You mean the ones that the FBI independently looked into and found so credible that they advised her and her family to leave their residence? The ones they then proceeded to investigate because they found them significant enough to invest man hours and money into the case? The ones that include bomb threats at public gatherings, received by people who weren’t Anita Sarkeesian at all? Those death threats are very real.
Look, if you have a problem with Sarkeesian and her work and you think your problem is actually legitimate, then the first thing you need to do is be honest with yourself about what’s happening and what people are doing to her. Because if you try to associate your cause with those people, you are telling the world that you are a swamp of a human being who’s okay with a woman being terrorized and threatened until she’s driven out of her home. And at that point it really no longer matters what you have to say because you have declared yourself a terrorist.
Yes. A terrorist. Look at the tactics of bona fide world-government-recognized terrorists and then look at the tactics of the collective of angry attackers going after women like Sarkeesian with death threats and bomb threats, and do let me know if you can see any difference in their approaches that doesn’t boil down to, “But these people have a point I agree with.”
In case you’ve missed the memo: no point, however legitimate, can ever justify the threatening or endangerment of human lives. And when you begin to threaten, endanger or actually take human lives in an attempt to intimidate others into agreeing with you, that is terrorism.
If you think you have any kind of legitimate point to make, then go ahead and intellectually engage with her work and try to refute her arguments. If you make any attempt at all to write in complete sentences and credibly cite research, I can guarantee you will find plenty of platforms that will be willing to publish your work, because there are plenty of people out there who consider themselves Sarkeesian’s enemies and would love to get their hands on a coherent argument why she’s wrong.
But be angry with the people who are doing this to her as well. Be fucking angry with anybody who would be willing to go so far as to threaten an entire room full of bystanders—whether the bomb was real or not, the threat was absolutely real—in order to silence a single person they disagreed with.
A person who, whether you happen to agree with her specific conclusions or not, is striving non-violently toward the betterment of half our population.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1wFWbiy