Update 2: People kept pointing out that “my bad” isn’t an apology, which is true, but honestly I didn’t and don’t see much point in apologizing here. It would be crass and revolting to do it on Twitter. I don’t know Sommers personally so I don’t have her email address. But then a way of finding one occurred to me, and I did find it, so I apologized to her directly.
Update: Oops. I didn’t realize Sommers’s husband just died, so these are notes and flowers sent to the bereaved.
My bad.
Although…honestly…it’s a little sickening that she uses #Gamergate to thank her new pals. More than a little. But still, if I’d known that’s what the flowers were for I wouldn’t have posted.
Christina Hoff Sommers is congratulating herself on playing a part in #GamerGate.
Christina H. Sommers @CHSommers · Oct 8
.@Nero & others from #GamerGate sent me wonderful notes, tweets,and exquisite flowers. All deeply appreciated.xoxoMom
@Nero is an associate editor at Breitbart. Here’s what Anita Sarkeesian thinks of #GamerGate:
Feminist Frequency @femfreq 18 hours ago
#GamerGate is best described as a sexist temper-tantrum targeting women, feminists, and allies working for change in the games industry.
RationalWiki has more:
A number of op-ed pieces critical of gaming culture were published in the wake of the new wave of harassment against Quinn. These pieces heralded the “end” of the “gamer” identity, in the sense that video games have become mainstream in recent years, and their audience expanded, trying to move on from and distance themselves from the gaming enthusiast (and primarily male) audience that gaming media traditionally catered to.[8][9][10][11] Many gamers aware of the controversy reacted negatively to these articles, accusing the gaming journalists of perpetuating harmful stereotypes of gamers as misogynistic white males or even going as far as seeing it as another example of “corruption” in video game journalism. Some of them expressed disappointment at the gaming journalists and other people surrounding the controversy for othering and distancing themselves from gaming enthusiasts instead of being pro-consumer and fostering progressive dialogue.[12] Either way these articles only ended up feeding the Gamergate movement and the controversy surrounding it.
Several commentators of conservative and libertarian persuasions chose to throw their support behind the Gamergate controversy. Christina Hoff Sommers of the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institutereleased a video on YouTube which dismissed the existence of sexism in games and gaming culture.[13]Milo Yiannopoulos wrote a piece for Breitbart decrying the “feminist bullies” he alleges are “tearing the video game industry apart.”[14] The piece is arguably an example of cynical opportunism, as he tweeted “If you’re a grown man with hands clamped to an Xbox controller instead of a pair of tits you need a good slap” just days before its publication,[15] and bemoaned the level of “sex, drugs and violence” in video games in a piece in The Kernel in 2013.[16]
Various largely interchangeable conspiracy theories are in circulation within the blogosphere about what Gamergate is really about and what the media don’t want you to know about it, most of them involving terms like “corruption and collusion” and clichés about “social justice warriors“, along with dog whistle nonsense about “cultural Marxism“, “social engineering” and “mind control”.[17]
I keep saying…Sommers used to be an academic, a philosopher. Now she’s down in the muck with Breitbart hacks. It’s pathetic.
Yeah, she’s in the muck with Breitbart, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Harris, Dawkins, and other terrible anti-humanity folks. We need to toss all of them out as soon as we can.
I agree, she may have just lost her husband and all, but supporting #GamerGate? She’s obviously the scum of the Earth, especially if a one-sided wiki says it!
For a group supposedly about fighting corruption in gaming journalism, this is the worst thing I can say about them: If I was an executive at EA, or 2K, or some other AAA game producer and my job was to bribe journalists and threaten game reviewers with loss of advertising for bad reviews I wouldn’t consider Gamergate a threat to my business model. Seriously. Who have they gone after? A indy developer, who wrote a free game almost nobody played because she slept with somebody who didn’t even review her game and a journalist who criticized them. They’re not going to stop me from schmoozing the people from Kokatu or Gamespot at Comicon. I can continue to bribe them with money, sex, and drugs* because I know I’m not even on their radar. Hey, we’ve got a new release coming out and the beta testers say it’s crap, but I’m still going to get a lot of preorders based on the great press we’re going to get. I’m sure one day somebody’s going to end this party, but it sure won’t be them. *To my knowledge nobody at a AAA studio has tried to bribe gaming journalists with money, sex, and drugs. It’s just part of my favorite quote by Cheech Marin from an otherwise terrible movie, The Great White Hype.
Depends.
Are you a woman?
Because that apparently seems to be the thing that really sticks in their craw.
Case in point: The Extra Credits crew has been banging the drum for the industry to grow the eff up and start diversifying already for going on 2 years and I don’t think they’ve gotten even a smidgen of the crap AS or even ZQ has received.
My god, her husband died so they sent her flowers and you chalk it up as Sommers “congratulating herself?” What a terrible thing to say. All of you should show a little more class.
You just insulted a grieving woman for receiving flowers. You are a bad person.
I wish I could say that it was surprising to hear this sentiment but it is pretty much the same regardless of who is doing the keyboard banging. You have said basically what all the anti-gamergate people say which is becoming so repetitive I can never understand why you people enjoy living in your echo chamber. At least Christina Sommers has something intelligent to say, whereas the vast majority of your opinion piece is entirely someone else’s writing.
Quoting Ms.Sarkeesian though is such a funny thing as she is nothing but a con artist who is riding the social justice gravy train to personal riches. Her education is in communications and politics. Her subsequent education was in sleazy internet marketing as a pupil and employee of Bart Baggett. In case you don’t know Mr.Baggett, he was the creator of a handwriting analysis system which was eventually investigated by the BBB after many complaints from unsatisfied customers. He also was an instructor in the art of the pickup. If you do not know what a pick up artist is then google it. Probably her best teacher though was Alex Mandossian. This is a man who made a living teaching people how to use teleseminars to make money which are basically just pyramid schemes. If you don’t believe me, watch for yourself.
http://youtu.be/yIpw3wHn9Sk?list=UU-yewGHQbNFpDrGM0diZOLA
That you write anything in addition to “sorry for being an uninformed scumbag” shows your complete lack of class. #GamerGate took donations and over 1500 messages of condolences and support for Sommers. That you would continue to paint this as trying to ride #GamerGate is unbelievable.
As a social liberal it is a bit scary that the voices of reason in this debate are coming from breitbart.com and the American Enterprise Institute, but if honesty were part of your agenda you’d realize that the only thing that matters is the message. Not trying to character assassinate someone because of what outlet their message is coming from. I’d say you and your commenters should be ashamed of yourselves if I thought you were capable of it.
Nice, it’s as if you haven’t looked into GamerGate at all.
Grotesque notpology, Ophelia.
I encourage you take a few days off from the net. Take a walk. Breathe some fresh air. Consider your post here and many of your other posts and if this is really the sort of person you want to be known as.
I think you’ve lost the plot.
At the point where you’re berating a woman who’s husband recently died for thanking the group that sent her flowers, maybe it’s time to step back a bit. How are you doing? Is everything going ok with you? Do you need someone to talk to? Do you feel angry a lot? My e-mail is there if you feel like you need to unload, and there are others who can and will support you. Hating this much can’t feel good and I’m sure you don’t want to be the person who can’t cease fire even when the other person is wounded from a tragedy in their life.
It would seem Elton John was right, Sorry does appear to be the hardest word to say – at least on the internet. Oops, my bad, is not even an attempt at an apology, it is a nasty, irreverent dig. To then try and deflect blame for your mistake, by defining a thank-you tweet from a woman whose husband has just died as sickening is lower than low.
I am reminded of a saying from my grandmother – ‘It you have nothing nice to say, say nothing’. If there is ever a situation where that adage applies, it is one involving a woman whose husband has just died.
You could probably describe the fallacy you’re engaging in here. I don’t need to point it out to you, do I?
Condolences to her, and her friends and family. Losing a spouse must be hard. Sorry to hear of her loss.
I wonder if RationalWiki would be less one sided if it didn’t criticise certain people’s pet irrationalities?
And, seriously, while it’s sad that her husband died, that doesn’t make her a sympathetic person. Losing someone they love doesn’t make a terrible person less vile, just less happy. Still, I’m sorry that she has a reason to be less happy.
Speaking as a person who is attracted to women… why would my hands be “clamped to a pair of tits”? I would suspect that using them in that manner would lead to my hands being denied future access to those particular tits. Also, what about those of us whose fingers rest lightly on our keyboards, stroking the keys instead of mashing the buttons?
Or it could just be that she’s using the #gamergate tag because it’s the simplest way to address all the people following it that provided condolences and money for the flowers.
Or doesn’t that fit your narrative?
Is it cognitive dissonance that drives all this hate?
Betas. Every one of us. Thanks to feminism we identify with James Dean instead of signing up for the army. I dunno. It’s not worth keeping track of all the ways reactionaries are upset with the kids on the lawn.
While you posted an update clarifying, the fact that you still handwaved it away and used an opening to attack is despicable. Is there nothing that would pause this sort of attack? Is there no proverbial Christmas Ceasefire? Her husband died and a community made a showing of support and you….denounce that? It makes you sick? Do you even consider people you don’t agree with to be human begins?
xoxoMom? Srsly? Sommers always seemed to me to be something like Cartman´s Mom for dudebros, but apparently this is also how she herself views her role.
@nero wrote an article about how he disliked gamers, because of something a few sick people where doing… Then shortly after gamergate happened, and he looked into it, and found out that he was wrong about what he had written.
He then, publicly, in one of his articles, apologised, for being wrong in his generalisation of gamers.
Ophelia Benson could learn alot from what she calls a “Breitbart hack”! But from reading her article, there are no doubt that she will be too proud to admidt that she might have been wrong.
Please, guys. Surely even people we dislike get to mourn their spouses in peace and thank the people who sent them flowers in whatever way suits them. I wish this post, being a mistake, could just come down.
martha,
I appreciate that, but if Ophelia takes it down, even after updating the post, she will be accused of trying to hide her error.
Meanwhile, This is still disgusting. Calling yourself “mom” to a bunch of men sending death and rape threats to women for the crime of being women is repulsive. No one here is harassing her or using her loss as a weapon to harm her with. That’s the kind of thing her “children” do and she encourages it. This cooing at them is not any less gross because of the circumstances and there is nothing wrong with saying so.
That’s why I didn’t take it down. It was up for awhile (an hour?) before I learned that the tweet was about condolence flowers and messages, so it was too late to take it down.
@kesara, 10 and Jackie, 12: Not wishing to defend her, but a quick question: are you absolutely 100% certain that the “xoxoMom” is actually addressed to the “men sending death and rape threats”? Because if not, there’s a non-zero chance you’re engaging in exactly the kind of knee-jerk error the original post was guilty of, which necessitated the later addition sincere apology quoted in full below.
Condolences to Hoff Sommers and their friends and family.
@Shadowrunner, 7
I wish I could say that it was surprising to hear this sentiment but it is pretty much the same regardless of who is doing the keyboard banging. You have said basically what all the anti-Sarkeesian people say which is becoming so repetitive I can never understand why you people enjoy living in your echo chamber.
Because, of course, there’s only one reason why there might be a repetitive sentiment coming from people you disagree with, and that’s that they live in an echo chamber.
(For the record, if you want to link a video, you need to link that video directly. Linking it from a playlist will link the playlist.)
@martha #21:
I find that statement absurd. “In whatever way suits them”? This is obviously an extreme, ridiculous possibility, but you made a universal assertion: if the mourning/thanking involves a murder spree, should we just be cool with that and let it pass without comment? Obviously not, so clearly some ways of mourning or thanking others for well-wishes are not acceptable and open to criticism. Once we’ve recognized that some extreme forms should be open to criticism, the question becomes where to draw the line (I like to use impact and particularly harm caused to inform where to draw that line). You may not think it appropriate in this particular case, and if that’s true, you’d probably be best served by criticizing what we’re doing in this particular case, based on the particular details of the case, becasue the universal ideal to which you are appealing is pretty clearly not actually universal.
An apologia for the criticism Ophelia and several commenters have leveled: it is CHS herself who decided to use a personal tragedy as a political tool, attaching her note of thanks to a misogynist internet mob as opposed to options like individually thanking the people without directly invoking a specific politicized stance. She’s using her husband’s death to try to cast assholes in a positive light: look how nice they were to send her words of commiseration and flowers! That is disgusting behavior, and it deserves to be roundly rebuked. Personal tragedy doesn’t made bad behavior any less bad, and it doesn’t mitigate harm that one’s actions cause. As other commenters have shown, it’s possible to both be sympathetic to someone AND criticize zir bad behavior.
son @ 24 – it wasn’t “knee-jerk.” I lacked a specific piece of information. The fact remains that Sommers is cheering on a campaign of harassment against feminist women.
@myself #27:
In fact, she could have simply thanked everyone who sent her flowers and condolences collectively without invoking #GamerGate by saying something like “Thanks to everyone who sent me flowers and condolences, they were much appreciated.”
Ophelia, you should’ve done a better apology. Shorter, simpler, leave it at I’m sorry I screwed up there.
But it is true that those friends of Summers are scumballs.
Nope. Sommers chose to include the taunting #GamerGate in her tweet. That limits what kind of apology I can do. I wouldn’t have posted this if I’d known that her tweet was about getting flowers and messages of condolence, but I also wouldn’t have posted it if she hadn’t made it about #GamerGate.
#8
Hey, maybe the KKK will send her some love, too. You know, to show what good guys they are, and all.
The mere use of #GamerGate in a tweet is “taunting” now?
So because she used the hashtag to thank the people who sent her the messages/flowers, this is somehow taunting anti-GamerGaters?
No, that shouldn’t “limit what kind of apology” you can do. Your apology is weak as fuck.You accused her of “congratulating herself” when she was merely expressing gratitude for some genuinely kind things done for her by her supporters during a time of grieving for her. For you to seize upon this, even after realizing you were wrong, and say “it’s a [more than a] little sickening that she uses #Gamergate to thank her new pals.” and offer no real apology is just petty.
I disagree with Sommers, and agree with Anita about #GamerGate/Tropes vs. Women, but this situation calls for a true apology.
It’s not an apology. It’s not a weak as fuck apology, because it’s not an apology. It’s an acknowledgement of error, without being an apology.
Look. Sommers is combative as fuck, just as I am. She’s gone on being combative even now, so her Twitter feed looks as combative as ever. I posted about what looked like just one more snipe. I wouldn’t have if I’d known what it was about, but I didn’t do anything wrong in not knowing what it was about.
And yes, the use of #GamerGate is a taunt. It’s not just some neutral name or label. It’s political and combative. Sommers is choosing to continue being political and combative; that too is not something I did wrong.
I’m fucking amazed that she thanked gamergate for their condolences too. If they think death is a bad thing, why are they always threatening people with it?
@Ophelia #28: “The fact remains that Sommers is cheering on a campaign of harassment against feminist women.”
You appear to be participating in a campaign of harrassment against Sommers. I’m not sure I see one act as inherently worse than the other. I’m with Martha on this point. I can understand why you left it up, but I think Sommers deserves an apology, not just an acknowledgement of error.
Jackie #22:
“Calling yourself “mom” to a bunch of men sending death and rape threats to women for the crime of being women is repulsive. No one here is harassing her or using her loss as a weapon to harm her with. That’s the kind of thing her “children” do and she encourages it. This cooing at them is not any less gross because of the circumstances and there is nothing wrong with saying so.”
I agree there is a serious problem with threats and harrassment of women on the internet. I’m not sure what the solution is, but not everyone on the ‘other side’ of gamergate is participating in that behavior. Many of them decry the practice and don’t do that.
Meanwhile Sommers gets her share of harrassment too and I would include the post of Ophelia’s as part of that. Consider this post of Amanda Marcotte’s http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/harassment-doesnt-need-curse-words-to-be-harassment/
Ophelia is apparently following Ms. Sommer’s twitter account and making derogatory comments about what she says. Why don’t you consider this behavior harassment?
Beth: Please confirm that you understand there is a difference between harassment and “making derogatory comments.” The latter is what is known as “robust disagreement,” or even “scorn.” I don’t think you actually mean to say that they are the same. Do you?
Beth – that’s blankly uncomprehending even for you. No, I’m not participating in a campaign of harrassment against Sommers.
Yes, I’m pretty uncomprehending of the difference between what you did with your original post about Ms. Sommers’ tweet and what is termed harassment by people like Amanda Marcotte in the post I linked to earlier. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to articulate your perception of the difference?
I haven’t read Marcotte’s article.
You’re comparing the kind of thing that’s been done to me for the past more than three years with what I’ve posted about Sommers over the past few weeks. That’s disgusting.
Beth, never change.
Sorry, Ophelia, I also think you did it wrong. She may be combative, yes, but so what? Maybe it’s just her way of dealing with the tragedy – we can’t know. Of all the moments, this is exactly the one not to fight back.
Yes, I am. My understanding is that people who have been abused often become abusers.
Can you articulate the difference between your OP and what has been done to you? Do you have any idea of what hate your readers may send her way?
Yes, I can, and I have. Does it cross your tiny fucking mind that I don’t want to keep articulating it over and over again? That it’s not actually all that much fun?
But ok, if you’re going to insist on playing dumb, I’ll list some differences for you.
1. Sommers is orders of magnitude more visible, prominent, public, official, influential than I am. She’s a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. I’m not.
2. I haven’t posted any demeaning photoshops of her.
3. I don’t call her “Chrissy” or any other diminutive.
4. I don’t muse about kicking her in the cunt.
5. I don’t call her a cunt or a bitch.
6. I don’t tell lies about her.
7. I don’t tell her to get help for her paranoia.
8. I don’t tweet and post about her multiple times every day, and I don’t hang out with a group of people who, together, tweet and post about her all day every day.
9. I don’t seek out blog posts that mention her in order to post lies about her there.
10. I don’t make videos about her.
11. I don’t talk about her on podcasts.
12. I don’t draw cartoons of her and post them on Twitter and Facebook.
There, I hope that helps you see the difference.
I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.
Well what does that mean? I answered your question, and you see the differences? Or you’re backing slowly away from a crazy person?
social justice gravy train to personal riches
You have a really funny idea of “riches” grasshopper. I mean, look at the FORBES 400: it’s chock full of bloggers, right?
@ 7 Shadowrunner
Y’know it’s almost a relief, the way “ad hominem” is so misused these days, to see someone give a clear example of a real ad hominem.
So Sarkeesian is wrong because she allegedly once took lessons from a pick up artist. Gotcha.
Condolences to this woman.
As I understand it, she is an reactionary activist, and she tweeted thanks using a hash tag that is favoured by reactionary scuzzbags. Ophelia didn’t know that she’d lost her husband, so I can’t see what it is that people want from Ophelia.
It’s just another excuse to attach Ophelia.
In no time, it’ll have morphed into the truthy statement that Ophelia danced on this woman’s husbands grave and made all attendees at his memorial service read the Female Eunuch.
In the unlikely event @Shadowrunner comes back, can you explain how she is “riding the gravy train” to riches when all her donations go into a 501(c)3? So she is required by law to publish how much she gets, what it is spent on etc etc etc … Seems to me that would be a fairer assessment of people like Thunderf00t who jumped on this bandwagon to “criticise” Sarkeesian and whenever he posts a video about her he links to his Patreon. The Patreon where he claims his videos are about science and skepticism. But when he created a rare science video recently… No link to the Patreon page. Hmmmm. Unlike Sarkeesian, who has to show where all her donations go, he doesn’t have to explain where a single penny of the money he gets for riling up misogynists against women goes.
Oh yes, and I’m sorry to hear Christina Hoff-Sommers husband died. Regardless of what I think of her “feminism” I wouldn’t wish that on her.
I didn’t and don’t see much point in apologizing here
I’m surprised that you haven’t learned the first rule of holes by now. Really.
Of course some people are going to criticize you intensely for your mistake, while selectively ignoring other people when they are thoughtless. But that doesn’t make “my bad” any less flippant.
Ophelia,
I posted the previous question before I went to dinner and while out, I realized it was was not the one I meant to pose and was inappropriate. I apologized. That’s all. I don’t think you’re a crazy person.
Beth – no, it’s not all. “Inappropriate” doesn’t say anything.
You claimed, in 3 separate comments, that I’m harassing Sommers just as I’m harassed by other people. I gave you a list of 12 differences (not an exhaustive list). Having made that ridiculous and brutal claim 3 times, in 3 separate comments, you should respond to my response. Just saying “never mind” doesn’t do it.
Marcus. I apologized directly to Christina Sommers. She responded warmly. End of story.
I agree that I owed her a better apology; it took me awhile to figure out how to deliver it. Then I did figure it out. It’s done. I don’t owe you an apology. I hope that’s clear enough.
Brian @ 50 – oh, that’s already happening, more or less. The slimers at Michael Nugent’s Slimepit Ireland are telling huge whoppers about my crimes against Sommers.
Way to go Ophelia, great job trying to score ideological points through a full-frontal assault against a grieving woman. This is a new low for you, but on the bright side, you’ve now got the requisite experience to join a new club: http://i.imgur.com/A7xWFJh.jpg
^
See, there’s one now – it pretends I knew she was grieving when I wrote the post. That’s a whopper.
Not to mention the adorable nym.
CuntajusRationality @58
Slymers gotta slime.
So ‘my bad, so sorry’ doesn’t really cut it? I can agree with that.
Since you asked, I’ll give you a longer explanation.
I do feel your original OP was harassment. Chastising a recently widowed woman for publically thanking those who expressed kindness and condolences to her because you don’t like them constitutes harassment IMO. I’m glad you were moved to apologize to her.
I don’t think what you have done is comparable with everything that you have received, but I do think it is comparable with what some of your harassers have done.
I had wanted to talk about it in the context of Marcotte’s essay http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/harassment-doesnt-need-curse-words-to-be-harassment/
You hadn’t read that and I responded without thinking.
I had been thinking of things like the last two in her list:
Bastiat Fan tells her “What happened in your life to fill you with such hatred?
Christian Matthews says “show us what narcissism is. It’s all about her”
And I’d swear you’ve mentioned on more than one occasion that it isn’t necessarily the bad words that hurt. But sometimes I don’t properly remember the right people to attribute sentiments to.
Amanda ends with this quote
“
It seems to me the purpose of your OP was to basically say look at what a bad person Ms. Sommers is – look at who she associates with while pointing at a very large group of people.
In context, I do tend to peg it as harassment, but a very mild sort. Mild enough that I feel it needs to be tolerated. I was interested in discussing where you draw the line at what is harassment and what should be tolerated.
But I phrased things badly and didn’t ask what I meant to ask. I’m sorry about that.
Cute. But very dishonest. You are talking directly to me, here. I was not talking directly to Sommers in this post. I couldn’t possibly be sure she would see an apology I posted here, and I didn’t and don’t think I owed anyone else an apology, so it seemed entirely futile (and thus rather self-regarding) to post an apology here. You, on the other hand, were addressing me directly.
That would certainly be true if I had done it on purpose. I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t know she was recently widowed.
So you feel intention should be taken into consideration regarding whether or not something is harassment?
Beth, you feel it shouldn’t?
(Sheesh, that rain really harasses me!)
Oh, I get it – intent isn’t magic, therefore intent never, ever matters. What a gotcha!
I wonder what Beth’s intention was in pretending I’ve “harassed” Sommers the same way the slimers have harassed me. I wonder what her intention was in ignoring all the ways I listed that it’s not the same thing. I wonder what her intention is in commenting here at all. It’s like being trolled by a robot.
@ 64 Beth
???
You just quoted Amanda Marcotte saying so (@61). See?:
My condolences to Christina Hoff Sommers and her family. Death is a terrible thing, and it’s always hard to deal with. I disagree with her on most (if not all) things and I do not like her, but she does not deserve to be widowed. I hope she is able to heal and move on in the good memory of her husband. I hope she is able to find comfort in her memories of him, and how much she loved him. It’s a terrible thing. If I had known about this earlier, I probably would have participated in raising money for flowers for her as well, because no one should go through this grief alone, even people I disagree with.
I have to agree with Ophelia and others about Sommers’ use of the GamerGate tag, here. However, I still hope Sommers is able to find peace from this.
Silentbob #68
Yes, I did. I quoted it to illustrate what I would like to have a discussion on. I don’t actually agree with Ms. Marcotte regarding all of her harassment being done with that intention, but I’m certain that is how it feels to her. I’m not certain how much intention should figure into deciding whether or not something constitutes harassment.
Ophelia #67
I’m not pretending. I think that what you’ve done is similar to what some of your harassers have done to you. Just as some individuals have contributed little to the total mass of harassment you have received, so your contribution is mild and small relative to what Sommers has received.
Is it harassment when someone sends you a single disparaging tweet or email? Does the intention of the sender matter to you?
Is it harassment when someone makes a disparaging post about you but doesn’t send you a link, just puts it up for the amusement of others so they can also comment on what an awful evil person you are?
What was your intention in making the OP, before you found out about Sommers’ husband’s death?
I wanted to talk about borderline cases, not the clear cut ones. As I said before, I asked the wrong question.
I am interested in exploring what constitutes harassment and what doesn’t. What is reasonable to expect people to tolerate and what is not. Certainly death threats and rape threats are unacceptable. OTOH, I think pointing out who people associate with is fair game even if I also think is a logical fallacy to judge someone by the company they keep. But so far, you have not seemed interested in discussing such details.
In other words you’re making a Sorites type of point. How many hairs does it take to divide the bald from the not bald, etc. There’s a continuum. Some things are worse than other things. Some minor things become less minor when there are thousands of them. Etc etc etc. All very fascinating in the abstract, but as I have repeatedly pointed out to you, this isn’t an abstract question to me. I think you’re deliberately and with malice aforethought trying to needle me, and I’ve allowed you to do it for too long.
@Opelia, 56:
Ach, last line should have been out of the blockquote, sorry.