Repost: On Friday, Anita Sarkeesian called out “toxic masculinity” on Twitter

This article is written by David Futrelle and reposted from We Hunted the Mammoth

What a surreal life Anita Sarkeesian must lead, in which virtually everything she says and does becomes grist for the Great Internet Lady Harassment Machine, Sarkeesian Division.

Take the latest blowup, which followed a few comments Sarkeesian made in the wake of Friday’s school shooting in Marysville, which may have been triggered by the shooter’s angry response to a romantic breakup. On Friday, Sarkeesian posted a few thoughts on the matter on Twitter:

We need to seriously address connections between violence, sexism and toxic ideas of manhood before boys and men commit more mass shootings.

— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 24, 2014

Not a coincidence it’s always men and boys committing mass shootings. The pattern is connected to ideas of toxic masculinity in our culture. — Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 24, 2014

While it it not literally true that every single mass shooter in history has been male, we are talking about an almost exclusively male club: one recent attempt at crunching the numbers found that 97% of school shooters have been male, and 79% of them white. (The Maryville shooter was Native American.)

In any case, the notion that a crime so heavily associated with men might have something to do with our society’s notions of masculinity isn’t exactly a radical notion. Indeed, it seems rather obvious.

But to Sarkeesian’s many haters, on Twitter and elsewhere, it was as if Sarkeesian had just posted a video of herself drowning puppies. Cue the twitterstorm.

Here are just a selection of the literally hundreds of lovely comments that Sarkeesian had Tweeted at her on Friday and Saturday after making her original comments.

[Giant TRIGGER WARNING for violent, explicit threats, harassment]

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There were, of course, the explicit threats:

And the implicit threats:

And the sexual harassment:

And those who merely expressed their hope that Sarkeesian would kill herself:

Or die a horrible death:

Or simply die :

But not everyone wished violence on her. Some just told her that the threats and/or harassment she’s already getting is totally justified:

(Apparently by “fishing” Mr. de Alba means “expressing an opinion or making an observation.” Also note that the tweets that set off this latest wave of harassment didn’t contain the #GamerGate hashtag. )

Speaking of harassment, we’re just getting started in our chronicle of the latest wave.

Let’s continue with an assortment of Tweets using the c-word, a favorite slur amongst Sarkeesian’s detractors.

Why, yes, that is Suzanne McCarley, A Voice for Men’s “Assistant Managing Editor” happily adding her voice to the harassment.

Others pulled out the f-word:

She was called a “bitch.”

She was called a “whore.”

She was called a “terrorist.”

And a Nazi:

One fellow said that he thought Sarkeesian’s tweets were actually worse than the shooting itself:

And one even declared her “officially worse than Wil Wheaton,” the former Star Trek:TNG actor who has won mass opprobrium from internet dicks for publicly expressing his belief that people should not be dicks.

To add insult to injury, a few reported Sarkeesian herself to Twitter for various imaginary infractions:

Another asked why she wasn’t in jail for her, er, crimes:

Just to remind you: these tweets are all from TWO DAYS’ worth of harassment and threats on Twitter. And this isn’t all of them.

At this point anyone who claims that Sarkeesian is “making up” the harassment she gets, or writing it herself, or just the work of a “few trolls,” is either disingenuous or delusional.

I’ll leave the last word to Sarkeesian herself.

Our culture is deeply sick when simply asking questions about how toxic forms of masculinity may harm men leads to hours of hate on Twitter.

— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 25, 2014