June 23, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
04:18
| 
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| On Thursday the 22nd of June 2017, I attended a panel at VidCon called Women Online Discussion featuring Anita Sarkeesian. | |
| The panel was advertised as a discussion about how to create and engage as a woman. | |
| This is of particular interest to me as for many years now I have been attempting to engage with Sarkeesian and other feminists about their criticisms of the video game industry. | |
| Like thousands of others, I have long been a critic of Sarkeesian's work, finding it of poor quality while Sarkeesian consistently avoided answering criticism by smearing male video gamers with derogatory terms such as toxic masculinity and decrying any and all legitimate criticism as inciting harassment. | |
| My hope for the conference was to learn how Miss Sarkeesian and the other panelists would like to be approached in order to discuss my concerns. | |
| Within minutes, Anit Sarkeesian hijacked the panel for her own personal agenda after she identified me in the audience. | |
| I was sat quietly anticipating an interesting discussion, but instead Sarkeesian decided to use her position of institutional privilege as one of VidCon's featured creators to launch an unprovoked tirade of abuse after singling me out specifically to bully, culminating in her calling me a shithead and a garbage human. | |
| On page 9 of VidCon's code of conduct, there is a paragraph detailing what construes harassment. | |
| It reads disorderly conduct that includes but is not limited to any behaviour that is illegal, unsafe, disruptive, discriminatory, or causes excessive discomfort to our attendees or guests. | |
| Anit Sarkeesian violated VidCon's code of conduct by abusing me from the stage. | |
| Although you can't hear it in the video, after receiving this abuse, I told her that I just wanted to talk. | |
| She dismissed this without consideration and then lied about me to the entire audience, claiming that I had either personally harassed her or incited others to do so. | |
| As anyone who follows my work will be able to attest, I have had a completely consistent record of advocating against the public contacting Sarkeesian at all, let alone sending threats. | |
| I make two arguments, the first moral, that it is wrong to send abuse, and the second pragmatic, that she can paint anyone who criticizes her as an abuser in order to avoid the criticism. | |
| My criticisms of her are also consistent in regard to the evident bias of her work and her defamatory attacks on men, by using bigoted terms such as toxic masculinity. | |
| Naturally, videos of Anita abusing me went viral on the internet and incited a ceaseless torrent of cyber abuse and harassment from her friends and followers on Twitter, including many content creators with many thousands of followers themselves, also calling me a garbage human. | |
| This lasted for the entire duration of last night, in which I stayed up to catalogue the abuse on my Twitter feed, an archive of which can be found in the video description. | |
| Being abused by Anita Sarkeesian was understandably my least favourite part of VidCon so far, compared to the highlight which was bumping into my favourite content creator, Boogie2988. | |
| I have enjoyed Boogie's work for many years, and cyberbullying is an issue I personally experience every day, so as a paying customer, I was eager to see my favourite YouTuber discuss it. | |
| Instead, I now expect Anita to be unable to contain her disdain towards myself and other members of the audience and launch another spiteful and humiliating attack which her followers will mimic as they did the previous night because she's clearly unable to remain professional and refrain from violating VidCon's code of conduct. | |
| For this reason, I am formally petitioning VidCon's co-founders, Hank and John Green, to remove Anita Sarkeesian from the cyberbullying panel on Saturday to prevent further such incidents and maintain the polite and prestigious atmosphere that all other panelists and attendees have been maintaining. | |
| If you wish to support this petition, please politely contact Hank or John with your own respectful statement on their public email addresses, which are linked in the description of this video. | |
| Thank you for your time, and I hope the remainder of VidCon can pass without any more such incidents. | |
| I think it's important to recognize that harassment is, as someone had mentioned, it's not just what is legal and illegal, right? |
Export Selection