Slashdot Mirror
How To End Online Harassment
Presto Vivace sends this excerpt from an article at the Kernel, titled 'With Gamergate, it's not enough to ignore the trolls.'
Gendered bigotry against women is widely considered to be "in bounds" by Internet commenters (whether they openly acknowledge it or not), and subsequently a demographic that comprises half of the total human population has to worry about receiving rape threats, death threats, and the harassment of angry mobs simply for expressing their opinions. This needs to stop, and while it's impossible to prevent all forms of harassment from occurring online, we can start by creating a culture that shames individuals who cross the bounds of decency.
We can start by stating the obvious: It is never appropriate to use slurs, metaphors, graphic negative imagery, or any other kind of language that plays on someone's gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. Not only is such language inappropriate regardless of one's passion on a given subject, but any valid arguments that existed independently of such rhetoric should have been initially presented without it. Once a poster crosses this line, they should lose all credibility.
Similarly, it is never acceptable to dox, harass, post nude pictures, or in any other way violate someone's privacy due to disagreement with their opinions. While most people would probably agree with this in theory, far too many are willing to access and distribute this humiliating (and often illegal) content. Instead of simply viewing stories of doxing, slut-shaming, and other forms of online intimidation as an unfortunate by-product of the digital age, we should boycott all sites that publish these materials.
We can start by stating the obvious: It is never appropriate to use slurs, metaphors, graphic negative imagery, or any other kind of language that plays on someone's gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. Not only is such language inappropriate regardless of one's passion on a given subject, but any valid arguments that existed independently of such rhetoric should have been initially presented without it. Once a poster crosses this line, they should lose all credibility.
Similarly, it is never acceptable to dox, harass, post nude pictures, or in any other way violate someone's privacy due to disagreement with their opinions. While most people would probably agree with this in theory, far too many are willing to access and distribute this humiliating (and often illegal) content. Instead of simply viewing stories of doxing, slut-shaming, and other forms of online intimidation as an unfortunate by-product of the digital age, we should boycott all sites that publish these materials.
What irks me about GG is that the shitty things a few gamers said is *evil* beyond imagining and must end, while the shitty things professional journalists said is defended across the board.
‘Games culture’ is a petri dish of people who know so little about how human social interaction and professional life works that they can concoct online ‘wars’ about social justice or ‘game journalism ethics,’ straight-faced, and cause genuine human consequences. Because of video games.
Why is it socially acceptable to demonize an entire demographic (gamers)? Because they're the "out group" for feminists. It's always acceptable to attack gamers in the media. Likewise you can always safely attack men, rich people, and white people. These so-called journalists and pundits seem to think gamers are male, middle class, ignorant, socially crippled, and white. That's a stereotype from the mid 90s. Games went mass market with the PS/2. Games went female with social media. Games went international and cross-cultural 15 years ago.
It shouldn't be safe to attack gamers, because they're no longer male, ignorant, socially crippled, and white. Even if they were, it shouldn't be acceptable to attack people because of their sex, social status, and race.
This isn't equality, this is oppression and it's far worse than a few anonymous death threats.
Oh. My. God. Abusing Twitter's anti-abuse button ?! That's totally worse than sending credible rape threats to someone's home address!! Won't somebody think of the ethics in game journalism!?!?
This goes way beyond offending people, though. This is abuse and harassment, which is not the not the same thing at all. Since you obviously can't tell the difference, you are directly part of the problem. There is no right to make rape threats. There is a right to make jokes about rape. Saying you are going to rape somebody is a threat and not a joke. If you can't tell the difference, maybe you should sit in a corner and think quietly before joining the rest of the online community again.
Gendered bigotry against women is widely considered to be "in bounds" by Internet commenters
Is it? Is it really?
Are you sure it's not only considered as such by a tiny but vocal and offensive minority?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I am sick of hearing the same old fallacies over and over. Ditto with the passive aggressive shaming language, crocodile tears, and deliberate misrepresentation of troll 'threats' in order to keep the controversy going. Why is it that slashdot never really covered the opposing side to all of this? The only stories that get through are anti-gamergate/pro feminist, just like with the mainstream media (no surprise there).
Just because a few women (sarkeesian/quinn/dina/wu etc) got called out for fallaciously and hypocritically generalizing/stereotyping one of the largest internet communities doesn't mean that the majority of that community hates women. The community just has a problem with what a few specific women (and men) said. It also has a problem with the so-called 'journalists' (and their pals at DIGRA, silverstring, gawker) covering the community's activities. When journalists editorialize or propagandize, they are no longer journalists. They should have the integrity to leave the editorializing to the op-ed sections of their publications, or, ideally, abstain from it altogether.
Why do these 'justice' warriors hate objectivity and meritocracy so much? When gaming met the internet, it was the ultimate equalizer. All that mattered was the game and how well you played relative to other players, not your race, your sex, or any other irrelevant characteristic. Trashtalk was trashtalk, and only lamers took it seriously. I remember a time when this was looked at as a positive thing. Now it's all about wearing shit on our shoulders and baiting each other into passive aggressive offense. I guess SJW politics had to turn up the intensity in order to keep certain politicians and ideologies relevant. The bottom line is, if someone criticizes you, it does not mean he hates your race, sex, religion, or anything else. Instead of routing all negatives to /dev/oppressed, have the fortitude to listen to the criticism and see where it might apply. If there's truth to it, modify your perspective. If not, discard it. Quit playing the victim. It's a loser's game.
The right to offend is more important than the right not to be offended.
True. But that is not the point here, nor is it the point of legislation against stirring up hatred against religious groups. Criticising or making jokes about others is orders of magnitude away from inciting hatred or bullying a vulnerable person. The difference is in the consequences and the intentions: if you joke about religion, it is well-intended, but if you incite hatred, you are actively trying to harm somebody. It's like sex vs rape; one is good, the other is bad, and most people accept that there is a fundamental difference.
"Freedom of speech" once meant simply that everybody had the right to express their political or religious opinions without fear of being persecuted by the authorities. Nowadays it appears to be used as an excuse for why you can't be held to account for anything you say at all, no matter what the consequences. Call me old-fashioned, but I disagree with that notion - to my mind, you always have to face up to the consequences of what you do, freedom or not. If you drive like an idiot and kill somebody, you're guilty of man-slaughter; if you bully a vulnerable person online and they commit suicide, you're guilty of the same; if you incite hatred and your followers lynch somebody, the same applies. The last example is no different from the concept of corporate man-slaughter, which most people find very reasonable.
Did you miss the point?
I think you did.
Its not about what its OK to be offended about: its that THREATS of EXTREME VIOLENCE are not okay.
It is quite possible to define a set of rules that do not include committing violence, particularly here, sexual violence, against someone. If you can't get behind that, you're part of the problem.
This isn't about made up offense and political correctness and differing cultural norms. We're talking about threats of rape and extreme violence here. Its not okay to threaten to rape someone. Its not okay to threaten to murder someone. The topic is not a joke. You're the problem if you think otherwise.
As soon as I saw a few troll harass women, I knew it would become the number 1 issue by journalist outfit rather than the real reason of the anger. And make no mistake troll almost certainly did not care about gamer or game, but got a rise out of harassing the women, there are study of trolling and troll out there showing they do not care about their victim or the cause they "seemingly" endorse. the reality is that troll are mostly sadist personality which gets a thrill from the rise they get out of people.
But on the journalist side, it is the same as with dorritosgate. Rather than admit and try to change , or explain why some things are not corruption, they immediately JUMPED on the trolling and made it the SOLE issue. I am not into conspiracy normally, but this was a so widespread reaction, that it felts like a defense mechanism : try to move the issue to something else as to avoid discussing the main issue most people in gamersgate sees as an increasingly disturbing problem. I don't even recall know how it started this time (for me it already started with the "dorritosgate") but the fact is that there are far too many publication having a disturbing behavior incestuous with publisher or developper, and endorsement are not clearly marked often with the relationship.
I see the same behavior with the sarkeesian story : She made a statement on damsel in distress openning the discussion, then rather than ignore the troll and concentrate on the counter statement indicating where she made errors or is not going the correct way for a study, journalist and folk are concentrating SOLELY on the troll.
It is starting to be the hack of any discussion : move the thema to troll harassing women, and poof the whole discussion is dead.
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visit randi.org
Gendered bigotry against women is widely considered to be “in bounds” by Internet commenters (whether they openly acknowledge it or not), and subsequently a demographic that comprises half of the total human population has to worry about receiving rape threats, death threats, and the harassment of angry mobs simply for expressing their opinions.
The language is a bit convoluted, but the author implies that these threats are the result of online misogyny ("gendered bigotry", really?), or at least that ending online misogyny would put an end to death threads as well. This sounds like one of those cases where harassment automatically is blamed on bigotry, instead of accepting the fact that people often simply dislike you for your actions and opinions and not for your gender or ethnicity. It's easy to make that mistake (especially as an outside observer) because once those threats and insults materialize, they often do contain sexual or racial slurs.
Before asserting that death and rape threats are the result of online bigotry, at the very least one should examine who exactly is getting these threats. Hint: it's not just women and minorities; it happens to plenty of white males. The language in those threats might be less racial or sexual, but they are threats just the same.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
This is the biggest pile of bollocks I've ever read at slashdot and as you can imagine it's up against some pretty stiff competition. (Am I allowed to use the word "stiff", or is that a gendered slur that reinforces the patriarchy?).
This, for example: "gendered bigotry against women is widely considered to be "in bounds" by Internet commenters". It is? No, it isn't.
The only gendered bigotry I come across on the internet these days, especially Twitter, involves pejorative uses of the phrase "straight white male".
Men-hating feminazis is not some random term
No, but anyone using it is helpfully signposting the fact that they're a pathetic fucking idiot.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
As always, there are a large number of people on slashdot and elsewhere who seem to think there is something magically different about an act if it is done via the internet, rather than face to face.
Your "free speech" has consequences, only children would believe otherwise.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
There is effectively no censorship on the internet now so whatever you say can result in criticism and attacks of any kind whoever you are. Obviously trolls will pick on the form of attack that generates the most outrage, that's what trolls do. If you can't take a mature attitude to it then don't get involved. Trying to censor the internet is:
a) impossible
b) damaging to everybody's interests
Grow up, get a life, stop whining and nagging.
Well that's all totally spiffing then, no one's oppressed at all, and anyone who says otherwise is just a whiny bitch, yes?
Nope. Just because you aren't oppressed doesn't mean you don't have problems that need to be addressed.
Using words like 'oppression' to describe how women are treated in modern western countries is just a cheap political tactic - it defines the situation in terms of 'us vs them' (if someone is oppressed, someone must be oppressing), while exaggerating the issues women face and downplaying the issues that men face. That broken model is why you think that people who disagree with you must think than men are oppressed - you assume that other people are using the same framework, but are merely on the 'other team'.
There's no pigeonhole in that mindset for people who just want the world to be nicer for everyone.
4000? You realise their main subreddit alone has nearly four times that in subscribers right? Even the various automated blocking systems used on twitter have double that or more. On top of that you need only look up "gamergate harassment patrol" to see that they're dealing with even outside actors like the GNAA and various goons so fast that the accounts get suspended before anti-gamergate users can even retweet them for publicity. They even tracked down the source of much of Anita Sarkeesian's harassment to brazil and have furnished all the necessary information to the FBI and brazilian law enforcement... of course Anita has so far refused to actually press charges or do anything about that person. Meanwhile Leigh Alexander, Ben Kuchera, Bob Chipman, Devin Faraci, and many other leading voices on that side of the fence continue to publicly encourage openly racist abuse and even participate in outright doxing.
Also the idea that toxic voices get addressed by other feminists in any meaningful way is demonstrably laughably false. Where's the mainstream voices "addressing" West, Valenti, and Marcotte? Where are they "addressing" the fact alleged "feminists" against gamergate are openly racist and transphobic, have rallied around a domestic abuser, and have encouraged somewhere upwards of 30 outright criminal attacks against primarily women and minorities?
Or to give you what is perhaps one of the most egregious examples: right now in the US one of the most powerful and influential researchers working on the largest and most definitive study of sexual and intimate partner violence is a feminist who has explicitly stated she does not believe men are ever raped by women, but rather that they "choose to engage in unwanted sexual intercourse". Every year the NISVS classifies male rape victims as "other sexual assault".
You would think the deliberate and total erasure of almost 2 million rape victims from one of the most important studies in the US would be the sort of thing that needs to be "addressed".
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." — H. L. Mencken, US editor (1880 – 1956)
Really, that's it in a nutshell.
TFS says: "It is never appropriate to use slurs, metaphors, graphic negative imagery, or any other kind of language that plays on someone's gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion"
I will actually agree with that: it is inappropriate, as in, uncivilized, trollish behavior. And it absolutely must be tolerated, because freedom of expression is such a critical, fundamental right. Calls for silencing such boorish behavior are entirely misplaced.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Who are you who have insight into the ultimate motivations of harassers?
I have as a basic assumption that men are no better than women, and vice versa. If there's some way of being evil that's dominated by one sex, then you can assume that is not for lack of evil in the other sex, but rather that they have some other way of living out their malice.
It's a doctrine of faith in some circles, that you should not only believe the victim, but not question the victim's interpretation of events. If she says the motive of her harassers is that she's a woman, then you're a monster for questioning that (even if the "harassers" deny that it was harassment, and assert other motivations for it.) This is obviously and blatantly abused in "social justice" circles on the internet.
Let's NOT take gamergate as an example. Let's take the Requires Hate drama instead - there you have identity feminists on both sides, both sides claiming to represent the true, unsubjugated, authentic feminism, defender of all minorities. There's this hate blogger, Requires Only that you Hate, who has a long history of "criticizing" fantasy authors, stalking them for years, saying they deserve to be raped by dogs and have acid thrown in their faces etc. She used to get away with it for a long time. Why? Because she always claimed to "kick upwards". If you're a man, you're obviously fair game. If you're a white lesbian feminist, you're fair game too. If you're an asian, you're still fair game if you are "diaspora". You're mixed race? well fuck you, appropriating scum! Don't you dare write about your minority parent's culture!
Now, she was "doxxed". Her identity (or rather, her literary pseudonym, as opposed to the blogging one) was exposed by a friend of hers - she is a well-known Thai writer - and people started assembling the pieces. It looks like she has systematically targeted competitors. Especially competitors in the niche of "writing for the oppressed". More and more people come forward with stories of whisper campaigns she's waged, open hostility, stalking for years, online community after online community that has went down in flames from her warfare. And she has been at this for almost 15 years.
How? By saying the right things, with unshakeable conviction. By using the social justice people's own rule about "tone policing" - that you're not allowed to protest against the ways an "oppressed person" lashes out at her "oppressors". For over a decade she's played them like a fiddle, for personal gain and personal satisfaction. The social justice people's beliefs have a hole in them wide enough that a psychopath can drive right through it with a truck and set up shop. The "cheap moral glow" of siding with someone righteously proclaiming their oppression, was a tool she used to build an army that could make a talk radio host green with envy, to sic on people who fell afoul of her or competed with her.
I've said "her" throughout. But technically, we don't even know that. So even for the purpose of protecting/advancing minority women, the SJ crowd's own principles fail disastrously. There's no reason to think Requires Hate even believed in the rhetoric she was spouting.
Now, I said let's not use Gamergate as an example. But let's, now. Most of anti-gamergate missed one rather important thing: the initial post was a callout of a similar nature.
The ex-boyfriend of Zoe Quinn had story to tell about infidelity, emotional abuse and cynical career promotion - he told it because he had come to the same conclusion that the social justice folks in SF/Fantasy now believe about Requires Hate - she may not even believe those things, she certainly uses them with extreme cynicism for selfish ends.
And is he right about that? Judge for yourself
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
You would think that a group that defines itself by being hyperaware of power dynamics would see the irony in using phrases like "widely considered to be "in bounds" by Internet commenters (whether they openly acknowledge it or not),", but apparently not, so I will spell it out. By putting things like this, in one fell swoop you both demonize your opponent as well as remove their ability to respond. No matter what they say, you can just go "oh, you're just not acknowledging what I know you to truly believe." No matter who they are, you can just say "well, you're an internet commenter, and internet commenters believe certain things whether they openly acknowledge them or not."
It ends all discussion, and effectively removes any possibility of debate or even reply by describing an entire group as having property X and then removing the ability of that group to dispute that claim. It's like saying "I am right, and anyone who disagrees is a he man woman hater misogynist asshole."
Whether they acknowledge it or not.