Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Who is Harassing Anita Sarkeesian？

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April 14, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

22:34

Who is Harassing Anita Sarkeesian？

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	What I couldn't say is, fuck you.
	To the thousands of men who turned their misogyny into a game.
	A game in which gendered slurs, death and rape threats are weapons used to try and take down the big bad villain, which in this case is me.
	There's nothing quite like a good bit of humble bragging, is there?
	But we'll come back to that in a minute.
	I don't want to get ahead of myself.
	I want to talk about who is harassing Anita Sarkeesian.
	A few months ago, Anita posted on her Tumblr account, one week of harassment on Twitter.
	Ever since I began my tropes vs women in video games project two and a half years ago, I've been harassed on a daily basis by irate gamers, angry at my critiques of sexism in video games.
	Are you sure they're not angry that you still haven't finished your video series?
	Anyway, she then says, it can sometimes be difficult to effectively communicate just how bad this sustained intimidation campaign really is.
	So I've taken the liberty of collecting a week's worth of hateful messages sent to me on Twitter.
	The following tweets were directed at my at femmfreak account between the 20th of the 1st 2015 and the 26th of the 1st 2015.
	That is of course except the tweets that she's listed that aren't to her at femmfreak account or aren't to her at all.
	But these are the minority so I'm happy to ignore them.
	Before we have a look at the tweets I just want to focus on the wording of this statement.
	It can sometimes be difficult to effectively communicate just how bad this sustained intimidation campaign really is.
	Now for it to be bad you would think it would have to have some kind of effect on Anita herself.
	You would think it would, I don't know, drive her off of Twitter for a while or cause her extreme emotional distress or something tangible that you could look at her and say wow that person is actually suffering because of what's happening to her.
	I'm kind of used to it at this point which is sad and like it does in no way means that it's acceptable but I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	Because honestly I don't think any of this really bothers her at all.
	Anyway on to the tweets.
	The first one comes from an account called Fenes Octavian that says at FemmFreak you are a despicable whore smiley face.
	I don't think it's unreasonable for her to classify this as harassment because frankly there was no need to send her this message.
	Unsurprisingly this comes from an egg account the new face of harassment.
	Unsurprisingly it seems to be the account of some gamer who doesn't like Anita Sarkeesian.
	I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	Here's one from Adensma at FemmeFreak.
	Kill yourself, feminists are a waste of air and also more games should have girl characters half naked such as Tomb Raider etc.
	This was a troll account that seems to have been suspended.
	I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	Here's a tweet from COD Community Lawyer at FemmFreak.
	Shut the fuck up bitch, I'm the lawyer of this community, got something to say, take it up with me.
	This just seems to be some kid who's really into Call of Duty modern warfare shooters and they seem to be responding to something that she had said.
	But we'll get to that later.
	I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	Lizard Man says at femme freak, you criticize gamers for threatening you.
	1v1 me GTA, you be the prostitute and I'll be the guy that runs over your attention whore.
	Unsurprisingly this is a tiny troll account that seems to be somewhat affiliated with Lizard Squad.
	I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	Hashtag fella squad or MC Morgan Freeman says at femme freak.
	Bitch, we're not talking about that, so I hope you get fucking raped you fucking whore.
	This is one that I would actually classify as harassment.
	But you'll notice that this person is clearly responding to something Anita has said, but we'll get to what she says on Twitter in a bit.
	And anyway, this account appears to have been suspended.
	I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	Jay McClay says, at FemmeFreak, I hope every feminist has their head severed from their shoulders.
	From a tiny account from a user whose interest seems to revolve around sports.
	I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	Zambie says, at femme freak, fuck you, attention whore, fuck off.
	Another tweet that is clearly a reaction to something presumably incendiary that Anita Sarkeesian has tweeted.
	And it seems to have come from, well, an angry gamer.
	Someone who's been personally offended by something Anita Sarkeesian has said.
	I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	Red Haz says, at FemmeFreak, fuck you and everything you stand for.
	With one favourite.
	I mentioned the number of favourites because this comes from a reasonably large account that deals almost exclusively with first-person shooters and gaming.
	I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	Brawl says, at femme freak, you stupid fucking cunt, I'm a fucking rape you, blah blah blah.
	This is the first actual threat on the list.
	And unsurprisingly, this person has been suspended.
	I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	So this is pretty much what her list of harassment looks like.
	It's either people saying that they disagree with her, or people saying nasty things because she's frustrated them.
	There is of course no reason to harass or threaten Anita.
	And I am glad that Twitter has dealt with these accounts accordingly by suspending them.
	I'm sure you'll notice there was a distinct lack of representation of one specific group of people.
	Unsurprisingly, there were very very few tweets to Anita Sarkeesian involving Gamergate or involving anyone recognizable as having participated in the online consumer revolt.
	In fact, I could only find three tweets to Anita Sarkeesian that included the hashtag Gamergate.
	Verified news, at femmfreak at Steven at Home.
	How the fuck did you make this about feminism?
	Gamergate is about something completely different.
	Dumb bitch.
	Evidently referring to Anita Sarkeesian's appearance at the Colbert report to talk about how Gamergate was all about her.
	This is not harassment, although I am willing to concede that it's not very polite.
	And it's worth noting that this was the only tweet about Gamergate that this account has made.
	Jonathan Irons says at FemmFreak, you are not a real gamer, go die, get out of here.
	Hashtag Gamergate, hashtag fuck you Anita, hashtag drama alert at Keemstar X.
	I have no idea who this person is, and it seems that very few other people do either, given that their account is protected.
	They seem like some kiddie who is a fan of this chappie, a guy who runs a YouTube channel called Drama Alert, whom Anita has actually called out in the past, which presumably is what our reclusive Jonathan Irons was tweeting Anita Sarkeesian about.
	If this guy has any connection to Gamergate, then I'm not aware of it.
	And I'm guessing that this is the pitfall of a hashtag campaign.
	Anyone can use it.
	And the third and final Gamergate tweet to Anita was from Angel.
	At FemmFreak, you're ruining Gamergate.
	For what it was supposed to be like, why do you do that?
	What's your problem?
	Like, stop, dude, like, fuck.
	This tweet to try and separate Anita Sarkeesian from Gamergate appears to be this person's only Gamergate tweet.
	Needless to say, Anita Sarkeesian is not receiving harassment from Gamergate.
	Anita is actually receiving harassment from the people she's pissing off.
	I'm not joking.
	Anita goes out of her way to provoke on Twitter.
	Such as making up shit about games she hasn't played.
	Feminist frequency.
	The villain's dialogue in Dying Light is about damseling Jade.
	The last time we met, you took something of mine, now I took something of yours.
	That dying light quote is damning because regardless of her strengths, she's still reduced to an object in competition between men.
	A lie.
	She's actually the saviour of the main protagonist.
	But you know what?
	It reinforces some pre-existing rhetoric, doesn't it, Anita?
	But Anita displaying her complete lack of knowledge about gaming, the subject she purports to be a critic of, is just the tip of the iceberg.
	Anita is more than happy to call for censorship of things that she doesn't like.
	The just don't play it mantra is nonsense.
	Sexist depictions of women in games are not just harmful to women, they're also harmful to men.
	So presumably the only option left open to us is to ban these things in their entirety.
	She comes up with the most wonderful circular logic as well, such as denying or dismissing the sexism that permeates our culture is, in and of itself, a form of sexism.
	How wonderfully unfalsifiable.
	It's not that it's not right.
	It's not even wrong, Anita.
	But once again, this is Anita making herself look like she doesn't know what she's talking about.
	So it's not exactly a fandom.
	I'm not a fan of video games.
	I actually had to learn a lot about video games in the process of making this.
	Bino, I don't really care about that.
	I care about Anita Sarkeesian's hate speech, which I think is adequately defined by Collins English Dictionary as speech disparaging a racial, sexual or ethnic group or a member of such a group.
	Given that Anita Sarkeesian is a feminist, I'm sure you can guess which group of people she hates.
	Feminist frequency tweets, we need to seriously address connections between violence, sexism and toxic ideas of manhood before boys and men commit more mass shootings.
	Bloody hell, steady on Anita.
	That sounds pretty disparaging to a sex to me.
	Feminist frequency.
	Not a coincidence.
	It's always men and boys committing mass shootings.
	Alright Anita, geez, I can't see why people might be sending you nasty tweets.
	I mean it's not like you're provoking them or anything.
	Feminist frequency.
	Mass shootings are one tragic consequence of a culture that perpetuates toxic ideas of masculinity.
	This is how patriarchy can harm men too.
	I love how you're going straight into the crazy wild blue yonder of feminist nonsense.
	As a way of justifying saying that it's not a coincidence that it's always men and boys committing mass shootings.
	They're just inherently geared towards murdering people.
	And the thing is, this is backed up by rationales that sound like they came out of mine camp.
	There's no such thing as sexism against men.
	That's because sexism is prejudice plus power.
	Men are the dominant gender with power in society.
	Well, that isn't the definition of sexism.
	Sexism is the discrimination on the basis of sex.
	But I'd like to congratulate feminists for coming up with a definition of feminism that sounds like it might have been written by Adolf Hitler.
	If you find there's no such thing as racism against Jews because racism is prejudice plus power, Jews are the dominant race with power in society, offensive, then I'm sure you can understand why spouting rhetoric that justifies prejudice against men is also offensive.
	And what I find most amusing about Anita is that she says the masculine mistake.
	Why America is producing so many young men who are hostile to women?
	I don't know Anita, maybe it's something to do with feminists creating all sorts of justifications for women to be hostile to men.
	And of course, this is all Gamergate's fault.
	Anita putting hate speech out on Twitter and then getting responded to by the gamers she is criticizing is somehow Gamergate's fault.
	There's nothing like a good convenient scapegoat for one's bigotry.
	Anyway, I'm sure that Anita takes all of these things very very seriously.
	I'm sure that she treats them with the absolute utmost concern as you would expect someone to do if they really thought they were being threatened.
	So Anita started grinding her axe against men and boys and how they're so prone to commit school shootings because apparently she received a mass shooting threat when she was due to speak at the University of Utah.
	The threat was in the form of a disturbing email, and the police have decided that at no time was there any immediate threat.
	And there was indeed absolutely no risk to students.
	So you would think that Anita Sarkeesian would step up and go and do her speech.
	Except she found any reason not to.
	Anita started making demands of the police and the university to change their procedures to her whim, even though there was no threat and there was no need to do this.
	And so you're probably thinking, why would she do this?
	Why would she look for any reason that she could find to justify cancelling a speech?
	Because most people make money for giving speeches.
	So you know what, maybe it's worth taking a look at Feminist Frequency's financial information for 2014.
	Now, the threat was made against Anita Sarkeesian in October, at the beginning of the fourth quarter of the year.
	And lo and behold, out of the entire year's worth of revenue of just under $450,000, almost $400,000 of that total revenue came in in quarter four, after the threat at the University of Utah.
	I mean, I'm not saying that it pays handsomely to cancel a speech you're supposed to be doing at the University of Utah, even though the police have confirmed that there was absolutely no threat.
	The facts are saying that.
	Anita withdrew from giving a speech due to her receiving a threat that was deemed not credible.
	I'm kind of used to it at this point, which is sad, and like it does in no way mean that it's acceptable, but I just sort of ignore them as they come through.
	You know what, I don't want to say that there is incentive to do this.
	It's not like she gets treated as a special victim and paraded around on mainstream television or makes hundreds of thousands of dollars directly after it, probably as a result of it.
	I mean, those things are all true, but I'm not saying that that's the reason that she did it.
	But you know what, let's have a quick look at the threat.
	I think it's a very interesting threat, and I think we should definitely check it out.
	This threat is a bizarre thing.
	For example, the first line.
	This is a warning to all staff and students at Utah State University.
	Why would someone who is going to commit a mass killing send a warning to the people they're going to kill first?
	What a perplexing thing to do.
	It would really rather defeat the purpose of going out and committing a mass shooting if you were to tell people where you're going to do the shooting in advance that you're going to be there.
	In fact, just the act of giving a warning is suddenly political.
	This is being done for reasons other than the desire to kill.
	And we know this because the person who wrote the email says as much.
	They say that Anita Sarkeesian is going to be speaking at the Taggart Centre.
	This event is being organized by campus feminists at the Centre for Women and Gender Studies.
	And they list a demand.
	If you do not cancel her talk, a Montreal massacre-style attack will be carried out against the attendees, as well as students and staff at the nearby women's centre.
	How peculiar.
	How unbelievably peculiar.
	I mean, most massacres are carried out by people who are trying to get revenge against society.
	not people who are trying to stop Anita Sarkeesian from giving a speech.
	I mean, this is probably the only example of someone who's threatening to do a Montreal massacre-style attack and doesn't because the demands were...
	They wanted Anita not to talk at the university, and if she had done, they would have gone on a huge killing spree.
	I mean, I can kind of see why the police said that this wasn't credible.
	Because it sounds like bullshit.
	I mean, right down to the sort of Navy SEAL copy pasta.
	I have at my disposal a semi-automatic rifle, multiple pistols, and a collection of pipe bombs.
	This will be the deadliest school shooting in American history, and I'm giving you a chance to stop it.
	Why would someone who wants to commit the deadliest school shooting in American history give anyone a chance to stop it?
	And why would that chance be simply Anita Sarkeesian not giving a speech?
	These threats do sound like they've been written by a teenager, but the thing is, there's something about this that really kind of stands out for me.
	It's the reference to the Montreal massacre and this passage.
	You've probably heard of a man named Mark Lepine.
	That's pretty weird because you probably haven't heard of a man named Mark Lepine.
	Most people absolutely have not.
	I mean, if they had said something like Elliot Rogers or the Columbine shooters, then I would agree you've probably heard of these people.
	Frankly, I'd never even heard of the Montreal massacre.
	And I'm not really surprised why.
	This happened in 1989 when someone called Mark Lepine went into a university and decided to shoot nine women and then stalk through the classrooms specifically targeting women to shoot because he thought he was fighting feminism and he called the women a bunch of feminists.
	And in his suicide notes, he claimed political motives and blamed feminists for ruining his life.
	Now, I find this very, very interesting, that they would bring up this obscure, feminist-focused massacre.
	I'm trying to think of the mindset of a person who would use this as their example.
	I would think that if that person was a gamer, they would talk about the Columbine massacre, because it was so closely tied to video games and it was so much more recent than the Montreal massacre.
	Or if that person was, say, anti-feminism or hated women or something like that, they might well talk about Elliot Roger, who's a much more high-profile and again, much more recent event.
	To choose an obscure event like the Montreal massacre that targeted specifically feminism strikes me as a bit odd because the people I would have thought that would have remembered this massacre particularly would be feminists.
	And the humble bragging in this, Anita Sarkeesian is everything wrong with the feminist woman.
	Is she really?
	She kind of seems like the person who pays lip service to feminism, complaining about gender signifiers on, well, Lego, and then wears hoopy earrings and red lipstick herself.
	I mean, she seems like the sort of woman who probably still shaves her legs, which means she's definitely not everything wrong with the feminist woman.
	Unless, of course, everything that's wrong with the feminist woman is that they're not being feminist enough.
	Anyway, and then the final line, I'm a student here.
	You'll never find me, but you may all soon know my name.
	Feminists have ruined my life, and I will have my revenge for my sake and the sake of all the others they've wronged.
	Unless you cancel Anita's talk, in which I won't have my revenge, and I'll just carry on with my ruined life.
	No, bollocks.
	I don't believe that this was sent by someone who wasn't a feminist.
	Anita Sarkeesian is not a real gamer or even a real feminist.
	She's actually a con artist who fakes and orchestrates her own harassment in order to gain sympathy, which she uses to scam people into giving her money.
	It is kind of funny because it's so ridiculous.
	Is that ridiculous though?
	Because, I mean, you have benefited from threats made at you.
	Just so we're clear, I mean, you have directly financially benefited from it.
	You've benefited in many other ways that aren't financial as well.
	You get to give talks to thousands of people.
	You get to appear on the Colbert Report.
	This is by far the most popular theory and takes one of two forms.
	One is Anita provokes the harassment on purpose by trolling and tricking the poor innocent kids on 4chan into harassing and threatening her.
	Well, you do say things that are quite inflammatory, and I suspect you know that you're going to get quite a backlash when you say them.
	This is the consequence of putting hate speech all over Twitter.
	Virgin 2 is similar, but takes it a step further.
	Anita cre- sorry, Anita fakes the threats and harassment she receives on a regular basis, either by sending these threats to herself via sock puppet account or by enlisting an army of feminists to do it for her.
	Where is that army?
	There is your army, Anita.
	There it is.
	And that is probably almost all of it as well.
	Do you know what I find incredible?
	I find incredible that when a YouTube channel with almost 200,000 subscribers, run by someone with a Twitter presence of almost 300,000 followers, makes a video specifically promoting a video game because of the glowing recommendation of how positive the female character is.
	What I can't understand, Anita, is how that can translate to a net game of zero people.
	Zero extra people playing this game.
	How?
	How can quarter of a million people be exposed to your media saying this is a wonderful game?
	This is such a great game.
	And yet no one turns around and plays it.
	So it's not exactly a fandom.
	I'm not a fan of video games.
	I actually had to learn a lot about video games in the process of making this.
	It's because you're not a gamer and neither is your audience.
	Look at the feminist frequency Steam Curation list.
	9,000 followers.
	9,000.
	That's nothing.
	That is such a piddling amount for someone with your reach, for someone who has been on the Colbert report.
	That is such a small amount.
	Anita, if someone with your scale, your reach on social media, is incapable of increasing the sales and playing figures of a video game, what use are you to anyone, anywhere?
	You are certainly no use to the video game industry, and you're no use to the video game industry because you are a charlatan.
	You're an imposter.
	You are here under false pretenses.
	You do not care about games.
	You do not care about gaming.
	Your threats sound made up and they sound like they were made up by feminists.
	They sound like they were made up by feminists who are pushing an agenda, an agenda that you are profiting from.
	I mean, what am I thinking?
	What am I thinking?
	I'm being critical.
	I'm looking at the actual details of the case.
	I'm simply not doing as you have so politely instructed everyone to do.
	So I leave you with one simple thought.

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