“If you have any kids, they’re going to die too. I don’t give a fuck. They’ll grow up to be feminists anyway.”
[All quotes used can be found here. They are tweets shared by feminist game designer Brianna Wu that she received before fleeing her home]
Saying you’re going to T-bag someone’s mother isn’t illegal. It isn’t particularly funny or clever, but it’s also not going to land you in federal prison for 5 years. Saying you will kill someone, even if you say it online or through any digital medium, can land you in jail for up to 5 years. Federal law 18 U.S.C. § 875(c) states: “Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”
“I wish whoever rapes you, gets a POV video of it”
If it is illegal to say you will come to someone’s house and rape and murder them, then I have 2 questions: 1) why are so many people still making these threats online and 2) WHY THE FUCK AREN’T THEY IN PRISON?
“You just made a shitty game nobody liked. That’s it. No one wil lcare when you die”
Now, I know it’s all the rage to hate on feminism these days; it’s very “hip” as they say. It’s even more in fashion to belittle white, well-educated feminists trying to make a difference (this belittling most often coming from young white male academics who clearly are the voice of the silenced and marginalized woman). But carceral feminism? Forget about it. Did you just hear that? It’s white, male, straight academics peeing themselves with excitement. Wipe up that puddle boys; I’m not done yet.
“I hope you enjoy your last moments alive on this earth. You did nothing worthwhile with your life.”
Prisons aren’t the answer to everything. The law isn’t the answer to everything. There are still going to be systemic problems women face even if this harassment law is enforced. Sometimes calling the police makes it worse. [Other appeasing line for those who will willfully not engage in the substance of my argument because I haven’t hedged and nuanced enough.] Besides, you’ve gotten what you wanted anyway. Because right now there is no recourse for these women threatened out of their homes. So that’s good right?
“I’ve got a K-bar and I’m coming to your house so I can shove it up your ugly feminist cunt.”
Back to the topic at hand. Women have been getting threatened and harassed out of their homes and out of the gaming industry, well, actually out of almost all technology-based industries since there were technology-based industries to harass women out of. What’s happening now, however, is that the harassment is coming in public forums in addition to the private ones used in the past. Further, it’s happening, or at least women are coming forward about it, at an alarming rate. We have also reached a kind of tipping point where women occupy an important ($) market for companies. Women spend about half of the dollars spent on game and represent roughly half the players. This, if nothing else, forces companies to pay lip service in support of stopping the threats and harassment.
“Your mutilated corpse will be on the front page of Jezebel tomorrow and there isn’t jack shit you can do about it.”
So why isn’t the macho-industrial complex coming to the aid of these poor, helpless, frightened women? Or said another way, why do there seem to be no repercussions for this type of harassment? I don’t know. I want this to stop. I want women to be able to freely participate in gaming or any technology industry and culture.
“How’s that for terrifying you stuck up cunt? I’m sick of you fucking feminist asshats.”
Now, before you jump on me for wanting to silence or change or whatever the dude-bro gaming culture, let me qualify. I would like to think that I’m not too sensitive when it comes to jibes online. I can T-bag with the best of them. That’s not the culture we need to change. We don’t need to take the jokes, insults, and banter out of gaming. We need to stop DDOSing women for being women. We need to stop calling women’s workplaces and families to call them whores. We need to stop the rape and death threats. This is not a fine line, people. We have likely all been a part of an inappropriate joke. There are some that are offensive, but they likely don’t involve publishing someone’s address online, tweeting their kids’ names, or making a video game where you beat the shit out of them. Let’s stop that part.
“I’m going to rape your filthy ass until you bleed, then choke you to death with your husband’s tiny Asian penis.”
Ok ok, it’s easy to say, “let’s end harassment!” Cuz, who wouldn’t want to do that? That brings us to an interesting point. What do we do about this? For one, I say we demand that that Federal law 18 U.S.C. § 875(c) be enforced. Then, I say as people who love gaming that we refuse to be a part of any group that conducts this harassment and we talk loudly about it when we see it. Finally, I say that we as academics stop being sidetracked by this and that and really start to give a shit about what is happening to these women. We do research on technology. We use technology to teach. But this technology comes with blood on its hands and we need to start giving a shit about it. I issue this challenge to every academic with a Facebook/Twitter/Google+ account: every time you want to post something about one of the following items, you instead post something about harassment in video games: anti-feminism, object-oriented ontology, lazy students, computers in the classroom, or brunch.
“Guess what bitch I now know where you live. You and Frank live at 6** *****, Arlington MA, *****”
3 thoughts on “Bad Boys, Bad Boys: Whatcha gonna do when they come for y— wait you were harassing WOMEN online? Nevermind then; we’re cool bra.”
We can’t find this guy but when we do GamerGate will turn him inside out (socially and legally speaking of course).
We were not amused and his best bet is to hide his IP address until he’s forgotten. Threats of manner are not tolerated.
Interested on your take on this Jean:
From Chris Kluwe:
“In fact, #Gamergaters, if your concern really was ethics, the very first thing you would be saying about this whole mess is, “Holy shit, get these fucking misogynistic creeps away from us. Let’s find a different hashtag to assemble under RIGHT FUCKING NOW.” You’d be doing everything in your power to make sure the legitimate cause you’re concerned about wasn’t hijacked or used as a shield by those with no other agenda than to make women and minorities afraid, simply because they can. You wouldn’t defend the oppression of someone simply based on their gender (because let’s be real honest here, I haven’t seen a single #Gamergater go after Activision, or Ubisoft, or Rockstar), and you definitely wouldn’t concoct ever-more wild conspiracy theories to support your increasingly flawed view of reality.
…
Unfortunately, all you #Gamergaters keep defending this puerile filth, and so the only conclusion to draw is the logical one: That you support those misogynistic cretins in all their mouthbreathing glory. That you support the harassment of women in the video game industry (and in general). That you support the idiotic stereotype of the “gamer” as a basement-dwelling sweatbeast that so many people have worked so hard to try and get rid of.”
https://medium.com/the-cauldron/why-gamergaters-piss-me-the-f-off-a7e4c7f6d8a6
I read that just yesterday. I went on a somber Twitter rant. I was broken up about it because I’m a big fan Kluwe (his stance on gay rights during his NFL days was marvelous).
I was gonna do a blog before I was too upset to reply to his, but I’ll put the jist of it here:
Feminist have lately been meeting people who would question; “Why not just be Egalitarians?” It’s still about equal rights. It’s still about rooting out injustice. AND it would avoid the negative connotations with the ‘F-word’ people have (“Man-hating feminazis”). The goals are the same, nothing is lost. Feminist, as recently as one I spoke to over a long convo on Twitter, reject this idea. We have feminist who’s said some hateful things, and behave in a deplorable ‘don’t invite him/her again’ manner – and casual on-lookers will always tie the bad with the general image (Ferguson protests, Occupy, etc).
But feminists will not change their moniker. For good or bad, they feel there’s power in that name. Pride, even. A point. That’s all fair and fine, but we’re not gonna let trolls hijack our hashtag. It didn’t start with trolls, and we don’t condone them. If they wanna act in our name, we can’t stop them. They are not using any tenet we’re pushing (journalistic integrity, anti-bullying, gamer diversity, game variety, creative freedom) when they doxx people. I’m black, and the actions of some gangster does NOT reflect on my race. I’m a fighting gamer, and the actions of rowdy fighting game players do reflect on the FGC. I’m a shooting gamer, and the actions of kids ‘swatting’ other players do not reflect on the community.
And I assume the woman who tweeted ‘#killallmen’ does not reflect feminism, or that guy wanting bullying to return to nerds doesn’t reflect game journalists, and Anita’s absurd “Listen and believe” cult phrase doesn’t reflect SJWs who are still willing to talk. None of those actions will get people to denounce who they are or chose to be – same with GamerGate. We can’t let other people define what it is, no other group would tolerate that.
And his ‘conclusion’ is the same tripe we’ve been dealing with since day 1. He’s not saying anything original there. All he accomplished was make this fan of his upset at his lack of reaching out, and parroting the headlines. You think I would still be allowed to post on this blog if I was HALF of what’s said about GamerGate? Or am I just ‘one of the nice ones’? We’ve learned through many social events that the constant is any group large enough will have bad apples and we should not generalize, yet this lesson goes out the window when it comes to GamerGate.
And to nail that last point in your head consider this:
How often is it that these GamerGate article ever call out anybody by name? When do they ever address specific actors of the movement? We’re not hard to find, a lot of us Tweet with our real name. Where’s the screen caps of tweets and forums revealing our most toxic members? Why is GamerGate said in blanket terms almost every time? In what other argument against a group was that acceptable in recent memory? No matter which side you’re on this should grant you pause.
I’ll leave you to it.