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Nov. 9, 2014 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
29:52
Identity Zealot Erases Minorities in #NotYourShield
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Gabrier Gates' base assumptions create a worldview that enables and justifies harassment and terrorism.
Oh yeah, that sounds realistic.
I expect that's why Devin Ferrarsi from Badass Digest said that gamers were worse than ISIS.
This is what we're going to talk about, but it's going to be a long road because I want to run through the whole process from start to finish.
Yes, and somehow you're going to try and twist this around to suggest that a consumer revolt against corrupt journalism is actually a worldview that enables and justifies harassment and terrorism.
And it gives us a great reason to talk about critical tools.
This is actually a subject that I've wanted to bring up more often for a long time, pretty much since the show started, but I've never really gotten around to it.
I mean, it's been there in bits and pieces, but let's really crack into one because this is a perfect time.
Yeah, let's do this.
I'm pretty hungover, but I think I can manage it.
Let's talk about base assumptions.
Base assumptions are the things that you, I, everyone takes for granted about the world.
They are the things that default to yes or no until proven otherwise.
These are the things that we believe are just the way things are.
In fact, even more than that, they're often the things that we don't even consciously believe because they're frequently things we're completely oblivious to.
Because most of the time, these things exist for reasons.
Reasons that don't actually need to be questioned.
They're invisible, unquestioned, part of the background.
And most of the time, these assumptions are based on things that can't be changed, which is why nobody gives them too much thought.
For example, if you were going to compare the strength of a man and a woman, your base assumption would probably be that the man is stronger than the woman because humans are a sexually dimorphic species.
It would be possible to have a woman that is stronger than a man, but it is not usual.
Because it's unusual for women to be stronger than men, when we compare a woman with a man, we're probably going to assume that she's not stronger than the man.
In short, base assumptions usually have a good reason for existing.
Believing is active.
You've encountered something or been taught something and thought about it, and yes, you think that's how things work.
Base assumptions, however, are typically passive.
They're just there as the rules that everything else is built on.
They are one of the major things that form what we consider to be normal.
Because by definition of the word, they are normal.
Alright, I know a bunch of you are thinking, well, what is normal?
Maybe the crazy people are normal and the normal people are the crazy ones.
God, this is really a low-ball pitch, isn't it?
And that's good.
I've wondered the same thing myself in the past.
It's wrong for a variety of ontological reasons, but...
Which is a fancy way of saying it's wrong because things just aren't that way.
But it's a good starting point because it's being critical about assumptions that drive daily life, recognizing that many, many things in society are more or less arbitrary constructs.
The important word here is arbitrary.
They may exist for a reason, but those reasons aren't natural law.
Then why are you about to give us an example that is predicated on natural law?
Take traffic lights, for example.
Why are they red, yellow, and green?
Why not blue, orange, and hyperviolet?
Turns out the answer is pretty typical.
Back in the 1800s, the railway industry started using those colours, and they just kind of stuck.
Red already has a history as a warning signal.
Yes, because red is the colour of blood.
According to Wikipedia, several studies have indicated that red carries the strongest reaction of all the colours, with the level of reaction decreasing gradually through orange, yellow, and white, respectively.
Which also answers the question of why is yellow the next in sequence?
But there's also another reason.
Red is the international colour of stop signs and stoplights because red is the brightest colour in daytime next to orange, although it is less visible at twilight when green is the most visible colour.
Red also stands out more clearly against a natural backdrop of blue sky, green trees or grey buildings.
The reason for choosing red as the colour that means stop is not arbitrary.
Green was chosen because it looks different from red.
That is partially correct, and that is also not arbitrary.
But human beings universally associate green with positive things, which isn't really surprising given the seasonal reliance human beings have on nature.
And yellow because it looks different from the other two.
Well, as long as you aren't colorblind, that is.
Which the overwhelming majority of people are not.
Right there, we've hit a base assumption.
The chosen colors assume you aren't colorblind.
For very good reasons.
For most people, that applies.
So there are reasons underpinning the choice of traffic light colours.
There is a logic there.
But that logic is arbitrary.
No, it's absolutely not arbitrary.
And you said so yourself.
Red already has a history as a warning colour.
Yellow is different to red, and green is different to yellow.
That in itself is a list of reasons that are not arbitrary.
Traffic light colour isn't dictated by the force of gravity or the speed of light or some other immutable fact.
But this doesn't mean it's not based off of natural laws.
For human beings, red is a warning colour.
For human beings, green is an inviting colour.
It is a decision that someone made over a century ago that stuck because traffic rules need to be more or less standardized so that drivers know what to expect of others and what others expect of them.
Also, they need to be explained out of context.
The reason they didn't go for blue, orange, and hyper-violet is because they would have had to explain to people looking at them what the traffic lights meant.
When they were first setting up the railways, they needed colours that they could tell people, look, we're installing these things called traffic lights.
One light will mean go, one light will mean stop, and one light will mean be ready.
It's very easy for human beings to understand exactly which colours are which when given that context.
There is absolutely nothing arbitrary about the colours of traffic lights, which is why they aren't orange, blue, and hyper-violet.
In order to minimize how often they ram into one another.
So that's a tiny example that has nothing to do with narrative, but it's a good demonstration of how something becomes just the way things are.
It is an excellent example, because normally things become just the way things are, for good reasons.
I agree that these things do need to be challenged, but this obsession with the narrative allows you to cherry-pick the reasons that you think are acceptable to declare why things are as they are, rather than looking at the actual reasons.
You want to be able to say, the colours of traffic lights are arbitrary.
So you have constructed a narrative that says, yeah, it's completely sensible and logical to say the colours of the traffic lights are arbitrary, but they're in fact not.
They're entirely predicated on the natural inclinations of human beings.
Let's apply the same to narrative.
First things first, we need to talk vocabulary.
Kitchen vocabulary.
I'm skipping this because it's dull, but what he means is that a text is a piece of work.
A book, a film, etc.
In order to evaluate the base assumptions of a text, it can be helpful to anthropomorphize the text.
Think about it as though it were a person and figure out what its priorities and beliefs would be if you could talk to it.
This is useful as a device because it can help separate what exists in the text from assumptions about the motives of the people who made the text.
That's valuable because while authorial intent can be insightful or interesting, in the end only audience remains, and it's entirely possible for well-meaning people to create problematic texts through accident, inattention, or carelessness.
Indeed.
I'm picking out an example that I touched on ever so briefly before in my longer rundown of Man of Steel.
How does Man of Steel feel about the military?
I'm going to skip this because it's dull.
Feel free to watch the original video if you'd like to see it.
The underlying assumption at play is that the military is a legitimate locus of power and that we as the citizenry should defer to that power.
It doesn't say as such, but that is the world that the text builds.
That is Man of Steel's normal.
It's pretty damn normal to see the military as a locus of power, given how much power militaries have.
Understanding that normal, being able to pull it out and look at it, is an invaluable skill in communications, opening up new and interesting meanings and messages, bridging gaps between cultures that may seem to be at odds, revealing conflicts that were previously invisible and paving the way for empathy and understanding.
I want to agree with this so much.
I really do.
But this person has demonstrated a lack of understanding of why traffic lights are the colours that they are, and has come to the conclusion that they were just plucked out of the air randomly.
This person's capacity for empathy and spotting invisible conflicts is not something I would personally rely upon.
Now we can talk about Gamergate.
Finally.
There are some things that we need to say about Gamergate first.
This is not a new phenomenon.
Well, that's true.
Corruption and bias have always been with us.
And this social justice culture kind of pushed its way into gaming journalism around 2012.
And Gamergate has been quietly building up pressure since then.
These ideas and beliefs did not spring up in August 2014 with Gamergate any more than Gigi's most odious ideologues or the women that they target.
I'm not sure if you can get an anti-corruption ideologue, but even so, I really think you should look at your own ideology.
They were already here.
In this regard, Gamergate's core assumptions are not unique, but are reflective of attitudes and opinions within society at large.
Oh, yeah, go on, this will be good.
Attitudes that view the status quo as the natural, inevitable result of apolitical forces.
Don't be ridiculous, everyone knows that this is a consequence of the patriarchy.
Davis Aridi, Jordan Owen, John Bain, Phil Mason, Dean Esme, Paul Elam, Jason Polera, the denizens of 4chan, they already had an axe to grind.
Look at those evil, evil white men.
Their axe to grind is not being considered evil white men, and most of them do it by being reasonable and using facts to back up their arguments.
Those fucking monsters.
Gamergate is nothing more than the new name for a long-standing resistance to the increased visibility of minority voices in society at large.
That is a deliberate and willful lie.
Gamergate is actually a response to a very corrupt and despicable culture that will go out of its way to misrepresent, lie, and demonize anyone who isn't part of that culture.
And it does it using bully boy tactics like this.
If we look at Gamergate as a text, look at their message boards, their IRC channels, their blog posts, YouTube videos, claims, priorities, and target selection, we can drill down to the following base assumptions about the world.
The Gamergate normal.
Oh, this is going to be good too.
1.
There are no real problems with inclusion or representation in gaming.
2.
Any problems that do exist don't matter because that's just market economics appealing to the majority of players.
3.
The status quo, as they perceive it through the lens of assumptions 1 and 2, is a natural state, thus, any disruption is inherently artificial.
These statements are all true.
There really aren't any problems with inclusion or representation in gaming, unless you want to consider non-white males some kind of protected class who must never ever be represented in anything less than stellar fashion.
If one considers that problematic, in my opinion, tough shit, that's art.
But any problems that do exist don't matter because that is market economics appealing to the majority of players, which again is true, and the status quo is indeed a natural state because it came into being due to the free market, in which anyone can try and compete.
And so, yes, any kind of disruption of that would be inherently artificial.
This is the bedrock of the movement's ideology.
I swear to God, only ideologues believe that everyone has an ideology.
I think it's because they literally can't see the world in any other way.
They are ideologues, and therefore they assume that everyone else must be ideologues because we always project onto others what is most true about ourselves.
Core here is that from their point of view, the criticisms directed at video games in the community are fundamentally unnecessary, that nothing is wrong with the way things are, and that any problems are the unavoidable result of natural processes.
There may well be people who don't agree with that, but I don't really know any of them.
There is a space and market for all kinds of games.
Any kinds of games.
Look at the Fine Young Capitalists.
They are a self-described radfem organization.
And I fully support their attempts to make video games created by women, 100%.
Because instead of trying to tear someone else down or change something that someone else has built, they are trying to build something new of their own.
More power to them.
This is what drives the Vitrell against Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, and others.
They are seen as pretenders, if not invaders.
Their criticism as wholly out of place, unnecessary, and artificial.
Actually, no, I don't really think that that's the problem.
I think their problem is how they demonize the people they're criticizing.
They suggest that men are sexist and misogynist for enjoying the natural feeling of being a protector and a provider.
Which wasn't really derided when there was a significant danger of, say, wolves or lions eating the family.
But now this danger has largely been removed.
It does leave men with an instinctive biological drive that they need to satisfy and have no use for.
So video games are actually a really good way of doing this.
And these three women claiming that men are evil for doing this is wrong.
Gamergate actively seeks to have these voices silenced and expelled from the industry.
Two of these women are developing video games.
It is a free market.
There is no way anyone from GameGate could expel these people from the industry.
Gamergate wants to talk about ethics in journalism.
It wants to address the problem culture that has overtaken games journalism and is creating such havoc.
These three women are irrelevant to that conversation.
This perception that their natural state of normal is being invaded feeds and internally justifies the use of militaristic rhetoric, constant references to being at war, and organizing under names such as Operation Vox Populi and the hilariously named Operation Shills of Shilicon Valley.
That is a really good name, actually, but that's not going to distract me from your flagrant intellectual dishonesty.
The gaming press literally used such warlike rhetoric as, We're seeing calls to do away with the concept of gamers altogether.
This is great, but this change isn't going to happen automatically.
It's absolutely not inevitable.
Celebrating that uncertain victory now is premature, hubristic, and an insult to the people who are suffering abuse from self-identified gamers.
Do you see why this is warlike rhetoric?
This is why gamers consider themselves to be at war with you.
The social justice press declared gamers over.
They tried to extinguish the concept of a gaming enthusiast because they personally find it distasteful.
That is not acceptable.
And you misrepresenting this as if somehow gamers are the ones who declared war on the press is even less acceptable.
The use of harassment and abuse tactics such as dogpiling, sea lioning, gish galloping and gaslighting are seen as acceptable means justified by the ends.
Look in a bloody mirror.
Wherein invaders are purged and the natural state of normal is restored.
The use of terror tactics such as death threats, doxing, hacking, and the tacit threat of mobbing while engaged in by the minority creates an environment of fear that all members enjoy the privilege of whether they engage in them or not.
Your levels of self-awareness are astoundingly low.
I'm going to restate that just because of how important it has been in the course of the last few months.
The use of terror tactics, even if only by a minority, has created an environment of fear that all members enjoy the privilege of.
When people are unwilling to engage because they are afraid that they'll be next, that their websites will be attacked, that their information will be stolen, that their employers will be harassed, that they'll have child pornography tweeted at them or sent to their email, all members benefit from that person's silence, even if they were not personally responsible for the harassment.
The reason that you stated it again, instead of showing us the evidence to prove your case, is because you have no evidence that this is in any way Gamergate related.
What you are undoubtedly describing are the actions of individuals against other individuals to whom they have taken personal umbrage.
I agree that the things you have stated are wrong, but this matters not a whit to Gamergate.
And if you want to talk about privilege, perhaps you should consider who had the privilege of being able to declare the other one dead.
One of the major ways that Gamergate enables harassment is through its anonymous swarm mentality.
Gamergate at every turn claims decentralization.
Like being attacked by a swarm of bees, rarely does any one person inflict a particularly grievous wound, each individual being able to dispute their own involvement or cite the timidity of their contribution.
This allows for perpetual deflection of real harms because it is difficult to summarize the cumulative impact of hundreds of messages implying you are a liar or obnoxiously asking for proof of well-proven facts.
Well-proven facts that you have still failed to prove, and you are being called a liar because you are lying.
Even if you are only lying to yourself.
Gamergate is not an organization.
It is a grassroots consumer revolt.
That is why you are seeing what you call a swarm of bees.
Because that's how it is going to look from your perspective.
But that's tough.
Because you idiots went up and booted the beehive as hard as you fucking could and declared that there were no more bees left anywhere.
You morons.
Additionally, the swarm is exploited by constantly claiming that anything particularly bad is not the work of a true Gamergator.
This is of course a fallacy, as by definition, a swarm has no one to dictate its overall form, thus no one to say what is or is not a true Gamergator.
I wonder where I've heard this one before.
Either everything is in or everything is out.
Fine.
Now provide the proof that it was some kind of Gamergate initiative to harass women and not actions chosen by individuals.
Because I have seen absolutely no proof whatsoever that these threats were even sent by members who consider themselves part of Gamergate.
I think it's because such proof does not exist, which is why you aren't presenting it now.
And furthermore, if it was proven that this was a member of Gamergate, what do you think the reaction of the other members of Gamergate would be?
Yes, you know as well as I do that everyone would roundly denounce them and report them to the authorities.
Even within the more benign aims of the movement, these underlying assumptions are present, the primary target of corruption and conspiracy accusations being women, queer folk, and their allies.
Why you feel the need to instead take Zoe Quinn or Brianna Wu or Anita Sarkisian or anyone else as an individual and extrapolate that to mean all individuals who share characteristics with those people is baffling.
But you and your social justice side do this all the time.
There is something wrong with your minds.
I am stating now, because I'm pretty sure you'll hear this.
I want you to understand you have a thinking problem.
You see an attack on a woman, a woman, for something she has done wrong, and you equate that to an attack on all women.
The issue, the fault, lies with you in this circumstance.
I know you don't want to believe it, I know you won't like it, but I swear to God, that is what everyone is trying to tell you.
It is not wrong to criticize a woman if she has done something wrong.
You need to understand that.
And either way, none of the people you are talking about are journalists.
So the only way for any of this to be connected to Gamergate is that there is a culture of corruption that you are currently defending.
Because these women are a part of that culture.
Particularly insightful in this regard is Gamergate's use of code wording.
Zoe Quinn, as a persistent target of harassment at the core of Gamergate, Gamergate itself being a hashtag coined by Adam Baldwin in reference to the conspiracy videos, was eventually given the code name literally who in an attempt at deflecting very true accusations that the movement largely revolved around demonizing and punishing her.
The movement does not revolve around demonizing or punishing her in any way.
She's not a journalist.
She has not breached in any way journalistic ethics.
She may have breached a bunch of personal moral ethics that most people hold, but that's really beside the point.
She's called literally who because she's not relevant.
And it's only because your side keeps bringing her, Brianna Wu and Anit Sarkeesian up as a shield to cover your corrupt ways that this is going on.
No one else cares about Zoe Quinn.
No one.
No one is interested.
It's like she has hijacked this for her own personal gain and your side is entirely complicit with that.
I have no idea why, but I can only assume it's because you are pro-corruption.
Why else would you be so desperately trying to obfuscate the issue?
It also serves as a symbolic excommunication, an ex parte declaration of Zoe as a non-person, stripping her of name and identity.
You fucking hypocrites.
That is precisely what your side, what you are defending, has attempted to do to gamers.
But that's also beside the point, because that is actually not what Gamergate is trying to do.
There is nothing about Gamergate that is trying to remove Zoe Quinn's identity as a developer, because that's what she is.
She does not have the identity of a journalist.
So I have no idea why you are trying to give her the identity of a journalist to justify the repeated conversations we have to have about her.
She is called literally who because she is not relevant.
However, as additional targets accrued, the code name was expanded to include dehumanize and expel others, barcoding each additional target as LW1, LW2, LW3 and so forth.
While no formal list was kept, there were at one point seven.
Nice inclusion of Le Alexander there, as she is in fact very relevant as the editor-at-large of Gamer Sutra and wrote one of the original Gamers Are Over articles.
The rest, as you say, are not important, but Leia Alexander is actually meant to be a quote-unquote journalist.
Seven people codenamed as literally who.
All women.
Dun dun dun.
This list eventually collapsed at the time of publication, having been reduced to LW1 through 3.
Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and Brianna Wu.
Yes, the people you literally can't stop talking about.
That Gamergate literally wants to forget.
The perception, the base assumption, is that these women, none of whom are technically journalists, represent the invasion into the cultural space.
Yes, and you won't stop talking about them.
But that's the point, isn't it?
That's the point.
Because what we're dealing with is this culture war.
Invasion of gender, race, sexuality, and class issues, politics, and awareness.
They couch this idea in conspiratorial tones, assembling lists of supposed collaborators and drawing out complex webs of accusations, implying that these minorities are all outsiders looking to hijack games as a platform for political ends.
Because you people are entirely concerned with labels.
Gamers are entirely concerned with individuals.
To you, the personal is political.
It's one of those things that you can't seem to get out of your head that nobody cares what your personal preferences are.
I think it's because something is honestly wrong with your brains.
You seem to be unable to compartmentalize.
You can't not talk about gender.
You can't not talk about your ideology.
You can't not talk about something else.
And in the process, you guys suck the fun out of everything.
This has been the most boring video I've had to go over.
But yes, you do have a culture that is desperately trying to invade gaming culture.
You have framed it as a culture war.
But I'm sure that you will perform some kind of act of monumental doublethink and deny that this is what you have literally just done.
This is of course all utter nonsense.
Women, queer folk, trans folk, racial, ethnic, religious, and political minorities have been playing games all along.
Which is why Gamergate is in no way concerned with women, queer folk, trans or minorities.
You are the ones bringing it up.
You are the ones always bringing this up because you are identity zealots.
You cannot leave your identity politics at home.
They have been here all along.
They did not, as 4chan summarized with this image, suddenly start playing games in 2007.
Also, as we've already discussed, games are and were already political in nature because all culture is unavoidably political.
The perception, the base assumption, is that these women, none of whom are technically journalists, represent the invasion into the cultural space, an invasion of gender, race, sexuality, and class issues, politics, and awareness.
They couch this idea in conspiratorial tones, assembling lists of supposed collaborators and drawing out complex webs of accusations implying that these minorities are all outsiders looking to hijack games as a platform for political ends.
That's true.
They have been there playing games the whole time and the market absolutely reflects that.
What hasn't been here the whole time is this identity politics bullshit.
You are the people who are claiming that every culture is political, that everything is political, the personal, things you hold personally dear are now political issues.
This is not true.
Nobody cares about your personal identity, about how you want to inject that into every space you come to.
That's why there are so many women, there are so many people of colour, there are so many trans, there are so many queers on the Gamergate side.
They understand that their personal preferences aren't actually political.
What they see as an invasion is little more than the players who have been present all along finding a voice in the market to discuss politics that were already there.
Bollocks.
The people you are talking about just consider themselves to be gamers.
The people who have come in with identity politics, declaring that gamers are over, games aren't necessarily about fun, and games should be avant-garde doom without guns, are the problem.
That's you.
You don't represent trans minorities, whatever.
You only represent this San Francisco culture.
That's it.
You can hide behind all of the labels you want, but the truth of the matter will always be it's your little group against everyone else.
This fact, along with the core assumptions, creates an interesting contradiction in the companion hashtag not your shield.
Not your shield was conceived of as an effort at creating a controlled counter-narrative, something that's known as culture jamming.
Originally an astroturfing campaign creating the illusion of a grassroots movement, the hashtag gained traction beyond channels and sock puppets.
Just calling women and minority gamers sock puppets.
They don't exist.
They are erased.
You're not even dehumanizing them.
You are erasing them from existence.
In your mind, not your shield isn't actually a counter-attempt to, like you say, regain control of this narrative that you people are consistently, fraudulently creating.
No.
These people don't exist or they don't deserve to exist.
The idea is that by having minority allies, the ideological force of Gamergate would be able to deflect criticisms of their bigotry by pointing to supporters and saying, how can I be racist if my best friend is black?
Leave it to gender ideologues like you to tell women and minorities that their voices are not being heard.
They must not be heard because if they are, that contradicts your own narrative and that is unacceptable.
I am all for women and minorities and whoever, whoever wants to identify as a gamer, coming out and saying, look, I'm a gamer.
I don't want to play this identity politics bullshit.
I just want to get on, clean out this corruption, and get back to some fucking gaming.
I am done with this video.
This video has been nothing but a desperate attempt to twist reality to fit an agenda.
This constant denial of the women and minorities, as if they aren't the ones directly saying, look, I have a problem and you're not going to address it because you're going to dismiss me.
I know it.
You've done this before.
It's just unconscionable.
But that's the problem with this sort of thinking.
This is the problem with identity politics.
You don't represent all gay people.
You don't represent all women.
You don't represent all trans people.
They are individuals.
Some of them are on your side because they are concerned with this identity politics culture.
There are others on the other side of this.
There are others that are pro-Gamergate because they do not care about identity politics like most people.
Because when you start bringing identity politics into this sort of thing, it ends badly.
It's not egalitarian.
You don't ever find equality.
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