Over at Polygon, I argue that Bioware have created some goddamn terrifying universes where deities wish for our demise. That’s more terrifying than anything “atheism” could come up with.
The Indelible Stamp
Ethics, outrage and evidence
Over at Polygon, I argue that Bioware have created some goddamn terrifying universes where deities wish for our demise. That’s more terrifying than anything “atheism” could come up with.
The Rolling Stone college rape campus piece is already a complicated mess. The alleged rape victim, however, has to contend with another aspect of media and platform.
As Isha Aran notes:
Charles C. Johnson, a former Daily Caller writer and founder of GotNews (a conservative site rife with racist and Islamophobic content parading as “Independent, Unbiased & Unafraid”) has claimed that multiple sources have confirmed to him the identity of “Jackie,” the woman whose alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia was recounted in the Rolling Stone piece “A Rape on Campus.”
What, then, is the ethical response? (Emphasis mine.)
in an absolutely disgusting move, Johnson has published her name, or what he thinks her name is.
Lovely.
The details of the original case are already being heavily scrutinised, there is a lot of clarity still required; given the lack of clarity, how can Johnson release details? What purpose does releasing the name of a woman serve? Further, why not, as a media person, focus on the actual media space – Rolling Stone – that is central to this confusion? Even then, you’d have to engage in very specific, complicated arguments with some sensitivity to rape survivors and the climate itself.
This seems to be nothing but another reason to shame women, fueled by the the MRA fantasy of women crying rape at every opportunity. This is unethical journalism and is vile. Such a focus must be considered in an environment that regularly disbelieves rape survivors; that punishes them for silence and for speaking out. Indeed, such a move isn’t merely about the woman he wishes to reveal, but many others who will see – and know – that this is the price for speaking out.
Of course we should care about allegations that turn out to be false – but even to this, Johnson is doing damage. Even if Johnson was correct, there is nothing ethical in his response. You don’t get moral immunity, even if you’re fighting for a moral cause. What makes a cause moral isn’t merely its stated ideals, but how we promote, communicate and defend it.
And releasing the name of a woman online to people who already dislike women can’t possibly have good consequences. This is the Internet, after all.
This is a failing of using one’s platform and media information; there are complicated moral issues involved in targeting people with your platform. And I see no reason anyone should support Johnson’s disgusting move.
UPDATE 09/12/2014:
The Washington Post‘s Terrence McCoy asked Johnson what his endgame is, specifically when it comes to outing “Jackie”.
So what’s the end game? What does he hope to achieve from publicly shaming a young woman he claims to be Jackie? Who would that benefit? Johnson has an immediate answer.
He wants revenge for what he perceives to be a rupture in the public trust, inflicted by writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s article. “I want [Rolling Stone Managing Editor] Will Dana to resign. I want the people who control Rolling Stone to go over all of Sabrina’s stories. And I want Jackie to get psychological help. I want all the fraternities, suspended under these dubious stories, to be reinstated.” Then, because why not: “I want the [University of Virginia] president to resign. I would like some truth.”
And he intends to get it.
Yes, I’m sure the only and most moral way to achieve these lofty goals is to reveal the identity of a young woman at the centre of an alleged rape.
First if you really want the best experience of the upcoming Terminator film, don’t watch any trailer, read any article. I wish I was in your shoes.
However, if you can’t help yourself, at least watch the trailer without seeing icons, header images or descriptions. I’m not going to embed it but link to it so you can just watch it without, um, spoilers (yes, spoilers in a trailer… I know).
Watched it? Good.
So let’s go through it.
First, bros everywhere. White men fighting back against overwhelming force – the plot of basically every Hollywood blockbuster. You’ve already got the hint that this is a “reboot”. Yay. Another one? So the first part of the trailer shows the same beats as the original film: scarred John Connor, time machine, soldier volunteers to save Mommy Connor.
Then we see the main evil time-travelling Terminator is a T-1000…. who is played by Korean actor, Lee Byung-hun.
OK, diversity. That’s… unexpected and fucking cool. And he’s amazing.
Then a truck comes jack-knifing through a wall, apparently in time to save our “main hero” soldier bro. The door flings open and at the wheel is a woman, who promptly shoots the T-1000. With the voice of some sort of queen – or, ahem, Mother of dragons – she splains to the dude that if he wishes to continue to not die, he ought to accompany her. Some of you might know the reference.
She then commands him as a soldier.
So, after the boring reboot introduction, we have a Terminator who is not white; we have the white male hero being saved by a woman, who is more badass than anything he’s so far demonstrated.
Then you find out the Governor of California raised Sarah Connor, because… time travel.
Yeah, there’s a lot here. And it’s amazing. I usually make a point of not watching trailers for film, due to spoiler territory and enjoying films more with ignorance. But I couldn’t help seeing this as a sign of progress; see, it’s not just being “PC” and ticking of boxes of – gasp – including people who aren’t white dudes. It’s that all this, almost by definition, seems to mean breaking the mould; it means we can have an interesting lead character, who, by the way, is a woman.
Nothing would be shocking if this was yet another major film which featured almost no one who wasn’t the lazily accepted “core demographic” of action films/video games/comics – instead they recognised that Sarah Connor is one of Hollywood’s best female roles, they recognised there’s no reason to cast yet another white male actor to play the role of a fucking liquid robot (however cool he is).
This little trailer should give us hope, like a small robot hand reaching out as it’s swalloed by boring paint-by-numbers summer blockbuster affairs.
PS: Yes, “Genisys” is a silly name.
I argued why over at Polygon.
This is my favourite gaming website, so it means a great deal to me. However, I doubt anyone will understand it unless they’ve played a recent Call of Duty.
I had no idea, OK. I didn’t know Scott Adams, a person I admired for his Dilbert comic, was… well, like this. I wrote an article for The Daily Beast on street harassment and male entitlement in general; let’s just say Mr Adams and I disagree somewhat.
He wrote this blogpost last month, but yeah. OK. So… let’s have a look.
—–
This blog is written for a rational audience
Well, thanks. I guess?
in 2014, sexism is not so much the “can’t vote” type of problem it once was. It’s more of the “Someone is making me uncomfortable” or “I think my gender played a role in a decision” or “I can’t tell if this is a business meeting or a date” sort of thing.
I’d like to point to a small American paper called the New York Times, though I realise I’m quoting from all the way back to three days ago. This is what’s happening in his own country. Right now.
Anti-abortion measures pose a risk to all pregnant women, including those who want to be pregnant.
Such laws are increasingly being used as the basis for arresting women who have no intention of ending a pregnancy and for preventing women from making their own decisions about how they will give birth.
How does this play out? Based on the belief that he had an obligation to give a fetus a chance for life, a judge in Washington, D.C., ordered a critically ill 27-year-old woman who was 26 weeks pregnant to undergo a cesarean section, which he understood might kill her. Neither the woman nor her baby survived.
In Iowa, a pregnant woman who fell down a flight of stairs was reported to the police after seeking help at a hospital. She was arrested for “attempted fetal homicide.”
In Utah, a woman gave birth to twins; one was stillborn. Health care providers believed that the stillbirth was the result of the woman’s decision to delay having a cesarean. She was arrested on charges of fetal homicide.
In Louisiana, a woman who went to the hospital for unexplained vaginal bleeding was locked up for over a year on charges of second-degree murder before medical records revealed she had suffered a miscarriage at 11 to 15 weeks of pregnancy.
You can nail this next to the other numerous incidents of women – still in America, today – being arrested for not stopping abuse while themselves being abused. Oh, but yeah, it’s probably just feminists overreacting – not shitty laws worth opposing, like voting law restrictions which Adams deems proper feminist issue. Nope: voting is far more important than women being locked up and arrested for trying to protect their own bodies and selves and lives and making autonomous decisions. (Note: voting of course matters, but why is this more worthy of feminist sledgehammers than fucking bodily autonomy that still is an issue today?)
Again, I’ve not even mentioned what happens to Muslim women in conservative Muslim countries or elsewhere. Even America sucks when it comes to women, dude.
Then we get this bit of patronizing nonsense (aside from the whole thing).
I pause here to make a clarification for any folks who might have wandered over here from Jezebel.com, HuffingtonPost.com, or Slate.com. I will try to type slowly so you understand this next part: Scott…is…saying…there…is… still …plenty… of …spousal abuse…job discrimination …sex crimes… and …other …horrors…perpetrated against…women. But in 2014 that stuff looks more like crime than sexism. All women and 98% of men are on the same side when it comes to the criminal stuff.
(I like how he thinks ellipses indicates typing slowly, whereas I could’ve taken an hour to write this sentence.) [Read more…]
I seriously don’t understand this one narrative thread in Gamergate about how it’s giving “voice to the voiceless”.
This is the Internet. Make a blog. Pitch articles. By definition, you have a voice.
Comment on The Verge article. Click pic for original URL
But let’s look at this idea of clutching the megaphone of Gamergate.
There’s no denying they are being heard: almost every major media outlet has covered it, from the New York Times to the Boston Globe to the Guardian. None of it favourably, all of it looking at the toxicity and abuse that is its outer, wider, flailing parts. [Read more…]
So this happened in my city of Cape Town, in South Africa.
Another day, another brutish man decides to show the world how brave and strong he is by beating up a harmless woman. Well done, big strong man.
A shocked and traumatised Cynthia Joni, 44, of Khayelitsha, said she was on her way to work in Kenilworth on October 2 when an unknown man leapt from his car and slapped her repeatedly, then threw her to the ground, without any explanation.
He was traced after people in the neighbourhood responded to her screams, and took down his registration number.
What could spurn such rage and hatred? Trying to tease out why men beat up women is complicated and horrible. But we can operate on what this individual, Tim Osrin, said.
Later, Osrin… who is a committed member of the neighbourhood’s ‘security committee’ and lives close to where the incident took place in upper Kenilworth, claimed he had assaulted Joni because he had mistaken her for a prostitute.
Apparently, sex workers can be smacked around because, hey, they’re sex workers. And sex workers magically create crime – because no big business, cops, etc. ever commit crimes, either, right? I wonder if Osrin will smack Wal-Mart and other retailers around who mistreat and underpay their staff? Maybe he smacked cops who are corrupt and allow for bad things to happen? [Read more…]
A harmless woman became the target of bullies online. It must be a day ending in “y”. Except of course she was involved in games and the harassers were proud supporters of Gamergate.
After bullying her, they then claimed to be victims themselves – of trying to curb bullying. See, after harassing someone, they then try say “Hey, this person feels harassed!”. I wonder why?
Then the gaters wonder why we don’t trust them when they claim to be “helping”. No doubt some are. But again: it depends on who, at that second, is using the hashtag.
You want some two-faced morality? Here you.
Chloe Sagal is in a bad space. Gamergate is doing well in its two-faced response. pic.twitter.com/NULndv85Ab
— Tauriq Moosa (@tauriqmoosa) October 19, 2014
Oh, bullying a person who is considering suicide? Please tell me more about ethics…
But if you wanted some more awfulness from Gamergate, look no further than another of its spokespeople, Mike Cernovich. (HT @stillgray)
(If unable to view Storify, find original link here)
So this dude, Brian Robinson, is described by the NY Post as a “railway Romeo” because Robinson claims “he has gone on 500 dates with women he has met on the subway”.
I don’t even know 500 people, but then I exist on Twitter and consider journeys beyond my study more daunting than Frodo’s journey to Mount Doom. I’ve always had an issue in general with men’s approach to “picking up” women (ugh, that phrase); it seems to ratchet up the creep levels when there’s formulas involved as with all pick up artists (PUA) formulas. [Read more…]