It’s not a great morning. The sun is shining, I got a lot done yesterday, I got a good night’s sleep, and my class notes for tomorrow are all in order, so I get to just kick back and relax today, but it’s still not a good day. I started it by catching up on my email.
Greg Fallis spent some time on the Free Republic website. They hate Obama and all that he touches; they fear the Muslim Menace; they worship Sarah Palin; they despise gays; they think more guns will solve all of our problems.
Ben Stein opened his mouth again. He is pining for the good old days, when we knew how to deal with uppity black men.
It’s a very sad state of affairs. I mean it used to be, there was a time … when lynchings of African Americans were not that incredibly rare. Now the lynchings are the police and it’s just an outrage.
For a moment, there was one bright spot: I was pointed to the work of Jenn Frank, a game reviewer who is also a fantastically good writer: read I was a teenage sexist and He’s still alive, for example. Then she wrote a short piece for the Guardian, defending Anita Sarkeesian’s work, and the howling mob descended on her. Jenn Frank has quit writing, out of fear and anxiety. But I Just discovered her!
Then the standard wave of misogynist emails are there: I have so much noise in my in-box from indignant young fedora’d gentlemen insisting that Sarkeesian and Quinn were con artists and liars and “bitches”, so they fucking deserved to be puked on with misogynist hatred — not because the pukers were misogynist, oh no, it’s just that the best way to deal with lying women is to demean their entire sex and slam them with stereotypes. I disagree. Even if Zoe Quinn had slept with game reviewers to solicit positive reviews (she didn’t), that doesn’t justify raging about “evil cunts” to me and the world at large. Even if Anita Sarkeesian had lied about what she was going to do to solicit donations (she didn’t, and actually seems to be delivering what she promised), that doesn’t mean she deserves to be raped or beaten to a bloody pulp or her family killed.
Could you boys stop yelling at me about how bad these women are? Because I don’t care. All I see is you, shrieking in hatred. Sarkeesian and Quinn and Frank aren’t writing to me about the good old days when gamers could be lynched, they aren’t whining at me about wicked gamers who must be silenced, but you are.
They aren’t 4chan. There once was a person in our FtB group (now gone, gladly), who’d use 4chan as an excuse. “They were just used to 4chan culture,” he’d say, “4chan makes you comfortable with that stuff — they’re just joking.” And I’d gag. That you think long exposure to sexist, racist, homophobic ranting of the most extreme sort makes slightly milder versions of sexism, racism, and homophobia excusable — it could be worse, it could be 4chan! — is a pretty good reason to detest 4chan harder. I used to think 4chan was just a collection of childish stupidity that had voluntarily confined itself to a ghetto, but that guy convinced me that no, they’re a bad problem, a kind of immature anarchist version of FreeRepublic. Learning now that they’re also fully into conspiracy and undermining other organizations…their existence disgusts me.
But one last bit of concentrated despair: there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do. We don’t believe in forced conversion, deportation, or the use of violence, unlike the people we oppose. Yeah, that link is to a Christian pastor declaring that it is not only acceptable, but obligatory, that we persecute and kill all Muslims because all True Muslims believe that it is not only acceptable, but obligatory, to persecute and kill all Christians.
The only tool we have is to keep hammering with words, over and over again, trying to use persuasion to explain that the behavior of all of those awful people up there is wrong. It’s tiring. It’s also really aggravating that these same advocates for hatred react to words and explanations with accusations of “witch hunting” and “lynch mobs” and “Stasi/Nazi tyrants” and such similar nonsense.
Maybe I should just go read about molluscs for a while. That’s much more cheerful — but nowadays I also feel a little guilt about finding happiness in a world so full of poison.
Read about zebra mussels.
What helps me not despair is seeing and reading about people working together to make the world a better place: demonstrations, rants, a Sarkeesian video, some righteous Shakesville contempt, the Good morning America thread (where Pharyngulites are continuing to pay attention to Ferguson and related injustice), maybe a Pete Seeger or Billy Bragg song.
Because for every 4chan, there’s a Pharyngula somewhere. Stay strong, PZed.
Fantastic post, PZ, but a couple pedantic quibbles, if you’ll forgive me! First of all, the author in question calls herself “Jenn Frank,” not “Jenna.” Though she has done game reviews in the past, she’s much more of an essayist now; reviewing is not really her main output. Also, though many took her ‘quitting’ the way you did, she has made clear that she’s not done writing, just done writing about games and game culture. I admire her too and will read her on any subject–but it would be even better if she were able to write about a topic she is obviously passionate about without fearing for her own sanity and safety. She has explicitly said that she decided to stop writing about games because she has a family, and might have children at some point. There’s no better indicator that there’s a sickness at the very heart of “gamer culture.”
Is crawling back into bed an option? — I see the march-of-humans evolutionary path drawing, with fish on the left, “progressing” through various critters (including that important missing link, the crocoduck) to apes and, finally, early humanoids and eventually the long pig. Except in poopyhead’s case, there is one additional image. The last image is someone cowering under a bed…
… with a tentacle poking out and waving a sign on which is written “Kraken Against Rapists”.
Okay, here’s a mental exercise to distract you from outsized, nightmarish horribles of frightening power and flexible, omnipresent capacity for attacking by surprise, and from any direction or even all directions at once:
What is the correct plural of Kraken?
Krakain?
I’ll bite…
Krakens?
*prepares self for QI hooter*
What is the name for a group of Kraken?
An Elder Gods.
A Poopyhead.
Neat!
An Arrraaaaggghhhh!
… ?
@blf:
A Horde.
“Kraken” would be a consonant stem, so “krakenēs” in the nominative (or “krakena” if neuter).
When I started reading this blog post, this Douglas Adams quote came to mind:
The more I read, though, I started feeling a bit more like Carlin:
When I finished, I decided Bill Hicks was right:
Krakina?
I wanna crawl back into bed for about a week too, so no happy thoughts from my quarter.
The Is Only One.
no plural needed
CatieCat@2:
That sounds like a great idea! It’s a day for Talking with the Taxman about Poetry. Thanks for putting it in my head.
I hope Jenna Frank finds spaces where she isn’t a damn target. I’ll probably be hoping that for a long time, though.
If there’s a bright spot in the whole gamergate storm, it’s that it appears Ms. Quinn collected an extensive amount of information about her attackers for the past two weeks.
https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate
I got into it with a guy on Facebook yesterday who was talking about this. He told me it was “apparent that [I] still trust the gaming press”. I do not read gaming press. He then claimed Sarkeesian had run “a fraudulent kickstarter”.
After he criticized me for what he thought were my sources, and I corrected him about what my sources were, he wrote me this:
Seriously, /r/ you really going to post that list of source
safter criticizing mine, dude?I particularly loved the subtle and intelligent:
yeah, that’ll help them avoid civil liability, that will.
Isn’t krakenes the application of Greek linguistic rules? I’m assuming that from someone who once told me that “octopus”, being a word with a Greek ending, should be pluralized as “octopodes” which is a word I very much like. But the Kraken was supposed to hang out between Norway and Greenland. Isn’t that more like “Krakenir” or “Krakenar”?
More than one Kraken is superfluous, so there is no need for a plural.
PZ:
Not if you’re planning on drinking the first bottle quickly. Oh wait, you’re not talking about Rum are you?
gmacs:
Fraudulent how? As a backer, I need to know how outraged I should be at having been defrauded by this master criminal who took my money and then did exactly what she had promised to do, very well.
12. Beatrice,
Oh. Yeah. Oops.
Moggie @21:
I’m still trying to figure out how Sarkeesian did anything wrong (I know she didn’t, but I’m trying to understand where her detractors are coming from, and my does not want to assist in this).
Of course. Kickstarters are only meant for potato salad.
Moggie @21
My guess? By being successful while disagreeing with the majority of Reddit. I stopped talking to him after he left that comment. I hadn’t realized before that I was discussing things with a straight-up Redditor.
Remember: Gaming journalists always lie; Collection of barely-moderated loud mouths never lies.
Beatrice:
“Dear Krakina…”
Welcome to the Pharyngula comment section. We are The Kraken.
(or are we merely the tentacles?)
I, for one, myself, have downloaded the little scamp’s kickstarter several times, and yet still my moped sits lifeless, burning no fuel.
Cheer up, everyone – pressure works.
Those idiots are having their threads deleted on reddit and some of the most illegal threads on 4chan. Soon they’ll have no more rocks gather under.
I am surprised – SURPRISED I tell you – that a group of people who routinely act like bigoted jerks to punch down at anyone ruining their entitled fun… turned out to really be bigoted jerks. Le gasp!
I nearly read the Ben Stein quote as comparing the current inability of police officers to distinguish ‘black people going about daily business’ and ‘dangerous threats to everyone’s safety’ to lynchings. Then I realized he meant the officers.
(Also, as I understand it, the complaints about Sarkeesian are:
1. She might have used game footage captured by others without crediting who provided the video.
2. She once mistook fanart for official promotional art. (She removed the fanart, noted the artist and apologized.)
Also, probably (I haven’t seen it, but it seems to be a staple of Kickstarter troubles)
3. Sarkeesian-as-producer budgeted money to pay Sarkeesian-as-video editor or Sarkeesian-as-host, so the video editor or host could work on the Tropes videos as paid work rather than as a hobby. People don’t seem to grasp that just because the project manager and the creative staff are the same people, that the creative staff still deserves reasonable pay by the project manager.
The next time an misogynist arsehat starts sliming up a Pharyngula thread, PZ can either wield his banhammer like Mighty Thor himself, or will be able to feed the troll still living to the assembled Pharyngulites with but one command;
Release the Kraken!
(Ultra shiny armour polished obsessively by a thousand Pharygulite tentacles being optional)
Decisions, decisions…
Still, I think PZ’s true form may be closer to this chap.
[…]
I’d say that it qualifies as good news: fascistic bullies like Stein and Cass only become that candid when they’re desperate enough to conclude that it is a pointless effort to try to hide their sociopathic desire to beat the plebs into submission and slaughter en masse all those who refuse to bend the knee.
“Maybe I should just go read about molluscs for a while. That’s much more cheerful — but nowadays I also feel a little guilt about finding happiness in a world so full of poison.”
Sorry to disagree PZ, our happiness is an important tool against the horrors of the world. It is not a luxury – it is an absolute necessity. How else can you detox?
laurentweppe @ #34
That’s one way perhaps but not the only way. Sadly they may feel they have the right and permission to be vicious. Given recent events, I’m afraid it’s the later not the former, but then I’m optimistic that that’s just my pessimism.
Ryan Cunningham @28: “(or are we merely the tentacles?)”
I’m sure that some would say we were the suckers. ;)
no I am not going back to sleep just yet though a nap later might be fun.
With crap like this there any wonder that we have not been contacted by any intelligent life from some other part of the universe yet?
uncle frogy
more coffee please
is …. why
uncle frogy
Well… Kraken is a loanword from Scandinavian languages, so, the singular is Krake and Kraken is the definite form. Here in Sweden we’d just say, One krake, several krakar, and, this specific kraken.
If there’s only one Kraken, he’s really The Krake, which, funny enough, in modern day usage often means a small pitiful creature. You would call a wet shivering abandon kitten a ‘poor little krake’ for example.
Oh, how the mighty kraken have fallen…
Poor Jenn Frank. She’s got to do what she feels is right for her own personal safety and mental well-being (as well as that of her family), although I’m not convinced the harassment will stop just because she’s decided not to write on it anymore. It means that misogynistic horde is now smelling “blood”, and there’s probably going to be a drawn-out period where new assholes get into harassing her for a while.
I mean, just look at Rebecca Watson still periodically taking shit from idiots over Elevatorgate literally years after it happened.
Don’t know if this will get any replies because it’s past a couple of posts. But, from the nude photo leakage bullshit to this Gamergate stuff, man, the last week has been taxing. First trying to make sense of all the people trying to look at stolen photos instead of standing against the injustice, then trying to speak sense into all the apologists on websites making all sorts of victim-blaming arguments and then this obvious harassment tool trying to be passed off as “legitimate concerns and criticisms”.
I read Mattie Brice’s last post ather blog : http://www.mattiebrice.com/moving-on/
and her second to last post : http://www.mattiebrice.com/how-do-i-help/
and she says something very eye-opening: “You cannot solve the big problems and they will most likely still be there when you’re dead.”
And it got me thinking, is “progress” just a lie we tell ourselves? Are we really going to progress through these stuff or is it just going to be the “same old same old” bigotry forever. If anything, the 60s, 70s activism had hope because they were accomplishing something. Now we are just seeing fundamentalism on the rise, racism coming back full force, sexism and misogyny becoming not only acceptable but people who fight against it are getting laughed at as over-whiny, sees rape everywhere etc. Are things ever going to get better?
I know this is a pessimistic first post. But I feel drained and miserable. I can’t understand how people like Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian keep going on without having mental breakdowns every three minutes. I felt like I was going to cry when I was trying to speak sense into people about pictures that weren’t even mine.
PZ:
Sorry for offtopicness, but I see the fedora reference from time to time. Where does it come from and what exactly does it mean?
I mean, a fedora is just a hat, right? I sometimes wear a hat, so I need to be aware: do I need to worry?
I agree about the world being full of misogynist poison.
Hey, Shadow_Nirvana.
Don’t worry about your tone (e.g. “pessimistic first post”). normally the Lounge is the place to get support, but PZ clearly labeled this a fuck-this-world-has-got-me-down,-discuss thread. So you’re in the right place, and you can always take things to the lounge if you feel it’s getting more personal and less topical.
Please do remember that there are a lot of big issues – a LOT of them. The fact that any given issue is likely to still be around after you croak doesn’t mean that you have no power to impact the world for the better in meaningful ways. Women’s suffrage was and is a huge problem, but the “big issue” of women’s suffrage in the US was given a major legal victory in 1920, and by 1973 was pretty much settled. Looking back, from the time the problem was identified (during the negotiations for the Articles of Confederation, in fact, and for the Constitution that replaced the failed Articles of Confederation), **all** of the people that really cared about giving women the right to vote during the debates over constitutional ratification were dead long before ratification of the 19th. But it was frankly a huge issue just to get a discussion going on citizenship, its conferees, and its privileges in relation to gender and sex. Maybe not all of the people who really cared about the issue in the 1780s were dead by Seneca Falls, but if not all, then nearly all.
And of the Seneca Falls attendees, how many lived to see the 19th ratified? Any of them? Certainly not Mott or Stanton. But can you imagine the passage of the 19th without some firebrand somewhere kicking over the ants’ nest? Seneca Falls – or something very like it – had to happen for the 19th to pass.
it is sad that Mott and Stanton – and Truth and Anthony and too many others – didn’t live to see victory in the ratification of the 19th. But up to and throughout the 1950s Minor v Happorsett was still used as precedent in many cases, for many nefarious purposes. The Civil Rights Act 1964 and the Voting Rights Act 1965 were not structured around the perception that voting rights were threatened for women qua women, yet racist voting exclusions didn’t melt away if you flashed some sideboob.
There are issues that continue, but who would argue that passing the 19th amendment wasn’t a big hurdle, a huge hurdle, addressing a real and towering problem? There are permanent victories – or victories so complete and so indefinite that going back seems beyond the realm of realistic possibility.
We won’t beat them all this week – or even this lifetime – but I’ve been lucky enough to be part of the first national anti-domestic violence summit focused on queer DV generally (not “gay men’s DV” or “lesbian DV” which each got some attention before I was old enough to be involved). You think that wasn’t a hurdle? You think it was easy for me to convince the old-school lesbian-feminists who founded many of the early shelters that work against queer DV wouldn’t be complete if it wasn’t gender comprehensive?
You may not have ever heard of me. You may not have even recognized that that hurdle ever existed. You may not even now appreciate what that really meant. But two transsexual women attended that special summit – just a handful of people, maybe 2 dozen tops – in a room for a day, with follow up smaller get togethers over meals during the main conference to which the summit was prepended. One woman from California who had done great work in the Bay Area and I were in attendance with people with media access and budgets about which we could only dream and drool. We were visible. We influenced thinking. We changed minds. We changed policies. And, despite the fact that probably thousands of conversations were necessary to get people to the point that they were able to listen to someone as accomplished as that woman from the Bay, it was the two of us who got to witness it. That was a day when lo, and behold! someone planted some vines a while back, some other people watered them, and now, just I’m really hungry, here’s some fresh, ripe eggplant, waiting to be plucked.
A few years later two of the very same people treated me quite abysmally at another conference, making some terrible assumptions about me and passing around their comments on my imaginary faults and missteps (though I’m sure there were some real faults and missteps commented upon at the same time).
No, it’s not as if there are no longer problems with anti-trans* oppression in anti-violence communities. But if you think that summit didn’t constitute a real victory, a permanent victory which can never be taken away or fully undone, then you aren’t giving yourself or any other worker of/for change the credit that each deserves.
Me? I’m savoring the taste of eggplant till they scatter my ashes on the next generation of nightshades, baby. And if I can accomplish anything else in this life, well, that will just be a bit o’ vindaloo on top.
Olav @ 43
Its a weird Insult. Basically, its started with this meme about atheist superiority from a young white male. It eventually melded with this. Its got all kinds of weird assumptions and issues and is very much a product of the internet and especially reddit and 4chan. On 4chan its commonly used to dismiss atheist or SJW posts. On Pharyngula its a reference to young misogynistic atheists, I think.
@Arawhon
ZOMG, from your 2nd link:
Really? Really? Don’t you have to be a positive-energy wielding cleric of high level to have any chance at all of keeping a friend zone between you and a succubus? Nyehs’ is really going all,
?
I think Nyehs is really kinda missing the whole point of “succubus”.
O.o
Arawhon, 45
Never heard of the atheist connection to fedoras. I had only heard of the neckbeards/fedoras of OKCupid such as this.
MattP @ 48
Check out the September 2nd posting on that tumblr. The image is very much a distillation of the fedora insult including the atheism thing.
Arawhon, 49
Yeah noticed that after I had posted. When I first heard of the fedora insult several months ago, I had only seen stuff about the ‘nice guys’ of okcupid and assorted flavors of misogyny without an explicit link to atheists.
@Shadow_Nirvana
If it’s any consolation, it’s still much, much better than it used to be. The fundamentalists have gotten a nasty edge on women’s reproductive rights in terms of abortion, although the states they’re doing it in tended to be pretty shitty on abortion even before Roe. Marital rape is illegal, women have their own property rights and legal personhood (plus the right to vote), most people at least pay lip service to the idea that women have the same rights to men and equality of the sexes is good in the US, gay rights have expanded enormously, police might actually have to wear surveillance cameras now in many cities – it’s getting better, one painful battle at a time.
Of course, there is one thing that is much, much worse. It used to be a lot harder for the misogynistic, criminal, and possibly mentally ill assholes out there to gang up and harass people. Now they can concentrate their forces and harass people in ways they never could before.
Regarding Zoe Quinn, I’ll repost something I wrote on another site:
Virtually everyone knows that the game reviews industry is completely corrupt (except maybe for some of the game reviewers who have convinced themselves that the game publisher supplied perks haven’t influenced them). Between the extravagant gifts, er, promotional materials and the all expense paid trips, and the occasionally outright editorial interference, everyone knows that they’re bought and paid for. People have just accepted that this is the way things are for a long time.
I mention all this to show that the outrage directed at Ms Quinn isn’t really about corruption. Even if we were to accept their version of the story, it doesn’t even come close to what already goes on in that industry. The real reason behind this outrage is simply slut shaming, and punishing a woman who was making waves in an industry dominated by boy’s clubs.
brett @ 51;
Let’s not bring toxic ableist assumptions into this. There is no basis upon which to draw any connection between misogyny and mental illness. Most MRA scumbags appear to be entirely neurotypical, which itself forms another part of the unearned social proivilege they trade upon, and there are several feminist progressives who post on this very blog that have diagnoseable mental conditions.
Language like this doesn’t help, but rather serves only to oppose bigotry against one oppressed group by punching down the social power gradient at another.
Test. (The previous comment should not have been blank; the link contains a screen shot of the preview window.)
https://twitter.com/Xanthe_Cat/status/509127790461849600
Well, if it’s any help, here is some good news (within bad news unfortunately):
Man rescues woman kept in dog cage
Summary: Young woman was kept restrained in a cage and repeatedly raped and beaten by a scum of the earth piece of shit couple. A 61-year old badass helped her escape:
he’s not bringing assumptions. there’s lots of documentation of it. Dennis Markuze (David Mabus) is a great example.
you shouldn’t automatically DISCOUNT it either.
what’s more, they didn’t actually link misogyny with mental illness. what I read is a list, INCLUDING misogynists and the mentally ill.
…the overarching set being “harassers” not “misogynists”.