Several years ago, when that awful Expelled movie came out, I did a radio interview with Mark Mathis, one of the producers. It was hilarious. I was talking about their dishonesty in getting interviews and how the movie was misleading propaganda, and by the end, Mathis was reduced to shouting in answer to every question, “HE’S AN ATHEIST!” That’s all had to do, he thought, to rebut me: expose the openly known fact that I also proudly mentioned on the header of my website, and he’d crush me (and with some members of the audience, it was probably true.)
For some reason, I remembered that when I was reading Milo Yiannopoulos’s attempted rebuttal of Brianna Wu.
Wu is one of the hated targets of gamergate: she’s been the subject of well-documented, open and virulently hateful threats. This is not something anyone can deny, and any gamergater who wants to argue that they’re all about “ethics in gaming journalism” ought to be deeply concerned that this taints their movement, and must be repudiated.
Not Yiannopoulos!
He has instead written a screed in which he attempts to destroy her credibility (which is weird, since her personal credibility doesn’t matter — the threats and frantically obsessive maliciousness by gamergaters is what’s out there), and he does so in a strangely bigoted way: by accusing her of being a trans woman. Repeatedly. At length. As if this somehow transforms the death threats into righteous actions.
Maybe it works for his audience, though. Read the comments (never read the comments!) and you find hundreds of enthusiastic people cheering Milo on and debating the worth of trans people as human beings.
But this irrelevant hurling of red meat to bigots seems to be Yiannopoulos’s standard strategy. Try reading FEMALE THOR IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PROGRESSIVE HAND-WRINGING AND MISANDRY RUIN A CHERISHED ART-FORM. Seriously, that’s his title. He’s very upset that Marvel has created a comic-book superhero who is a woman.
He’s very upset that Marvel has created a comic-book superhero who is a woman
I’m surprised he’s not thrilled — seeing as how it’s an opportunity for titillation. (Which is what I’m afraid of. There’s potential for things to go badly off the rails with this idea if the boys don’t keep their brains on)
*smashes mug* More progressive hand-wringing and misandry! More, I say!
As far as I know, if Brianna Wu is trans, she’s never publicly disclosed it. So, the fact that #gamergate has people attempting to out someone as trans pretty much kills any credibility to the notion that they are about ethics in, well, anything.
I guess he isn’t aware that Jason Aaron is the ongoing writer of Thor, and has been for several years. It was HIS idea to have a woman take the mantle and hammer away from the Odinson. I wonder if Aaron (who from what I’ve read of him is a progressive atheist) is aware that he’s a misandrist.
Gamergate has gone so far over the top that even if every alleged misdeed by their targets is 100% true, they’ve still lost me as anything remotely approaching an ally.
Not that it’s likely much of it is true. They throw so much out there something almost has to be true by random luck, but I just don’t see any reason to think any of their targets are actually horrible people. Imperfect, maybe, but so are all of us.
And on trans people- throwing it out like it’s a bad thing, you’ve lost me. Throwing it out there on someone who hasn’t said they are trans, whether they are or not you’ve lost me.
And then the few times a gater says “hey, could we lay off the harassment a bit and go after this actual ethical issue” they get shouted down at best, become a target in the normal case.
They aren’t even an “ends justify the means” group with noble goals and corrupt methods. If they targeted journalists with this crap they could at least claim that. They’re just misogynist assholes who stumbled on a means of attack.
from that puddle of dog vomit:
Okay, those people are very much NOT racist, but they think that whote people are fundamentally different from black people. Is that what they’re saying? Or is it that they’re acknowledging that in a racist world white people and black people have very different experiences that shape their lives and personalities? Like, you know, one group is pricileged within society and one is not? And the qualities that define those superheroes are only accessible for white people?
Sounds, you know, racist to me
And then he goes on to quote Vox Däh:
I’m really wondering how he became privy to women’s thoughts. I’m not even commenting on the mars-venus bullshit.
And his own, ehm, brilliance again:
Dude, it’s because there are dozens of male Lara Crofts. It’s because you can name ONE fucking female video game protagonist.
Clearly misattributing his anger to merely “female superhero”. Yet, it must, (more rationally), be that Marvel has altered Thor from male to female. If Marvel came out with a Thoreena (female Asgardian), to accompany Thor on his superadventures, then Yiannopoulos would be quite accepting of a woosy as a superhero ( iff* accompanied by the male Thor ). Alternatively: maybe Yiannopoulos is thinking that the female-Thor has STOLEN the position from the real Thor; as representing all the wimmins breaking thru the glass ceiling. Due to the pussification of proper society.
–
* if and only if
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
[washing the bad thinking from my poor little brainz]
I gotta stop thinking this way, attempting to mock, or I’ll start thinking this way permanentz.
As redemption, to up my cred: I am a big fan of the Agent Carter TV show with a “real” woman as the hero, portrayed as far superior to all her male “peers”. And soon the Ghostbusters reboot with all female leads, etc. etc. And years ago, and still, big fan of Ripley, attacking that alien xenomorph on her cargo ship. etc. etc.
@ Giliell If by ‘male Lara Croft’, you mean a competent male hero also designed to meet the straight female (or gay male) gaze, there’s less of those. But I am all for this. But I imagine that if there was such a character, he’d be dismissed as pandering to women.
(And actually, regarding ‘black Captain America’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth:_Red,_White_%26_Black Basically Marvel wrote a book where black WWII-era soldiers were experimented on in an attempt to reproduce what happened to Steve Rogers. It ends badly.)
Regarding black Captain America… Has he looked inside a comic book store in the last year? Because this guy is currently wearing the mask, and I don’t recall hearing any complaints…
I never know what to do with GamerGate. (well, no, I follow the 3R’s: ridicule, rebuke, revile. that’s not what I mean.) Everything they do is so obviously fabricated, false, and full of holes that engaging with their “serious arguments” is worse than useless. Their volumetric Gish Gallop is designed to kill real conversation, and it’s a distraction at the very best anyways. Just ignoring them is a terrible practice too – walking past hate of that volume is just unacceptable. And you can’t really engage with them directly.
I know that this is a conversation that’s been wrung dry (and probably better in the land of the Mammoth Hunter) but, good grief, what can we do about this toxic chan-spill? It’s disgusting.
So comics is finally a cherished art form? Sheesh, comics and video games both, just as they’re starting to emerge from the sewer of popular opinion, these CHUDs keep trying to drag them back down.
Marcus Ranum #1
Milo is gay. But he does stand up for the rights of GG to demand cishet titillation in their games.
Also, Milo is not writing anything revealing nor new about Brianna Wu. GG has been saying all of this about Brianna Wu for months now. All he did give back all of the talking points that GG has decided on long ago.
For example, one Twitter account I follow tweeted out a screen capture of one GGer tweeting at Brianna Wu should start a company if she thinks the female representation in games was too low. I got involved in the argument and pointed out that that Brianna does own a company and has released games. The GGer linked me to that Milo “essay” on Breitbart (The GGer tried to imply that Breitbart is an impartial news site. ) as if this disproved everything.
Isn’t Lara Croft basically a female Indiana Jones with the sex appeal turned up to eleven? While Indy never went around in tiny shorts, he’s clearly meant to be an attractive guy and his appeal to, and pursuit of, women is a core part of his character.
The difference between Lara and indy is, oddly, a similarity: Both have men as their target audience. Where Lara is a fantasy of a woman you’d like to get naughty with, Indy is a fantasy of the kind of man you’d like to be yourself; smart, cool, and so hunky that women just fall all over him.
The problem here is that these guys are so used to being catered to, they don’t even recognize when it’s happening.
Anyone seen any exploding heads after the Gamergate episode of Law & Order SVU this week?
Yiannopoulos claimed that Brianna Wu was a transwoman as a means of silencing her? He actually used trans* people as an insult and an accusation in the belief that the mere association with trans* people would discredit his opponent, and that cynically trading on society’s repellent transphobic bigotry in this way was acceptable?
That is utterly disgusting behaviour. Yiannopoulos clearly doesn’t care how many innocent trans* people he hurts in order to get his way. He should be ashamed of himself, but that would require a functioning sense of empathy for others unlike himself that he seems to lack.
The more I hear about GG the lower they (and their fellow bottom-feeders) seem to sink. I eagerly await the time when police will come to arrest Gaters as the terrorist hate group that they are. Unfortunately, we live in Bizzaro world.
____________________
Giliell #6
His “mom” told him.
____________________
savant #10
You’re right that debating is pointless, so the only way is to provide a smart counter point. Either mock them relentlessly like in We Hunted The Mammoth or write honest analysis of VG (and related phenomenon) while paying attention to gender, cis, het and other biases, like at Feminist Frequency. Anita Sarkeesian has already inspired at least one commenter here to start her own game blog.
Also, let me show how we’re really not transphobic by writing an equally wrong and transphobic article. Starting with the assumption that a transwoman could of course not stand up for women in gaming to the horrible crime of not disclosing your trans* status which could make poor straight dudes hurt you (they’re the real victims here!)
I’ve never seen anything from Brianna Wu that was not kind, sympathetic, intelligent and thoughtful. When criticised about the body shapes in Revolution 60, she reacted with grace and insight.
Hey, if Loki once turned into a female horse, got pregnant, and gave birth to nonuplets, why shouldn’t Thor become a woman, at least once?
Ahem. Allow me a comic nerd moment. Thor has not become a woman. A woman has become Thor. It’s an important difference for how things are playing out.
I tend to assume the majority of people who complained about the Odinson losing Mjolnir and a woman picking up the mantle of Thor don’t really follow the comics. One of the defining characteristics of Thor Odinson is that, every day, he must ask himself, “Am I worthy to wield the hammer?” And every day he fears he’s not.
This storyline’s given us a new character to get to know and love. There are mysteries to resolve. We know she’s not Freyja, but that hardly narrows down the possibilities of her true identity. We know Nick Fury told Odinson something that made him unworthy, but not what it was. It’s sent Odinson to some dark, difficult places. It even made fuckin’ Loki the wielder of Mjolnir for a hot second (which also indirectly led Odinson to unleashing a lifetime of rage in bareknuckled violence against an unresisting person). It’s just made some fascinating, heart-breaking storytelling that’s been threaded through much of this universe.
—
That transphobic attack on Brianna Wu is utterly stomach turning. No, Yiannopoulos, you cannot convince us that you’re not transphobic by relying upon transphobia. Brianna Wu is a woman. She can speak for at least one woman and she can–and does–effectively advocate for other women.
@hyphenman
I’ve been waiting for someone at WHTM to bring it up (if not David, someone in the comments), but so far silence. And I’m not about to go looking myself. I can take it second hand with snarky commentary, but right now I have not the fortitude to venture alone into manosphere waters. I was also curious about the reactions of feminist people, including Anita and Zoe, to the way the subject was handled. I had some criticisms of my own.
So much horrible. Trading in on the virulent bigotry of your audience to discredit someone is awful in itself but “outing” someone as trans*, whether or not they actually are? That shit could fucking get her killed, for fuck’s sake. But yeah, totally, ethics in games journalism and shit. Yep.
“GamerGate is not a “transphobic” movement, as you may have been misled to believe, but…”
No prizes for guessing which ‘phobia occurs next. The rest of the article may as well be “but… she is trans and that’s totes bad.”
@Ibis3 No. 20
Good afternoon,
I’m a fan of the show and enjoyed the episode, but I think because I know too much of the backstory, I found myself wishing I could have had input to the script.
Had that been the case, however, I’m most uncertain if what I wanted to add would improved the show or, more likely, made the final product unwatchable.
Like you, I’m surprised at the dearth of comments either way.
Do all you can to make today a better day,
Jeff Hess
Have Coffee Will Write
I’m not a complete and utter bastard and i will demonstrate this fact by being a complete and utter bastard!! Muaaahahahahaa!!!
Milo is absolutely hilarious in a very sad, sad way. He is not a gamer…he is not a geek…he is not a comic fan…and yet he pretends to act (unsuccessfully) like he knows and cares about these things. Damn you women, for (not really, like not at all in fact) ruining this art form i don’t give two shits about and whose fans i consider pathetic and laughable man-boys.
MILO’S PIECE ON FEMALE THOR IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A MISOGYNIST IS TOO KEEN ON USING ANY EXCUSE TO BE MISOGYNISTIC.
Brianna Wu was keeping it classy as far back as last October. I recommend this full conversation visible from here:
https://twitter.com/spacekatgal/status/527958512014745602 I have to wonder about anyone who would ding her for thinking that way.
I also wonder if Yiannopoulos is trying to distract from the recent failed attack against Wu: http://www.bustle.com/articles/63466-im-brianna-wu-and-im-risking-my-life-standing-up-to-gamergate Or maybe it’s because of Wu’s recent legal successes: https://twitter.com/giantspacekat/status/566277357183705089
Meanwhile, she shared a few panels from Thor, which you all might like: https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/566787518860111873
Ugh. So much ridiculous BS. Yiannopoulos writes in that piece:
Who the fuck is he to say how women are supposed to talk or act? What an absolute asshole.
Mr. Fancy Pants
That’s Yiannopoulos quoting misogynist supreme extraordinaire Vox Dumb
It’s hard to describe situations like this in a way that conveys the horror of the perpetrator without also conceding some of his attitudes. I’d probably try to avoid constructions like, “Accusing her of being a trans woman,”. Being trans is not something one can be “accused” of. It’s not a moral wrong. The same phenomenon happens when someone says, “accused him of being gay/muslim/atheist.”
Again, it’s easy to overlook these things. I mean only to point it out, not to chastise.
Giliell (#6)
Also, I don’t think Milo would be happy with a literal male Lara Croft. Because “Larry Croft” would look like this: link1, link 2. Maybe he’d wank to that, but I doubt he’d root for men getting sexually objectified in the mainstream.
Thor becoming a frog is one thing, but a woman? Now you’ve gone TOO FAR.
The Mellow Monkey@19:
Ahhhhem, allow me to continue the digression: Not being a comic nerd myself, I can only relate, second-hand, some arguments I’ve read over the transition of Thor, into Thor. The argument keeps focusing on Thor, as the name for Odinson, not his hammer-wielding-superpower. That there have been previous episodes of someone else being able to wield Mjolnir, yet they did NOT become Thor in the process. But now Marvel has gone completely banananuts [they say], to disregard “canon” and suddenly make Thor a female Asgardian. Without even a single panel showing this Asgardian upon picking up Mjolnir acquiring Thorpower. She just walks up to the hammer, introduces herself as Thor, and Mjolnir lets her pick it up [presumably]. In this conversation, I was reading, I offered a nugget of “compromise”: that the Asgardian Odinson is named Thor, and wielded Mjolnir so profoundly that his name has become a Title for whoever is wielding Mjolnir. …but it was left hanging, unanswered…
So, Mellow Monkey, with your comic nerd cred, what is your opinion of my (humble) suggestion? Or should I just GTFO (of comicdom)?
Josh, thank you, about the “accused” thing, it’s nice not to always be the one speaking up. Have an earned and undesired cookie. :)
Yiannopolous, go leap in a pool of liquid fucking nitrogen, you evil shit. MY PEOPLE DIE FROM THIS EVIL. How fucking dare you, you pusillanimous bucket of llama farm septic waste.
You mean the movement given its name by the transphobic Adam Baldwin is transphobic? I’m shocked. Shocked, I say!
twas brillig @ 31
It’s really hard to say, because there’s so much the readers don’t know. We don’t know what Nick Fury said to Thor Odinson that made him drop Mjolnir. We don’t know who the current female Thor is. What we do know is that the Odinson rejects anyone calling him Thor and identifies this woman as Thor now. The woman wielding Mjolnir also identifies herself as Thor.
There are a lot of different theories about why this is and your guess is a decent one, but without knowing the whole story none of us can really say. Both characters know things we don’t at this point and this is how their identities shake out.
Hmmm, I wonder what the market would be for Female Thor blow-up dolls?
(Copyright and trademark restrictions not withstanding.)
@28 Josh
So true, and it’s amazing how even the most proudly self-described progressives will frequently fall into that kind of thing. The problem is that some won’t even recognize their obvious display of prejudice when it is pointed out, which is the bare minimum you’d expect from a decent human being, and instead they will whine about how you are hypersensitive and you are just trying to find any excuse to be offended. They didn’t mean to imply that “x” is a bad thing with their comment that explicitely presents “x” as a bad thing, and all that….So much for “progressives”, i suposse…
gworroll@5: it’s not hard to look over the history of gamergate, and if you choose to do so you will find that NONE of what they say is factually true. Oh, sure, there are big problems with ethics in gaming journalism (as there are in *every* branch of journalism), but the gamergate movement had zero interest in attacking the well-documented cases of ethical breaches (e.g. the sacking of Jeff Gerstmann for a negative review that upset an advertiser) and instead went on misogynist hate-fests full of invented breaches of ethics and attacking any woman who presented feminist critiques of the gaming industry (which you may notice is NOT a lapse in ethics — the fact that gamergaters think that making an online video about female body design in video games is unethical tells you everything you need to know about the quality of their thinking).
He hasn’t established that she’s trans.
He’s posted quotes from various trans support forums and claimed that it’s her, just because the name is the same.
He’s posted a picture of a man and claimed that it’s her as well, when they don’t even look that much alike.
He’s certainly not explained why it’s relevant that she’s trans (if she is).
Despite all the vile transphobia the main thing I get out of his screed is that some people are mentally fragile for whatever reason, and that it’s acceptable to send such people death threats, discount their experience, and just generally make up shit about them. If they have a breakdown, that proves you were right to harass them. What kind of asshole thinks that this is acceptable? I get the clear idea that he’d have happily used similar statements from a cis-woman, such as someone expressing emotion over a miscarriage.
A gay man throwing trans women under the bus. I wish this was surprising and unheardof. *sigh*
Some time ago, I read an opinion piece that could be translated roughly as “How Sad It Is to Be a Right-Wing F***t” about the contradictory position of gay conservative commentators. It could have been written having this Milo in mind. I wonder how he rationalizes advocating for a group who accepts him despite who he is, even when they make that so woefully clear.
I am appalled at both the transphobic crap, and the misogynist whinging about Thor. These vile men can fuck right off with their belief that comic book characters based on the appropriation of Norse mythology constitute a canon, and that changing an attribute of a character totes justifies the ongoing terrorizing and harassing of women. The comic doesn’t even get the basic facts about Thor or Mjolnir right. Thor’s hammer is not a sledge hammer, its a double bladed ax. In greek mythology, this particular ax is known as a labrys, and was commonly associated with female divinities. Thor couldn’t wield the hammer without the gloves, or the magic girdle, and is also supposed to have red hair. I don’t see them complaining about these factual errors in their precious comic bookses. I love this tweet from Brianna, it’s good to see that she can joke about the latest round of harassment.
@ Josh, Official SpokesGay, 28:
Point well taken. I’ll definitely remember that.
@ A. Noyd, 29:
Thank you for the links to Larry Croft! Now that’s a game I would buy.
My reaction was:
a.) Who cares if she’s trans. That doesn’t diminish her insights, and comments
b.)You’re so full of shit Milo, it’s obvious that she’s not.
I also google Brianna. This article, seems to be almost taken word for word from her Encyclopedia Dramatica article.
@41, gjoel: don’t do that. Don’t speculate about whether someone is trans or cis, and for fuck’s sake never EVER say someone can’t be trans because of their fucking photo.
You have NO idea what that toxic evil stuff can do to a trans woman’s mind; we already face huge pressure to be “pretty” enough, and you’re not helping.
I get that you want t to do it right; that’s why I’m not calling you names. But please don’t ever do what you did.
Thanks, on behalf of the terrified and miserable trans woman who is almost certainly reading this thread and hearing an ally tell her that she’ll never be woman “enough” to get that “nope, can’t be trans” seal of approval, is more in despair than ever.
So don’t. Just don’t.
do you remember the “sexist” barbie who doesn’t code? rethink how “sexist” that was, read this piece: http://lambdaphagy.tumblr.com/post/103325956504/women-writing-about-their-experiences-in-it-is
I disagree with transphobia. Howeever I disagree with Wu as well. This woman was caught 1) creating sockpuppets to attempt to discredit her critics. 2)Saying nasty stuff an then claiming her account was hacked when she was called out on it 3)lying about her whereabouts
so I take everything she says with a heap of salt. Also she posted a tweet with some bad C++ code and some people on the badcode subreddit started making fun of it. She came in and said any criticism of her code was “sexist” and “bullying” , basically using her gender as a shield from criticism.
Yes, I do remember that sexist barbie crap. If you had bothered to read your link, you might have noticed the quote from the woman who is responsible
So since the author agrees that it was sexist, no rethinking is necessary. Any other stupid questions?
@Tethys
So a woman writes about her experiences in tech, and people say its sexists , and you appear to agree. Glad to see you’re being reasonable.
If Yanni is such a big fan of Thor, why doesn’t he know that this isn’t even the first time a woman took up the hammer?
http://xkcd.com/385/
(This particular xkcd comic is starting to feel over-used lately, but it’s just apt…)
@Tethys
LoL you decided not to read the actual analysis I posted, eh? you might realize the reality of why barbie says what she says in the book rather than just shouting “sexism!”
johnny d
Do you mean that you agree that the transphobic crap spouted by Milo is bad, or that it is transphobic crap?
citation needed
citation needed
What!? (also citation needed) Brianna Wu is a grown adult, and her whereabouts are noneofyourfuckingbusiness. Considering the well documented (and linked in the OP) constant stream of death and rape threats she is subject to from the GG asshole brigade, complaining that she lies about her whereabouts is asinine.
hence I take everything you say with a grain of salt the size of Wyoming….
Oh, misogynist fuckwit, you only believe what men say? *snicker*
Does the (possible, unproven) fact that she is a liar and a flake make it all right to discount what she says and send her death threats? Is the existence of someone less perfect than yourself an excuse to treat them however you want? Is your (hypothetical, unproven) flake automatically always wrong? Do you think there might be a wee bit of entitlement in an attitude like that?
johnny d., #46
What does this even mean? If someone says they experienced sexism, we should doubt them?
johnny d
I completely agree with Susan Marenco that the Barbie draws cute puppies but male programmers do the actual coding trope that she used is the epitome of a sexist stereotype. It’s called stereotype threat, perhaps you can educate yourself on it while you are off gathering your citations?
Yay for you? Perhaps you could return the favour?
Oops, never mind. I thought johnny d was saying that about Wu.
@Tethys
This site has some of the stuff documenting her deceptions about her whereabouts and her creating sockpuppets.
http://thisisvideogames.com/incsub_wiki/brianna-wu/
she’s deleted the tweets since , but she claims she was hacked here
https://twitter.com/spacekatgal/status/522122969653719040
@ChristineRosee
I’m just saying that if she’s a known liar we should be critical of what she says unless we can verify it.
@Saad
A woman wrote a “Barbie computer engineer” story based on her experiences in tech. Feminists declared that this was sexist and promoted bad stereotypes. We’ve reached the point where talking about reality is now sexism.
@Nerd
“Oh, misogynist fuckwit, you only believe what men say? *snicker*”
No I believe the author , Susan Marenco. Its the feminists who don’t believe her and say it was just sexism and bad stereotypes.
ahilan
I read the poor analysis ( as you might have logically surmissed when I quoted it) and pointed out that it’s author (aka the source) agrees that it is a sexist stereotype. No further analysis is necessary to prove sexism, it is not exactly an extraordinary claim. It is quite clear that neither you, or the author of the link, have a working understanding of what sexism or stereotyping are, much less being capable of spotting them in practice.
And why shouldn’t we be critical of what you are saying?
Give me one reason beyond your citation being a woman for me to believe you. After all, you do have your female apologists misogynist. Put up, or shut the fuck up. Util then, your word is dismissed as unevidenced fuckwittery….
Johnny d
I repeat for the hard of thinking….. Her whereabouts are none of your fucking business. Are you upset that she used an alias, or are you upset that she busted the GGers stupid malicious asses, and some of the harassing assholes actually had to face repercussions?
You have yet to provide any proof of dishonesty from Brianna Wu. Citing the people who are harassing her is propaganda, not proof you idiot. The known liars are the dudes who were such enormous shitweasels that they got banned from reddit . That fact alone is all the proof I need that the GGers are completely vile lying sexist asshats who should just shut the fuck up already.
ahilan @43
do you remember the “sexist” barbie who doesn’t code?
What does that have to do with the post under discussion?
johnny d.@58:
Oh, hey, a GG’er! Hello there. Come to see what trouble you can rile up?
So far you (and your now-silent companion) have said “Read this! Aren’t feminists liars?”, and then when confronted with the fact that not everyone takes the same interpretation as you from the article, have said “I believe the author, and feminists don’t because it doesn’t match their message (i.e. feminists are liars)”.
What you you think that article is saying? Other than “feminists are liars.” Positive assertions please!
@Tethys #39
First, I agree with your larger points regarding Thor and the idiots that are complaining about the new Thor.
I have a question regarding Mjolnir being an ax. I don’t see support for that in the links you gave. The wiki link to Mjolnir breaks down the etymology and it pretty clearly points to it being a hammer. That is rather trivial beside your broader points which I agree with, but my curiosity remains.
My all-time comic book favorites were/are Wonder Woman, Plastic Man & Scrooge McDuck. Let the self-appointed psychologists of questionable mind play with that one.
Someone may have beat me to it, but Indiana Jones.
@johnny d
Let’s say for a moment that I believe everything you have posited about Wu (I don’t). How the fuck does that justify what this asshole did? This whole I’m not a bigot, but _____ is a member of (bigot targeted group) nonsense is both painfully transparent and nauseating. You should step back a moment and consider the sources you are using. You also need to seriously rethink your whole “I don’t completely agree with this tactic, but the totally agree she deserves attacking” tack you appear to have taken.
Actually, It’s About Ethics in C+ Coding.
(which is to say, I don’t believe you for one second)
gmacs: Yes, you are pretty late to the party. See comments 6, 8, 13, and particularly 29 (oh my).
@Grewgills #64
I can’t speak to the accuracy of Tethys’s comment, but in Ultimate Thor, Thor’s weapon was a part-hammer/part- axe affair, I think.
azhael wrote:
So, he’s a fake geek guy. Okay, maybe that’s a little harsh. Maybe opportunistic reactionary asshole is a little more direct to the point. That goes for the gator’s “Based Mom” Christina Hoff Sommers and “Juicebro” Mike Cernovich, too. It’s amazing how these people, who have either ignored or openly disparaged gaming prior to this, have suddenly become gaming’s one and only hope for freedumb. Other luminaries of the movement include people like Davis “white nationalist on paper” Aurini.
Anyone taken in by these idiots deserves all the mocking they get, and then some.
Yeah, that Milo, what a perfect spokesman for comics fans.
As PZ points out in the original post, the death threats are public and happened no matter what sort of liar Wu is or isn’t. The blog linked to is full of unproven and unproveable nastiness, and centers on someone’s health problems, problems which are pretty much irrelevant to the question of whether sexism in games is a real problem. So I am rather inclined to dismiss Milo as a known jerk.
Is there any place to hear PZ’s interview with Mark Mathis?
The Mellow Monkey @ 19
Im loving the storyline. I hope she becomes a permanent character once the current story ends. The page where the hammer changes, once you read it in the comic itself, sent shivers down my spine in excitement.
Ibis3, These verbal jackboots were made for walking @ 20
From Zoe’s Twitter, not well at all. These places have covered it: The Mary Sue, Ars Technica, even someone at Forbes. There are many other sites too. They all agree it was a shit show and that it actively harmed all sides.
Grewgills
The etymology is unknown, though the meanings of lightning and milling grain to flour are both given as possibilities. The Greek pantheon and the Norse pantheon are widely separated in time. It is impossible to document the origins of either one, but the various gods all have such similar attributes that they must have some common origin. Zeus and Jupiter and Thor are all sky gods associated with lightning and thunder. thor also used mjolnir to bring his goats back to life each day after eating them for dinner. Thors hammer amulets are clearly bifacial blades with a phallic fertility connotation, often with stylized birds heads reminiscent of neolithic bird goddess artifacts and often either a meander or knotwork on the handle . Its shape very much evokes the stone ax heads known as thunderstones which were venerated up until quite recently. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100614101724.htm
Yeah, the Thor amulets used to bother me. They don’t look like a hammer. I had not really thought about it, but an axe would be a better tool for Thor, and that would explain the amulets.
(I made myself a short-handled sledgehammer once, it wasn’t good for much.) (I hate the shape of the Marvel Comics Thor’s hammer – I don’t care if he is a god, that handle is too skinny and the grab loop is wrong, plus having tapered faces reduces precision. (Hmmm. If the faces were really tapered on two sides, it would become an axe. Hmmm. Maybe the taper is symbolic or vestigial.))
Grewgills
There are old depictions of it which show something ax-like. Unfortunately, it’s a symbol heavily appropriated by fascists.
ahilan
Goodness, the ridiculousness, it burns.
So, the author herself acknowledged that she wrote stereotypes, i.e. she perpetrated sexist ideas about how men and women are and that is somehow evidence that it’s not sexist?
And her own experience is, her own experience. Not more, not less. To extrapolate it to a book about Barbie being a computer engineer which in the end showed that she apparently cannot be a computer engineer but the boys can is sexist stereotyping.
The question that remains is: Can you understand that?
That “female Thor” seems to be part of the original Norse mythology and not a Marvel invention.
see: http://norse-mythology.org/tales/thor-the-transvestite/
I’m only familiar with movie depictions and not comics, but this strikes me a lot like The Doctor can’t be a woman fan panic.
But Thor married a Frost Giant to get his hammer back …
@Tethys
Other etymological possibilities given were more hammer related including one that suggests a common origin to the term mallet.
I am far from expert, but my relatively limited reading I’ve seen that Norse gods are remarkably similar to gods of the British Isles and mainland Germanic and Slavic tribes. Variations of Odin, Thor, and Tyr with varying importance in each culture are pretty common. The Thor and Tyr analogues are more important than the Odin analogue in some of them.
There is evidence of trade between the Mediterranean and Scandinavia even prior to the rise of classical Greek culture, so there is certainly the potential of some religious influence between the two. There are some interesting parallels though, including the antagonist relationships with Titans/Jotunn that are more primal gods.
I don’t see the Thor amulets as “clearly bifacial blades”. They resemble hammers more than the Greek bifacial blades you linked to. That said, the thunderstone articles are interesting evidence that they may be connected to stone axes or stone hammers (or some intermediate tool). The flint and steel sparking being related to lightening is a cool angle.
Norse myth does have a complicated relationship with gender. Odin in particular embodies that in a number of ways. It is cool that Thor may also embody that more than I thought.
@Giliell #79
That appropriation sucks. I wonder if it’s just the stereotypical arian ideal of Scandinavia that is being latched onto, or if there is something more to it.
@yubal #80
Cross dressing isn’t the same as changing sex or gender. Thor in that story was cross dressing to deceive jotunn, not because of personal identity. There may be something feminine in a protoThor and some of that symbology may have followed through, but that isn’t it. Then again, maybe I am being too pedantic about a smart assed comment.
In the edda Odin ignored gender boundaries whenever it suited.
Tethys @ 62
Seriously. Reddit condones damn near anything. You’ve got to really be on your shitweasel game to get banned from reddit.
As interesting a discussion as it is, the Thor conversation is kind of tangential to this post, no? As noted, Yiannopoulos is not a comics fan, he just digs in when it feeds his need for more attention. What’s been happening to Brianna Wu is more the important topic here, isn’t it?
Not to mention the Thor subthread being not a little affected by a number of people’s need to get through Trans 101, and being quite hard to read as a result. I keep getting sideswiped, and it’s not been fun.
CaitieCat@87,
Yes, the conversation about Thor should definitely migrate to the Thunderdome.
I can certainly understand if you’re a bit Thor about it!
You’re Thor? I’m tho thore I can hardly pith!
/old joke punch line
Nick Gotts,
Well, loki here. We’ve got ourselves a joker.
@Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy
Worse than that. They got themselves banned from 4chan.
/relurks
Oh, I gotta jump in with the Thor/axe derail. Some trace Thor back to the Indo-European god Perkwunos. Perkwunos is most certainly tied to certain Baltic and Slavic gods of thunder who often had an axe as the representation of their thunderbolt weapon. Complete with followers wearing axehead amulets. See works about Perun and Perkunas for examples.
@Tethys
You have yet to provide any proof the people on that website have been harrassing Brianna Wu. They just have been documenting her sockpuppetry and her deceptions. Nobody from GG got banned from reddit . You can follow the links in the piece so you can see the videos and articles and tweets where she has been making her claims.
@Grewgills
Wu has been basically writing articles and giving appearances demonising gamers and aalling them terrorists. Milo just went through her online history and looks at all the unethical things she’s done in the past to prove she is an unreliable source and may be milking the whole situation for patreon funds.
@optiuum
That’s not what happened. The TLDR version is that moot (the 4chan owner) sold out 4chan so he could get laid.
long version:
4chan used to be a great place for free and open discussion. However , moot got himself a feminazi girlfriend and ever since then , 4chan has been going downhill. She forced him to ban /gg/ and /pol/. (She cheats on him on the side too). This is all common knowledge on 4chan. Open a thread on 4chan asking about why 4chan went downhill and asking what they they think of moot’s girlfriend and they will confirm everything I said here. Encyclopedia dramatica has a great entry on how she killed 4chan as well.
johnny d. @ 93
And “common knowledge” in this context means “shit we decided is true because reasons”.
johnny d. #93
Well, that’s certainly one way to sound credible and impartial: Use the word feminazi.
Forced him! With an MP 40 to his head, I bet!
Can you explain exactly how 4chan went downhill? Precisely what sorts of “free and open” discussions are they not able to have now?
@Saad
https://images.encyclopediadramatica.se/2/2c/Mootlegg15.png
Here’s a post from a former longtime mod who got pushed out after moot got brainwashed. Former users leaked a number of chat and email logs proving that this was what moot was planning.
4chan’s really been going downhill.
There IS no downhill for 4chan to go to. They were already at the lowest place possible. Somyeah, not buying what you’re selling dude, but since you believe everything every schmuck on the interwebs with an axe to grind has to say, I have a bridge to sell you…
Nice source there Johnny d. First you use feminazi then a post complaining about SJWs(insert scary music). Maybe moot didn’t become brainwashed maybe they just decided to become a decent human being.
johnny d. #96
That link isn’t working for me.
What? Isn’t he an adult with control over his actions? If he’s the one who closed /gg/ and got rid of that mod, why is his girlfriend getting the blame for it and not him? Actually, don’t answer that.
You avoided my question. You said 4chan was a great place with “free and open” discussions, and implied because of a woman, it no longer is. So what were these great discussions which are no longer allowed to take place because of a woman?
johnny d. #96:
[Link]
Saad
Isn’t that funny? Men really seem to be very impressionable, easily manipulated and controlled by women an completely unable to take responsibility for their own actions yet women are the weaker sex. If misandry exists it’s in the ideas of misogynists.
johnny d. #93
This is pure gold! Folks, if you ever wanted to see how a Gator mind works, here it is in its full comic glory:
1. “Selling out” by not condoning dangerous illegal behavior? Check.
2. Doing it “to get laid” (because, apparently that’s the only thing that matters to adults)? Check.
3. Calling 4chan “a great place” (hell, even one of /b/’s stupid memes says that it was never good)? Check.
4. Calling a woman (who may not even be a feminist) a “feminazi”? Check.
5. Saying that men are corrupted by women that utilize their control over who “gets laid”? Check.
6. Saying that m00t was “forced” to do something, when no proof of actual “force” exists? Check.
7. Thinking that an intimate (or just a romantic) relationship is some kind of force that women wield against men? Check.
8. Slut shaming a woman who apparently “cheats on him on the side”? Check.
9. Thinking that other people’s sexual relations are in any way relevant to this discussion? Check.
10. Calling gossip on some website “common knowledge”? Check.
11. Thinking that conformation from some anonymous 4channers means anything to anyone? Check.
12. Thinking that banning sub-forums that were crawling with neo-Nazis, pedophiles, harassers, xenophobes of all kind and all manner of other human garbage means that a website is “going downhill”? Check.
13. Thinking that free hate speech is the most important thing in the world? Check.
14. The icing on the cake: Citing Encyclopedia Dramatica as a reputable source? Check.
I haven’t laughed this much in a long, long time. I didn’t just get a bingo – I filled the entire bingo board. Several actually, since we have Freeze Peach, MRAs and online troll ideology so neatly packed in this one comment. I hope that PZ frames this comment and hangs it in the Thunderdome, because you can’t get anymore clueless and wrong than this in so few words. If this was a parody I’d say the writer has achieved perfection.
The only thing that spoils my mood is that people actually think like that. Not only that, but johnny d. isn’t even the worse of the lot since he didn’t assault or harass anyone (as far as I know).
*sigh*
@Saad
Try the link again
https://images.encyclopediadramatica.se/2/2c/Mootlegg15.png
There’s a longer article if you search “moot sellout” documenting how hesold out 4chan.
Both of them are getting the blame. Moot for being a sellout and and his girlfriend for being a feminazi who hates free speech.
They’ve been getting rid of longtime mods for merely disagreeing with moot. Banning people just for disagreement. They banned discussion of /gg/ and closed /pol/. Now I don’t agree with those boards , but I’ve always believed in free speech and I hate how moot has given up those ideals just so he could get laid.
OMG, it continues!
“SJW”, Gawker, Tumbler, Anita Sarkeesian, “hundred of firewalls”, doxing, “extremist moderators”, brainwashing girlfriend…
This only lacks the Illuminati and lizard people and we have ourselves the ultimate conspiracy!
I apologize for contributing to the Thor derail. In the came vein… I note another derail belonging to Thunderdome.
It is, of course, compeltly impossible that this guy changed his opinion.* Because feminism, unlike racism and such, is so horrible that no man in hie right senses would ever think about matters, learn new things and change his mind. Real men don’t change their minds! If any guy ever appears to be pro-feminism, it’s because of the incredible lure of sweet pussy!
*I’m not even discussing the actual case.
johnny d. #103:
How often do we have to say this? Free speech is a right. The use of someone else’s platform is not a right.
This statement says more about you than it does about moot. He is a free agent who has, of his own free will, come to conclusions which you disagree with. Also, please do not ever take up dating, and thereby afflict your notion of romance on an innocent human being.
Seems legit.
Perhaps we should declare a holiday in her honor.
I’m sorry, Tony, I have no clue how you and your fellow male gay feminists fit into the picture. What’s in this for you?
Please, let’s not slander our good friends in Order Crocodilia.
Oh boy, free speech is another thing johnny d. doesn’t understand. Why are MRA assholes always so incredibly dumb?
AlexanderZ, #102
That was fantastic! Even if I wanted to be completely on the wrong side of an issue, I don’t think I could manage fucking up on that level.
johnny d. #103
What sort of free speech did he ban? Like expressing dissatisfaction with zoning standards?
No it didn’t. 4chan was a shithole from day one.
I knew about GG, but /pol/ is gone now? That’s a definite improvement.
This statement has all the credibility of “Gay people are all pedophiles. This is common knowledge among Tea Partiers.” I’m actually not sure which group of assholes I’d take more seriously.
Of course they would, but why exactly would I trust a bunch of idiots who get off on anonymous trolling for reliable information (especially when they’re bawling with all the righteous fury of a five year old being scolded for throwing sand in the other kid’s eyes)? In any case, if she did, then as Rey Fox @ 109 says, we should declare a holiday in her honor. Maybe next she can destroy Reddit.
johnny d.
Oh, c’mon! According to reputable information source “Encyclopedia Dramatica”, moot is gay, so that can’t possibly be what happened. Are you sure it wasn’t the Freemasons, instead?
johnny d. wrote:
Just when I think you might’ve reached the limit of the layers of conspiracy theory, another one is added Inception-style. I see the “shills” of Gawker Media are the big bad here again (completely without evidence, of course). I do have to wonder how many of these conspiracy onion layers were the handiwork of the GamerGhazi subreddit, who has spent months mocking gators by either just pointing and laughing or sometimes satirizing them. The satire, no matter how ridiculous (Poe’s law), is often uncritically added to the gators “common knowledge”, like the supposed fact that Gawker was paying twitter users to undermine GamerGate (pure Ghazi fabrication).
But do tell us more! Was 9/11 an inside job? Were the moon landings faked? Was JFK killed by the CIA? Is fluoride being added as a mind control agent? Are chemtrails sapping and impurifying all our precious bodily fluids?
Having caught up with the thread at last (in between working and other commitments), I wish to place it on the record that Milo Yiannopoulos is bigoted scum and his transphobia is disgusting. It comes as no surprise, sadly, but it’s still disgusting.
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4bwlzgN0h1qgnf10.gif
Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe people like this aren’t joking.
@ck, The Irate Lump
Ghazi didn’t even come up with that. A Weird-Twitter guy called @dogboner photoshopped (or html edited) his bank statement to include a payment from Gawker media – $20 for anti-gamergate shilling – as y’know, a joke.
I think even he was slightly surprised that they actually fell for it. At around the same time one GGs e-celebs fabricated a facebook post of Gawkers CEO comparing himself to the joker and gamergate to batman – and they fell for that as well.
Holy crap, I’m reading a ten year old channer howl about feminazis on Pharyngula.
Big difference between one dumb ass GGer yammering on about femininazis, men being brainwashed and what other cranky shit he can pull out of his ass and having wave after wave of his type of hate filled jackasses sending this type of shit at selected targets.
johnny d, either you are a horrid person of you are spending time defending the actions of horrid people. Either way, fuck you and everything you stand for.
@jodyp
First of all , I’m 14 , not 10.
To be clear , when I say feminazi , I mean the extremist feminists. These are the types of feminists who do not believe in free speech and will ban and censor any dissenting opinions. They will accuse men of serious crimes based on hearsay .They will attempt to silence their opposition at any cost. Many of these extremist feminists will attempt to get their critics doxxed and fired from their jobs just for disagreeing with them.
There some moderate feminists like Christina Hoff Sommers and Emma Watson who do not attempt to censor or ban people for disagreeing with them and back up their beliefs with evidence. For example , unlike many feminists , Christina Hoff Sommers allows free expression in the comments of her videos , while many feminists attempt to censor dissenting comments or even close comments and ratings alltogether.
@Janine
I am not a GGer. While I disagree with the feminists who are trying to ban games and censor gamers , I think moralfagging on the internet is dumb.
You consider Sommers a ‘moderate’ feminist? Yeah, no. Sorry. She’s very much not and is quite anti-women.
Let me tell you a little thing about free speech, something that you’ll learn in civics when you take it: Free speech relates to THE GOVERNMENT. You cannot be arrested for expressing a vile opinion.
Free speech is NOT:
Having people listen to you
Being free from criticism or insult
Getting to use any platform you want
Also, I know that you’re hinting at women falsely accusing men of rape when you mention hearsay; it makes you look like an idiot to dance around it. Own up to those vile frozen peaches you’re whining about. I had two close calls with rape. I only reported one of them. That was that was reported, the fucking cop didn’t believe me about my stalker because I took too long to call the police. Apparently the idea of being 17 and petrified and hiding for several hours unable to move is totally not a possibility. He filed a report, but they did no investigations. And even if a woman does get to the point of a filed report and investigation… she’s often the one being investigated. “What were you wearing? Were you leading him on? Were you drinking?” We get not believed or blamed. So often women don’t bother reporting because shit all gets done about it. Instead, they tell their other female friends, and it gets spread amongst women to avoid such and such a guy… he’s a rapist. AND HE IS.
homophobia is ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE you little turdwaffle. Since you claim to be 14, I suggest you recant and apologize for this slur to Janine. I’m sure others will not be as tolerant and will request your immediate bannation.
@Tethys
I apologise for using that slur and anyone I might have offended. I did not intend to convey any homophobia with it. Its a term I was used to using and I used it here without thinking.
johnny d @ 122. You’ve made a lot of specious and unsupported claims here. Let me unpack them for you, so can, in your reply, back them up with evidence;
Please give the names of feminists who have the power to ban opinions. Hint: there aren’t any. The power to “ban” things belongs to the government. The government is not allowed to infringe upon free speech. The same goes for “censor”.
Tell me this: do you mean “feminists who remove comments on their websites”? If so, they are not impinging on your free speech. You remain free, as in, not in jail, not fined, not beaten, tortured or fired from your job or expelled from school. You remain free to speak, upload video, post on your own website, print, publish, and otherwise disseminate your opinions. What the “feminists” have done is deny you their platform (ie. website), which they own and pay for, and which, therefore, they have the property rights over. No-one owes you a platform, johnnyd.
Please cite: the names of men who have been accused of serious crimes on the basis of hearsay by feminists — these are serious, legally-actionable charges. Also: the names of the feminists who doxx and get people fired, and the names of the people they doxxed and got fired (or attempted to). Serious accusations such as these require PROOF.
Ms. Sommers, as the property owner of her website/server hosting videos has the right to close comments and ratings, as does ANY ONE similar property owner. Feminists who do so are NOT censoring, they are denying you a platform. Make your own platform, johnny d. You have free speech.
Again, please name, cite, and provide links to feminists who are trying to ban games, ie. stop them being made, stop them being sold, stop them being traded, stop them being played. Cite, or you’re a liar. And I’ve dealt with the “censor gamers” crack already. Seriously, with the almighty fuss you and the GG’ers are making how can you seriously argue that you’re being censored?
You betray your immaturity, bigotry, and homophobia with that phrase. And it might get you denied this particular platform.
@Rowan vet-tech
I agree with you that all men guilty of rape should be brought to justice. However there are cases where the alleged victim tells a story that is false or highly suspect , such as the recent Rolling Stone case.
johnny d. the jr misogynist
Oh dear, are you really this bad at logic and rational thought, or are you just pretending to be this stupid for the trolling lulz? This reply is what is known as an own goal. (look it up) You claim that BW is not being harassed, and then link to an entire website dedicated to stalking her and obsessing over the various lies and conspiracy theories that have been concocted. You have swallowed every one of these lies whole, without bothering to verify if there is any basis in fact for asinine claims like this
Show me where anybody is trying to ban or censor video games. Saying hey, these games are full of shitty sexist stereotypes and it needs to change is the actual goal here fool. More games…better games..everybody wins. It’s a little thing we call social justice.
johnny d.
Name one, ONE, even slightly visible/famous feminist who is trying to ban or censor gamers.
It is quite clear you are tilting at windmills, believing any idiotic anti-feminist story told on the MRA/reddit/4chan/whatever place you get your information from.
Also, you don’t understand the concept of free speech, as well as a lot of other quite basic concepts which you should know before you start running of your mouth. You are quite young, you have still a lot of time to learn fortunately. Use it.
@johnny d.
So, like, when you say feminazi, you’re talking about people who don’t even exist. Gotcha.
You’ve got a loooot of learning ahead of you, kid. For starters, try looking for accurate rape statistics.
Here, I’ll start you off: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape
Take note of the wording: unfounded and unproven just mean the police either didn’t have enough information or couldn’t be bothered doing their job. Do false accusations happen? Sure. But they’re so vanishingly rare that it’s just so not important.
You know something more important to think about than falsely accused men? How about the statistics on how many rapes actually get reported. Why is it, that somewhere around 60% of rapes are never even reported to the police, hmm?
Johnny d, “moralfagging”?
Fuck you and everything you stand for, you fucking bigot.
And how many cases do the men go free, even with solid evidence? Because of shitheaded misogynists like you.
You lie and bullshit, as has been amply shown by others. So, since you approve of lying and bullshitting, you are in no moral position to complain about others, if they do the same…..
johnny d, besides showing off your toxic chan terminology. you are also showing off the fact that you have picked up a lot of MRA talking point.
#127
You do realize that false claims of rape are rare. Women, on the whole, are not using accusations of rape to ruin men’s lives. That, along with the fact that most cases are not reported and many men do get away with it means that this concern of yours is not worth being a talking point.
Also, you deserve all the scorn you get for simply using the term “feminazi”. People who use that word has no fucking idea what a Nazi was. It is a term used simply to poison the well.
And, again I say to you, johnny d, fuck you and everything you stand for.
(I saw your apology. And guess what, I do not fucking care.)
@Janine
I apologise ,
It was just internet slang for people who try to impose their morals on other people . I did not mean to offend any homosexuals.
Monitor Note:
Please do not use bigoted slurs. This includes slurs based on sexuality.
The rules.
I do not fucking care that it is internet slang.
Also, shit for brains, why don’t you fucking stop telling me how I should see words that have been slurs since long before you and I were born. All you are doing is throwing a fit that people calling calling you on your bigotry. (And it is not just homophobia, shit for brains.)
Fuck you and everything you stand for.
So, johnny d, will you apologize for using MRA/chan talking points, talking points that has no fucking roots in reality.
(Yeah, I really do not like you, you whiny little shit weasel.)
I always have to laugh when I see some GGer complaining about banning games. As others have said, please, please show some evidence they are trying to do this. Attempting to get developers and gamers to think about these issues, to consider the content of their games, is not banning, it is not censorship. If you want to find people that are want to ban games, look at someone like Jack Thompson, someone who plenty of GGers were willing to get behind as soon as he was critical of Anita Sarkeesian. That was a hoot, months later I still shake my head when I think about it.
If there’s one thing female game developers want, it’s to ban video games. And the guy at my local bakery wants bread outlawed.
Travis, that is one of the things that really leaves me gobsmacked, the claim the that those that the collective shitheads call “The Literally Whos” are women who love games.
But what can you expect from a movement that is founded on lies, harassment and intimidation?
With more than due respect, perhaps that is your problem. You express ideas and words without thinking. Perhaps you should listen and actually think about how your ideas are expressed and what they would mean to someone outside.
Take your comment: “I think moralfagging on the internet is dumb” and imagine what it would express to, say Charles Dickens, or an English speaking martian and whether the statement would be convincing. The immediate question is what on earth does that strange word “moralfagging” mean? Well, clearly it would mean some who fags about the issue of morals. Well, what does to fag mean. Well, a fag is derogatory term for a homosexual so moralfagging, therefore, in context would mean someone behaving like a homosexual in a negative manner about morals. That’s really the only conceivable meaning it possibly could have.
Now, the question is how on earth can anyone possibly use the term and not realize it would be insulting, derogatory and homophobic?
Think, before you speak and think if you really mean what you say.
Here’s an exercise. *Why* do you believe any of the things you actually say. Why do you believe Brianna Wu wants to censor games? Why do you believe she lies about her threats? If she does lie about her threats and does desire to censor games, what is the threat and danger this poses to you and the world in general? What is the proper response? Is posting, apparently unfounded, allegations about her gender reasonable? Are making death and rape threats a reasonable response?
johnny d.
Since you’re just 14, I’ll give you a tip:
Stop!
You’re using terms you picked up from people you thought cool and you use them without knowing what you’re saying.
You are probably wondering why people are so angry with you for using a term you just consider internet slang.
Most likely, you have no frame of reference for slurs. You didn’t want to offend gay people and you think that’s gotta count for something. Think about stepping on someone’s toes: Did the fact that you didn’t intend to stomp on their foot change anything about the pain you caused?
So, take a break from the forums you’re most likely hanging out at and get on with life. Nobody is coming for your video games.
Janine, indeed, they say they love gaming, but when I see GGers using harassment and intimidation against those that want to inject new ideas into gaming, to discuss uncomfortable aspects of games, and gaming culture, I don’t see people that love games at all. I see people that want to limit games, that want games to conform to a narrow set of ideas. It is sad that they think they are champions of gaming.
I’ve been gaming since the mid-1980s, I have watched gaming change, and have been so happy to see growth in it. The rise of indies has brought back so much of my joy, enabled genres that went a out of fashion in AAA gaming to find an audience (for examples, adventure games have made a big comeback. They are one of my major loves, and for some time it was hard to find new ones). But then I look at GGers and other regressive elements, obsessed with going after indies, angry over the mere existence of games that do not appeal to them, trying to label them as something other than games. It kills me. There is so much interesting stuff going on and they attack that.
johnny d is only fourteen? I almost feel bad about cursing him out.
Kid, you have a lot of growing up to do.
And you need better people to learn from.
Now just go away and grow up.
It’s linked at comment #14 but I guess it needs to be repeated multiple times in order to penetrate the mindset of the typical entitled ignorant vidiot rabble brigade. Law and Order SVU just aired an episode based on Brianna Wu and the actual, real, and obsessive harassment that she has been subjected to by the GG terrorists. (also trigger warning for assault) Apparently NBC is the latest victim of the lies and treachery of Brianna Wu, which proves that she is really an alien lizard feminist mastermind.
@Janine
Don’t feel bad. I’ve heard worse stuff on 4chan and Counter Strike online. I’m a big believer that free speech means the freedom to insult others.
@woozy
On 4chan we use -f*g as a generic term for a person. Someone who is European is a Euro-f*g, someone who likes to draw is a Draw-f*g, someone who is normal and socially accepted is a Normal-f*g. That where Moral-f*g comes from. It was just slang. I didn’t want to offend anyone.
Kid, you have a fucking lot of growing up to do. Please do not try to explain your use of slurs. Most of us do not give a fuck.
Also, it is not just the casual use of slurs that is off putting. It is also the casual misogyny. You are talking about issues that you do not know what it means.
Before you ever call anyone a “feminazi”, you better learn what a Nazi was. And why that the term “feminazi” was created. It is meant to be dismissive.
Now, just go away.
some advice to the younger readers here.
not everyone the internet is young this is a place where you are likely to read things by some who are old enough to be great grand parents. The posters here have a very surprising depth of experience and knowledge. I myself have learned much and been challenged by different perspectives and have grown because of it and I am most assuredly not young nor lacking in experience. Though the one thing that is on short supply here is tolerance for willful ignorance, rigid thinking and self serving bullshit.
it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt.
uncle frogy
Johnny: What Gillell said.
4chan is NOT the real world, and you don’t get to tell people what they are and aren’t offended by.
And as a gay dude, f*g is really offensive no matter how you try to parse it.
Oh, and Johnny: free speech is NOT freedom from consequences. If you use language like that, people are well within their rights to call you an asshole, a bigot, and worse.
What’s more, they’ll be correct.
Monitor Note
johnny d.
Spelling the word with a missing letter does not remove the slur. The word ‘fag’ in this context refers to a people of certain class of sexuality. Using that term as a slur is bigoted. It implies that there is something wrong with with that class of sexuality, and with people who are born into it.
It’s good that you didn’t mean to harm anyone, but the harm is still done, and your attempts to excuse your use of the slur will continue to harm.
Don’t try to excuse its use; just don’t use it.
You’re very young; I’m allowing you some leeway to learn here. If you cannot show that you have done so, and continue to make these excuses, I will recommend to PZ, as per the rules, that you be banhammered.
I don’t see this being repeated often enough. The extremely insular community on 4chan, and 8chan, and other chans seems to make many of them believe some strange things about how the world works. They come up with ridiculous theories, stupid “Operations” and feed off of each other. They do not realize that the rest of the world does not operate like this, and that they just look ridiculous, and foolish to everyone else, and no one cares about the norms that exist there. You might be able to get away with this type of thing there, but you won’t in the world outside of that.
I’m sure I once properly grammar able was to do.
I think the trollhappy world shares that quality; it’s like a particularly toxic treehouse. In the treehouse, I’m the captain of the Firefly Yun Qi, and you’re my faithful 2iC. When we leave the treehouse, though, people will laugh at our war stories if we don’t leave them behind.
What happens in the chans should stay there. It should be an inescapable singularity of sniggering evil. And its war stories really need to stay there, lest they be laughed at.
You coming away from the treehouse, johnnyd, or just on a day pass?
I think the trollhappy world shares that quality; it’s like a particularly toxic treehouse. In the treehouse, I’m the captain of the Firefly Yun Qi, and you’re my faithful 2iC. When we leave the treehouse, though, people will laugh at our war stories if we don’t leave them behind.
What happens in the chans should stay there. It should be an inescapable singularity of snickering evil. And its war stories really need to stay there, lest they be laughed at.
You coming away from the treehouse, johnnyd, or just on a day pass?
johnny d, @ 146,
It really doesn’t matter where you, in your 14 years, came upon the word fag or compounds containing it. It is alway an expression of disdain and sometimes of something much worse, a word which cannot be neutral and has no positive connotations.
Don’t believe me? Try this.
You can check that for yourself at http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=faggot
Basic humanity, with which you seem to have little contact, demands that where you use a word to which someone takes exception you have three jobs to do – apologise, stop using it and then try to understand that other person’s point of view. In this last task a little more knowledge will go a long, long way.
You were pointed to the rules of this blog way up there somewhere. Have you read them? Do you understand them?
Well, you are not on 4chan right now. Would you use that language at home with your parents? At school with your teachers?
Every community has its own standards for what is and is not acceptable language to use. These standards are not cross-transferable.
Free speech does not mean freedom to be safe from counter-speech. It does not mean freedom to not have the quality of character be judged by others based on your freely chosen speech. And it does not mean freedom to be safe from ostracization (ie banning), which is everyone else exercising their freedom of association to not deal with or pay attention to you anymore.
@Travis ‘
Have you ever been to 4chan? I recommend you check it out.
4chan was one of the few places on the internet that allowed free speech for everyone (until recently). Its still one of the free-est places on the web.
There’s a good quote from Game of Thrones. When you cut off a man’s tongue , you’re not silencing him , you’re telling the world you’re afraid of what they have to say. If someone has good ideas , why won’t they allow people to critique them in the comments section? Or why block people who are criticising them? If you’re putting your ideas out in the open marketplace of ideas people will use their free speech to respond. And be prepared to get insults if people think your ideas are dumb. That’s not harrassment. If someone makes a dumb post on 4chan you can call him on it and say what you think about OP.
Bullshit.
4chan is one of the nastiest cliques on the web.
You are confusing trolling by entitled white boys with free speech and I recommend you grow out of it.
johnny d. @ 157,
Free speech is actively encouraged on this blog. No-one owes you a platform, though, and we have decided collectively that the use of slurs and the endless repetition of pathetic excuses actually get in the way of that freedom of speech.
Is this your first visit?
You are very confused over the right of free speech. Your civil rights are only relevant if you are being censored and repressed by the government. Insulting others is entirely possible without using gendered slurs, racial slurs, homophobic slurs, or trans as a slur. ( the subject of the OP) Acting as if having high moral standards is a bad thing is entirely repugnant on its own, adding in casual bigotry does not improve your credibility.
johnny d, being able to use slurs with no one to call you out is not free speech. All it is is attacking people who are not part of the group identity.
I, as a trans lesbian would not be welcome and my free speech would be drowned out.
So, no, I want nothing to do with your little wonderland. And you do not get to drag it out as if it were a little piece of utopia without being called out.
But I guess it is nice not being the target of their collective wraith.
@johnny d.
Because there are way too many assholes who will use that comments section to try to inflict real harm.
What you call criticism, the majority of people would call harassment.
And people who scream “FREE SPEECH!” as a cover for their harassment and attempts to cause harm have no right to complain when I or anyone else exercise our own rights to make sure we don’t have to listen to that hate.
And yes, you say criticism, everyone else says harassment. There is a difference between pointing out a dumb idea, and launching a personal attack because someone said something you don’t like.
People here are giving you a lot of leeway because of your claimed age. Take advantage of that to do some learning about the things you’re talking about, else nobody here will be patient with your bullshit for long.
For those of you claim feminsists aren’t trying to censor games . look at this story.
http://orogion.deviantart.com/journal/Save-the-Boob-plate-380891149
This guy was drawing an attractive female character for the cover art for his game. Feminists were hugely offended and sent his company hate and threatening emails. Journalists threatened to blackmail his company
And all these feminist critics often disable criticism on their videos , so you can’t respond to defend this game.
He was eventually forced to change the character art for his game.
Is that free speech?
Also feminist petitioned to get GTA V pulled from target and Kmart in Australia.
They’ve already started banning songs they don’t like from college campuses in America and have banned pornography completely from Iceland. I’m anti-censorship.
Why? It’s a cesspool of low-life liars, bullshitter, and misogynists. No sane person would go there.
And if those “good ideas” are sexual slurs, death threats, and threat of rape? Nobody owes such low-life misogynists a platform. They can do what they want in their own space, not somebody else’s territory.
Yep, he is free to do want he thinks is best. You aren’t free from criticism, or being thrown out of somebody else’s turf. You obey their rules or you are gone.
You believe in what we derisively call “FREEZE PEACH” here, Every owes you a platform to say whatever you want, no matter how offensive, and everybody must LISTEN TO YOU, and not criticize you.
Sorry, you can speak your bile in the park down the street, not in my front room. My house, my rules, you are eject for death/rape threats while being criticized for being a misogynist. That is free speech.
johnny d, please explain why gratuitous violence done to sex workers is an element that must be part of a game?
Also please explain why women in many of these games must have breasts that defy the laws of physics and gravity?
You are not doing yourself any favors, kid.
Also, I want you to tell me how I would be treated at 4chan/8chan if I reveal that I am a trans lesbian. And tell me why I should be grateful of the mob mentality that insists that it is “free speech”?
johnny d. #163:
Umm. Yes, they appear to have exercised their right to free speech, in pointing out that the all-too-familiar two-saucepan-lids-and-an-iron-thong female ‘armour’ is, in fact, entirely useless as armour, and serves only one purpose: that of portraying a female warrior as a sex-object. What is being objected to is not one image, it is a trend.
Who is being censored? Fact is, free speech is being used to express ideas you happen not to like, and to guide public opinion in a direction you happen not to want it to go, and so you are calling it censorship. Why are you against free speech?
johnny d, I am a lot older than you. I’ve been online since the early 1990s, I long used usenet, and I am quite familiar with 4chan, and used to go there a lot, right from the beginning, long before you were even aware it existed.
You continue to conflate free speech with being blocked or banned. They are not silencing you, they are not cutting out your tongue. Game of Thrones is not gospel, the assumption that people ban because their ideas are weak is mistaken and born of ignorance and entitlement. Mobs of GGers make it impossible to have a good conversation, the best ideas to no rise to the top, they get trampled down and hidden by those that do not argue in good faith, and whose only goal is to get someone to stop talking, rather than discussion.
Gads, another link to Brietbart. Isn’t their motto “Fabricating lies and teaparty bias since 2006”?
Kmart and Target willingly chose to withdraw the games after public backlash. That is not censorship. That is Target listening to it’s market.
Besides, the whole affair could probably have been avoided by not advertising a violent game next on the same page of their catalog as toys for 10 year olds. (Gasp! Target made a decision and then had to deal with CONSEQUENCES!)
Tethys, why do you think that Milo Yiannopoulos is a perfect fit for Brietbart?
(I know you are already aware of that.)
johnny d
Others have already castigated you for most of your stupidity, but I’ll just note that in addition to the misogyny, transphobia and homophobia already mentioned, there’s a shitload of racism infesting 4chan as well.
Also,
Save the boob plate? Seriously? That’s your go-to? Why boob-plates are lethal.
Johnny D, what you fail to understand is that “free speech” must also include freedom from compelled speech, as one cannot speak freely unless they can choose both what to say and not say. This necessarily implies that those with platforms — this would include blogs, publishing houses, stores, etc. — are free to choose what speech they publish and/or promote. Those of us without platforms are also free to call you an asshole. and to petition platform operators to reconsider their choice to facilitate your bad behavior. All “freedom of speech” means is that the government cannot use threat of force to silence you: You’re free to self-publish in whatever way you’re able. Hell, America has even extended the concept to “Title II” common-carrier services, which will almost certainly include ISPs soon, which means you’re perfectly free to buy your own server hardware and host your own hate site. What you are not allowed to do is compel somebody else to publish opinions they don’t agree with. That being said, I’m looking forward to the inevitable fireworks display when your account gets gridfired.
Janine
Oh I would say that the ability to write hate speech and propaganda makes him eminently qualified. Not everyone has the ability to be a shameless greedy opportunistic misogynist hack. Just look at the headline at the latest link.
Moral PANIC!!?!! Oh noes! later there is this paragraph.
That last sentence is well beyond the head explode threshold of most people and as expected, the article doesn’t support this claim by johnny d.
The link goes to an article in the Guardian from 2013 on the rapey song Blurred Lines being banned from some student unions in the UK. It has some decent analysis of the subject of ratings, but seemed to be very sparse with it’s warnings of MOREL PANIC!
Sounds like johnny’s mostly upset at capitalism’s occasional failures to maintain a pristinely kyriarchal status quo.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Tethys (#174)
More particularly, it’s banned from being broadcast within public venues. It’s not like you can’t listen to it on your own device with headphones in. You just can’t force other people to listen to it.
johnny d.
Since you’re young I’ll be easier on you, and the first step is giving you some resources. Here is a link explaining what rape culture is, it’s part of roundup of sexism education links (you might want to look at a more general social justice link roundup). At the very least read the first link, you are in desperate need of some basic education.
Speaking of which, the reason I laughed at you about posting the link to Encyclopedia Dramatica is because it’s not a reputable source, it does no research and it is at best intentionally satirical. Even the actual Wikipedia, the one place where you have to have a reputable to post anything, is itself merely a start to gaining knowledge and not fully reliable. That’s why most teachers won’t accept papers based on Wikipedia (and no one will accept anything from Dramatica).
You’re already seeing that not only the commenters here are disagreeing with your ideas, they disagree even with the words you use and the mean you think they have. That’s because, simply put, you’re ignorant about their actual meaning. “Free speech”, “hate speech”, “racism”, “feminism”, etc, are all philosophical or scientific concepts that had tens of thousands books written about them. A chan post, no matter how good you think it is, offers no new insights to the researchers and philosophers that study these matters.
This forum has a large contingent of researchers of all fields and of philosophers. Please listen to them when they tell you that you don’t understand how certain words or arguments work and educate yourself about it (for example, you might want to read John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty which explains the Harm Principle, as well other Utilitarian works since they are the ones that presented the modern idea of Free Speech).
Finally, others have already engaged your points, so I’ll only add this: I catalogue games in my free time. If there was any threat to Gaming, I would have known about. For the moment the greatest threat are the proponents of GamerGate since by their own actions they portray all gamers as violent, entitled babies.
P.S.
It’s amusing that a dev of Divinity: Original Sin is complaining about “censorship” when Rhianna Pratchett (yes, that Pratchett), the writer and creator for earlier Divinity games is a feminist and is very much in favor of expanding the roles and representations of women in games. Funny that she’s not writing Original Sin, though.
I suppose for at least some Gamergaters this might have been a factor, via pattern-matching error: the last several times the content of games became a topic of discussion, there WAS an explicit, broad, and highly motivated effort to ban certain kinds of, or at least heavily restrict their sale (with, contemptibly, the support of a nontrivial number of “progressive” figures). By the time they figured out it was a false alarm, sunk-cost-fallacy took over. >.>
Not that this is really any better.
Iceland, population around 350,000. Has law on books since the 1940s banning pornography, which is not defined. Prosecutions under that act? Apparently “sporadic” at best. I could not find cases of convictions. The Internet ban seems to have been an election issue. Still some work going on there writing the law, but not on the books at present.
UK, Population 64 million, 2003 Communications Act amended to “filter” out internet access to porn. Far more striking example of change in law and it is actually being put into effect.
johnnyd, is the law only a bad idea if feminists propose it? Are you going to go on to call out far more active and far reaching examples of such laws? I suspect you will not as your point is supposed to be the evils of feminism. My point is, are you just against feminism or are you actually trying to make a point about civil rights? If anti-feminism only, why? If not, how do you pick the groups you go after?
Please note that I haven’t even touched on the nature of what sort of thing is said to and of women like Brianna Wu, Anita Sarkeesian, and the ever popular Rebecca Watson. You say insults are OK! How do bomb threats fit into that? Death threats? Rape threats? Those are coming from the anti-feminists, by the way. Those sorts of statements and threats are what the commenters here are against.
I don’t think this is precisely what you mean to say, given that some people “take exception to” words like “patriarchy” and “rape culture.”
Johnny D-
I will reiterate, as you’re young enough you haven’t had Civics in high school yet:
FREE SPEECH refers explicitly the fact that the GOVERNMENT CANNOT punish you for speaking.
Free speech DOES NOT MEAN that everyone MUST listen to you, that no one can criticize you, that you cannot face social consequences for your speech, that you can speak anywhere you want.
If you come into my house, and start spouting off about ‘fags’, I will tell you to STFU and GTFO of my house. This action is not in any way, shape, or form, limiting your right of free speech.
What you are whining about (and make no mistake, you are whining) is people facing social consequences for their speech. Boycotts are people expressing distaste for something a company is doing. Writing letters to complain about sexist and sexualized armor is a way of expressing distaste. It’s exercising their right to the same free speech you’re whining about. If someone tells me that the dragons I draw are awful because they don’t have scales (I HATE drawing scales), I am perfectly within my rights to tell them that I’m drawing them the way I want. That artist could have said the same thing, but drawing women as *things* versus people the way men are drawn is typically frowned upon when it’s pointed out. People don’t like having their sexist tendencies pointed out. It makes them whiny and defensive. Kind of like your whiny defensiveness over the use of the word fag.
Stop regurgitating talking points from 4-chan (and yes, I’ve been there. Fuck 4-chan) and GG and actually LOOK at the statistics, and LOOK at the harassment and LOOK at the content of their tweets and ask yourself if that shit is really okay.
@johnny d. #163
Wait. You think this is a bad thing? You object to people writing petitions? Are you against free speech?
GTA V is available from many vendors in Australia. It has not been censored. Kmart and Target are private companies, and can choose what they sell and don’t sell. Do you think private companies should be forced to stock and sell a product that they don’t want to sell?
Depend on what boards. Boards like /pol/ and /b/ are extremely transphobic/homophobic , so I wouldn’t go there. Boards like /lgbt/ and /leftpol/ are more accepeting.
People get doxxed for all kinds of dumb reasons on 4chan/8chan. ( A guy got doxed for “white knighting” and moralising on /b/ the other day) . Be careful what personal information you do put there if we decide to go.
Free speech is important so that all ideas can be expressed and heard. I don’t defend what they say on those boards , but they have the right to say it.
By “forced”, do you mean threatened with jail? That would have been a violation of free speech.
But if people just threatened to boycott his game, then that’s healthy debate and a great example of free speech: Developers want to make money, so they love getting feedback about whether their design decisions are helping sales or hurting them.
But I’m confused. Earlier, you said, ” I think moral[izing] on the internet is dumb.” And yet, here you are, on the Internet, debating the morality of self-censorship in response to customer feedback. How do you decide which moral issues can be discussed on the internet? Is your reasoning something like, “Sexism doesn’t affect me, so people shouldn’t waste time talking about it. Videogame ‘censorship’ does affect me, so we must debate the problem until we’ve found a solution that I’m happy with.”
It isn’t a be and end all though. Some ideas, like slavery is good, should never be expressed unless you expect a lot of pushback. There is no problem saying things. There are problems with you, or anybody else, saying something stupid, unevidenced, and misogynic, and not expecting to be called on it. That is OUR free speech to criticize YOU. Don’t like it, talk elsewhere, not here. Nobody has to offer you a platform or agree with you. OUR free speech.
johnny d. #182:
The speech is a right. The audience isn’t.
johnny, you are not paying attention….
So, johnny d, in order for me to be safe in your little slice of free speech utopia, I would have to pretend to be a straight white man. Otherwise, I will have to watch their “superior arguments” attack who I am. So, either, I have to suppress my own free speech or have people tell me that I am sick, that I am filth, that I deserve to be raped, that I deserve to die. (Do not think I am exaggerating about any of that.)
Forgive me if I am not excited to visit, what is in your secluded mind, the greatest place on the net.
Kid, at this point in time, even though you love to play with slurs and expect others to put up with it, you are still a rather stupid and very self centered child.
And if I was your mother, I would be very careful about where I would allow you to visit on the net.
Johnny d, I note that quite a few of us have repeatedly told you what free speech actually is, and that you continue to spout your fairy tale idea of what it is.
I am beginning to think you are being quite dishonest.
THAT was feminists exercising THEIR right to free speech.
There was no law that FORCED Target and Kmart to pull that game in Australia. Those two companies CHOSE to do so, because they exercised THEIR right to LISTEN to whatever free speech they wanted to.
This is the journalists exercising THEIR right to free speech.
Because their right to free speech means they get to publish, in their own publications, whatever they wish to, for whatever reason they wish, as well as NOT publish whatever they wish NOT to, for whatever reason they wish.
Free speech does not protect you from the consequences of OTHER people’s free speech, which includes their right to ignore you and their right NOT to talk about you.
Johnny, you’re only 14. Hey, when I was 14, I had some internet habits that I wasn’t too proud of myself. I’m not going to shame you for the fact that you’re a 14 year old on 4chan. Lots of guys your age do that. I did myself for a while, but I’ve abandoned that shithole of a site and the culture associated with it. It’s a cesspool of sexism, hatred, and a huge amount of people who post there lack critical thinking skills. There are much, much better places on the internet for you to be.
The thing that you are whining about is the fact that many people with websites that allow user comments are exercising their free speech by controlling content via deleting comments and blocking people. If that’s such a huge problem to you, think of how great your life is, since you obviously don’t have any serious hardships in it. Do you know why adults don’t care about what you are complaining about? It’s because we have bigger fish to fry in life, and people deleting bigoted comments or blocking assholes on their personal sites is a total non-issue that nobody gives a shit about, and your complaints about it show that you don’t understand free speech very well. I’m guessing that you probably spend a lot of time online. Maybe you should use that to go learn about real injustices in the world.
Also, the fact that homophobic slurs are in the local slang of 4chan and have been for a very long time pretty much speaks for itself. Fuck that culture.
Privilege is fascinating…it makes people blind. You think that 4chan is an open place where free speech is guaranteed and everyone is free to express themselves….but you only think that because you are part of the dominating group. Everybody else, who isn’t, can instantly tell that it is a corrosive place where people impose their bigotry on everybody else and where dissent from the status quo is strongly punished.
I wanted to elaborate on the subject of the use of terms like “moralf*agging”. I’m very familiar with this idea people have that this new forms of slang have redefined the word so that no offense is implied. I encounter it constantly, even with close friends of mine. I’m sick and tired of trying to explain how that is complete and utter fucking horsehit. Tell me, exactly, how using that terminology is not explicitely atributting a very clear negative connotation to a word that is used as a slur for non-heterosexuals. I hope that you won’t be dishonest enough to pretend that people in your community think “moralf*agging” is a good thing….we all know that it’s not….it’s a bad thing. Why do you think it is ok to equate “bad thing” with “word for homosexual”? And how exactly is that supossed to not be offensive, bigoted and homophobic? You may not be expressedly meaning to offend…you might even think yourself an accepting person, who has no problem with LGBTQA people….and yet, not only are you fine with using a slur that identifies those people and giving it a negative connotation, but you are also annoyed that people would call you out on using it. How dare people be offended by being vilified and demonized by others in a possition of privilege who know nothing about how it feels to be a member of a group that is discriminated against even by the people who claim to be their allies? Don’t they realise that your freedom to use words that make them feel like shit is more important than they not feeling like they live in a society that humilliates them for no reason whatsoever? I mean, we are not burning homosexuals anymore…so being abused, othered and laughed at should be no big deal in comparisson, right? Specially since you, and others like you, enjoy using that slang because you find it funny…surely, the affected people should be happy to pay that small price for your benefit, right?
The truth is, that the word has not been redefined to acquire a non-offensive meaning. It’s just being repurposed to include a new, but still fully negative meaning….and when you use a word that identifies a certain group of people, and you use it to mean something negative….you are definitely, without a doubt, 100% being, in this case, homophobic.
Whining about how it wasn’t your intent does absolutely nothing to change that, it just showcases how little you care that you haven’t even bothered to consider why people are offended…
If you want people to not be offended, then don’t imply that there is something wrong with being one of them, which is precisely what you are doing every single time you use slang like that.
Whoops, you might be wondering what the point of using an asterisk is if i’m going to still use all the letters…
I have my reasons…shut up….
johnny d.
I know, by now you’re probably feeling put upon. I can sympathize. And people treat you like a fucking kid, because for them, you know, you are.
That sucks.
But really, try to listen and learn something.
Actually, I think you know most of the stuff, you’re just bad at connecting your internet brain with your meat space brain.
You know that there are consequences for insulting people in meat space. You also know that there are different consequences depending on how much power the other person has. Call your mum an idiot and all hell breaks loose. Call the small kid without friends who sits alone at lunch an idiot and you probably get patted on the back by people who are also bullies.
What you are currently objecting to is the small kid turning into the principal.
Your free speech isn’t under attack. People criticising boob-plates and saying “I won’t publish that shit” is not censorship.
Also, publishing the 1687646168442th game/comic/whatever with a hyersexualized woman isn’t exactly a new idea that needs to be heard. It’s a very old idea that is currently being discarded for good.
And some funny and educational material: 5 insane things comic books believe women’s bodies can do.
At 14 Johnny is already a dishonest reactionary right wing misogynist sleaze. I wouldn’t waste my time on him.
johnny d.
And yet here you are crying us a river about people expressing and hearing ideas you don’t like. Funny that.
“On 4chan we use -f*g as a generic term for a person.”
Since you’re young, I’ll give you some advice: It doesn’t matter that there is a place that it is commonly accepted to use a slur on a regular basis. It is still a slur.
Here’s some more advice: Frequenting a place where such a slur is an accepted and ordinary part of communication is probably a bad idea. Trying to use the common usage of such a slur in such a place to defend your own casual use of it isn’t really a defense, and it makes you look even worse.
Now here’s some advice from a lawyer: You have no idea what free speech is, or how it works.
I’ve never been in a GamerGate space — one established by and for GGers to discuss GG-related issues and activities, exchange information, and plan strategy — but I understand from those who have, such as David Futrelle, that whay thet talk about is how horrible femininity is, how to protect gaming (and nerd culture in general) as a male preserve, how to most effectively go after those on the side of social justice, and so on. What they don’t talk about, except as it pertains to those things, is journalistic ethics.
—
4chan still exists as a site, right? The more odious aspects may be toned down now, but it’s still there, no? Also, is there evidence that m00t’s girlfriend is cheating, is it the assertion of someone whose nose was put out of joint by his actions, or is it just a stands-to-reason because she’s a woman and Zoë Quinn is also a woman?
—
I was about as much of a narr at 14 as johnny d, but I had the benefit of not finding a community of apparent adults who assured me that my narrishkeit was acceptable and appropriate, and discouraged me from outgrowing it.
Not unrelated, I’m seeing something like the tourist’s fallacy from him — overlooking that there are people older than he is, people more experienced on the internet and in life generally than he is, people who know things he doesn’t and have experiences he hasn’t even heard of.
Jonny,
When you say everyone’s ideas should be heard, you mean all white, straight, cis men (and boys apparently. *cringe*) who are bigots. You are calling women who use their free speech Nazis. You aren’t pro-freedom. You are pro-shut up unless you are like me and hate all the right people. You think 4chan is fun because it is a place where entitled white boys can be awful and get patted on the back for it. It’s the very dregs of the internet. Do your parents know that you frequent a place where kiddie porn is shared and campaigns to drive trans people to suicide are considered good fun? Because in my house, there would be a moratorium on all tech until you got your head out of your ass. It would not be any different to me than if I caught you hanging out on the corner with guys who used slurs, passed around “revenge pron”, stalked and terrorized minorities and catcalled women. You’d be on lock down so fast for showing such poor judgment and bankrupt morality.
You are are also denying threats and harassment that are well documented and the fact that you are indeed a ‘gater. We get that alot here. “I’m not an MRA, but here is every single MRA make believe talking point.” We’re not as easily fooled as say…you are. Age may only be a number, but education and experience make a difference. Once you have more of both, I think you’ll change your mind.
I realize that you have never written a research paper so you have probably not been taught how to know if you are citing a good source. You need to spend more time on your basic education and less time on a place where pederasts exchange depictions of child rape, if you want to less easily be made a fool and a bigoted asshole.
You can start by learning the definitions of the words you use.
It’s fascinating to me. You know in my time (when dinosaurs roamed the earth), children at the age of fourteen, myself included, generally parroted the political views of their families of origin, mainly parents if applicable, despite what friends and other acquaintances’ view were. Then at round about 16 or so, you started to rebel against the authority of your parents (leaning more towards the view of your friends) and eventually trying to find your own answers and your own identity.
These days, children parrot their parents’ views until they start to rebel, but instead of starting to question ideas and sifting through them, they almost immediately find a place to “belong” to online, preferably a place their parents wouldn’t approve of. Then they uncritically accept this new group’s views as their own in the same way that they uncritically accepted their parents’ views as their own before they started rebelling, and without actually going through a phase of questioning views and testing them against reality and identity.
One of the problems is, with these new groups on hand, they don’t feel the need to rebel, because these groups don’t exert authority over their lives the way parents do over a teen’s life. So they get stuck in this mode where they uncritically accept whatever shit the group’s views are without questioning it, and constantly getting reinforcement that they are “cool” and “accepted” as long as they agree with the group’s views and regulations, and are seldom if ever placed in a position where they even think about what they’re agreeing with.
Like the younger kids on the chans literally cannot understand that people’s views can change as they become older and more mature and more conscious of being a decent person with socio-political responsibilities, maybe because many of the “older” people on the chans are still immature with little to no ability to accept responsibility in general, not to mention the fact that they’re almost all white cis het manbabies with so little exposure to other cultures, ideas and realities and that many of them only say outrageous things for the sake of being outrageous and as a form of escaping from their real life day-to-day responsibilities, not because it’s actually based in truth, yet the young members are unable to discern this and accept whatever is said uncritically as the truth.
So now these older immature and irresponsible members of their “in-group” serve to mentor only further immaturity and irresponsibility, further reinforcing this kind of behaviour and forming a cycle.
In any case, johnnyd, I can honestly say that my views when I was 14 are embarassing to remember. Even my views when I was 24 are embarassing for me to look back on. So if people treat you like you’re a child, it’s mostly because you pretty much still are a child and there’s still hope for you, if you start to pull your fucking head out of your fucking ass and start asking the hard questions and looking the difficult answers, the answers that make you uncomfortable and threaten your cushy, easy life, square in the eye. If you are brave enough, nay, decent enough to do that, you’ll turn out just fine. Otherwise, you’ll continue to be the classic villain in this comic book of life.
(I wonder how many GGers realize that they are casting themselves and their movement as the villain in this episode? What do they think someone like Batman or Wolverine, or hell, Thor, since he was brought up earlier in the thread, would do in this situation? Do they honestly think he would side with them and go “oh sure, the bitch deserved every death threat and rape threat she got, it’s all just words on a screen and destroy her for daring to use her right to free speech”? Or would he, as I believe he would, act against those who would sink to such vile depths and their supporters? /endtangent)
It’s fascinating to me. You know in my time (when dinosaurs roamed the earth), children at the age of fourteen, myself included, generally parroted the political views of their families of origin, mainly parents if applicable, despite what friends and other acquaintances’ view were. Then at round about 16 or so, you started to rebel against the authority of your parents (leaning more towards the view of your friends) and eventually trying to find your own answers and your own identity.
These days, children parrot their parents’ views until they start to rebel, but instead of starting to question ideas and sifting through them, they almost immediately find a place to “belong” to online, preferably a place their parents wouldn’t approve of. Then they uncritically accept this new group’s views as their own in the same way that they uncritically accepted their parents’ views as their own before they started rebelling, and without actually going through a phase of questioning views and testing them against reality and identity.
One of the problems is, with these new groups on hand, they don’t feel the need to rebel, because these groups don’t exert authority over their lives the way parents do over a teen’s life. So they get stuck in this mode where they uncritically accept whatever shit the group’s views are without questioning it, and constantly getting reinforcement that they are “cool” and “accepted” as long as they agree with the group’s views and regulations, and are seldom if ever placed in a position where they even think about what they’re agreeing with.
Like the younger kids on the chans literally cannot understand that people’s views can change as they become older and more mature and more conscious of being a decent person with socio-political responsibilities, maybe because many of the “older” people on the chans are still immature with little to no ability to accept responsibility in general, not to mention the fact that they’re almost all white cis het manbabies with so little exposure to other cultures, ideas and realities and that many of them only say outrageous things for the sake of being outrageous and as a form of escaping from their real life day-to-day responsibilities, not because it’s actually based in truth, yet the young members are unable to discern this and accept whatever is said uncritically as the truth.
So now these older immature and irresponsible members of their “in-group” serve to mentor only further immaturity and irresponsibility, further reinforcing this kind of behaviour and forming a cycle.
In any case, johnnyd, I can honestly say that my views when I was 14 are embarassing to remember. Even my views when I was 24 are embarassing for me to look back on. So if people treat you like you’re a child, it’s mostly because you pretty much still are a child and there’s still hope for you, if you start to pull your fucking head out of your fucking ass and start asking the hard questions and looking the difficult answers, the answers that make you uncomfortable and threaten your cushy, easy life, square in the eye.
If you are brave enough, nay, decent enough to do that, you’ll turn out just fine. Otherwise, you’ll continue to be the classic villain in this comic book of life.
(I wonder how many GGers realize that they are casting themselves and their movement as the villain in this episode? What do they think someone like Batman or Wolverine, or hell, Thor, since he was brought up earlier in the thread, would do in this situation? Do they honestly think he would side with them and go “oh sure, the bitch deserved every death threat and rape threat she got, it’s all just words on a screen and destroy her for daring to use her right to free speech”? Or would he, as I believe he would, act against those who would sink to such vile depths and their supporters? /endtangent)
johhny d @ 134:
You think that your use of bigoted, hateful, unthinking slurs is offensive only to GLBT peoples? You need to give that brain of yours some fucking exercise before you lose it to complete atrophy.
Or you could just say what I spent almost 15 minutes typing, in a comment that the spam filter seems to have et.
It is attitudes like this that produce more dishonest reactionary right wing misogynist sleazes.
Besides, replying to him doesn’t take much time at all.
@196 Jim Balter
But you had enough spare time to insult and alienate a child. How generous of you.
If anyone with terribly missguided ideas deserves time being spent on them, surely that’s a 14 year old….
@201 Caine
Thanks for that, reading that made happy :)
I writes well good.
make that “Thanks for that, reading your post made me happy :)”.
Jim Balter @ 196:
At 14 Johnny is
already a dishonest reactionary right wing misogynist sleaze. I wouldn’t waste my time on him.a very young person, who has not yet had a wealth of experience to aid them in thinking through a variety of large issues. Johnny is also a 14 year old who has been exposed and immersed in a pit of unthinking, biased, bad influence. If nothing else, a round of sound argument and critique is very good for the ol’ thinking muscle, and people generally benefit from such, no matter their age.I expect there were more than a few people who considered writing you off at 14 years old, Jim. I also expect it was a good thing they didn’t go with that impulse. You need to work on being less of an asshole, because right now, you don’t sound much older than 14.
When my oldest son came to live with me he was 6. He had already been taught that he should not like black people and when school started he was upset that his teacher was a black woman.
By the end of the year he loved his teacher and knew it was stupid to judge people by their skin color. Even when they are trained up to hate, they can be taught right from wrong.
I don’t know how much of a cult mentality there is in the *chan verse, but writing off a channer doesn’t help matters.
This is why I changed how I was talking to him, because he is still a child. While I do not expect him to change his mind as a direct result of the words in this thread, I do hope it is a small part of him being a real functioning adult.
Also, I am scared of what all of us believed in when we were fourteen.
Janine:
Word. There’s no stupid in the world quite like fourteen year old stupid.
When you plant a seed you do not know for sure if it will ever flourish. You do not know for sure how good the soil is. You may even have reason to believe that the soil is not ideal.
Does this mean it is not worthwhile to try plant that seed? Only if planting that seed is very difficult and costly, and the resources are better used elsewhere.
But the seed in this case is cheap. Perhaps it will not grow. Likely we will not see it grow for a while. But if it should grow, the benefit would be enormous.
So what is there to lose in trying?
While
makes you happy, Well, I’m amused.
When I was 14 I was campaigning for the California Fair Housing Act. There are great kids out there who could really use your help.
Word.
Back in the days I knew a guy who’d only wear long sleeved shirts, no matter what. Because at 16 he’d been a Nazi and tatooed himself with badly done Nazi symbols and slogans. At 18 he was standing up against his former “friends”, at great personal risk, doing anti-fascist and anti-racist work.
Obviously, somebody wasted their time on him…
I wonder if you were able to project like that when you were 14, or if it took longer to develop the skill. Maturity certainly isn’t your long suit.
If I actually thought that this was the place, or the way, to rescue little Johnny’s mind, I’d give it a go, but that’s just an ego-serving conceit, a game you’re playing.
Jim Balter @ 212
Admonishing the kid to use their brain is not equivalent to recommending that others abandon them to fucking 4chan.
Congratulations on having had adults in your life who influenced you to spend your time in that way…oh wait…
Or are you going to claim that you emerged from the womb a fully fledged human rights activist?
And there are badly misguided kids out there who could also use help. Because taking a few moments to educate this particular kid is something we all have to do instead of helping kids who meet your standards. Or are you only in favor of helping people who are already on the right path?
Jim Balter:
Yes, there are. There are also a fucktonne of potentially great kids out there, some who are misguided, others who are in impossibly bad situations, some who are surrounded by adults intent on breaking them in new and interesting ways each day of their life, who struggle in isolation to build and keep some sense of themselves, some who are surrounded by bigoted asshole adults and have no other information to go by, and they could really use your help.
You are a fucking asshole, and worse, an asshole who takes pride in being an asshole. You should be ashamed.
I’m ashamed for you.
You’re doing quite a bit more that “not giving it a go”.
You are, through your rhetoric, actively trying to discourage other people from “giving it a go.”
Why, may I ask, have you chosen to invest your apparently precious time in doing THAT?
Do you know what the people you are responding to do in the time away from the internet? Do you know what kids, great or not, they are helping right now?
Are you aware, perchance, of the times in the past when a “great kid” (I recall Chiroptera, for one) appeared here, and was welcomed with open arms?
It is not as if we “wasted” lots of effort searching for and finding Johnny. He came here on his own accord. All we had to do was spend a few seconds typing. Typing which, I might add, most of would have done anyways, commenting here on this and other things, even if he had not appeared.
This is a “found” opportunity to do some small good in the world, which costs us almost nothing. Perhaps the good is small in the big scheme of things, but the ratio of small over infinetismal is infinity.
And here you are, begrudging even that.
Frankly, regardless of what you may or may not have campaigned for when you were 14, it seems you could have benefited from more compassionate adult influence yourself. Summarily writing off another human being, and actively trying to persuade other people to similarly write off that human being, is not what decent compassionate human beings do.
And I didn’t say they were equivalent. The charge was “insult and alienate a child” … only the most grossly dishonest sort of person would deny that “You need to give that brain of yours some fucking exercise before you lose it to complete atrophy” is insulting. And it’s hardly the first insulting statement made here. But the parade of intellectual dishonesty will continue, as it always has.
Caine should be proud to elicit such a reaction from you.
jim Balter
I disagree completely. IMO he is just a naive kid with too little supervision, who has learned some fairly horrific slang, and been steeped in the sewer that is reddit/4chan culture. Nobody is irredemable, and though johnny is not good at critical thinking now, that does not mean that he is unable to learn or is doing anything worse than repeating lies he has read or heard on the internet. Even if he never changes his mind about GG, he did learn about using slurs, demonstrated actual contrition, and apologized for using it. This puts him (at 14) miles ahead of the mindset of Milo Yiannopoulos.
Another non sequitur strawman.
I wrote one line in which I said I wouldn’t waste my time on him. I wrote it because it’s my honest view. No one is obligating you to agree, or to not spend time as you wish. It’s one of those “free expressions” … but you, and a number of others here, are as hypocritical about that as is Johnny. And all this hyper reaction because … OMG, he’s 14 … it’s not honest. That’s my real, genuine view. If expressing that makes me an asshole to you, then you are an asshole to me.
Goodbye.
That’s fine that you disagree with me, and you may well be right … neither of us knows him personally.
I appreciate that you simply expressed your view about what I wrote instead of going off your rocker because Johnny is 14 and being a gigantic projecting asshole like some others.
Actually, I think he is relatively intelligent and even idealistic in his way. He believes firmly in free speech which is a worthwhile thing to believe in. But he’s living in a pretty sheltered community and not really aware how insular it is.
These grapes sure are sour.
Woozy #224
I would say he firmly believes he should be heard. Not that he should reciprocate, listen, and learn when other people speak.
Sigh.. Ran across some ranting porn star recently. Seems a friend of hers was actually attacked, and.. she thought it would be a brilliant idea to ask Anita to help her out, and got ignored, so… being a clueless twit, she decided to rant about how “modern feminists don’t give a damn about women who have suffered real assault, unlike the whiny people attacked in #Gamergate, and.. of course, her campaign to raise money to help has been picked up by the trolls from the same, who want to show off how much they so, so, so.. *do* care (at least about women who will take their clothes off for them).
Seriously.. If I was someone who had just went through shit, and had lots of difficulties of my own, and some twit showed up demanding I personally help them… my reaction would probably by to dump the email in spam, along with all the other BS hitting my inbox too. I doubt she even saw this nuts plea for help, never mind consciously rejected it. And, of course, its proof to this person, which makes one seriously wonder about how much ranting BS about gamergate and feminists my have been in her request to start with, that the basement trolls where the ones that got everything right.
I really hope this whole nonsensical mess of gibberish will, one day, finally get buried in a toxic waste dump, where it belongs.
I don’t disagree.
Several people have pointed out how opposed he is to various acts of speech by others. You’re right, his framing of importance of free speech is idealistic, but when you get down to the details he is quite hypocritical.
His worldview is self-centered. Not atypical for a teenager.
Oh, lookit, johnny is not the only teenager in our midst.
If I were Johnny, I would be insulted by the patronization. It’s worth noting that, when Nerd called him a “misogynist fuckwit”, he didn’t break stride.
If this was HONESTLY what you were doing, you would have left it at that and not made any of your other inflammatory statements afterwards. And the wording of the phrase “I wouldn’t waste my time on him”, as opposed to say, “I’m not wasting my time on him” is in 99%+ usages, one not merely of expression a personal opinion, but of exhorting others to agree with you and act as you do.
So yes you damn well did come across as attempting to convince others do as you would, and continued to come across as such over the course of several responses. And you went to far as to pull a fucking “Dear Muslima” with your putrid “there are great kids out there who could really use your help” statement. To claim now that “all” you were doing was “expressing an opinion” is grossly disingenuous.
And your claim that others are being “hypocritical” about Johnny because we have decided to adopt a teaching/guiding tone is flat out ludicrous and frankly disgusting.
And if that is your real, genuine view, well then, those are the views of assholes.
Goodbye indeed.
Jim Balter
And Malala Yousafzai faced down the fucking Taliban. What does that have to do with the price of butter? You also forgot that you had to walk 10 miles in the snow for doing so.
You don’t think it’s worthwhile spending a few lines on educating Johnnie*?
Fine. Don’t do so!**
But I’m personally sick and tired of guys who think that their personal opinion translates into imperatives for my doing.
*Who ever said it’s all about Johnnie? He’s probably wandered off already. But over the years we’ve had lots of people telling us how the comments we wrote educated them and helped them understanding.
**Oh the irony of you wasting so much time telling everybody how they’re wasting so much time instead of helping the good kids.
The ship has long since sailed, but I just can’t leave this…
Wu did not call criticism of her code bullying. Another not-even-half truth from GamerGate. The Reddit thread where it was submitted (and where Wu replied in good humour) was heavily brigaded and transphobic comments were voted to the top. Not that saying this will make any difference, but it’s so frustrating hearing GGers’ blatantly dishonest and self serving versions of events.
Amphiox @ 220:
Thanks.
“doing”? I said that was my honest view … that’s not an “ing”. Nothing about my other actions — which were reactions to reactions to what I wrote — has any bearing on my statement. The claim that, if were doing one thing, I wouldn’t do another — in this case respond to attacks on me — is stupid and grossly dishonest.
I said it’s an expression of my view … it’s my opinion of what’s an appropriate response. Feel free to stick “If I were you …” in front of it. And again, you blatantly lie … an exhortation is “an address or communication emphatically urging someone to do something”. And even if I had “emphatically urged” anyone to do anything — which I obviously did not — so the eff what? Again, “No one is obligating you to agree, or to not spend time as you wish.”
You are so focused on me and tossing all your strawman constructions at me because you are deeply, fundamentally, an angry judgmental jackass who is determined to get the better of someone. You don’t give a flying eff about Johnny. Like I said, it’s a game for you … those are my honest beliefs. But they don’t pick your pocket or break your leg.
I’m sick and tired of liars but I know they never cease. I never said anything about an imperative … that’s Amphiox’s construction, and now yours. Again, do what you want … what other possibility is there? I’m not exerting any control over you.
Sheesh.
,blockquote> because you are deeply, fundamentally, an angry judgmental jackass who is determined to get the better of someone This is the most clueless statement made in this thread so far, including every lie spouted by johhny. If you despise this place so much, why are you here?
arggh…borkquote…sorry
More lies. I wrote one line saying “I wouldn’t waste my time” … it didn’t take “so much time”. No more time would have been spent if it had been left there. But some people made it all about me, and I responded. That’s the way these things go, as any remotely intellectually honest person knows about these all too human interactions.
Tethys:
Oh, to herald the news that Pharyngula has become such a corrupt pit, full of intellectually dishonest people, not at all like when the old clique ruled things, ya know. (I know you don’t hang in Tdome, so Jim Balter is the former Truth Machine.)
/derail
No, it’s clueful and true.
When I use hyperbole I admit it to myself … do you do the same?
Another lie … in response to my statement about one person who was engaged in a sustained attack on me. Meanwhile I had some very interesting and substantive discussions with Owlmirror and consciousness razor in Thunderdome … interspersed with attacks from a few jackasses. As I commented there, this is a place where you find mature intelligent people like Sastra and Owlmirror next to … well, people quite different. I don’t despise the place but I do despise some of what happens here.
Anyway, I spent years here and won’t be doing that again.
Except that I haven’t said any of that or anything like it. And there never was an “old clique” or anyone (other than PZ) who “ruled things” — what an incredible pile of vile stupidity.
Jim Balter #242:
Best news I’ve read all day.
Here’s a little addition to the ‘when I was 14’ sub-thread. I was getting the shit kicked out of me by a father whose favourite sneer was ‘You’re not worth the effort.’
@243, as you seem fond of tu quoque, that last sentence was more about projection than Mercator was. What an angry waste of pixels you are; were this an actual room, I suspect the rest of us would now be running short of oxygen, or just running, from the angry jerk who wants to just piss in the punch and call it freeze peach.
Oy.
What an arsehole.
Daz @ 244:
When I was 14, I was reeling from the discovery that the family member who had raped me for six years previously (and stopped when I was 9 years old), decided I was rape-worthy again. So, yeah, some of us had things on our mind, eh?
Right, Caine blatantly lies about me and I note that I never said any of that, but I’m the projector. I see that some of the same nefarious elements are still here …
Yeah, now everything bad that ever happened to any 14 year old rests on my shoulders because I said something harsh about a kid who is calling people feminazis.
We’re all entitled to some.
I’ll take this opportunity to thank all those older and wiser than me for helping me become a better person when I was a teenager. I was a repulsive piece of shit back then, but some people didn’t lose hope and engaged my poisonous views – some with mockery and ridicule, some with suggestions for self-improvement. It was this two-pronged approach that allowed me to change my views.
Good thing that I completed my change several months before I was conscripted.
Caine #246:
Indeed. The odd thing, looking back on it, is that being made to believe I was quite literally not worth the effort it would take to correct/instruct me, actually hurt more, in some ways, than the beating; and certainly caused the longest-lasting damage.
Which, via some frankly maudlin thought processes I’d rather not re-indulge in, leads to the statement: Do not ever tell children that, or treat them as if, they are not worth such effort.
Also, the irony of this argument taking place under an OP by a dedicated educator is, well, kinda stunning.
Jim Balter #248
DEAR FUCKING GOD! SHUT UP!!
Caine is talking about how she was raped and all you can do is talk about your poor self?! You are nothing short of scum!
Jim Balter
I have been lurking in t-dome, and commenting on this thread. Your condescension and low opinion of the horde is clear, but I still do not understand your need to come onto this thread and insult anyone who engaged with johnny, or took issue with your initial insulting comment. Isn’t that behavior exactly what you claim to despise?
Jim Balter,
If you were not so sure of your superior judgement you would have shut up and gone away long since. May we remind you that people in need of help or a little broadening of perspective are not often best placed to pass your personal test of worthiness.
I think of Walton who came here years ago, highly educated – which johnny is not – but with his world view a little constricted, a little rigid, possibly because of the milieu in which he then found himself. We argued with him and to his credit he argued back. Johnny does not. He simply refers to a script only half of the words in which he understands. He does not address the many cogent points made.
With Walton it was a hard fight, lasting over a year as I recall it, but he followed some of the leads we all gave him, checked out facts and managed to get both an Oxford First and a Harvard Masters in the meantime. Now as a barrister he is working in a tough area of law, having successes and the odd failure, funding some pro bono work himself and campaigning in his “spare” time. He has never once complained about the thorough going-over the denizens of this blog gave him.
I’ve never met him personally but I regard him now as a friend when initially he raised every hackle I had. And then some!
Yet you would write johnny off when he is still ill-equipped to argue with us. Your choice, of course, but it does not impress me.
Daz @ 250:
I could not possibly agree with that more. Right there with you. I went through that too, years of being told I was stupid (I wasn’t, nor are you, but that doesn’t matter when you’re having that hammered into your psyche) – that fucks you up so very much, and having that extra “oy, you aren’t worth it”? Beyond destructive.
You’re mighty sure of that judgment.
The actual reason I haven’t gone away is because I haven’t slept so my neurotic tendency toward obsession is amplified.
So many people here really have no sense of what it means to be intellectually honest. And no this isn’t something new, contrary to Caine’s lie about what I’ve said; I addressed intellectual dishonesty from when I first posted here years ago.
Except for my first one liner, I have only responded to attacks on me. Had they ever stopped, that would have stopped me. Of course I’ll stop anyway because I haven’t slept for a day … that will be good news for me, certainly.
A bit of information about human nature: telling people to shut up on line doesn’t work. Learn more more effective strategies … see above.
Perhaps you could understand it if you would stop lying about what I have done.
Jim Balter:
Did you never realize that everything is not about you? You did not say something harsh about a kid. You made a definitive judgement about a 14 year old, stating that they should be written off. The rest of us disagree with your judgement, and in the course of that disagreement, are managing to have a discussion about being 14 years old, in general, and in the specific. I don’t recall anyone writing, oh, by the way, this is asshole Jim’s fault.
AlexanderZ @ 249:
That’s really nice, AlexanderZ. Thanks for posting that.
Hey guys , you don’t have to go easy on me. I’m a veteran of a million flame wars on 4chan and have been called every name in the book. I was there when the tumblr SJWs tried to raid 4chan and 4chan flamed back. I don’t care what names you call me. I’ve had tonnes of mature and open discussions on politics , news and feminism on 4chan.
@Travis
Out of curiousity did you participate in any of the old 4chan raids? Why did you leave?
@Alexander Z
I know Encyclopedia Dramatica is satirical. (Check out the Law and Order page for Top kek). However that post from the mod that got kicked out by moot was real and the summary of events is snarky , but true. For context , white knighting is highly frowned upon on 4chan and free speech is one of our highest values , so many people felt betrayed when moot sold out so he could get laid.
On Free speech and censorship
I’m not opposed to any kind of free speech. If I say something stupid , you have the right top call me any names you want . However the way it usually works of that someone says something stupid and then bans anyone who gives them criticism or asks questions.
I decided to look up previous usages of “censor” on this blog.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/10/12/uh-oh-sciam/
Here’s Sciam pulling blog posts critical of them
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/13/conservative-values-opportunism-and-cowardice/
Christians getting AP to pull images they find offensive
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/09/12/tom-holland-is-censored/
Muslims getting a station to pull a documentary they find offensive
According to you guys they are just “denying them a platform” and so this is not real censorship. You guys should tell PZ to update the post.
According to you guys the Charlie Hebdo victims did not have their free speech violated. According to you if free speech is not freedom from consequences , they just got the consequences of making muslims angry.
Freedom of speech is freedom from bad consequences.
Now of course I don’t think people saying mean stuff about you on the internet is any real consequence. (Which is why I lol every time people claim about getting harrassing messages on twitter.)
I’m against it when Christians or Muslims pressure people to censor images or documentaries they find offensive. I’m also against it when feminists try to pressure people to ban songs or stop carrying games or change art they find offensive.
My philosophy is the feminists can make their own games like Revolution 60 and Depression Quest and the “misogynists” can make their own games like GTA V and Divinity: OS and the free market can decide whether feminist games or “misogynist games” are better. I’m against it when feminists try to censor artists trying to create their own vision.
@Jim balter
I’m not right wing. The closest thing to my view is libertarian because I value free speech and personal freedom. I haven’t read much about it though. I mostly learned about it from 4chan.
As you write about me.
Uh, yes, I did.
A harsh one.
That was pretty harsh.
Tethys disagreed with my judgment … without attacking me. You, OTOH, did something completely different … you went over to ThunderDome and wrote
and then came back here and lied about me:
See, I use quotes to back up my claims. I may be an asshole, but I’m not a fundamentally bad person.
So much for your reading skills. In a response to me:
That’s pretty direct.
Good news: I’ve pretty much covered it all; any more is just repetition, and I won’t be any less sickened by pointing out what sickens. Good bye.
Yeah, I take back what I said about you … it was hasty and harsh. I think you have some pretty foul and uninformed views about feminists, but you’re educable. After today I have a higher regard for you and your integrity than several others I’ve dealt with here. Best of luck to you.
…Wow… I’ve been missing a lot. Too bad it’s half past 1 at night.
johnny d. #259:
I seriously doubt that last sentence.
The sciam case: They pulled an already-published post, which did not violate, as I remember it, their own terms and conditions. Also, I disagree with the policy of pulling down posts, even if the post is deemed inappropriate (which that one wasn’t); it smacks of hiding the evidence that something was said. A published correction, apology and/or retraction is far better if needed.
The two religious cases involve undue and unearned weight given to religiously based argument. Show me a god, persuade me that that god is the god worshipped by one of those organisations, and then show me that that god is, in fact, worthy of obedience, and I will happily revisit those adjectives. If you have evidence that feminists are regularly accorded such unearned and undue respect, bring it on.
Eh? Bullets do not constitute a form of speech. Bombs are not a debate-format.
Of course you don’t. Words don’t hurt you, so you don’t think they can hurt anybody. But please, name me a war, a rebellion, a pogrom, or a plain old riot, which did not begin with words. You yourself claim to champion the right to free speech. Why do you do so if you do not think words have the power to affect people?
I’m not against anyone trying to use free speech in order to affect any change they see fit to attempt. I’m opposed to the idea that just because something offends someone, such speech should be heeded and acted upon. If something is harmful, though, then yes; we should all speak out against it. Such as…
…this. Because those games, songs, books etc are not merely offensive, they are harmful.
Again, people using free speech to apply such pressure is not censorship.
And therein lies your problem.
Your initial comment was insulting. The trend continues, but at least you offered an explanation
Stupid won’t get you banned, unless you don’t listen. Asking questions is method of trolling. That will get you banned, if you repeat inane questions, and ignore the answers. In short, you actually listen, engage, and don’t get mouthy and abusive (like most MRA types), people don’t get banned. PZ will warn you first. So far, nothing, Paranoia about censorship by private parties is absolutely wrong. Only the government can censor, stopping you from talking anywhere, anytime. All that PZ does is remove Pharyngula as platform. His blog, his rules, and you need to understand that basic concept. NOBODY HAS TO GIVE YOU A PLATFORM OR LISTEN TO YOU. Write those words 1000 times or more until you get it.
johnny d. (#259)
You aren’t doing yourself any favors talking in generalities. Let’s take this one thing. Can you explain the details of any actual bans on songs? Such as which songs were banned, from where, and under what conditions? Because you can’t properly be against something until you understand what it is.
Also, do you understand that this sort of “pressure” is a kind of speech? Which you are against. Why is it okay for you to be against the speech of feminists, but not okay for feminists to be against songs that portray consent as unnecessary?
@Johnny d.
Then you are a fucking idiot. Come back when you’ve done some growing up. The shit you say to other people can cause real pain. More than one person has committed suicide because of online harassment. Many people can have their depression or anxiety or other conditions triggered or worsened by online harassment. There are no real consequences to you. But there probably should be, because there most definitely are real consequences to your victims.
The only things 4chan can teach you is how to be an asshole and how to cause harm to other human beings.
People aren’t being nice to you by holding back on the abuse. People are being nice to you by assuming you’re still capable of learning.
Johnny d., ever hear of the golden rule? Everything you would like to be able to do an say, everybody else has the same abilities.
But, here is the clincher for you. Are women your equal, with the same rights and privileges you have, or are they your inferiors, to shut up and not bother you? Misogynists are banned here. Think wisely before answering.
you know I find that when some people disapprove of what some others do and say to other people they have to tell them it is a waste of time. While that may be true it is those who are wasting the time’s choice no one else’s right?
why do they then read all of that waste of time anyway? then have to make a comment about it???
think first then write some times works for me when I remember.
uncle frogy
People, particularly people in disadvantaged groups, like, say trans men and women, gays, and in some places, atheists, have DIED as a result of other people saying “mean stuff” about them on the internet.
There is a reason freedom of speech is considered an important right, one important enough that people fight to preserve, and others in power seek to deny.
Speech has CONSEQUENCES. Whether you shout in in a town square, or publish a pamphlet, or post it on the internet, speech is speech is speech. Venue is unimportant.
And speech is powerful. If it were not so, no one would care one whit about a “freedom” of speech.
Then you are against feminists exercising their right to free speech. Because that is all that calls to ban songs, or stop carrying games, or change art is.
Free speech.
And the reason that such speech RESULTS in songs being banned, or games no longer being carried, or art being changed is, again, because speech has power. Speech persuades. Whether it is the company itself to pull the games, or enough other customers that the company or artist finds financial interest in pulling those games, or changing that art, that is the power of speech.
And that is why freedom of speech is important.
To say that you “support” freedom of speech but are “against” the consequences that result from that speech means you are not really for free speech at all.
The Charlie Hebdo victims did not, in fact, have their free speech rights violated. Their government, that of France, continued to support their right to speech, and did not use the coercive power of government to curb their speech, within limits. Their comics were published, so their right to speech was not violated.
What they had violated was their right to LIFE.
The consequence of their speech was indeed to make muslims angry. It is likely that many muslims did not buy their magazine, and they would have suffered a loss of income from those lost sales. That is a consequence that they had no right to be shielded from.
But being angry did not give those killers the right to kill the target of their anger.
When I was in high school, I was the main source of amusement for my class’s bullies. They seldom resorted to outright physical violence, though. It was mostly a matter of verbal abuse.
While I imagine I could brush off being called names once or twice, the campaign of yelling and laughing at me at every single class or recess, compounded with my already high levels of anxiety, did eventually break me down. But I did learn a few tricks to make school more tolerable: avoid the bullies’ eyes, and never speak up. Act as if I didn’t exist.
I have grown a thicker skin since my school days, but I have no reason to believe a good dose of Internet harassment wouldn’t shut me up again. And so much for freedom of speech.
Speech led to this.
Speech led to this.
Speech led to this.
Speech led to this.
‘Saying stuff’ is one of the most powerful tools the human race has at its disposal; for good and for evil. And it does not lose its power just because it is said on the internet.
The first thing to point out is that censorship by private organizations is not a violation of the right to free speech, because private organizations really do have the right to post or not post whatever they want. The right to free speech is about what the government allows its citizens to do and what it promises not to stop its citizens from doing.
The second thing is the primary responsibility in all cases rests with the primary organization doing the censorship and not the protesters. It is SciAm, AP, and the radio station that chose to LISTEN to the protesters and pull the material. That is a choice they are indeed free to make. It is in fact an exercise of THEIR right to free speech. BUT they are not themselves immune to the consequences of THAT choice, part of which is the criticism PZ levelled at them. This is particularly true in organizations that engage in the dissemmination of news, which all of those cases are. Pulling the material – ie choosing a course of action based on other people’s speech, which is not, in fact, “forced” on them, but a choice, can be said to be a violation of professional responsibilities of journalism. This is an issue separate from the freedom of speech and censorship issue.
And if people got together and threatened to boycott SciAm, or AP, or that radio station for pulling that material, then that too, is free speech.
And finally, the Christians and Muslims who called for the pulling of those images and that documentary were also exercising their right to free speech. Note that no one was calling for the government to shut them up or throw them in jail for it. But they in turn are not free from consequences of being criticized by others for their speech, and they should not be entitled to the expectation that anyone would listen to them.
johnny d. #259
But see we’re not talking about people saying just “stupid” stuff. I think it’s a sign of privilege that to you the worst anyone’s free speech can be is merely stupid. There are people that are already treated unfairly by our society. Is someone getting on a public platform and saying hateful or prejudiced things about those people merely stupid free speech? You can bet to them it’s not.
Oh goodie. The quality of conversation in this thread is sure to go way up now.
Yes, because they all have the same megabucks that the triple A game publishers have. Totes level playing field.
It insulted Johnny, no one else. Again “your need to come onto this thread and insult anyone who engaged with johnny” is a lie, and also baselessly asserts a “need” that has nothing to do with my statement or my intent. Even if someone other than Johnny interpreted my comment as insulting to them, it wasn’t intended as such. If someone told me that I shouldn’t (stronger than what I actually wrote) waste my time arguing with or attempting to educate someone, I wouldn’t be insulted by it and I think taking it that way i stupid.
Your trend is hypocrisy and dishonesty. Of course I insult people who lie about me … byI state plainly that they are lying about me. Over and over again, folks like you lie, but never cop to it, instead patronizing me and pretending that you’re pure of heart and guilt-free. As I said, it’s sickening. I also said I was done, yet here I am … see that explanation I gave. But again, if you would stop poking at me, I would be gone … and that’s what people say they want. An explanation for why you feel the need to continue to attack me rather than letting it go has not been provided.
You may have missed that I was contrasting myself with someone else.
Comments like that don’t help.
johnny d. @ 259:
Because, as we all know, the free market is the ultimate arbiter of quality.
That’s how we know McDonald’s make the world’s tastiest, healthiest hamburgers.
johnny d
Would you apply this philosophy to race, too? If most action movies were portraying black characters as insulting stereotypes, would your position be “black people can make their own movies” or would it be “I think film studios should change how they portray black people”?
johnny d, this is the last thing I will say to you. You still have a lot to learn so that you are not a self centered and self serving asshole. and words can and do hurt, especially for people who do not have the same status and privileges that you have. Imagine what it is like for people who had “faggot”, “trannie” or any other slur that your 4chan friends like to toss about just before they are assaulted?
You seems to think that “good ideas” end up winning at 4chan. You are mistaken. The ideas that win there are the ones that young straight white reactionary men already believe in and profits them. Repeating the same talking points and drowning out people crushes good ideas.
Well, that is what Brianna Wu tried to do, and look what happened to her.
It is not really about the names. The “names” are just decoration. What is important is the critique of what exactly it is that you said that was stupid and why.
Just because one is afforded the right to do something doesn’t mean that this is something one SHOULD do. Freedom of speech for example gives you the right to call your mother a “bitch” to her face, any time you want, as often as you want. But is that a reasonable, decent or humane thing to do? In a free society freedoms are deliberately made very broad, and in fact cover a wide range of behaviors that individuals actually SHOULDN’T really do, not if they want to be decent, compassionate people. To safeguard the advantages of living in a free society, we give people the right to choose to be jerks. But that doesn’t mean people SHOULD choose to be jerks. It just means that we have decided that when people choose to be jerks, it is better to use means other than the coercive power of the state to control the jerks. Chief among these means is the social pressure of widespread criticism, which is another form of speech.
Every right comes with an attendant responsibility. The right to freedom of speech comes with the responsibility not to use that freedom to speak in ways that are harmful to others. If that responsibility is violated too often, the right inevitably gets taken away, when the majority of people get fed up with the abuse of the right by the violators and ultimately decide that the right itself is no longer as important as dealing with the trouble the violators are causing by abusing it.
Those who care about preserving freedom of speech in the long term care about people being judicious with their speech.
You see, what we call “rights” in our societies are in fact cooperative agreements between the group (society) that ensures and enforces the access to the right, and the individuals who are given those rights. It is in fact a Tit-for-Tat style Prisoner’s Dilemma (you can look that one up, Johnny) situation. Society agrees not to censor your speech, and to protect you from censorship by other powerful groups, within reason, in exchange for you agreeing to apply self-censorship before you speak, and not to speak in ways harmful to others. If you should “defect” by reneging on your promise not to engage in harmful speech, then society can choose to Tat your Tit and defect back on you, to effectively silence you by denying you a venue, or using the force of public criticism and public shaming to persuade you to self-censor appropriately again, or, in the worse case scenarios, by applying the law against you (hate speech, libel, slander). We are fortunate to be living in an era where the predominate strategy is Generous Tit for Tat, wherein most defections are in fact forgiven, and a person can say pretty extreme things and mostly get away with it. But as Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma experiments show, Generous Tit for Tat is vulnerable to subversion by defectors. If too many people abandon their responsibility to self-censor harmful speech, and the harm that results from that unfettered harmful speech reaches a sufficiently high threshold to exceed the benefit of maintaining freedom of speech for all, then the right to freedom of speech will be lost.
The preservation of all liberties requires constant vigilance. In the case of freedom of speech, that vigilance means the constant suppression of harmful speech by counterspeech. If we fail in doing that, the inevitable eventual outcome is the loss of the right to free speech for everyone.
With every right comes a responsibility, johnny. The right to freedom of speech comes with a responsibility not to engage in harmful speech. In other words, society agrees not to censor your speech, and to protect you within reason from others who try to use force to censor your speech, in exchange for you agreeing to engage in self-censorship and not speak in ways that are harmful to others.
Regardless of what one might think philosophically about the inalienability of rights, in practical reality, the continued existence of a right depends upon individuals agreeing to take the responsibilities that come with them. In the case of freedom of speech, if too many people insist on engaging in harmful speech, a tipping point is eventually reached where the majority decides that the harm produced by this harmful speech outweighs the benefit of maintaining and enforcing the right to free speech, and they will decide to simply stop enforcing the right to free speech. Fed up with the harmful speech, they will choose tyranny over freedom and crack down, and the right to freedom of speech will be lost for everyone. You can argue until you’re blue about whether or not this is a “right” choice for the majority to make, but history has shown time and again, that this is what will happen in reality.
Those who care about the preservation of the right to freedom of speech in the long term know that this absolutely requires the successful suppression of harmful speech by counter-speech and other non-coercive means.
So. Milo Yiannopolis writes a story about how Brianna Wu is trans* and therefor deserves the harassment she gets. Some little manling from 4chan catches wind that someone, somewhere is talking about Brianna Wu and feels duty bound to educate them about how, despite totes not being transphobic, he feels Yiannopolis is really quite right. And now this thread is not remotely about transphobia or Brianna Wu but about explaining free speech to johnny.
And that’s how much you value the free speech of people who disagree with you, johnny. You value it so much that you went out of your way to try to stop us suggesting that one of your Literally Whos might not deserve the harassment your little friends have subjected her to. I mean, you’re here johnny, talking to us so, clearly, you think words on the internet have some kind of real consequence. Otherwise, why aren’t you over on 4chan with your friends congratulating each other on being cis-het white dudes?
Extra ironic considering GG has boycotts and letter (or rather email) writing as their primary “media strategies”.
@Johnny:
Meanwhile, gators brigaded Revolution 60 in a futile attempt to prevent it from being Greenlighted on Steam, and keep telling Brianna Wu to make her own games even though she did just that. Your personal phylosophy means jack squat to the GG consensus.
When Brianna Wu tried to do that, look what happened to her.
@ Jim Balter
This sentence is contradictory, Jim. There’s no reason to expect others to give a shit what you would/wouldn’t do in a given situation unless you mean them to understand that what you would do is what they should do. People don’t just toss opinions out into the ether with no expectation that others will listen and heed them.
johnnie d.
Now, this is a very good example of how this works. The song that was pulled from Student Union stations by the Student Unions was “Blurred Lines”.
That song is harmful, because it perpetuated myths about sex, consent and rape. Countless rape victims have come forward and testified that the lyrics in that song are verbatim what their rapist said to them.
Rape can lead to PTSD, a servere condition, as you may know. Having that PTSD triggered by a song while getting an education can severly harm someone. It is an example of real actual harm caused by speech. Do you think that people who have been victims of a severe violent crime should then be further punished by not being able to go to college?
We believe in free speech because speech is powerful. That’s the point. You cannot go on about how important free speech is and act as if at the same time speech didn’t matter.
+++
I swear, Jim Balter sounds exactly like every troll we get here.
I think I have a Bingo already
yeah JB has got nothing to say and he does not want anyone else to say it either!
while little johnny wants other peoples speech stopped because free speech!
bookends in an empty library
uncle frogy
Jim Balter
I have a question. Do you normally do English? It’s just a hypothesis, but it would explain why you use a construction that is commonly use to express advice, recommendations and flat out commands* and then act all surprised when people object to this?
It would also explain why you think that people who are relating their personal experience, showing that they’re coming from all sorts of lives and backgrounds, are blaming you for the abuse they suffered.
*as opposed to, say, the going to future, the will future or simply shutting up. Why letting all of Pharyngula know that you think it’s a waste of time unless you want others to react to it?
Johnny D perfectly illustrates why GamerGate is a right-wing reactionary movement of the worst kind. In their world, an organized campaign of harassment and intimidation with the sole purpose of shutting down dissenting views is simply free speech, while pointing out problematic ideas and asking others to reconsider their support is censorship. This is, of course, driven entirely by tribalism, where the only acceptable “free speech” is their own and any criticism or disagreement from the “other” must not be tolerated. That this kind of movement originated in the *chans is no surprise.
@294
Indeed. They are faultless, anything they do is just free speech, even if it’s just foul mysogyny/racism/homophobia/transphobia, and even if they are actively harming people (and enjoying it). Anything the “others” do, including something as mild as using their own free speech to say “that’s disgusting, you should be ashamed of yourself” is censorship and they are othered by equating them to things like nazis, so that they are easy to hate and dismiss.
Others have already said it, the only free speech that 4chan is concerned about is their own, everybody else’s means nothing to them and they will infringe on it in a heartbeat. Also, their entire subculture is built around not facing responsabilities for their actions and calling that freedom. It’s pathetic…
Since johnny d. repeats the lie that feminsts are trying to ban games, I’m just going to repeat my previous question:
johnny d., name one, ONE, even slightly visible/famous feminist who is trying to ban games or censor gamers.
You keep repeating the lie, but are unable/unwilling to point to even one concrete example, which says a lot about your point of view.
Also, you still don’t understand the concept of free speech.
Hopefully Johnny d. will grow out of this, though he’s making it harder on himself by the company he (virtually) keeps.
I know someone who has done work as an emergency doctor and they have asserted that they can cope much better with people in their teens if they consider them as similar to people who have come in with frontal lobe damage. (I think that was the part of the brain..)
Because it is a tricky time. Their brain is undergoing a whole load of changes, as is their body. They’re not old enough yet to be adults, but can see it coming and don’t want to be seen as kids, and yet they are still not yet mature enough to be very good at grasping nuance or things which aren’t simple. So they are attracted to such things as libertarianism, which if you are not experienced and not considering it at anything more than a shallow level, can have some appeal. It requires deeper thinking to determine its flaws. (Most ‘ideal’ forms of social organisation or government suffer from the same problem, which is that people are involved) Similarly ‘free speech’ is an ideal which overall is good, provided that it’s not just the people who already have all the privilege who get to have it.
I think johnny d. is an idealist in a lot of ways, but one who has been exposed to toxic ideas along with some plausible ideals, and doesn’t yet have the discrimination to see which ideas are toxic. And of course hanging out in a space where repeating such toxic ideas gets him approval only contributes to the problem.
I suspect one of the strongest human needs, psychologically, is to be approved of. So if he is getting approval there, then it would be very difficult for him to risk that approval by challenging the toxic ideas there. I do hope he either does develop that strength of character or finds better people to spend time with to fulfil the need for approval.
Yeah, johnny d. has done an excellent job of derailing. Hey, johnnie, why don’t you address what Milo said about Brianna Wu? Is it okay that he was dishonest, and that he tried to use transphobia against Wu?
(Well, 4chan did invent the term ‘trap,’ and campaigns against transgender people have been organized there, so my expectations of johnny d. on the subject of transphobia are rather low…)
johnny, “libertarianism” is right-wing. It’s a political philosophy of the privileged which pretends, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that everyone has the same chances in life, and that unrestrained markets will provide rainbow-farting unicorns for everyone prepared to work.
Sorry for the aside, but…
Uncle, can I just say that I enjoy practically every word you’ve ever said here? Your bon mots are brilliant.
I decided to take a look at /lgbt/ and it took me about five seconds to find a transphobic thread. And another. And one more.
I must admit /leftpol/ was a much more pleasant board, by virtue of not existing. There is a /leftypol/ at infinite chan, but they seemed strangely sympathetic to the project of establishing a white-supremacist state in Namibia.
johnny d. #261
Isn’t “white knighting” just speech in favor of someone/thing or against harrasment? If “free speech” is so important to 4chan why would “white knighting” be frowned upon at all? Methinks the 4chan community as a whole doesn’t give two shits about free speech at all, what they want is people who agree with them. “White knights” say things that 4channers don’t like, so it’s frowned upon; GamerGaters say things that 4channers like to hear so Gaters are celebrated.
This isn’t free speech, it’s base tribalism that tries to hang unto an ideological pretext in a vain hope of looking clever or enlightened instead of a simple-minded collection of bullies who have never engaged with a serious idea in their lives.
And you know it’s true how? Because it says something you believe in? Because your friends agree with it?
The reason why the entire planet accepts news reports over the yammering of GGers is simple Bayesian logic. We know who writes each news report, we can check their previous record, and we cross-check each report with similar reports of other journalists, all of whom also have a testable record, etc. Now look at GG “article” – the past record is intentionally unserious, all “reporters” are intentionally anonymous (and those that aren’t have a horrible record) and all of their claims are in direct opposition to other, more reputable sources.
When it comes to Dramatica, 4chan, 8chan and other such groups, the default hypothesis can only be that they lie, unless proven otherwise from other sources, because the former function as nothing more than an echo chamber. The OP is a good example of this – Milo Y. has never reviewed games or comics, has suddenly decided he has an opinion about them, bases his opinion entirely on GG talking points, gets quoted by GGers, and repeats the process ad infinitum.
No, and the others (particularly Amphiox) have told you why. Here is fun assignment – search those posts to find where PZ has said anything about free speech being violated. You’ll come with nothing. Why? Because PZ acknowledges the right of an institution to deny someone a platform. He disagrees with the reasons, or the specifics, in other words he tries to convince others to change their worldview – the very reason why free speech exists in the first place.
Again, you’ve already been taken to task for this bullshit. If words don’t have consequences why does the entire profession of psychology exists? Because people were “brainwashed” to give them money?
Here a simple example. Suppose a drug lord decides he doesn’t like you and posts on Twitter that you’re a snitch. How long do you think you’ll last before someone comes to murder you? It’s same thing for any disenfranchised group. Rape threats result is some men acting on them, and then getting away with it because other men are convinced that the victim had it coming. Transphobia and homophobia encourages people to murder trans* and gay people, and then get away with it other cishet men think the victim had it coming. Remember the link I posted about rape culture? Go read it.
The only reason you can dismiss online threats is because for you, personally, they don’t carry any consequences. For a woman that has to watch any beverage she drinks to make sure its not drugged or for any queer person who has to take a step outside their apartment life is a Russian roulette of whether they’ll be assaulted, raped or killed.
And when they do they are being harassed for it.
Here’s a thought though, do you have any games you dislike? How about Ride to Hell: Retribution, or any Sonic game? Ever read a review calling those games bad? Saying that they shouldn’t have been made in the first place? That nobody should buy them? That, at least in the case of Sonic, the entire franchise is diseased and should die? Was that censorship? Why not?
Feminists are doing just that – they find some game to be bad and either offer suggestion for improvement (like Anita Sarkeesian does in the end of almost every video) or simply suggest not to buy those games. How come it’s called “censorship” when they share their critic, but not when others do it?
Also, let’s not forget that Sonic games are simply not enjoyable, whereas feminists claim that the games that they critic are harmful to the society as whole by (among other things) creating a generation of misogynistic man-children (amusingly enough GG supports that theory by its very existance).
Here’s a Cato report about the voting habits of libertarians. As far as facts go (see table 5-7), libertarians are very closely aligned to conservatives.
For context , white knighting is highly frowned upon on 4chan and free speech is one of our highest values , so many people felt betrayed when moot sold out so he could get laid.
This sentence of yours encapsulates the hypocrisy of 4Chan on “free speech”, and illustrates that you have no idea what it is.
“White knighting” is an exercise of free speech. If 4Chan really did regard free speech as one of its highest values, it would accept it and regard it as a good thing.
moot choosing how his platform can be used is him exercising his right to free speech. If 4Chan really valued free speech, they would be fine with his decision to do what he wished with his privately owned platform.
Trying to understand what free speech is and how it works by frequenting places like 4Chan and Encyclopedia Dramatica is like trying to learn how cooking is done by eating out of a sewage pipe.
“frowning upon” “white-knighting” = a-OK!
“frowning upon” sexism, homophobia, transphobia and harassment = y u violate muh freeze peach