The Anita Sarkeesian mess. You can be incensed by a) the threats, b) the invocation of Marc Lepine, and c) the state of Utah’s gun laws:
The school confirmed Sarkeesian’s explanation in a statement. “During the discussion, Sarkeesian asked if weapons will be permitted at the speaking venue. Sarkeesian was informed that, in accordance with the State of Utah law regarding the carrying of firearms, if a person has a valid concealed firearm permit and is carrying a weapon, they are permitted to have it at the venue.”
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Why interrogating teenagers is not the same as interrogating adults, and why having their parents present isn’t a clear fix:
Parents have conflicting roles, Dr. Cleary said. “They want to defend their children against accusations of wrongdoing. But we also socialize children to obey the law and tell the truth.
“Some parents might have felt compelled to use the situation as a teachable moment, or they might have felt their parenting skills were being threatened.” Dr. Cleary said. “It’s not fair to put parents in that situation, particularly without a lawyer.” But how do parents balance encouraging children to respect authority against the harm that can befall them by speaking with interrogators?
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The New Yorker has a beautiful introduction to the work of newly-minted Booker Prize winner Richard Flanagan, and I am going to buy BOOKS BY A MAN as a result (he also wrote this excellent piece for the magazine in 2013):
Flanagan’s tender, direct way of writing about the body is reminiscent of D. H. Lawrence, and some have found this side of his work a little embarrassing, even cheesy, but I’m moved by Flanagan’s sentimental men, known in the beginning as numbers and by the end revealed to possess secret wells of sentiment. In “Narrow Road,” Dorrigo is celebrated for his machismo and for being a paragon of his gender: brave, strong, stoic. Australians traditionally value hyper-masculine men who don’t expose their vulnerabilities, and Flanagan is deliberately writing against type. You might even say that he’s proposing another way of being, though he would hate the didacticism implied there. And it’s perhaps why reading the book ends up an uplifting experience, fundamentally of the material, not the dramatic, world. Flanagan said recently in an interview that “love is the scent of a sleeping back, death a slight draft of bad breath,” and, on finishing “Narrow Road,” that seems about right.
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You mentioned earlier the question of ego in this work. Generally, it is male artists who are known for and expected to work on this scale. How was this process for you as a woman?
I don’t know. It’s such an anomaly. I felt like I had to draw on the early industrialists. This wasn’t just going to be about, “We’re all [messed] up and we’re all gonna die and we’re all trafficking in other people’s bodies.” [Laughs.] We were also building something fantastic. So I had to go with that spirit: “We’re going to change the world and we’re going to do it like this!”
But the gist of the piece was that it wouldn’t be rebuilt again, that it would never happen again. It was ephemeral. You build these monuments, but they’re really castles in the sand. It’s like sugar. It evaporates and goes away. I think that side of it, the disappearance of it, the absence of it, that’s something the proverbial male artist isn’t doing. The quintessential monument sculptors build something to stand for ever and ever or [create something] to be rebuilt and reconstructed in some other form. That’s not what I’m doing.
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The title of this alone. THE TITLE. It made me happy.
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RIP, Ted Gullicksen:
“I think that all renters in San Francisco will be diminished by the loss of Ted to our movement,” she said. “He was a tireless advocate for tenants and really led the charge for tenants’ rights in this city for over 30 years.”
In a city where almost two-thirds of the residents are renters, housing “was Ted’s passion,” said his longtime friend and former partner, Sheila Sexton.
“For all of the intense personalities at City Hall, Ted was an amazingly gentle, kind and decent human being,” said Board of Supervisors President David Chiu. “He really truly was one of my favorite people at City Hall.”
A transplant from Massachusetts who moved to San Francisco in the early 1980s, Mr. Gullicksen was known for his passion for the Giants, doughnuts and Falcor — a moppy part-Maltese mutt that showed up at his door several years ago.
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I don’t usually link to Kickstarters here, but Doll Hospital has theirs up, and I’ve already sent authors their way successfully, so feel kindly towards them.
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The return of Lesbian Bed Death Radio.
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The question of whether trans men should be welcome at women’s colleges! Oh, man, sometimes I’m just happy not to be the person who has to Make Decisions About Things That Seem Complicated (I can’t imagine kicking out a trans dude who transitioned on campus/trans men are unlikely to be the first wave of traditional patriarchy overwhelming women’s colleges/trans men are men/what does it mean to be a women’s college/I will punch anyone who doesn’t think trans WOMEN should be accepted at women’s colleges/trans men face a ton of garbage and could use the environment offered by women’s colleges/literally thousands of other things/interesting metaphor in article talking about how HBCUs may accept some white students but can still identify as a community of color):
When I asked Eli if trans men belonged at Wellesley, he said he felt torn. “I don’t necessarily think we have a right to women’s spaces. But I’m not going to transfer, because this is a place I love, a community I love. I realize that may be a little selfish. It may be a lot selfish.” Where, he wondered, should Wellesley draw a line, if a line should even be drawn? At trans men? At transmasculine students? What about students who are simply questioning their gender? Shouldn’t students be “free to explore” without fearing their decision will make them unwelcome?
Other trans students have struggled with these questions, too. Last December, a transmasculine Wellesley student wrote an anonymous blog post that shook the school’s trans community. The student wrote to apologize for “acting in the interest of preserving a hurtful system of privileging masculinity.” He continued: “My feelings have changed: I do not think that trans men belong at Wellesley. . . . This doesn’t mean that I think that all trans men should be kicked out of Wellesley or necessarily denied admission.” He acknowledged he didn’t know how Wellesley could best address the trans question, but urged fellow transmasculine classmates to “start talking, and thinking critically, about the space that we are given and occupying, and the space that we are taking from women.”
The reactions were swift and strong. “A lot of trans people on campus felt emotionally unsafe,” recalled Timothy, a sophomore that year. “A place that seemed welcoming suddenly wasn’t. The difficulty was that because it was a trans person saying it, people who don’t have enough of an understanding to appreciate the nuance of this can say, ‘Well, even a trans person says there shouldn’t be trans people at Wellesley, so it’s O.K. for me to think the same thing, too.’ ”
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Eh, I will be raising my kids to never ever give any information to cops that they aren’t under legal obligation to give. I can’t believe parents would be so naive as to encourage their children to talk to police interrogators. ACAB.
I hope that didn’t sound victim-blamey-I feel really bad for the kids and it shouldn’t be able to happen. But cops are cops and you should never talk to them if you can help it.
I was raised not to trust cops except as a safe place to go if I was being kidnapped/van stalked as a child.
That’s probably going to continue as a family tradition.
Yeah my dad did a lot of social activism in the 60s. He taught me, essentially, to go to the police for help if I need it, but never to trust them.
Same. My dad spent years being harassed by local cops after successfully suing the department for a wrongful shooting, and my parents were both active in Vietnam protests and have been tear-gassed and slapped around by cops. I was raised to believe that the police are not your friend.
You can also talk about John Grisham, I woke up to that lil treasure.
Or we could avoid talking about John Grisham, as he has shown himself to be an ignorant garbage person…
Listen, we’ve all stumbled upon something we shouldn’t see on the internet. We’ve all run red lights. We’ve all walked up to a bank teller and given them a threatening note in exchange for cash. We’ve all slipped knives between the third and forth ribs of our enemies. These things just happen! But do white men really deserve to go to prison for this?
It’s like he’s a pervert or something! OR SOMETHING.
Re: Anita Sarkeesian, I can also be incensed by the grade-A losers who think she “should have done the talk anyway, she shouldn’t have given in to them”.
Here’s my guess about the dummies saying that: You’ve never felt physically threatened in your LIFE.
Sarkeesian made the right decision in a fucking insane situation and if you don’t support her you’re the problem.
Thanks for giving me an outlet for my morning rage spike! Love you, Toast!
Add to the list of things to be incensed by: the evil, evil men who suggest that Sarkeesian (and other women) MADE UP the threats for publicity. I just. NO.
Someone on 8chan or one of the other GamerGate-friendly forums actually suggested that since all the threatening tweets ended with periods, and Brianna Wu ends all her tweets with periods, SHE MUST HAVE FALSE FLAGGED IT. INCREDIBLE. UNBELIEVABLE.
Hell, even besides the invocation of Lepine, let’s not forget that the Eliot Rodger shooting happened in the *last six months.* If someone has explicitly threatened to bring a gun and shoot me, and is furthermore legally permitted to carry out the plan up to the point they point the gun at me and fire, then I am damn well going to cancel my talk.
This is the third or (possibly fourth?) time in the past year that Sarkeesian has given a talk which has had a shooting or bomb threat, in addition to the GDC awards and Girl Geek Con. All because she wants to talk about basic feminist theory with respect to games. In those cases, she kept on going because proper security measures were provided. The whole thing is sad and tiring. “Just ignore the trolls” my ass.
All because she wants to talk about basic feminist theory with respect to games.
Right? I couldn’t imagine being this blindingly, terrifyingly, violently angry if Sarkeesian was out leading a charge to ban all games, but actually, she’s just… commenting on them. What does your emotional state need to be to respond to critical commentary on a thing you like with death threats?
I had to scroll through my retweets to attribute this– from Laurie Penny:
“I mean, who sits down and thinks “I know what will make feminist writing look unecessary – huge sexist comment threads under every article”?”
ALSO: USU spokesman, in defending the choice of state officials said “They determined the threat seems to be consistent with ones [Sarkeesian] has received at other places around the nation. The threat we received is not out of the norm for [her.]” SO, you know, NBD, it’s NORMAL for this woman to inspire threats of physical violence and terror, so why bother do anything about it? I can’t even. http://www.salon.com/2014/10/15/when_gun_rights_t…
That is the thing that makes me insane. That this kind of threat really does follow her around, and this has been confirmed, and there really are assholes (I kept debating with them on FB) who think she’s making it up for shits, giggles, and Kickstarter money? Does anyone really not understand, there’s pretty much no amount of money worth having people write screeds about how they want to murder you and everyone who has genitalia like you?
seriously this was the thing about their response that made my eyeballs roll around in my skull on fire.
what part of “this woman has her life threatened all the time” equals “lol so who cares no biggie let the show go on”????
“I mean, people keep threatening to murder her, and nobody’s done it yet, so really, we’re not sure why everybody’s so tense about this.”
USU didn’t even TELL her about the threat!! She had to find out via twitter and other media!!
Oh my fucking WHAT
https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/52254289600080…
OH MAN. I’ve been off twitter trying to get work done, and I just…I can’t conceive of the thought process that would lead to this. People send in specific threats of mass shootings and bombings and you…shrug it off? I feel like the most generous interpretation of events is that this was handled by the same person who decided it was ok for the nurse with a fever and a recent history of exposure to Ebola to fly to Cleveland for the weekend.
I can see their argument about the conceal carry laws (even though they are WRONG) but I cannot even begin to fathom the thought process here. UNACCEPTABLE.
Not to mention that if the threats in that Email were carried out, hers wouldn’t be the only life at risk. That is a huge decision to make, and I think she handled it with so much responsibility and grace.
Especially when considering that the security or policy involved could not take effective measures to keep her, any of the attendees and any of the onsite security personnel safe. She had no good options and decided on the safest route, like a sane adult.
Mmhmm, exactly. A dude threatening a massacre doesn’t shoot just one person.
I ended up talking with a couple of tech guys at work yesterday about the Anita Sarkeesian situation, and I am pleased to say that both acknowledged the MAJOR problem.
Rarity, but still.
Oh man that last link. I read it this morning and have been puzzling it over since. My IDEAL solution is for us to live in a world where sexism and discrimination doesn’t exist so there is no need for women’s schools (except some women would still want them!) and also abolish gender, who needs it anyway (except some people would still want it, probably). So, y’know, simple.
EASY
That article was just so interesting and well done. As Nicole said, I am so grateful I will never have to make the kinds of decisions like “who is allowed to be on our inclusive campus”. The other schools listed are clearly trying to figure things out their own way, but “helping them transfer” to another school seems like the wrong approach. But on the other hand, you want to protect your bastion of women. And on the other hand*, as the article says, most women’s colleges require application materials to indicate that the applicant is female but few 17/18 year olds have transitioned, which makes it tricky for both trans men and trans women to feel as though they are able to really fit in.
The ending paragraph about singing the Alma Mater was basically the perfect summary.
*you are an octopus.
There’s a good conversation going on about this on the Metafilter thread for that article as well.
Maybe this is simplistic, but I feel pretty okay on the admissions front–basically the “anyone but cis men” approach works for me–but way confused and torn up about how to approach the questions of culture and generalization once people are there. I went to an all-girls school in 7th grade through high school and always felt trans girls should be allowed there (this didn’t come up much, to be clear, but I distinctly remember having a conversation about it in maybe like 8th grade?); but weirdly the question of girls who might decide they were boys after coming to the school never came up. (We weren’t onto the nonbinary stuff yet.) But on the other hand the school’s feminism wasn’t so explicit as you find in women’s colleges. I mean, it was all there in the underpinnings, but the language of “sisterhood” etc wasn’t so much a thing. (Plus it’s a day school, so the community culture aspect is different.) So a lot of the questions about how to go about community and education don’t apply as much in the experience I have of female-centered education. I DON’T KNOW. I DON’T KNOW.
I had to unfollow someone on Twitter last night because he just didn’t see what was so bad about GamerGate. And then Mr. Grisham. *heavy sigh* No more men, okay? I’m done. I’m banning them all.
I like the people (…men) who show up to every discussion about GamerGate with “But you don’t know the REAL facts! The media is afraid to talk about our side of the story!” No dude, I’ve been following this from day one, and even the most charitable interpretation of any of this still makes you absolute garbage.
Is it OK if I add “No More Men” to the list of misandrist slogans I am seriously considering turning into a cross-stitch sampler?
I would be delighted!
I had a very fun convo with a game journalist the other day who was like, “why are there sides here, we need to bring people together!” (this was after ZoE Quinn refused to go on Huffpo the other day and talk with one of her abusers) and I was like, “omg no, there is nothing to be salvaged here and never was.”AND HE STILL DID NOT GET IT.
I had a looooot of fun in this thread last night. If you want to read a bunch of people just running off Gators, it is a good time. (Order the comments newest to oldest, though, maybe.)
The Rude Pundit had a nice piece explaining why USU really basically said, “We don’t want you here.” to Sarkeesian b/c Utah gun laws actually do permit universities to prohibit the carrying of concealed weapons like they do at the sports stadium as well. Since USU refused to use that option it completely makes sense for Sarkeesian to say thanks but no thanks.
I was wondering about this. Hate to be right. Also, thanks for reminding me about the rude pundit!
Well, that’s completely different. You’e talking about weighing the right to carry a gun versus the safety of men on the one hand, and the right to carry a gun versus the safety of women on the other. It’s like comparing apples and some fruit no one gives a shit about!
Of fucking course you can ban guns at SPORTING events, those people matter! Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!
ugh of course; The chances of the NBA not banning guns at Jazz games is basically nil, so it makes sense that universities can prohibit it.
That post has since been corrected. The Utah gun law states that higher education institutions “establish no more than one secure area at each institution as a hearing room … but not otherwise restrict the lawful possession or carrying of firearms.” Aside from one room for hearing disciplinary cases, they can’t restrict licensed gun carriers.
So the campus officials were correct in that this bonkers law meant they could not ensure the attendees safety.
Why do we allow police to lie to *anyone*, anyway? That combined with plea bargaining pressure just seems designed to create wrongful convictions and false evidence when people are scared and under pressure. It just seems like the reverse of justice.
I think back to that case of the Danish preschool aide in New York who confessed to child molestation because the police said they had videos of him doing this, even though he had no memory of it. He had no idea the police could lie like that to him and made a false confession in response to their promises of sending him back to Denmark for trial if he did (their second lie to him).
Besides miscarriages of justice, it just turns encounters with the police into “me vs. them” immediately because I have no faith as a citizen that they are actually trying to figure out the truth of what happened, as opposed to make arrest numbers or get a crime solved in x amount of time or some other goal not in my interest that I have no knowledge of. It creates a totally uncooperative citizenry (at least for those of us who read the news). I would voluntarily tell them just about nothing if I was brought in for something, even if I were innocent — there’s just no way to trust them.
Being incensed is cool and all, but does Anita still have a kickstarter or some other way I can support her work?
Yup! The Kickstarter was two years ago, but she’s got a link to donate to Feminist Frequency (which is a registered non-profit) on her website!
Brilliant, thanks!
I’m feeling reactionary today, and having All the Feelings about this:
What about Down syndrome and whatnot? For real, you are pretty old.
Could happen! Then we will have a baby who loves everyone. Down syndrome kids are the best!
On the one hand, I’m glad she said this because while I fully support anyone’s decision to not raise a child with a disability in our shitty, ableist society, it really pisses me off when people make these comments, as though having a child with Down’s Syndrome (not a “Down Syndrome kid”, thankyouverymuch) is the end of the world. It’s nice to see someone point that out.
On the other hand, I dislike her perpetuating the stereotype that all people with Down’s Syndrome are happy love buckets all the time. People with Down’s Syndrome are PEOPLE, with the full array of feelings and personality types that alllll the rest of us have. Lumping them all together like that strips them of individuality and allows us to see them less as actual people.
Bah.
having just started the first season of american horror story, i welcome the inclusion of the idea that people with down’s syndrome can be FUCKING TERRIFYING if they want to be, and good on them for it
She’s great in season 3, too.
heck yeah Team Addie & Basement Ghost Friends for life
Thank you articulating exactly how I felt about that line.
OMG, a cousin of mine had a baby the other day. He was diagnosed after birth (because apparently she doesn’t believe in prenatal screening?) with Down’s Syndrome, and the things people have been saying make my jaw drop a little–all the “oh, you have a special blessing!” and “think of all the sweet smiles in his future!” and such.
I mean, people, don’t turn this kid into a Joyful-Amid-Tribulations Church Lady Accessory instead of, you know, an actual person. :/
I can understand the effort (especially when first discovering the condition) to Be Positive and absolutely NOT offer sympathies, condolences instead. I think overwhelming positivity is a more helpful response than a general “D:” reaction (balanced, though, with real friends you can talk to who will be realistic about his future and what it means in terms of long-term child care). Hopefully it’ll get more balanced as he grows up and they all get to know him.
That totally makes sense, and thanks for the perspective! You’re right, it’s hard to figure out what to say in a situation like this, especially since the kiddo has other associated health problems that are going to be a challenge in both the long and the short term.
I guess I’m coming at this through the filter of the particular religious outlook this branch of the family and their friends tend to have. I hope they recognize that the little guy will have his own set of emotions and wants and desires and he is going to be more than an inspirational story.
I totally know what you’re talking about. *shudders in recollection of the manic smiles and wide eyes lit with a terrifying, zealous glow*
+1
People with Down’s do not exist to fill your home with love and smiles all day every day. Their placement on this earth does not give you the right to “a baby who loves everyone.” They will be your child, with a different array of challenges than most children, but with the same variety of feelings and emotions and personalities that everyone else on the planet is entitled to. Not all kids with DS are the same. A positive stereotype is still not a good thing.
I have four coworkers who have Down’s Syndrome, can confirm that they are not happy love buckets all the time. Two of them absolutely hate each other and it got to the point where their supervisors had to have A Serious Talk with them about behaviours that are inappropriate in the office, such as trying to knock people down by ramming them with the mail cart.
Yikes, where do you work?
*beatific smile*
only here for 7 more weeks, only here for 7 more weeks
*eye starts twitching*
Yup, in my line of work I am not infrequently around adults with DS, and they are certainly NOT all-smiles-all-the-time. Most recently, one such gentleman spent an entire morning giving the finger to a room full of people, for no apparent reason other than that he felt like telling everyone “fuck you.” People with DS are PEOPLE.
Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis
Much agree. I wrote about my own experiences dealing with the full humanity, rather than the rosy stereotype, of people with Down Syndrome: http://freethoughtblogs.com/heinous/2014/08/21/do…
Also the frequent and imo inexplicable repeated use of “gay” to describe the relationship of cishet people making a baby?
yeeeeeah i was pretty confused about that too…? like if you’re using it “NOT IN THE PEJORATIVE WAY” but also not using it to mean what it means then…?
that weirded me the hell out and i’m pretty sure i think it’s fucked up. because all i can think of for it to mean, how they’re purportedly using it, is like “fluffy and gooey and soft and kind of ickily cute” and it’s not like that doesn’t have some thematic connections to gross stereotypes about gay men, you know
I’m a former long-time reader of Wonkette, and their content has bounced around from really solid to more-or-less fluff, but their “house” tone has always been this ridiculous, overly clever stylized crap. It used to drive me bonkers.
I thought this was great: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/29/opinion/the-tru…
Reflected pretty well my impressions from part-time work with adults with Down’s Syndrome, including that people with Down’s Syndrome are just about as likely to be pleasant or unpleasant, happy or unhappy, as people without cognitive disabilities. And also that Down’s Syndrome is perhaps special in that way: there are other cognitive disabilities that do quite often lead to unhappiness.
Mr. Cosmia works in a video game store (only for three more months and then he is a licensed carpenter, yay!) and we had a talk yesterday in the light of this Anita Sarkeesian bullshit (we often do, as #GamerGate #NotAllGamers etc etc incenses him as well), and it’s absolutely stunning how if a male gamer isn’t one of these toxic MRA bros, he has no idea any of this is going on. Boyfriend has said that not a single guy who comes in to buy games knows anything about this, and although they often want to chat about “the gaming industry” to him, it’s always fawning over Watch Dogs or something.
I would agree with that. Mr. Wren is quite a happy little gamer, but he had no idea about GamerGate until I started talking about it. And it just stunned him how terrible it all was, because he has never experienced anything like this in his circle of gamer buds. It really surprised me, because he’s usually all over the interwebs and more up to date on current events than I am, but not about this.
In conclusion, GamerGate is awful, MRAs/bros are awful, let’s move them all off the planet, etc.
I think it also probably has something to do with how much you play online games, which are just complete cesspools of racism, misogyny, and general awfulness unless the company providing the services engages in really aggressive moderation of voice and text chat channels.
Yeah I more or less only play games offline, and most of them are indie games, so the only reason I know about GamerGate is because of the feminist channels I frequent.
Yeah, that is definitely true.
Dude here, I game a lot (but pretty much entirely single-player or exclusively with close friends), and I only ever heard of GamerGate through the feminist sites that I read, until it got big enough that even more mainstream places started to cover it. It’s very easy to be a person who plays a lot of games and still be disconnected from the industry or game culture, especially if you generally try to be a decent person and recognize that the people who play games online with strangers are the diseased gums of society.
Yeah, it’s not even that the guys who don’t know about it are bad guys, but now I’m wondering if they don’t know because it’s not being consistently reported about in gamer media? I mean, I hear about it all the time, but I just went on Kotaku and it took me three pages to find one Gamergate article, and it was a hopefully optimistic piece about how “thousands are calling it to stop” (well yeah, but it’s nowhere near being stopped…)
Yes! I am a pretty avid reader of io9 (who occasionally link to Kotaku articles), and even they have only mentioned it or linked to an article about it once. It’s kind of astounding. But my inner cynic says “well, yeah, of course no one’s talking about it. No one wants to talk about it.”
Right. Honestly, the only not-explicitly-feminist pop culture site I read that has regular updates on Gamergate is Badass Digest, and they aren’t really that much of a gamer site. The mainstream gaming media really doesn’t want to talk about this
BAD has been so good on this. I love that site.
That definitely doesn’t hurt, and I’ve heard from a lot of my game journo friends that most of these outlets are refusing to run stories on it because of the backlash. (I wrote about it over a month ago and thought that was way too late, but apparently I was wrong!)
I suspect that #gamergate MRA’s, like other bigots, use very carefully coded dog-whistle language to determine if an audience is likely to be receptive to their stories before actually sharing any of this information with others. Because if they share their story with men who wind up disagreeing with them, well then they have opponents they might have to actually listen to.
Also because men tend to have the option of not noticing harassment if they don’t want to.
I play a lot of (retro) games and only learned about any of this the other week.. and basically couldn’t even get over that dude documenting his whole relationship with Zoe Quinn in a carefully crafted website and.. DUDE ARE YOU F****** 15 OR WHAT!?!?!
Yeah, my guy cares about games a lot, and follows a lot of the mainstream games media…had no clue it was happening until I told him, and none of his friends had any idea.
I really think the “gamer” people have no idea how many of the people playing online with them just don’t give a crap about any of their “concerns”
We have been fighting a ‘war on terror’ for the last 14 years, and yet the terrorism that has been inflicted on this country by racist and misogynistic men with guns, yelling about their right to kill us for stepping out of line, goes on unabated.
I’m sorry, I know that this is an overly simplistic comment, but I am tired of this. I am so tired of reading about people who speak out in favor of equality getting threatened with murder for doing so. I am tired of reading about innocent people of color being killed.
Eh I don’t think it’s overly simplistic. I think it really is simple, in some respects. Google tells me this:
noun: terrorism
the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.
SEEMS TO FIT.
(I am feeling…Idk, extra vinegary? Wrt police, too.)
This sums up my feelings on the news lately.
I am just so tired of feeling like it’s a constant barrage of “BE AFRAID and also only rich white straight men matter.”
This, this, this, a thousand times this.
Overheard snippet of conversation yesterday (a middle-aged white dude obvs): “You’re a victim, because you don’t have a vagina!”
Ban men.
Never trust the cops, ever, end of story. They are not here to help. If I have kids, you better damn sure know this will be the lesson they get.
My mom basically taught me this although I don’t think she would put quite those words around it, and we are white and lived in suburbia.
I keep remembering this piece on NPR I heard years ago about how difficult policing in gang-heavy areas of some major city was (LA? maybe?), and this cop said, and I have never forgotten this: “What can we do to make these people trust us?” Like, how can you even begin with someone who’s so wrong?
Well the depressing thing is that we do have an idea of how to get people to trust police! Community policing absolutely can work. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of political will to effectively implement it, invest in communities long term, and change the “us vs them” attitude on the part of the police who obviously are the ones who have to change their attitudes first.
Well yeah, but you can’t “make” “these people” trust you. That was kind of my point.
Yeah, he probably wasn’t looking for an answer that’s basically “police need to do a lot of inward reflecting and cultural change and demonstrate good faith over a long period of time, through a process that will probably feel like two steps forward, one step back, and then maybe they can start building some trust.”
Hah! Yeah, his tone of voice was basically exasperation and anger at not being able to make people cooperate, not you know, frustrated angst at how difficult racial tensions are to overcome.
I feel like people who want to be cops are like people who want to run the universe — if you want this job, you should definitely in no way be allowed to do it.
Re: Your second point – See also: politicians.
I was raised in an upper middle class white household, by parents who met in law school, and this was the lesson from a very early age. And they were right. Because of a family member’s drug addiction (non violent offender! Stunner, I know!), we’ve had to deal with the cops numerous times and every time every fucking time our rights have been violated/the experience was abusive/ we were powerless and treated like garbage. I ask for a warrant? FUCK YOU, SIT DOWN, FUCK A WARRANT. I’ve been physically threatened for wanting to make a completely legal phone call in my own home, 98 percent of cops are pieces of absolute garbage, the end, end of story. This is my experience, a million times over, and I am a white, upper middle class girl. Fuck. The. Police.
Oh, let me add, it was ALWAYS WHITE COPS (men mostly, but most of the women as well) who were the bad ones. I’ve had nothing but good experiences with black cops. Go. Fucking. Figure.
I wanted to add that, when I referred to myself as a “white, upper middle class girl it was because much of my experience has been in the context of my parents and siblings, and my station in life growing up, not my station now as a pretty damn broke-ass white woman. (But I am not a girl, I am a woman, thank you, moving on)
Two of my white cousins are in law enforcement and YOU ARE CORRECT. I love them, but it takes serious effort to love them. I am NOT proud of them. They are racist glassbowls who think there is only one correct answer to any situation and that they know all the answers. Disagreement means you’re wrong, by definition. These people carry guns and have carte blanche. Scary shit.
There’s an overwhelming chance the reason you have had good experiences with black cops is because you are a white, upper middle class woman.
I think you’re missing the point. The black cops did their job without screaming and yelling and threatening people, used reason and logic, and actually helped the situation. The white cops did the exact opposite, routinely.
Did I tell you about the time my old landlord, who lived on the first floor of my building, had the cops smash down her front door with a battering ram at midnight? They had a warrant, but for someone with an unfamiliar name and to seize $10,000 in cash. They tore her place apart, I’m sure trying to find some weed to justify it all retroactively.
She told me she was going to get Telemundo to come out and do a story, which actually happened, to my amazement.
I have a story involving firemen using an ax to take down the front door of my buddy’s house (THE BACK DOOR WAS UNLOCKED GUYS) because someone reported a fire at the house (THERE WAS NO FIRE) and so they jut busted up the door, and then the cops came because sure, and I can’t remember if they got in trouble legally, but the cops came in and took all their weed, some cash that was with the weed, and some bongs (some nice ass bongs too).
I have more stories. Worse stories.
I’m not usually awake to chit-chat on the open thread but I woke up with back pain at like four so if I seem punchy, THAT IS WHY.
commiserating. 34 weeks and my back wants OUT.
That’s way worse than my dog barking her damn fool head off at four this morning. And I tried to ignore her, but apparently the cops and ambulance and CSI were swarming my neighbor’s house 2 nights ago and I slept through it so now I have to get up and peer out windows every time she growls, just to see if anything else is happening across the street.
More pillows for you! Firm pillows, soft pillows, medium pillows, long pillows, round pillows, wedge pillows, pillows pillows pillows.
Spent yesterday at work being incensed (read: nauseous and avoiding all contact with men (read: 100% of coworkers)) so I’ll focus on a happy link today:
I hadn’t heard of Doll Hospital before but the $12 reward level sounds so delightful that I had to back. “A care package with a mix tape, a hand written letter, sweets, original artwork, soundcloud mix and other cute things!” — ohhh man it will be such a lovely day when that arrives!!
I’m being published in it, and I am so excited. Thank you for donating, and I hope that you love it!
The past two months in games have been alternately frustrating and frightening. The Sarkeesian threats are probably the most horrifying thing to happen yet, but they also come after incredibly explicit threats made towards Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn, in combination with doxxing (i.e., “I am going to kill you and I know you live at [your address]”). I’ve never seen things get this bad in gaming. What’s particularly aggravating are people who, in this whole GamerGate debacle, fall back on the usual bullshit modern false equivalence “We should hear from both sides!” argument. Sure, GamerGate cares about journalistic ethics. Which is why they based their entire movement on shaming a female developer for her sex life and routinely try to hound women out of industry for being critical of sexism in mainstream games. And they don’t use the hashtag when they send rape threats, so this harassment has NOTHING to do with GamerGate. And plus, did you know that Leigh Alexander was MEAN to them once??
I think the title of this Business Insider article says it best:
“Video Gamers Are Having A Bizarre Debate Over Whether Sending Death Threats To Women Is A Serious Issue Or Not”
What’s particularly aggravating are people who, in this whole GamerGate debacle, fall back on the usual bullshit modern false equivalence “We should hear from both sides!” argument.
Pretty sure I’ve heard enough of dudes mansplaining why they’re fucking assholes for one lifetime, tbh
I am genuinely afraid to bring it up with dudes I know because I just…ugh. The disappointment! The DESPAIR.
I googled women’s communities / communes the other day for a laugh, and then was like, wait, they exist? You seem to need to know basket weaving or similar and be more comfortable with gardening in and idk goats than I ever foresee being, but it’s nice to know the option is theoretically there.
Sometimes I feel mildly guilty that I plan to either go full Golden Girl or join a lady commune if I outlive Mr. Ada. Well, less that I have a plan than that I *look forward* to it. I desperately want my late life to consist of playing Scrabble and painting arthritic Bob Ross-inspired landscapes, surrounded by my four cats, infinite cocktails, and my lifelong lady friends. And NO MEN.
It is my DREAM to have a big house fulla artistic ladies, some dogs and cats, maybe a garden where I grow herbs for tea (I don’t know how to garden), many many musty old quilts, a view of a lighthouse, and everyone gets their own rocking chair on the porch. And NO MEN. Ever ever ever.
Please may I join you? I’ll make you a quilt for your rocker.
OF COURSE
Yeah this sounds pretty perfect.
I can grow the herbs!! Where do I sign??
I think a Toast retirement commune sounds like a great growth model for the future
Shit man I would live there NOW and I’m 34.
It could be a retreat for the pre-retired, then a full-time retirement community for women in their Crone phase.
My BFFL and I have committed to growing old as the aunts in Practical Magic.
Here’s the thing: there’s no “other side” to graphic threats of rape and murder. I’m sure that all of the women receiving threats have committed greater or lesser sins in their lives. Some of them might even not be very nice. THAT DOESN’T MATTER. There’s no “other side” that could justify anything these wastes of oxygen are doing.
Speaking of the police being assholes, did anyone else see this article on The Nation about black Muslim men being compelled to be FBI informants? If you thought the FBI had gotten “better” since the COINTELPRO days of the 1960s…
I have this theory that male privilege, like white privilege, is so good no one who has access to it can resist using it, even if they denounce it or use it only very occasionally and sparingly. I heard from trans people that the NY Times article wasn’t any good, so I’m not reading it, but I think it is good that women (including trans women) are talking about this issue now.
I think your theory has a lot of truth to it, at least in my own experience. I have found myself going through this thought process: “Nice, got that thing I wanted. Wait, I wonder if I would have had access to it if I weren’t a white man? Hmm. Maybe not. But…what am I going to do, NOT take this thing?” I feel like I’ve progressed to the point where I’m constantly checking my privilege, but I haven’t reached the point where I’m doing enough work to dismantle the systems that gave me that privilege. Especially in cases where there is a direct, tangible benefit to ME PERSONALLY if I take advantage of those systems. I’m trying to get there though.
EDIT: more on topic, I also 100% agree with you that this is a really tough and interesting issue and I’m glad people are talking about it.
I would love to know the issues your friends had with the article [so I can better educate myself, not so I can be fighty].
The folks I follow didn’t have a specific critique, so I’m assuming it’s the same old situation of a journalist who knows little to nothing about a given subject but still gets to cover it: there are politically aware trans journalists who probably could have written a more informed, better nuanced story.
Hey, I’m not trans, but I’m a graduate of a women’s college (Bryn Mawr, not Wellesley). Aside from the title (which is sensationalist and also suggests that trans people are whatever gender they’ve been presenting as until they come out), this was an assertion that a lot of people strenuously disagree with: “But yielding to their request to dilute the focus on women would undercut the identity of a women’s college.” To me, a few more gender neutral bathroom signs and pronouns in our student government constitution did not make me feel like my school was any less committed to its identity as a place to educate women.We even had cis men from Haverford and Swarthmore in some of our classes (in a couple of my English classes, there were just one or two, shared departments like linguistics had more, but they weren’t a majority). It was so clear to me that it was still a women’s college, and that these men were invited into our space, not changing it. I also think that the article did a disservice to trans women; after multiple references to “trans students” meaning just trans men and transmasculine folks throughout, their exclusion is practically a footnote. I know that’s a reflection of the current admission standards, but I think it could have been handled better. Hope that helps–I’m happy to talk more! (just in case: this is in response to allofthewhine’s question about people’s issues with the Wellesley article.)
Oh, and I’m not saying that Bryn Mawr and other women’s colleges should just go co-ed–while the cis men I took classes with did not “ruin” it as a women’s space, it was amazing to have a huge majority of women in every classroom. I want to preserve that, and also make that experience accessible to trans women.
That was a really enlightening response! The bathroom and pronouns seem fairly easy to implement and uncontroversial, but do you think the atmosphere of a ‘women’s college” would have been affected if there were men in positions of power (RAs, student government leaders, etc.) as they mentioned in the article?
There was definitely an issue with how the article handled trans women, but I think it’s more that there’s an issue with how Wellesley handles trans women. If their application requires consistent pronoun use in documentation (letters, transcripts, essays, etc.), that’s going to be inherently problematic as the article mentioned that few 17/18 year olds have fully transitioned, many are cautious of coming out to their parents who may be helping with applications, etc. It sounds like they can transfer in, but that seems like a small concession. But what’s the next logical step? Opening applications to all genders/sexes? A statement of intent of gender? [this seems like a horrible suggestion, but maybe it would allow trans women to have the four-year experience.]
I obviously don’t know, but I can see why it’s a struggle for these schools.
*I apologize if I have misused any terms. If I have, please let me know so I can learn from these mistakes.
As a genderfluid uterus-haver, I have the following stance on trans dudes in women’s colleges: if they identify as women- at least most of the time- at application and matriculation, they’re in, and they can probably stay in. If they generally identify as male at application through matriculation, they probably shouldn’t be admitted. Transitions once en-schooled happen, and that shouldn’t be cause to deny a person of the school they chose and the support system they formed.
I applied to a couple of women’s colleges myself, though it was really weird to visit and think, wow, I’m the most maleperson on campus all of a sudden.
This is SO INTERESTING and your rule seems like the most sensible approach to me–make it what a person self-identifies as at the time of application, no matter what happens later. Trans ladies who transition mid-college welcome to transfer!
ETA: @Cosmia (reply button, you are untrue)
The only “gamer” (a casual one, at that) I’ve talked to about GamerGate in real life is my boyfriend, even though most of my male friends are gamers. I guess I’m afraid of what I might find out if I bring it up. I sincerely doubt any of them are “toxic MRA bros” but I swear to god if one of them tried to play “devil’s advocate” on the issue I’d burst a blood vessel.
It really is something they /should/ know about. Glad Mr. Cosmia has been bringing it up at work, though I’m sure it isn’t fun.
It was so weird that I saw this comment initially as a response to mine and got an email notification, but then when I refreshed the page to respond it was all the way down here!
But yes, I understand this problem and because my boyfriend is pretty much the only male who I trust respects my opinions and who I already know is on board with feminist ideals, I really don’t bring up stuff like this unless its in the company of my female friends because I don’t know what my male gamer friends are going to say. I went to film school and lost a fair few male friends when I realized how gross their opinions on women in entertainment media were.
That Wonkette article is my whole heart. CONGRATS TO EVERYONE 🙂
I actually thought a lot about men’s and women’s spaces while in the nude-mandatory sections of a Korean spa a few weeks ago! On one hand, having an woman-only, all-nude area is really nice for stripping away the male gaze and seeing all female bodies as just beautiful and interesting shapes, without judgment. And I like being naked. On the other, it makes it really hard for gender-nonconforming people to enjoy being nude in public, which should absolutely be available to anyone who wants it. And then I’m like “well why does nudity have to be separated by gender?” but then I realize lots of people wouldn’t be comfortable being naked in front of people not their own gender.
Anyway the solution is clearly do away with sexism and gender-normativity and also make everyone comfortable being naked so I can enjoy my naked jacuzzi time without having to Think Big Thoughts, ok? Everyone on board?
Right outside Santa Fe, there’s an amazing clothing optional spa with hot springs that has both gender separated pools and mixed. So maybe that would work?
Done, let’s go there.
Interesting! How are community norms, i.e., no staring, enforced? In my experience, it’s hard to convince straight cis dudes that their desire to look does not equal a right to look.
At least in my experience, it isn’t really an issue and people are just generally respectful. It might help that Santa Fe is a pretty liberal town full of retired wealthy hippies who are very come-as-you-are. There are, of course, ways to report people who are behaving inappropriately and have them removed should it come to that.
Same here — I just visited my first Korean spa a few weeks ago. I really enjoyed seeing the bodies of women of all ages and sizes and shapes and so on.
I went to my first co-ed naked spa a over the summer and it was…fine? It was fine, I didn’t love it the way I love the ladies-only spa BUT I recognize that’s my hangup and I wish I were more comfortable with the co-ed thing. For what it’s worth I didn’t feel like anyone was looking at me (at least not in *that* way) but I felt way, way more self-conscious sitting naked in a sauna with old Russian dudes than I usually do in a sauna full of ladies. The trick, I guess, is to just keep spa-ing until I’m totally over it.
I have many thoughts on many of these things that are just refusing to articulate themselves right now, so instead I am here to say that Kara Walker is great and awesome, and I love her work and her process.
I highly recommend Gould’s Book of Fish — it was gifted to me, and I’ve turned around and given it to so many friends (who either stared at me blankly after reading it or totally fell in love with it too). Find the hardcover edition, as the narrator is supposed to be writing with the materials he finds available in his prison cell which is half submerged in the ocean (seaweed, fish blood,…), so each chapter is printed in a different color.
Also, normally I am not an xoJane fan, but relevant and just published: http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/brianna-w…
And I couldnt help but wonder, do white men really deserve to go to prison ever?
Are they really bad people, or are they just porn that way?
There was a good point that was mentioned on the Deadspin article about Gamergate, which is that the number of people participating in it is actually ludicrously small — maybe 10,000, maybe 7,000 once you take into account all their fake twitter acounts. It’s less than a tenth of the number of people who regularly participate on Reddit’s general gamer forum.
It’s good that it’s a relatively small number, but good lord they are LOUD. And terrifying. And it angers me that they can cause chaos and scare people and threaten them and remain safe. Oof, sorry, flames emerging…I just get so angry about this, and about any of the internet’s terrible ways of providing anonymity to people who would like to do/threaten horrible things. The internet is a great place, but the way it acts as a shelter to terrifying individuals is just awful.
Yeah, the comfort I take is the idea that probably the reason that they’re so loud is BECAUSE they’re so small. Their noise is a reaction to the fact that ten years ago, they could have enjoyed regular contact with a spectrum of people who, to a greater or lesser degree, shared their ideas, and as time has gone on that degree has become less and less. The feeling of being hemmed into an increasingly-confined space is the motivation for their noise and aggression.
They’re actually fascists, in the literal sense — an organized group seeking to protect the imagined “purity” of a cultural sphere by creating folk devils out of members of minority ethnic or racial groups (or in this case women, which seems like a weird category of person to describe as “minority”, but I think that it functions the same way in this case), often with violence or terroristic threats. That is what actual fascism is, and it’s what they’re actually doing, and the thing is that while fascism is aggravating and terrifying and can sometimes take hold of the body politic in a horrifying way, at the end of the day fascism is always a loser’s strategy. You take it on because you’re not winning anymore, and you know it.
My feeling, and hope, is that these are the death-throes of this particular brand of assholes. Fingers crossed, anyway.
Double and triple crossed, if possible.
So my dad sent me a text early the other morning to tell me that Richard Flanagan had won the Man Booker, and then another one in the evening to tell me to watch him on tv, and I’m trying to decide if a) he’s just really excited that an Australian won the Man Booker, b) he is just really excited that Richard Flanagan won the Man Booker or c) he’s trying to somehow hint at the fact that see, people win this, people who write books. Even Australian people. You are an Australian person who just finished your book. When are you going to win the Man Booker?
Or maybe I’m just reading too much into it.
Anyway, I’m delighted that Flanagan won, and also happy that he used his interview on national television to highlight how dismal our government is. He says he’s ashamed to be Australian, with such a government. I say, ‘Richard, don’t feel ashamed to be Australian. Just feel embarrassed that they’re representing us. Hopefully we’ll do a better job next time.’
If you are a man, you should not apply. If you realize you are a man while there, you should leave.
If you are in some way non-binary, you should have your relationship to womanhood defined and articulated before you apply. If you realize you are non-binary while there, you’re kinda fucked b/c no one knows what to do with you, least of all you, so good luck.
If you are cis, you should be helping with the work to understand privilege/oppression as more than a yes or no deal. If non-binary experiences are indeed legitimate, they cannot be accurately described by theory predicated on a binary.
That Times article gave me a lot of angry feelings, because I am a trans man who thinks everyone needs to shut up about trans men because we are not special unicorns, we just seem like it because patriarchy. But also, this is the second or third time they have written a feature length piece about trans men in women’c colleges/in college in general, and as far as I know they have not written ONE about trans women. Why not write a piece about trans women trying to get into women’s colleges? And no, the like, three paragraphs this one spends on the issue do not count.
Mostly, though, the kid near the end who says that he doesn’t think trans women who haven’t begun legally or medically transitioning shouldn’t be allowed at women’s colleges, but his trans male ass should be made me so angry. He is literally a person made of garbage. A garbage person.
SO TRUE (though I’m speaking as a cis woman who graduated from an all-women’s college). and that dude’s reasoning! like, what, a few cis men (who previously identified as trans women) have the MAGICAL POWER to destroy a women’s college’s identity if they graduate from it identifying as cis? No, we’re stronger than that, buddy. I mentioned above that I graduated from a women’s college where (oh, the horror!) cis men from other colleges in our consortium could and did enroll in our classes. It still felt like a women’s college to me, because it was (and is, though sadly it’s not for all women yet).
It is a deep and abiding shame to me that my Women’s College does not admit young ladies who have not legally transitioned yet. But we do talk about it. Lots. And I’ve been emailing our president. So maybe some day *fingers crossed*
thanks for linking to doll hospital. the project sounds so charming, I couldn’t resist buying a copy of the magazine
The first two sentences: “John Grisham is a lawyer and best-selling legal thriller author. He knows the law.”
He practiced as a lawyer for about 2 seconds*, and based on the 3 or so of his books I’ve read, he doesn’t know much about the law or the practice of law. The idea that he is any kind of an authority–more than any other average person who has read up on something–in any area besides writing thrillers is nuts.
* He says in a NY Times article that he practiced unsuccessfully for about a year before being elected to state government.
He also doesnt seem to have a good understanding of how to have fun on the internet when drunk.
(Answer – do anything other than watch people get abused!)
I don’t have an answer for this, but I’ve seen a lot of current students & alumni speaking up recently in favor of allowing trans men at these institutions. While I’m glad I’m not A Person Who Makes Decisions About Things, if I were I would definitely take into account what current students & alumni have to say.
Also I’m worried about women who are masculine-presenting facing harassment/other difficulties if trans men are disallowed and a women’s college should be the one place those women aren’t policed for how they present themselves.
SO COMPLICATED.
This is a big problem I’ve come up against when discussing other realms besides gaming. I explain an occurrence of sexism that they haven’t heard of, and they cannot BELIEVE it’s even happening. They’re so crestfallen that such a thing could even be possible that they can’t move past their disbelief into any other kind of response. Which, bless them for being so innocent and outraged on women’s behalf, but it’s just not helpful. You almost feel like now you have to babysit their own feelings.
ETA: in response to Cosmia discussing Mr Cosmia above…
So, I read the Wonkette article, and a link within it led me down the internet wormhole to where I basically spent the last 2 hours reading about Kevin Swanson. I somehow had never heard of this guy before. Or maybe I’d heard of him but just lumped him in with all the other obnoxiously homophobic, misogynistic, radical Christian fundamentalist right-wing-nuts who infest the American airwaves. But this guy, this guy, THIS GUY is so much beyond. I’m not sure if he’s serious, or if it’s some sort of horrific performance art, or maybe he’s an agente provocateuse in disguise, planted to discredit people of that ilk altogether. Regardless, I enjoyed the surreality of it all. It helps that his attacks, while vile, are also painted in such broad strokes that his target is everyone, hence no one.
So I enjoyed my morning of reading his claims that women in pantsuits working with men who are not their husbands are essentially engaging in androgyny and polygamy, which can only lead to orgies of satanic lesbian communist muslim pagan twerking and also witchcraft, and how the ultimate goal of evolutionary theory and the homosexual agenda is to normalize bestiality, and also your daughters should be married off by age 15 and forbidden from selling Girl Guide cookies or else they will end up reading Mark Twain and Shakespeare and then listening to Church Music which eventually becomes the Beatles and Katy Perry which lead in turn to sexing it up with the high-school janitor, which is what the liberals want, and best of all how the uteri of women who’ve been on the pill are filled with tiny fetal corpses . I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.
Basically, this guy inhabits a misandrist fantasy world wherein soulless women, their uteri rattling with the dessicated corpses of their unborn children, spend their days in pantsuits controlling the economy and their nights bare-breasted, twerking satanically as they perform lesbian witch spells over the sacrificial remains of emasculated beings formerly known as men. I think I have more in common with him than either of us would care to admit.
That’s the best and most succinct summation of Swanson and his ilk that I have ever read. Brava.
Why would normalizing bestiality be bad anyway? Geez.
Engaging in androgyny.
Pantsuits? Is it 1973?
The thing that blows my mind about the Sarkeesian thing (besides, y’know, the GUN THREATS over VIDEO GAMES jesus christ) is that the university didn’t even tell her the threats had been made. She had to find out from a third party, and if she hadn’t, she would have gone onstage with a giant target splashed across her back. Do the words “reckless disregard” mean nothing to these people???
(I looked through the #GamerGate hashtag on twitter- I know, bad idea- and saw one tweet whining about how the movement is about ethics in journalism, so obviously the press isn’t giving them a fair shake! Right. A fair shake. A reasoned, even-handed discussion of whether or not it’s acceptable to threaten a woman with rape and death because she criticized your video games. I see.)
It’s about ethics in journalism the way Fascism is about train schedules.
There are actually some people who truly, truly believe GamerGate is about ethics in game journalism. And lord knows there are lots of issues there, as there is in most consumer journalism! (Leigh Alexander made a pretty good list a couple of weeks ago. BUT, all the people they go after are NOT people in power, the hashtag was explicitly created for harassers to hide behind these ppl who really DO think it’s about ethics in game journalism, and most of these people don’t understand how game journalism works anyway.
I should have bookmarked it, because I can’t find it, but yesterday someone posted a list of the actual stated goals of GamerGate, with respect to “journalistic ethics.” Essentially, they have not once gone after an actual instance of journalistic corruption (their primary targets have been female developers and women writing games criticism…always women…). Every instance of claimed corruption (the Kotaku review, Depression Quest winning the IGF because Quinn slept with the judges, etc.) is in fact based on lies and falsehood (the review never existed, DQ didn’t even win the award for fuck’s sake, and so on.). Their only “triumph” so far has been getting Intel to pull advertising from Gamasutra, which is a case of attempting to have editorial content being dictated by advertising, or the exact opposite of journalistic ethics. Blargghghghghh.
Yeah, I’ve seen the list of demands, they’re utter nonsense, for the most part. Like I remember part of it was like basically “never talk to indie devs or each other or anyone else ever” which like, is literally impossible. When the New Yorker ran a piece on GG a month ago, they started flipping out about how none of the facts were correct, it was slander, etc, and then someone said, “The New Yorker has a very vigorous fact checking department” and they were like, “Never heard of it.” These are literal babies who have no idea how the world works.
Like, I’ve seen the forums and IRC chats with Zoe Quinn’s ex where they explicitly state they are using GG as a smokescreen for harassing her, but these idiots would rather believe their conspiracy theories and Adam Baldwin than actual facts. And the dudes who started it know that PERFECTLY well. That’s why it pisses me off so much when ppl are like, “You just need to have a dialogue!” YOU LITERALLY CANNOT REASON WITH THEM, THEY HAVE WHAT THEY THINK IS THE NARRATIVE AND THEY REFUSE TO DIVERT FROM IT.
And the Gamasutra thing was a piece by Leigh Alexander who used the words “gamers are dead” AS A RHETORICAL DEVICE, and Intel pulled their campaign because they had NO idea what was going on with GamerGate, and took the complaints they sent them as real, valid, complaints .
They’re enjoying the warm glow of righteous indignation without any of the inconvenience of actually being oppressed.
Which just makes it worse, honestly. Because I know I’d enjoy this righteous indignation a lot more if it didn’t come with a side of nausea whenever I think about the content of the threats made (I actually linked to the Brianna Wu twitter thread from my FB, then deleted it because re-reading it made me feel sick). They’re getting to just have the warm glow, utterly free of the nausea and tears experienced by right-thinking folk when they read any of this.
I’m amused that no one has commented on the Gullicksen obit. @NicoleCliffe – neo-liberalism, i.e., the sensible opposition to people’s NIMBY knee-jerk anti new development / jobs / cheaper housing activism has even entered The Toast! Glad he was a Giants fan though, and a dog person. Sounds like a nice guy with horrible politics.
What’s odd to me about the article’s treatment of trans women is that this is such an important aspect of the conversation happening right now about trans students at women’s colleges. Mills and Mount Holyoke JUST announced that they are going to start admitting trans women. The issues you bring up are getting discussed, from online activism, to pressure from students and alums, to conversations within college administrations that are leading to real policy changes. There’s no inherent reason the NY Times had to downplay all that and make trans men the focus of their article. Making progress in our understanding of gender doesn’t mean that women’s spaces need to be undefined, not when there are trans women who are fighting to get in to those spaces.
(ETA: this was in response to allofthewhine.)
Exactly. There could have been a whole article on those decisions and the conversations surrounding them. I think they chose to focus on trans men for the grossest of reasons, like, look, women who become men are a threat to women’s colleges, so how could we even consider men who become women not posing the same threat?! (obviously not what I think). I wonder why the author chose Wellesley, too. (@ freshwaterpearl)
Speaking of cool shows and such that you should support:
CARMILLA!!!! – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4QzRfvkJZ4
A vampire web series with a cast thats almost entirely female (and gay!) and not only passes the Bechdel test, but also does not pass the reverse Bechdel test. The episodes are about 2 to 7 minutes long each so you can binge watch the entire thing within an hour and half or so. The series is based on the J. Sheridan Le Fanu novel, but it’s set in modern times and has 10000% less of the “scary lesbian” trope because everyone is gay and its amazing. Check it out if you get the chance! 😀
(also as a side note, you might see a bunch of Kotex videos and such in the channel, that’s because Kotex has announced that they’re going to be supporting the web show because what better support for a vampire show than a company that sells period accessories?)
I second that! So clever and perfect for binge-watching.
(Edited: reply #2 to allofthewhine) 🙂 Thanks! I did acknowledge that Wellesley’s policies re: trans women bled over into the article, but I don’t think it’s a total excuse. Here’s an example: “Today a small but increasing number of students at those schools do not identify as women, raising the question of what it means to be a “women’s college.” Trans students are pushing their schools to play down the women-centric message.” I think the author should have taken the opportunity there to mention that there are also people who do identify as women who are still being excluded by some women’s colleges. You’re right that it is really hard for trans students who are in the closet (at least to their parents) to apply. I don’t think that a physical or legal transition should be required for a 17/18 year old. Unfortunately for would-be trans women applying, matriculation would out them to parents no matter how lax the requirements for identifying as a woman, so it sadly might not be an option for everyone. Honestly, I seriously doubt any cis man would want to apply knowing that it’s a women’s college. The really shitty sexists would get weeded out, and the good ones would respect the space and not apply. (Sarah Lawrence actually went co-ed decades ago, and still has a 70/30 split, in part because it hasn’t shaken its rep as a “girls” school.) I don’t know that there’s a good paperwork solution: my thought of checking a box for “your gender identity now (including genderfluid, etc.)” and another for “Assigned Female/Male at Birth” is definitely problematic (I wouldn’t want to have to out myself as a trans woman, for example), but I think it’s better than requiring an explanation. Now, as for your question re:men in positions of power. It is tricky, because I understand the desire to have only women in positions of power to a certain extent. Ultimately, though, I think that having a handful of men (and based on numbers, I don’t think women’s colleges will ever be overwhelmed by trans men) who are well aware of their (often new) male privilege isn’t detrimental to a women’s college mission. Obviously some people don’t agree. I have a friend who was a huge part of campus life (and being our campus’ version of an RA was one of their roles) and I don’t think their realization that they are genderqueer in their sophomore year weakened the values that drew them to a women’s college. In fact, I think being at one gave them the space and vocabulary they needed to be more comfortable in their own skin. I’m a fan of the idea that women’s colleges, in a world where nonbinary identities are becoming more accepted, are a place for people “marginalized within the patriarchy” as ginkgotree put it. It’s definitely a struggle, but hopefully will become less of one. Death to the Patriarchy! (or D to the P, if you’re at Bryn Mawr!)
You guys are usually more on top of this sort of thing than I am, but I saw this yesterday somewhere and my heart rejoiced: http://www.elanaadler.com/index.php?/other-work/y…
I graduated from Mills College last year, and their policy is, as my husband recently put it, “Everyone but cis dudes, right?”
I like/d that policy. I think the point of a women’s college is to create an educational safe space for people who are traditionally marginalized. We still need to work on the intersections – the Black women of Mills were attacked horribly and anonymously while I was there – to make it a safe space for everyone. I think a trans-welcome policy is a good start and not a finish.
Also, where is a good place one can go to educate oneself on trans issues, preferably from the voices of trans people? I keep finding myself in situations/conversations where I want to be less ignorant.
Unfortunately, there is no well-rounded online forum I can recommend any more. Some books that might interest you:
Stryker’s Transgender History: http://j.mp/1qDRWzQ
Valentine’s Imagining Transgender: http://j.mp/1qDSKEE
Stryker’s Transgender Studies Reader: http://j.mp/1qDTnOx
Serano’s Whipping Girl: http://j.mp/1qDTSrU
Serano’s Excluded: http://j.mp/1qDTXMm
Salamon’s Assuming a Body: http://j.mp/1qDU22D
Brill and Pepper’s The Transgender Child: http://j.mp/1qDUdee
Meyerowitz’s How Sex Changed: http://j.mp/1qDVVw8
Green’s Becoming a Visible Man: http://j.mp/1qDWc2c
Spade’s Normal Life: http://j.mp/1qDYiPJ
Sallan’s Second Son: http://j.mp/1qDYXk8
Mock’s Redefining Realness: http://j.mp/1qDZy5d
Some of these are academic, some memoirs, and some pseudo-memoirs with a bit of theory. Most exclude non-binary perspectives. Queer theory wants to queer everything and is more properly understood as a tool with which to understand and change the position of trans people in language and culture and not as a good description of trans people’s actual lives. On the other hand, anyone who tells you biology can explain it all is being disingenuous. (Tumblr tends towards the former, reddit heavily towards the latter). Some use confusing terminology–The Transgender Child uses gender-variant to describe all trans children, even ones that meet stereotypical expectations for their identified gender (see the reification of sex assignment, inextricable from gender roles). Some are rather old (surgical procedures mentioned by Green are out-of-date). Hope this helps as a starting point.
An EXCELLENT starting point, thank you.
The terminology, in particular, can be confusing. Especially when I am trying to, I don’t even know what the word is, advocate on behalf of a community of people I don’t really know in real life?
Example:
Friend: Blah blah blah something tranny hookers.
Me: Um, I don’t think we call them that anymore.
Friend: Ok, can you explain the new terminology to me?
Me: Well, I think it goes something like this: *manages to sort of explain gender as a non-binary thing, gets kind of close to explaining a spectrum of transgender something, then totally bungles it, hangs head in shame*
FWIW, this friend is also a decent person who legitimately was like, “oh, ok, I won’t make those jokes any more, but seriously, how does one refer to sex workers of indeterminate gender?”
Do the rest of you guys have conversations like this during your commercial breaks?
“Trans” is an umbrella term that covers a variety of gender identities, including binary and non-binary gender identifications of non-cis people. So you can say “trans sex worker” to refer to a sex worker indeterminate gender. Or just “sex worker”. If you are not sure of someone’s gender, you can refer to them gender-neutral terms – “this person” instead of “man/woman.” I know you were talking about how to have this conversation in the abstract, but if you run into this situation in real life I would usually use gender-neutral terms (or avoid pronouns) until I could find an appropriate moment to confirm someone’s name/pronouns with them.
That is the perfect little encapsulation. Thank you.
I have found that, say over the last year or so, I’ve started to default to the gender-neutral more often, even when a person’s gender presentation seems “obvious.” It hurts the grammar nerd in me, but I hope it helps pave the way for new thought technologies in my brain.
The real issue here is probably also something like “sex workers are not the butt of your joke, sir.” Sometimes really inappropriate things are funny. That change is the change that is hardest in me.
Autostraddle has had a great series called Transcribe featuring personal essays by trans women. They have also been providing consistent coverage of trans issues and politics with several contributing writers who are trans women for some time now.
Trans scribe tag: http://www.autostraddle.com/tag/transscribe/
General content under the “trans” tag: http://www.autostraddle.com/?s=trans
I’m trying to think of other places to direct you but I only read The Toast and Autostraddle regularly; I get the rest of my content from my twitter/tumblr feed. I will also say that if you dig farther back than say, two/two and a half years, the trans content on Autostraddle gets a little iffier – but the editors have done a great job owning up to their past mis-steps in covering trans issues and unintentional cissexism.
Thanks for these, also. You rock.
I must go to one of these spas immediately. I just googled and found one–it’s open 24 hours on Friday and Saturday???
My LORD I offered up the TOTALLY CONTROVERSIAL OPINION that the entire claim of “journalistic ethics” is ridiculous and naive at its most harmless and A MAN wanted to explain me a thing about “collusion” and “breaches of ethics” and I was like dude
bro
bruh
listen to me okay
just hear me out, right
“Journalism” is a category of work. It is not an organization. It does not have regulatory agencies. There is no journalistic high council making the rules and setting forth ethical tenets to which all journalists must adhere. At best, you get an individual org’s mission statement. That’s it. Journalists can’t even agree how they’re going to say “this is who said the thing we are telling you was said by a Someone Who Would Know.” The expectation for uniform ethics is completely and obviously outlandish.
and his ARGUMENT, which in all fairness I believe he meant in absolute good faith–he really believes in this ethics thing–is that he should be able to expect a certain degree of objectivity
which
????????
I mean, I understand wanting to maintain a comfortable belief that people telling you about stuff aren’t lying to you on the regular, but making that assumption comes from a pretty lofty position of privilege, and MOST of the world has been pretty well disabused of the notion before adulthood because most of us are being routinely cast in false narratives as cultural shorthand. But even that doesn’t make a lot of sense w/r/t “games journalism” because…what use is objectivity there anyway? Like, is an alphabetical list of upcoming releases what they’re looking for? Can we even describe that as “journalism”? Isn’t the point to review the games and say things like “this game was fun” or “I would rather eat an entire garbage truck than play this ever again and I only played as long as I did because it is my job, for money, and also I did not pay for the game which I consider a major selling point”? In which case subjectivity and bias are desirable traits, right? How does collusion play into that at all? Like “oh yeah we’re all going to say we really liked this title for nefarious purposes as yet undetermined”? Perhaps that word does not mean what you think it means, kids.
But thanks for not threatening to rape and murder me and also kind of not talking over me, twitter guy. I guess. Not really sure that kind of baseline absence of malice is something to thank a person for. I mean you totally missed my point, bud, but whatever, talking to men is too exhausting to muck around with that.
Also would beg the question of why is Zoe Quinn being attacked over this breach in journalism ethics when she wasn’t the journalist in question anyway? Nope, nooooppe, this is an excuse to harass a woman a lot and protect mah video games something something.
It’s an open secret in Tassie that Flanagan has (was?is?) also (officially)unofficially been blacklisted from government grants and prizes for years due to his vocal opposition to the forestry madness that pervades every level of politics here.
At least they can’t ignore this win!
Indeed they can’t! Ha 😀
And even though yes, the forestry madness does pervade every level of politics, at least you have some particularly awesome people to speak out about it. Not only Flanagan but also Bob Brown and Peter Cundall, among others.
Yes! Full of evil and decay, but my abiding memory is the sense of humour through it all. Despite/because of the presence of so much poop?
Weird, these were meant to be in reply to posts above?? I’ll stop talking now…
I really, really hated the “big lesbian U-Haul” and “gay for you” remarks from a different-sex couple in the Wonkette piece. Like seriously, do not do that please.
Thank you for articulating this. I'm a cis lady who went to a Women's College, and something about the comments in that article about switching to "sibling-hood" as the default expression of solidarity gave me FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE. I think that it's beautiful when women's colleges can be a haven for exploration and growth, and that it is important for them to work for love and celebration of all students regardless of gender identity (I'm partial to grumblyqueer's criteria for admissions upthread) AND ALSO I want to keep using sisterhood as the default, because it does such important political and rhetorical work. So yes.
Yeah, I went to Smith and the thought of transmen enrolling doesn’t bother me much, although it does seem to make more sense in the examples given in the article where people were early in their transitions or not totally sure how they feel. But I do think women’s colleges are an inviting space in which to have an unconventional gender presentation. (Transwomen enrolling makes perfect sense and I hope policies are enacted to make that more feasible.)
But the push to move away from an identity as a space for women does bother me – the student who apparently asked a professor to use less women-centric examples is the worst, but even the gender neutral pronouns in the constitution is kind of a bummer. (The gender-neutral bathrooms don’t bother me.) Women are never the default, so to take away some of the only spaces in which this is the case is kind of upsetting. It also feel very patriarchy-confirming: a small number of men coming into a women’s space and demanding that it adapt to them.
On the other hand, it’s easy for me as a ciswoman to say “women have so few spaces of their own” when transpeople have even less space in society, and I imagine if you’re constantly erased and ignored that it would hurt more to be reminded that you’re an exception and are existing in someone else’s space. Plus students could be genderqueer and not identify with female pronouns without identifying as male.
But. BUT. It was so unique and so healthy and so revelatory to be in a space that assumed “woman.” It helps me recognize when spaces are defaulted towards men but presenting themselves as neutral. To, for once, not have to read “man” and correct to “human” to include myself – even though that correction is what i’d be calling on transmen to do. I don’t know. The more substantive shifts away from a focus on women and women’s perspectives definitely bothers me. The more superficial things like gender-neutral terminology also bothers me but I’m not sure if the loss of the benefits and enjoyment I got out of women-default language outweighs the harm done through exclusion.