Interesting. The right of free speech is best interpreted as an individual right, yet #gamergate does not treat Anita Sarkeesian as an individual, but as a avatar of an amorphous feminist movement, responsible not for her own thoughts and actions, but instead for the collective and largely imagined sins of the group.
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Not really. A new Falcor-gif every now and then is definitely called-for.
Plus, this one has 8-bit-gamer-style sunglasses: on-topic!
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If only! US federal sites have more weapons than the rest of the world combined. What a bunch of hypocritesā¦
hey! Stop trying to fix the goalposts into one place!
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Oh yeah? How many feminists have you dated? And donāt bother mentioning them if it wasnāt in a serious fashion.
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Robulus, I apologize. You arenāt missing anything. I missed using the right punctuation. I should have written:
I hope throwing a few facts in here doesnāt poison it
Sorry for the confusion.
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Letās be realistic: Why speak at a venue that has no respect for your well-being and shows callous lack of concern for your health?
In the words of Nicki Minaj, āHad I accepted the pickle juice, I would be drinking pickle juice right now.ā
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I donāt like that she canceled. Iām not saying she should take unnecessary risks with her safety, or that she doesnāt have a right to decide for herself what she considers to be a credible threat, or that she should choose martyrdom.
But I donāt like to see bullies win- Even a small, temporary victory. This feels like letting them win.
I also canāt help thinking that thereās a lesson here about how men and women deal with physical danger differently, and whatās expected of them. For a man to have canceled an appearance under similar circumstances would have been considered cowardice. A man would have been expected to be brave, fight back, and failing all else, sacrifice himself for others.
Iām not bringing that up to highlight some sort of double standard or accuse her of being less than honorable, but because I think it illustrates a fundamental divide in how men and women react to something like this, and I think that understanding those divides is necessary to achieving some measure of equality.
I think that what bothers me is that the bullies were allowed to win, in a way they interpret as a clean victory. Itās not just that they got what they wanted, but that they are able to interpret her cancelling as a sign of weakness- And get to feel theyāve proved their own superiority, according to a standard they were allowed to set in the first place. Itās alpha-dog posturing: Look the most threatening and see who backs down first. Itās a behavior that I think men intrinsically understand, which women donāt. Women operate on a different set of principles where pack status isnāt determined by strength alone.
Iām not trying to declare the superiority or irrelevance of either mode, but just trying to point out that on some level, weāre trying to have a conversation while speaking completely different languages.
Just a random late night thought.
Not her safety, Mike: her audienceās. Ćcole Polytechnique massacre, remember. She would have been a baby when it happened, but it had repercussions in our country (and sheās from here originally).
I would not have taken that risk either, and Iām a straight white male who is old enough not to give a damn about my own safety (i.e, Iām edging into the twilight years).
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No worries. It was an interesting comment.
Well according to another poster who was there, they did look into the threats, found them baseless, and beefed up security. Sounds like they took prudent measures, IMHO.
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What do you mean by that? Why would she be responsible if something had gone wrong? It would not have been her fault if the threats were credible and someone had inflicted violence on her or those in attendance. āIFā someone had perpetrated some violent act then he, himself would have been solely responsible for his actions. Sarkeesian is not responsible for anotherās actions.
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If only I got one pound for every Lib-Cap fake anarchist who was like that.
The Revolution would be funded and starting next week.
Christ, what an asshole.
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If they were baseless, why beef up security? And why beef up security if no measures are going to be taken to check (in any sense of the word) guns going into the venue?
I donāt see ānot credibleā in various peopleās opinion (some expert, some not) as being synonymous with ābaseless.ā On the one hand, youāve decided the risk is low, on the other that itās nil. Enough of a difference that they apparently did plan to have the place crawling with Feds and undercover cops.
A low risk of a large-scale school shooting is worth a response IMO.
And I just find this whole culture of making death threats anytime somebody says or does something you donāt like ā a culture thatās at least as old as the telephone but probably much older than that ā has gone overboard in the Internet age. Clearly most such threats are simply intended to silence the recipient, but they should all be followed up, and even the obvious pranksters should suffer consequences. Because bullying people into silence is not nearly on a par with killing them, but itās still cowardly and unacceptable.
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The prudent move, regardless of your gender, is to cancel the appearance. Your own safety should be a secondary consideration to the safety of the audience, and you might feel responsible, or be held to account, if the threat turned out to be credible. The double standard youāve just highlighted is a byproduct of patriarchy. Iāve said it before, and Iāll say it many times again, it hurts us all.
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More importantly, there was no chance to take even the most basic precaution of ensuring that attendees did not bring weapons to the venue. If the university cannot turn away people bringing deadly weapons, then there is neither liberty nor security. Instead, it is a tyranny of the armed.
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