From an article by Stephen Totilo on a recent talk given at NYU by Feminist Frequency commentator and noted target of #gamerhate Anita Sarkeesian:
Sarkeesian never acknowledged the security [metal detectors, an overall “heightened” NYU Security presence], and she only briefly mentioned the online harassment she’s received for her work. She fielded one audience question from a guy who said a female Gamergate supporter had been at the talk, had shaken her head at much of what Sarkeesian had said, had left early and, this questioner wanted to know, what Sarkeesian would say to this woman.
At press time the man, now approaching what one might–charitably–call the late-middle-age of his youth, was also reported to have a girlfriend in Toronto. “Megumi” particularly enjoys playing the new Bayonetta 2, because of the way it makes full use of the capabilities of the Wii U gaming system.
{ 43 comments }
Lynne 02.27.15 at 1:55 pm
Sarkeesian’s suggestions remind me of similar feminist battles, where you want equal pay for equal work and so on, as a first step, but ultimately want the structure of the work to change. So her suggestions seem to me uncontroversial, but hardly enough. Back when my kids lived at home and played a lot of games I used to wish there were more four-person games where the players could co-operate with each other instead of fighting each other. Now I am fond of games myself, but I like world-building games and Harvest Moon games.
guzheng 02.27.15 at 2:04 pm
I remember reading a review for Bayonetta 2 and one line that stood out went something like “the sexualisation here is empowering, not belittling” (I’m paraphrasing but w.e) and I couldn’t help but laugh at that, like “you should feel empowered by all these crotch shots. We don’t objectify just anyone, you know (no wait, we totally do)”
ZM 02.27.15 at 2:26 pm
A few years ago I was talking to a young girl I knew and the topic of computer games arose, and I recalled a game from when I was a kid that was pretty dubious where you were a cave man and had to go about clubbing dinosaurs for food (historically inaccurate) and cave women to drag unconscious back in to your cave where they would periodically have children and escape if you didn’t kill enough dinosaurs. She had grown up with Grand Theft Auto and so this cave man computer game was not even slightly shocking to her.
Ben Alpers 02.27.15 at 2:50 pm
The female Gamergate supporter is the black Confederate of ethics in journalism. #actuallyitsaboutstatesrights
The Dark Avenger 02.27.15 at 2:59 pm
I left a message at Philosoraptor a while back that talking about the two sides in Gamergaters is like talking about the two sides of Ghenghis Khan.
digamma 02.27.15 at 3:01 pm
She left to go drive Thomas Friedman to the airport.
AcademicLurker 02.27.15 at 3:05 pm
One of the things that surprised and depressed me most about the whole gamergate fiasco is how common the reaction “Oh death threats are no big deal. What are people complaining about? It’s totally normal.” seems to be. I feel like I’m literally left speechless by this, I can just sort of sputter “Wait…what?”
Kiwanda 02.27.15 at 4:07 pm
Somewhere, there may be a gamergater who doesn’t make death threats. But that’s as unlikely as there being a Muslim who is not a member of ISIS, or a man who is not a rapist, amirite?
My random anecdotal example beats your anecdotal example (or was it just speculation?): https://twitter.com/Dekashoko .
And I have two, the second with five parts!
Various reasonable points, if not a female gamergater.
Seven or eight good rants, although by a white cishet dudebro, so it doesn’t count.
Too many links to escape moderation, ah well.
phosphorious 02.27.15 at 4:11 pm
“If the woman who just left hadn’t left, but instead remained to ask a question. . . how would you answer her?”
Good question!
Halloween Jack 02.27.15 at 5:13 pm
Was her name Vivian James?
Roger Gathmann 02.27.15 at 6:25 pm
Belle has perfectly plugged gamegate into Jonathan Chait’s insight that the left gestapo is totally silencing the debate! I hope he includes this in another column, since it seems to me that a woman who leaves before she asks her question at a conference is a much bigger deal than, say, all the torture ever done by the CIA at Guantanamo.
Bloix 02.27.15 at 7:15 pm
Well, I thought the girlfriend in Toronto was a way of saying that the woman who left doesn’t exist. But now I’m not sure what it means. At first I thought it was a reference to Manti Te’o but his girlfriend who didn’t exist was in California. And I’ve got no idea who Megumi is. So color me clueless.
James Kitto 02.27.15 at 7:53 pm
I don’t get the impression the questioner is himself a Gamergate supporter. It doesn’t sound like Totilo or Sarkeesian made that assumption. Those last two commas do kind of make it sound like his tone was antagonistic but I’m not sure they’re supposed to be there.
Sam Dodsworth 02.27.15 at 10:25 pm
Oh, good lord. If you think that question was anything other than concern trolling by a gamergate supporter then you’ve (very sensibly) not been paying much attention to gamergate.
Anderson 02.27.15 at 11:14 pm
4: Ben, winning the internet has been surprisingly challenging this week, but that’s in my top 10 anyway.
James Kitto 02.27.15 at 11:19 pm
Concern trolling I can believe. Making someone up who supposedly just left and nobody else saw, and neither the speaker nor the journalist or anyone else in the audience call him on it? Not so much. Neither Sarkeesian nor Totilo identify the guy as a gater or question the existence of the woman who left, I think it’s just a misreading.
Adam Stephanides 02.28.15 at 1:53 am
I took the “girlfriend who lives in Toronto” to be an allusion to Avenue Q, in which a gay character in denial claims to have an awesome — and obviously non-existent — “girlfriend who lives in Canada.”
Belle Waring 02.28.15 at 4:01 am
Bloix: someone pretended there was a female gamergate supporter at a talk, but there wasn’t, and he did so in a way that was so transparent and so bone-stupid that it was embarrassing even for people who weren’t there, such as myself. James Kitto: Sarkeesian was bending over backwards to be polite but included the word “if” in her response; Totilo was sensible enough to think the anecdote spoke for itself. Don’t play ‘wide-eyed innocent fawn in the shadowy forest that is the life of the mind,’ it’s not a cute look on you for some reason. Further, more generally, don’t make me explain my jokes, people, it makes them lame and not funny. Do like Ben Alpers and make funnier jokes.
Belle Waring 02.28.15 at 5:08 am
Lifted from comments there and now I am going OUTSIDE TO SWIM:
Yep. “Plain-faced” video game avatars are over due to represent women who complain about sexism in video games. Because feminists be ugly! OK, I’ll never read comments at Kotaku again, like the blood oath I already swore.
mjfgates 02.28.15 at 5:33 pm
My various daughters have spent many hours playing “Bowling For Cop-Cars” in GTA. Doesn’t mean they aren’t annoyed by the random gratuitous bikinis everywhere, or that they wouldn’t be ALL 0ver it if Rockstar came out with a game with a cool female lead. (Oh, man… a drive-everything game with somebody who could dress like Agent Carter? Would that be awesome? Would every teenager on Earth buy a copy the week it came out? Yes, and yes, and oh yeah.)
Marshall 02.28.15 at 5:56 pm
What I notice is that Totilo totally buries Sarkeesian’s actual points. He discusses them as if they were just random street litter, mansplained. You weren’t thinking he was a sensible friend?
Belle Waring 03.01.15 at 2:49 am
Eh, no, I realized on a re-read that a) he buried the lede in the most burying way possible, by actually burying her bullet points in comments, rather than the article and b) he didn’t seem to be laughing at imaginary female gg questioner, and not even a single comment thread that I could fins was either. I took it as self-evidently…gerglh. Totilo’s among the more reasonable writers, too. I don’t know why I do this to myself, but the train-wreck fascination is irresistible. And then, actual people are being run over by trains; it does seem that should stop.
Anders Widebrant 03.01.15 at 11:05 am
> I don’t know why I do this to myself, but the train-wreck fascination is irresistible.
That’s my experience exactly. I find the sheer earnestness of the less frothing Gamerghazi fringe hard to ignore, even though the arguments are so poorly put together. Reminds me of what I surely sounded like when I first learned to argue on the internet (on relatively obscure web site forums, the way you’re supposed to).
Belle Waring 03.01.15 at 2:33 pm
Speaking of which, Kiwanda, I read all of all of your links, and all the comments on each page (with the exception of the Popehat post, the comments to which I have read only to about 100.) Do you think there was, in actuality, a real female gamergate supporter sitting there at Sarkeesian’s talk all “smh,” who then had to leave early (for
a bikini modeling shoot or whateverthat was unnecessarily snarky, maybe she had class)? I am genuinely for real curious, please respond. I will not be a total dick to you. I will be as small a portion of a dick to you as I can manage, admitting to myself that I am new to this whole ‘don’t be a dick to people’ thing, and I shouldn’t overpromise. Really, I am super-curious. Do you think there was a woman there? Really. PLZ ANSWER ME! HALP! Will it be like in the movie The 3hree in “Adaptation”?Tom West 03.01.15 at 5:14 pm
I left a message at Philosoraptor a while back that talking about the two sides in Gamergaters is like talking about the two sides of Ghenghis Khan.
I’ve been led to believe that there are quite serious historians arguing that Ghenghis Khan was a net positive for the modern world.
Hopefully there aren’t any serious anythings calling gamergate a net positive.
Bloix 03.01.15 at 6:04 pm
#18 – I get that. If you weren’t a woman, I would say that you are mansplaining. Hell, I AM going to say that you are mansplaining. My question was, I don’t know the pop culture significance of “girlfriend in Toronto” and “Megumi.” If you don’t want to say what they are, that’s okay, my life will not be appreciably poorer for it.
Hogan 03.01.15 at 10:51 pm
Bloix: The “Canadian girlfriend” trope goes back at least to this Onion article from 2000.
Wikipedia tells me that Megumi is a common female first name in Japan. It seems very suitable as an online handle for a female gamer with a sideline in anime/manga.
Belle Waring 03.02.15 at 12:02 am
Sorry Bloix, what Hogan said.
Belle Waring 03.02.15 at 12:08 am
Pretending to have a girlfriend in Canada so as not to be called out on why you don’t have a girlfriend (or boyfriend) pre-dates the very existence of the internet. And then, just, some Japanese girls are named Megumi. So they’re also named that in dating sims or whatever, or your favorite manga. I chose it at random, really.
Bloix 03.02.15 at 1:36 am
If you google girlfriend toronto you get a strip club. And if you google megumi you get a 3d print of a – well, you can do it if you want. Which I didn’t think was what you were talking about – but hey, I really am clueless, most of the time.
Main Street Muse 03.02.15 at 1:49 am
“”I’m happy if she cared at all and wanted to come,” Sarkeesian said, “but I seriously doubt people from Gamergate’s intentions of coming to an event where I am speaking…I think if anyone in this audience is here for Gamergate they are not here because they genuinely care and want to learn. They are coming here to be, like, ‘oh my god, that woman, that horrible evil woman that’s ruining video games.'”
There has always been viciousness in public debate (http://bit.ly/1Evr2mg), but social media and the web make it much more violent. The reporter and whistle-blower who brought to light the UNC academic fraud scandal both received death threats. Reporters covering the Jameis Winston rape case also were threatened with death.
What’s most sad about the post Belle links to – all that Sakeesian talks about could be applied to virtually every other sector – film, business, etc. Here’s to hoping that some of her suggestions take root – in the gamer biz and elsewhere…
Hogan 03.02.15 at 2:01 am
Bloix: No blame attaches to not knowing all that. Anyone who says it does is being a dick, and I can’t be having with that.
Ronan(rf) 03.02.15 at 2:01 am
The quote:
“A good friend of mine beta tested games for a living just like you and is a ex bikini model who is a staunch feminist as she was raised by two women. I’m not being funny either this is a friend I grew up with”
Is hilarious.
But, I’m ashamed to say, for a minute there I thought to myself, ‘you know, this might actually be true.’
On second thoughts though I’ve decided it’s probably not.
Abbe Faria 03.02.15 at 3:00 am
“There has always been viciousness in public debate…, but social media and the web make it much more violent. The reporter and whistle-blower who brought to light the UNC academic fraud scandal both received death threats. Reporters covering the Jameis Winston rape case also were threatened with death.”
At the same time the Sarkeesian and Quinn threats are getting totally overblown publicity because it’s good PR in what’s basically an internet culture war.
Let’s be frank, there’s enormous violence directed at feminists, but the feminist blogosphere isn’t that interested in it. Inna Shevchenko (leader of Femen) gets threats and was giving a seminar two weeks ago when a gunman turned up and tried to murder everyone in the room. Zineb El Rhazoui (spokesperson for Ni Putes Ni Soumises) is getting threats from allies of people who murdered 8 of her colleagues a month and a half ago. Can you find any mention in the feminist blogosphere? any hints of a feminist connection? For some reason these don’t register while Sarkeesian/Quinn are the poster girls for threats against feminists. It’s bizarre.
Belle Waring 03.02.15 at 11:04 am
Yo Abbe Faria: I’mma let you finish, but Richard Dawkins wrote the best “Dear Muslima” letter of all time. Also. Finally, the absolute next post on any topic whatsoever by a male CT poster had better have you in there complaining about what percentage of the world lives on less than $2 a day. I want HIGH DUDGEON. I am completely serious. Or do you not even care about wealth inequality in the world at large, but only among the relatively well-off people of your own nation, almost all of whom are well-fed when compared with the people of Chad. You don’t care, do you? Why aren’t you complaining about it already in one of the threads above? You actually, seriously don’t care about children that are starving to death this moment, do you? I started this comment in jest, but I finish it in a kind of heart-sickness as I realize that the plight of the hungry genuinely means nothing to you when the hungry have brown skin. Because if it did, you would have already complained about it in the thread on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement above.
Kiwanda 03.02.15 at 7:40 pm
If someone had just mentioned “Georgia Glass”, I would’ve understood.
Yeah, sure, male nerds have their problems, but what about female nerds? I mean, check your privilege!
Your team should never say “That problem isn’t important, because there’s this other, more important problem”, but my team can, because.
I’m impressed you read all that, honored by your attention, and touched by your determination not to be a total dick [1].
I don’t know if there was a woman there, I wasn’t there. If I had to guess, I’d say “probably not”; anyway, it’s a bad question, because “Some women disagree with Feminist Frequency” doesn’t really address the validity of what F.F. is saying.
However, this doesn’t imply that such disagreeing women don’t exist at all, anywhere, or are somehow like those “black confederates”. Which (and it probably wasn’t clear) is more what I was reacting to.
Again, given the amorphous nature of Gamergate, I don’t understand how some people can be so sure of the nature and motives of all “Gamergaters”, which apparently must be the same as those of the people making threats.
[1] Also, I can’t help but notice an element of airy condescension. Belle, I’ve dealt with total dicks. I’ve known total dicks. Total dicks have been friends of mine. Belle, you are no total dick.
Belle Waring 03.03.15 at 2:47 am
Also, I can’t help but notice an element of airy condescension. Belle, I’ve dealt with total dicks. I’ve known total dicks. Total dicks have been friends of mine. Belle, you are no total dick.
:(
BUT, there was no woman, then. We’re on the same page here, Kiwanda! Seriously! The reason the post wasn’t just entitled some long-ass thing, and wasn’t then 10 million words long was the fact that I was simply choosing to mock this one, to my mind obviously false, detail. Since it seemed really patently fictitious. And you think it is also fake! We are of one mind. Unlike Stephen Totilo, which is sort of weird, because he seems like an intelligent, empathetic guy, and it’s weird to include this obviously fake detail but then not draw the conclusion “obviously fake” nor have the readers do so, nor (it would appear) have expected them to do so.
The burn on Abbe Faria doesn’t have anything to do with male nerds; just with the originality of his ‘you can’t make fun of this one speaker at this talk until you have ended FGM worldwide’ routine, which seems overly strenuous as an argumentative precondition. You have to agree with me there too (namely that it’s an implausibly strenuous pre-condition. It amounts to shutting everyone up forever. Dawkins himself thought it failed on this account, after reflection). I can’t randomly demand…that you…say…bring it about by unspecified means that 50% of Destiny players are women before we can even start to talk about other issues. Because you don’t have magical powers, also it seems like it’s a fundamentally boring and maddening game in ways, in addition to not being my personal thing, wow it looks really gorgeous though, huh. That would be cray talk. So I’m not doing that. Dragging in the suffering bodies of women from the 3rd world as props to show you’re more serious than the other person about CARING about WOMEN is bullshit, and doesn’t have anything do to with male nerds per se. Click the second link in the comment to see me bitch about it in a totally unrelated discussion.
OK, the Canadian girlfriend named Megumi complaint can be a valid complaint that I’m being a dick, but we’re dealing with someone who, you and I both agree, has just lied, out loud, in a forum in which he could have been rebutted with extraordinary ease. Really, what if Sarkeesian had just said, “you know, obviously GG has supporters of every kind, but I’ve been punked a lot over the last few months, I’m just going to have this dude roll the ample security footage while I answer the next question and then get back to you. I really apologize in advance if I’m making the wrong call here.” What would dude have done then? Yelled “non-specific excuse” and run out? I think that, once we grant he’s just totally made this woman up and is wandering around NYC lying about her, it’s now fair to give him additional Canadian GF shit on this basis, without it being generalized dickishness. Unreasonable? And making fun of Bayonetta 2 is never not funny. Well, OK, that’s false. It lends itself to humor, however. I don’t…there’s porn now?! What?! Japanese glasses fetish being extended to, like, three-year-olds amuses and creeps me out in equal measure but generally…what?
bianca steele 03.03.15 at 6:05 pm
Someone upthread said there was actually no question, so Sarkeesian could hardly have answered it. But the guy clearly said the woman in question “had shaken her head at much of what Sarkeesian had said” but “had left early.” That’s pretty clear, and she should have known what the other woman wanted to say to her. Right?
Abbe Faria 03.03.15 at 9:49 pm
WTF? I drop the most on the nose reference to Hebdo/Copenhagen possible. I say the feminist connection doesn’t register with people, and the feminist blogosphere is bizarrely uninterested and unaware that leading feminists are caught up in an assassination campaign. And in response I get some sort of… I don’t know, reflex, stream of consciousness take down where this is thought to be some sort of 3rd world comparison!?! That’s shown me, right?
So we’re clear, this is actually happening in Paris too. Le Monde and Figaro are stuffed with Gamergate shit, and awfully quiet about that fact that feminists sticking their neck out a couple of streets away has put them in the crosshairs.
Belle Waring 03.04.15 at 7:27 am
Abbe Faria, it was not stream of consciousness, it was an ice-cold sick burn. Recall Kanye’s original jump onto the stage to grab the mike? No? Google it and learn. Then, remember “Elevatorgate”? Dawkins wrote a “Dear Muslima” letter, in which he said no feminist in the Western world could discuss any issue facing her because it was inevitably trivial when compared with the FGM of an impoverished 12-year-old in Egypt. Thus, I was suggesting that your derail was overshadowed by his contribution. Dude, it’s a very tired derail to say to a feminist complaining about any issue other than forcible child prostitution in Cambodia, “you’re not talking about the serious problems.” This post was not a post that said “I am concerned about death threats against American feminist speakers.” It was a post that said, “I am amused that some moron had the nuts to pretend there was a female GG supporter who ‘left early.'” However, had the post been the former, it would have been a completely legitimate thing to say, and I would not be a hypocritical failed feminist because I failed to address a feminist issue in another country. Much like “what about the men?,” “what about Filipina workers in Saudi Arabia being treated like slaves,” and, yes, “what about the feminists facing death threats in other countries” are attempts to derail and shut down any discussion of any feminist issue on the grounds that it is “not serious enough.” But for some reason it’s perfectly fine for men to post about any damn thing they please, and no one pipes up in comments to say, “what about the problems faced by illegal immigrants from Africa in Spain?” I was suggesting that by your own standards, you now have a moral obligation to point out to every male poster a more serious issue which his post does not address, and criticize all blogs that you regard as similar on the same grounds. Obviously I think Ni Putes Ni Soumises is an amazing organization and I admire the bravery of the women working to change their culture. However I am not under any moral obligation to talk about them. One reason I might not do so is ignorance–what do I have to contribute to a discussion of a complex set of issues in a country I know very little about? In any case, if you feel you would like to helpfully inform someone of something they may have overlooked in a post, it’s quite possible to say, “hey Belle, do you know what? Everyone’s focussed on these threats, but I feel like these are likelier to become more than threats. You should check it out sometime.”
Belle Waring 03.04.15 at 7:29 am
Agreed Bianca.
Abbe Faria 03.05.15 at 6:57 pm
Honestly, I’m not picking on you because you’re a woman/feminist.
https://crookedtimber.org/2015/02/18/we-won-umass-backs-down/#comment-612797
The Temporary Name 03.05.15 at 7:33 pm
What might the ideal words following this be?
A link to something you misunderstood is maybe not the right way to go, but it also gives me an excuse to post a link I find interesting (although I am nowhere near as cheerful as those interviewed therein):
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31728658
Comments on this entry are closed.