The offending account has been suspended, hopefully because itās part of an ongoing criminal investigation.
this is just horrible. i hope someone is able to help her, and she is able to sleep peacefully. damn trolls! damn them.
Iām going to tell them the same thing I tell jihadists:
If you have to threaten or kill people to prove youāre right, it means you arenāt.
Reading the Snappy response to sexist harasser yesterday I was depressed by the line, āBrianna Wu is a game developer and a frequent writer about gender issues in tech. As such, she frequently receives harassing, unpleasant emails.ā
Emphasis mine. What was depressing about that story is what makes this story even worse: itās expected. It would be nice to live in a world where this story is shocking because itās uncommon rather than being shocking because it happens too often.
Itās awful that anybody would write such a thing and he should be prosecuted for it, but what makes them credible? A loser who makes threats on Twitter generally isnāt raping anybody.
The offending posts included specific, credible information, including home addresses of both her and her family.
When you cast the light of truth into the shadowy abyss of ignorance, sometimes you find monsters.
I wish her all the best 
Freedom of speech only works when everyone can feel itās safe to speak.
Iām willing to grant that a person willing to use threats to suppress dissent might sometimes be on the right side of an argument. But without being able to test it against the dissenting views that were just suppressed, how is anyone ever going to know?
Suppressing other peopleās points of view is a rejection of fallibilism, even if one claims to be a fallibilist.
Honestly, if this were a domestic violence situation, Iād find the threats credible, but not when it comes to strangers. Iām in a fandom where the celeb has actually been stalked and physically threatened by so-called fans and those fans were not making threats on Twitter beforehand. The ones that talk the most on social media tend to actually do the least in real life.
You know, Iād like to take issue with this:
In so doing, these men have ably demonstrated the point Sarkeesian sought to make all along: that gaming is riddled with misogynistic violence, and that this violence reflects a real-world misogyny rampant within the gaming world.
But then, from the article there is this:
[Those issuing threats] also inexorably linked criticism of her work, valid or not, with semi-delusional vigilantism
Yeah, basically at this point itās very hard to disagree with Sarkeesian just because itās stomach churning to see what people who disagree with Sarkessian are like.
You know or can be reasonably expected to know sheās received threats before without taking actions like this. You donāt know the specific nature of the threat or why the reaction is as it was. Speculating is absurd.
Jeez, that sure are some dreary, depressing wankwits in the world. I hope the jizzstains responsible for this sort of thing are brought to book and given the appropriate treatment.
I think we shouldnāt down play things happening hereā¦butā¦
It should be recognized that these violent incidences have the āhive mindā type reactions, where a few miscreants that fit the bill for misogynistic ass wipes, create a swarm of trolls that cause the enormous damage. The same is happening in ferguson, as you have a situation that attracts the malcontents whose only real desire it to cause pain, suffering and whatever.
I only say this because of what the mind believes about the preponderance of people that would do this kind of activity in solitude versus those who would only act, or do act, in congregations.
We had the discussion on boingboing recently about how certain beliefs in society, such as, ābinge drinking is acceptableā are generally held by a minority, but propped up by a majority of thinkers, who think to go against the norm in a given situation would put them at a disadvantage. The group think is what is important to recognize.
So at the end of the day, every time this minority acts, thereās a majority which doesnāt push back, allowing them to appear grander than they are.
If we donāt recognize that thereās a seed of mysogny, surrounded by a coating of trolls, given space by an apathy, we may realize and create the inverse avenue, and create the vaccuum of space that allows hate itself to breed, regardless of idealogues, because the trolls will flutter to either side.
Trolls are trolls, and they are completely wrong in what they are doing here, but are we not furthering sexism by stating as fact that they are male? Yes, logic dictates that they are, but that is not factual, and assumes that women cannot be trolls as well.
I wish her the best, and continued safety.
I just canāt understand the threat-makers getting this worked up over bullshit. Because entertainment is bullshit. Where is everyone getting worked up over true injustice in this world? I can understand being a pratt on the net over this bullshit. The internet pays attention to those who bray the loudest. But to actually threaten people and make them unsafe? Over bullshit? WHAT THE FUCK!?! Seriously.
Whether or not you agree with Sarkasian, nothing changes. You can still play the games she calls misogynistic. She doesnāt have some magic tool to erase them from your hard drives or DVDs or BluRays.
We should lump these assholes with the ones in the other parts of the world that deny education to women and put them on an island somewhere and let them just be bitter and leave the rest of us alone to be kind, enlightened, and civil.
Itās awfully easy to discount threats as non-credible when theyāre pointed at someone else.
Seriously, the tweets included threats of explicit violence, sexual violence, and arson, visited on her and her family, attached to their home addresses. Thatās more than enough to be a criminal act in any jurisdiction you can name.
Honestly, reading the tweets sounded like they came from something out of American Psycho.
But go on, tell us how hypothetically brave youād be if it was your name, your home address, your familyās names and home addresses, attached to those threats.
Youāre laboring under the misapprehension that itās possible to be sexist against men.
Itās not.
Itās possible for men, individually, to face gender discrimination.
But sexism is a system, deeply rooted, universally experienced, constant undertone in the lives of women. It is not a series of isolated incidents: it is an inescapable fact of life.
How do you know that a person who makes specific threats like that hasnāt sexually assaulted anyone ?
Are you some sort of ādevilās advocateā ?
The individuals making the threats all identify as and present themselves as male. All of them. Not the majority of them. Not a significant fraction of them. Not some of them. Not one of them. ALL of them.
No, weāre not furthering sexism here. Weāre calling out facts.
