an evolutionary framework, which culture then takes hold of. And just because behavior has roots within an evolutionary framework doesn’t mean it can’t be changed on a societal level.

    If anything, the cultural view of behavior has been enhanced and reinforced by these discoveries. Bigots who insist on replacing the the Bible with Evo-Psych as their excuse for bigotry really need to actually learn about it.

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