{"id":4608,"date":"2013-08-02T06:00:55","date_gmt":"2013-08-02T13:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/?p=4608"},"modified":"2013-08-02T06:00:55","modified_gmt":"2013-08-02T13:00:55","slug":"pushback-and-misandry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/02\/pushback-and-misandry\/","title":{"rendered":"pushback and misandry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In response to complaints about sexism, you will hear a lot of complaints about how unreasonable and &#8216;misandrist&#8217; women who complain about sexism are. I want to talk about that.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, I had a couple of run-ins with people who were reacting to complaints about sexism and harassment. The first was with <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BenKuchera\">Ben Kuchera over at Penny Arcade Report<\/a>, who posted <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/penny-arcade.com\/report\/article\/swimming-in-a-sea-of-shit-the-internets-war-against-creatives\">an article that &#8211; as I said in one of my tweets to him &#8211; I actually <em>mostly<\/em> liked<\/a>. But I took issue with an apparent assertion that gender has nothing to do with online harassment. I wasn&#8217;t sure he meant that &#8211; tho&#8217; it turned out he did.<\/p>\n<p>He was clearly expecting responses on the topic, and said that snide and nasty comments would result in Twitter blocks:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/solarbird.net\/Livejournal\/2013-08\/kuchera-snide-blocked.png\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/solarbird.net\/Livejournal\/2013-08\/kuchera-blocking-nasty.png\"><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fair enough. After not all that long, he makes these comments, saying he&#8217;s being attacked along race and gender lines:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/solarbird.net\/Livejournal\/2013-08\/kuchera-race-gender.png\"><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;and that he&#8217;s up for debate, but not with people who call him &#8220;privileged cis scum:&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/solarbird.net\/Livejournal\/2013-08\/kuchera-always-up-for-debate.png\"><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So he says he&#8217;s totally up for talking to people, but is blocking people who attack him along race or gender, or who are snide and\/or nasty. Totes reasonable&#8230; on the surface.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I don&#8217;t know <em>all<\/em> the people he blocked, but I do know one thing: <em>I was one of those people<\/em>. He blocked <em>me<\/em>, lumping me in with all those people allegedly calling him &#8220;privileged cis scum.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I present to you our entire conversation, in screencaps. <em>I&#8217;m building evidence for an argument and this is relevant, so bear with me<\/em>. @AdamGoodallYes had taken issue with Ben&#8217;s assertion in a sentence that gender has nothing to do with online harassment. Ben had responded that picking one sentence out of an entire article to take issue isn&#8217;t reasonable. That&#8217;s where I jumped in. Read along:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/solarbird.net\/Livejournal\/2013-08\/talk-part-1.gif\"><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Note that I walked away here. I was willing to be done, because it looked like this was going nowhere; further, I want to make it clear that I&#8217;m fully aware I have no right to have a conversation with this guy. I&#8217;ve said my piece and said goodbye. But then <em>he comes back to me<\/em>, a few minutes later, so we pick it up again:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/solarbird.net\/Livejournal\/2013-08\/talk-part-2.gif\"><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Do you see what happened there? When I try to start providing data that is directly relevant to the conversation, he <em>blocks me<\/em>, as &#8211; presumably &#8211; someone attacking him on race and\/or gender.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently because I&#8217;m providing data he doesn&#8217;t like. That&#8217;s what it looks like from here, anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Hold on to that thought.<\/p>\n<p>That same week over on Facebook, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/michael.hanscom\/posts\/10153035628215338\">a Norwescon friend of mine<\/a> linked to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/thetrekkiehasthephonebox.tumblr.com\/post\/55560869754\/sources-star-trek-2009-bechdel-test-star-trek\">this Tumblr post about nuTrek<\/a>, and the way that nuTrek has eliminated or written out women. The post consists entirely of facts, except for one observation at the end.<\/p>\n<p>The first commenter &#8211; someone I don&#8217;t know and won&#8217;t name here, but the post is public &#8211; called it all &#8220;entirely incidental,&#8221; and declared that people &#8220;went looking&#8221; for this to complain about it. I disagreed, strongly, siting the 17%-is-seen-as-balanced rule, and noting &#8211; <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/exclusion\/\">as I have before<\/a> &#8211; that this stuff really matters in real life.<\/p>\n<p>His response is to &#8220;reject [my] misandry,&#8221; and declare that there are no facts (only &#8220;conjecture&#8221;) in the article\/blog post. After getting called badly enough on that, he goes back to his own Facebook page, where he <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/solarbird.net\/Livejournal\/2013-08\/meanwhile-misandry.png\">crows to his friends that<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/solarbird.net\/Livejournal\/2013-08\/meanwhile-misandry.png\"><br \/>Nothing pleases me more than listening to a &#8216;feminist&#8217; spout misandry as a defense for an already flimsy argument, only to find out that said &#8216;feminist&#8217; clearly didn&#8217;t read the ORIGINAL article about the issue, but only read the &#8216;Cliff Notes&#8217; version on someone else&#8217;s blog post about said article.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;an &#8220;original article&#8221; that nobody linked to, including the Tumblr blogger; that nobody &#8211; including him &#8211; talked about, and which is not linked to&#8230; anywhere, honestly, that I found. I didn&#8217;t look that hard; I will presume, in an excess of fairness, that this article actually exists.<\/p>\n<p>But notice what fundamentally happened here, <em>again<\/em>. Someone was presented with data he didn&#8217;t like, data that supports the idea that sexism is real, data that is <em>inarguable<\/em>, but leads him to conclusions he doesn&#8217;t like&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and that&#8217;s <em>misandry<\/em>. That&#8217;s attacking him, because of his gender.<\/p>\n<p>A lot like Ben Kuchera, above.<\/p>\n<p><em>And that&#8217;s just last week<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>So here we have two cases of <em>facts<\/em> being declared <em>misandry<\/em>; these <em>facts<\/em> about sexism are <em>gender-biased attacks against men<\/em>, by &#8220;so-called feminists.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Every time you hear someone talk about &#8220;misandry,&#8221; &#8211; or worse yet, &#8220;humourless feminist bitches&#8221; &#8211; I ask you: think about these. What are the odds, do you think, that the next time you hear it, it&#8217;s <em>just as much complete bullshit as it was here?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d say the odds are pretty damn good.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>In response to comments elsewhere, a followup post: <a href=\"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/gatekeeping\/\">gatekeeping and recourse<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In response to complaints about sexism, you will hear a lot of complaints about how unreasonable and &#8216;misandrist&#8217; women who complain about sexism are. I want to talk about that. Last week, I had a couple of run-ins with people who were reacting to complaints about sexism and harassment. The first was with Ben Kuchera [&#038;hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}