Death threats for talks about sexism in video games
mod
http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/14/anita-sarkeesian-cancels-talk-at-utah-state-after-receiving-threat-of-another-montreal-massacre/
What throws me off is that the majority of harassment towards women in the industry comes from those outside the industry. Its not fellow coworkers. Its the scum douche bags on the internet.
This whole thing makes me sick and i am so glad this woman is continuing with her mission even after all these threats. Im betting most threats are coming from the same people screaming they are going to kill you over voice chat in games. Or screaming something about your mother. All talk. just morons angry at life taking it out on whoever they can.
But for the small chance its someone with a serious mental issue that will actually do something.... im glad she was smart enough to cancel where they werent able to take proper safety measures..
absolutely disgusted by this...
What throws me off is that the majority of harassment towards women in the industry comes from those outside the industry. Its not fellow coworkers. Its the scum douche bags on the internet.
This whole thing makes me sick and i am so glad this woman is continuing with her mission even after all these threats. Im betting most threats are coming from the same people screaming they are going to kill you over voice chat in games. Or screaming something about your mother. All talk. just morons angry at life taking it out on whoever they can.
But for the small chance its someone with a serious mental issue that will actually do something.... im glad she was smart enough to cancel where they werent able to take proper safety measures..
absolutely disgusted by this...
Replies
I haven't been following Sarkeesian's talks too much but nobody deserves to receive threats like this, it just gives all gamers and probably all game developers a bad name in the eyes of people who know nothing about gaming or this industry.
totally agree. I've not been following this issue too closely. But whatever makes it to the media sounds more like "news from taliban country" rather than anything that should happen in western society. Even less in a seemingly harmless industry like video games. I still can't quite believe this shit is happening.
This particular instance hits really close to home. It implies that this psychopath lives within a reasonable driving distance to me and my family.
If anything, though, it's a sign that these scummy people are threatened and terrified of what is being spoken. Or they are sick trolls that think this crap is hilarious.
I'm sure it'll be just as hilarious in a padded room.
While I do find that the inequalities women face is unacceptable, I feel that giving attention to the trolls is simply not addressing the issues. The real question to ask is how can we get more women interested and working in tech/software development. I don't think creating a hostile us vs them mentality is the answer.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of the sites that I enjoy visiting for tech news have directed their frustrations of inequalities of women towards the gaming industry as a whole.
I remember watching an Oculus keynote recently when a woman asked a question to the team and I really felt that John Carmack gave an elegant answer.
She asked:
"What is Oculuss approach to their clear gender gap and how youre not going to port that into VR?"
He responded:
We are having a hard time hiring all the people we want. It doesnt matter what they look like.
On the up side, this is probably the point where the lunatic fringe of Gamergate has gone too far and the authorities will have to start paying attention. This is, after all, quite literally a terrorist threat, even if in all likelihood it's made by some milk sop sitting at his mum's PC.
what makes you so sure about this? does somehow working in the industry exclude you from being a scum douche bag on the internet?
I've always suspected that all this activist bullshit is mostly about money from sponsors, now its just grow bigger.
well... wtf are you talking? You never know how real a thread is.. I wouldn't deal with this carelessly myself. There are really some strange people out there.
Noone ever knew if death threat is real. Imagine Abraham Linkoln after he won the election, saying something like - um.. well I won, but I've received a death threat, so I'm not going to Washington. Nope, nope, nope!
I'm not saying that people who receive death threats should be careless. Just take your own weapon, hire a bodyguard or whatever. If someone so easily scared, thats just means they shouldn't be involved in the process of changing our society.
I don't think this one missed talk will have big consequences, it's more of a slow change that people go through over the years when constantly reminded of a topic. They start thinking.
Apart from that.. there are things worth risking your life for, but this one isn't. So don't demand something that stupid.
Oh piss off. Having a belief and spreading awareness of an issue doesn't mean you need to be willing to die for it.
I'm OK with n-gons on models but I'm not willing to weather death threats over it.
....noob.
And if you are going to say "hmm, interesting" and dismiss everything because she doesn't want to die, I expect to see you lay down your life for what you believe in. Would you willingly walk up to a podium after a detailed, long, horrible threat of a massacre, knowing full well that the on-duty security can do NOTHING to deter someone shooting you in the head?
Of course not, because that would be stupid.
I'm not demanding anything really. I'm just curious, because in this particular case at least one person is ready to die for his beliefs. And you just call him stupid. I don't know if he is stupid or not, or even if he is real, but if one person willing to die and take with him as many people as possible, then you can't argue like that. They will continue to threaten you and your ideas until you completely shut up and give up.
well, I'll piss of, but noone is gonna take you and your ideas seriously then. sorry.
Actually, I thought about that too. She can just inform people that it might not be safe for them to go and listen to her speech, and let people decide for themselves if they want to risk their lives?
sadly we will never know, because I cannot imagine myself receiving death threats over the fact that I'm making games for a living.
well you better not be TOO interested in games, becuase that could lead to you thinking critical about them, questioning some aspects of them, about how to make them better, and if you share those thoughts on internet, say youtube, your in the same seat as anita sarkesian.
did you even read that article? she got threats not for wanting games to be better. she is got it for being feminist. I can see how one is related to another in this case, but she is not involved with videogames production as I am, so I don't see how her story can be relevant to mine.
It's relevant in that you're both human beings.
but, i will stop arguing now. please stop derailing the thread with your unsympathetic opinions.
Edit: oviously not a reply to eld, but the one above
Again, I think threats like that should be taken seriously and she has all rights to postpone the event and whoever did this should be prosecuted.
I'm not sure how i feel about her giving it so much social media attention each time it happens though. The best way to go about it is to simply report it to the authorities and give them no attention, otherwise they get what they want and it shows other psychos that it works. And no this is not equal to "suffering in silence", it's simply about believing in your cause, taking the right actions towards your safety and giving the harassers nothing in regards to satisfaction.
It might also be healthy to keep the internet harassment separated from your argument, otherwise it makes it looks like you're riding a wave of attention brought on by showing everyone how mean a minority of people are to you on the internet.
In any case, anonymity+people=shit and it always will, it's easier to get used to it than be shocked each time tbh
i feel like this has been her strategy from the getgo, and it worked pretty well.
like she only disabled the comments on her youtube videos when she got waaaay popular and people started actually speaking for her in the comments. doesn't make such a nice headline as "evil gamers wanna kill me!"
anyhow i think the president of the us gets more deaththreats then anyone else on the plannet, and he doesn't stop fighting for his agenda.
IMO all deaththreats are just idle talk.
if someones realy wants to kill you, hes just going to do it, without announcing it, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Yeah that's usually it, oh well, NOTHING TO SEE HERE THEN
On youtube yeah, on tumblr and twitter she announces and showcases it all the time like some strange trophy collection...
Yeah, this. Best to just report and ignore.
Like that CoD dev that got several death threats from people for changing the rate of fire of a gun, it just shows people throw out death threats all the time for the dumbest thing.
Well it's up to the individual whether they want to live in fear and restriction or report and move on.
But yeah, reporting it, and going home and locking your freaking door is the next step.
oh, I'm sorry. I didn't knew that only sympathetic opinions are allowed here. You know what? You should write a letter to Anita and tell her to reply to that threat email, and ask this horrible person not to bother her anymore with his unsympathetic views of feminist movement. Because thats just how real world works! /sarcasm
Just because you find my opinion unsympathetic, doesn't mean I'm not allowed to talk about it.
We're all polycounters here, it's okay to have different opinions without resorting to personal attacks
Back on topic, I'm not familiar with what exactly her arguments are or her philosophy, but I really don't get how anyone can be against feminism. The only people who are, are those who are really, really misinformed about it. Of course there are extremists, but their loud voices do not represent the majority of the movement.
Justin: Wow, I hadn't heard about that one. But yeah, as you said, if you've been doxed, then it's a big deal when, not only do you get death threats, but they use personal information. Because at that point it's crossed the line of stupid troll to a real possible homicide.
Someone pointing out your bad opinion does not rob you of it.
You might find it interesting to know, but most people in this thread are not combating many other opinions simply because they are the same opinion. It would be counterproductive to intentionally argue against something that you believe to be reasonable or correct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_advocate
It's true that 99% of death threats turn out to be empty trolling or harassment. If it were only her life she was gambling on, perhaps she would've gone through with it. But really what it boils down to is trust and security. Security sounds like it was largely unavailable, which is a big issue on its own, but then you're just left with trust.
Can you trust the bodies of police officers standing around as security to be enough to dissuade someone? Even if you thought it was bullshit, and announced prior to the event that such a threat had been received - and encouraged all attendees to "be willing to put their life on the line for their beliefs", can you trust that the (potential) assailant would be willing and able to target only those people? Can you trust they would not get frustrated, and injure other people when backed into a corner? It seems incredibly idiotic to think, "Alright guys, we've got threat of a massacre and no manner of effective security. But let's do this anyway, and hope the guy only hits relevant people with his bullets and pipe bombs, since we're the ones who are deciding to put our lives on the line and he surely will be an excellent judge of who we are." Even if the threat has a ridiculously slim chance of turning out to be true - is a public talk really worth it - especially when your words are readily available elsewhere?
Yeah, threat was probably bullshit, but I think it was the right call. I would've done the same.
Edit: Though, I will admit that while I probably would've done the same thing and canceled, I probably wouldn't tweet about it and try to use the threats as fuel for my fire.
This was just trolling, and congratulations to the media you gave these trolls exactly what they want so we can look forward to the same thing happening again and again.
It's ironic that all this guy did with the threat was make her cause stronger by basically turning her into a martyr.
otherwise you just come across as a troll