bedlamania:

unatheblade:

alexds1:

sodisarmingdarling:

This is a thing that happened.

Helen Lewis wrote an article on the New Statesman yesterday on the online harassment experienced by Anita Sarkeesian, which I’ve been following for a while. To recap:

American blogger Anita Sarkeesian, who launched a Kickstarter programme to raise $6,000 to…

:C

There is absolutely nothing okay about beating a woman in effigy just for disagreeing with you. It’s not okay to bully anyone for disagreeing with you. That’s not how human beings behave. Don’t call yourself a man if you support this bullshit.  

This is absolutely asinine. Don’t call yourself a rational adult if you equate internet flash game bullshit to domestic abuse. No, really, if you actually think that a bullshit flash game on newgrounds is hurting women in the real world in any way you are a delusional and bad person. If you actually want to help people then donate to a shelter, don’t chase ghosts on the internet like Scooby fucking Doo because they were mildly rude to a horrible woman who scammed money to make videos about how creative industries aren’t censored enough. I can’t even imagine being so utterly self-absorbed that I could convince myself that random things on the internet that bothered me were actually serious contributors to REAL horrors like domestic abuse. “Oh yeah you think the Beatles were a bad band well it’s because of people like you that women are being raped in the Congo!” I’m actually extremely offended on behalf of people who have actually been attacked and threatened in the real world that their plight would be equated to this BULLSHIT.

Wrong. This is a specific act of harassment targeting a specific person. The message it sends is not one of direct violence but one of intimidation. It says, if anyone speaks out against misogyny in our little boys club, you will become a target. That does not come under the mantle of free speech, but suppression of dissent.

By the way, nobody is calling for censorship, just awareness of how portrayals of women in video games offend real people. Just as you would be within your free-speech rights to make a game about running a concentration camp, you are within your rights to make a game where the object is to abuse women, The difference is that society wouldn’t stand for a concentration camp game, but somehow gamer culture is comfortable with sub-human levels of misogyny.

I was raised to believe that real men respect women. I guess not everyone was. Feel free to unfollow me.