# Gamergate
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [September 5, 2014, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596 "2014-09-05T17:43:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 31
### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/602 "2014-09-24T14:25:09Z")
I think some folks should look up the term “straw feminist.” Those who make blanket statements like “I don’t like feminists” are likely influenced by that concept.
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### Author:  [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/603 "2014-09-24T14:32:28Z")
> [@BigT](#):
>
> And while I said I was done talking about Gamergate itself, I’ll go ahead and respond about VJ’s personality a bit, and why I say it makes her an asshole. The biggest part is that she’s perpetually fed up. That means she’s angry all the time. I don’t know a single person like that who isn’t an asshole.
While true in the real world, fictional characters like this are often liked by the audience in part because they’re assholes (say, Dr. House, for example or April Ludgate on _Parks & Rec_). The whole “She’s saying what we’re all thinking!” and “I wish I could get away with that” schtick. Roger Sterling on _Mad Men_ has some of the best lines on the show and they’re almost always in the context of him being a complete dick about something.
I’m not defending VJ directly, just saying that negative traits in the real world often become “cool” when you’re dealing with a fictional character. I could see a group of people sincerely making a character act this way because they think it’s a positive fictional character trait and not because they’re trying to make the character secretly repulsive.
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### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/604 "2014-09-24T14:33:58Z")
I’ve just stumbled on [a story](http://mashable.com/2014/09/24/emma-watson-nude-leak-viral-marketing/) outing the Emma Watson 4chan thing as fake, as 4chan/8chan expected. But I read in the reddit comments that they now thing Moot has sold 4chan to 2chan, fired all his moderators, and hired SJWs.
The anonymity of the place seems to engender a lot of paranoia and suspicion. Obviously, it’s really hard to find any actual info that isn’t all conspiratorial.
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### Author:  [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/605 "2014-09-24T15:27:59Z")
> [@BigT](#):
>
> I’ve just stumbled on [a story](http://mashable.com/2014/09/24/emma-watson-nude-leak-viral-marketing/) outing the Emma Watson 4chan thing as fake, as 4chan/8chan expected. But I read in the reddit comments that they now thing Moot has sold 4chan to 2chan, fired all his moderators, and hired SJWs.
>
> The anonymity of the place seems to engender a lot of paranoia and suspicion. Obviously, it’s really hard to find any actual info that isn’t all conspiratorial.
Hotwheels has announced that 8chan have teamed with 2chan, and while moot is rumoured to be trying to move on from 4chan he won’t be selling it in 2.
There is a good [daily updates channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj6WU3IdNXHuwqv6WbcUH2Q/videos) on youtube covering the day’s events. You may not be able to understand her, as she speaks both 4chan and Australian. Warning: also contains songs from the /v/ musical.
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### Author:  [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/606 "2014-09-24T15:49:38Z")
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> Are atheists defined by Stalin? Are Catholics defined by Robert Hanssen? Are Jews defined by Jack Abramoff? Does Jimmy Carter renounce the term “born again Christian”?
These are absolutely terrible examples. Do you know _why_ I keep coming back to Dworkin? It’s not _just_ because she’s a reprehensible, radical figure. It’s because by any historical account, her work was also widely influential within the movement. This isn’t some person who happens to carry the label by coincidence. This is someone who played a major part in forming the modern image of the movement as we know it. It’s like asking if Protestants a hundred years after the fact are defined by Martin Luther. The answer: not entirely, but damn if you can’t see the marks.
> [@](#):
>
> Feminism is a broad, general concept based on the equality of women. Within that field, just like in any broadly defined field, you can have all kinds of radicals that one might disagree with.
Except that that’s not how society perceives the group. Not entirely unfairly - when you hear about feminists, think back to what context you heard it in. And it’s not all propaganda - most of it isn’t from major media outlets, it’s just “through the grapevine”.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/607 "2014-09-24T18:14:13Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#):
>
> These are absolutely terrible examples. Do you know _why_ I keep coming back to Dworkin? It’s not _just_ because she’s a reprehensible, radical figure. It’s because by any historical account, her work was also widely influential within the movement. This isn’t some person who happens to carry the label by coincidence. This is someone who played a major part in forming the modern image of the movement as we know it. It’s like asking if Protestants a hundred years after the fact are defined by Martin Luther. The answer: not entirely, but damn if you can’t see the marks.
Dworkin is not the founder, creator, or fundamental source for feminism.
> [@](#):
>
> Except that that’s not how society perceives the group. Not entirely unfairly - when you hear about feminists, think back to what context you heard it in. And it’s not all propaganda - most of it isn’t from major media outlets, it’s just “through the grapevine”.
A lot of people latch onto and harbor the image of the straw feminist because they want to believe that’s what feminism is.
When people are given an accurate description of feminism, just like in this thread, the reaction is “well obviously I agree with that.”
It’s because our society has accepted the basic tenet of feminism—gender equality—at a public level while at the same time a large proportion of people reject it either specifically on a private level.
It’s a similar situation with racism. On a general or public level everyone will deny being a racist but in a specific or private level will go on being racist.
The major difference is that for many people the anti-feminist movement has successfully disassociated the term from its definition and deprecated the term feminist based on caricatures and strawmen designed to discredit the term, much like the organized effort to deprecate the terms “liberal” and “socialist” over the last few decades.
It’s all a part of reactionary propaganda, not just on an institutional level but on an individual level, because people want to continue to be anti-equality without being labeled as being against equality.
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### Author:  [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/608 "2014-09-24T19:41:29Z")
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> ```
> ... See, this is where Sarkeesian is exactly right. Those who oppose gender equality have used propaganda—both direct propaganda and false portrayals in the media—to make some portion of people think that feminism is define by radicals like Dworkin.
>
> ```
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> Dworkin is not the founder, creator, or fundamental source for feminism.
> A lot of people latch onto and harbor the image of the straw feminist because they want to believe that’s what feminism is. …
> It’s all a part of reactionary propaganda, not just on an institutional level but on an individual level, because people want to continue to be anti-equality without being labeled as being against equality.
Exactly right.
The term _feminism_ “has baggage” in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reason that the term _liberal_ “has baggage”: Those who dislike or are threatened by those beliefs (in gender equality and in progressive ideals) want to shame and intimidate–and, if possible, silence–those who hold the beliefs.
Mocking and ridiculing and ‘kindly’ pointing out that the terms referring to one’s political opponents “have baggage” are all means of silencing those opponents. If you can embarrass people out of saying “I’m a feminist” or “I’m a liberal” then you have gone a fair way toward making the _beliefs_ of feminists and liberals off limits in public discussion, and ultimately off limits in public policy.
(Sorry, Rush-‘n’-dittoheads: we are on to you!)
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/609 "2014-09-24T20:23:51Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#):
>
> I understand and agree with what the webcomic is saying. But as you seem to agree, my objection to the definition as overly broad and completely ignoring the very significant baggage high-profile extremists like Dworkin brought to the word still stands. Sort of how Christianity, no matter how well-meaning, still has to deal with the baggage the doctrine of hell carries with it.
I’m guessing you’ve never actually read anything by Dworkin? That’s okay, neither have I. Neither have most feminists, particularly those under the age of forty or so. Even at the height of her influence, Dworkin was a highly controversial figure within feminism. By the eighties, that influence was already waning, and her decision to get into bed with Jesse Helms on the subject of pornography largely discredited her within feminism. She’s only a “high-profile” feminist because misogynists like to use her as a strawman to represent feminism as a whole. In reality, Dworkin has about as much meaning to modern day feminism as Lamarck has to modern day evolutionary biology.
I also have to say, I’m amused that you avoid the term “feminist” because of it’s “baggage” with Andrea Dworkin, but have no qualms at all about going to bat for 4chan, despite it’s _extensive_ baggage of hateful misogyny, harassment, and abuse.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/610 "2014-09-24T20:43:18Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> I’m guessing you’ve never actually read anything by Dworkin? That’s okay, neither have I.
FWIW, I have: my ex-preacher’s ex-wife gave my then-girlfriend a copy of one of her books when I was in high school (the ex-preacher was a scuzzy cheater, the ex-wife was going through a nasty divorce with him, and my then-girlfriend was a teenager undergoing some trauma and as open to insane ideologies as most teenagers are). I read some of the book and objected to its broadbrush condemnations of all men, causing a great big fight, and later when I told her that she looked pretty in skirts she told me it made her want to go home and burn all her skirts, and all in all my encounter with Dworkin’s ideology both directly and filtered through my girlfriend was a formatively awful experience.
I’ve read many, many other feminist authors over the years, from hooks to Steinem to Daly (boo hiss Daly, yay hooks and Steinem). Although Daly comes close, none of them reach Dworkin’s levels of crappiness, and none of them reference Dworkin. Outside of adolescent girls encountering feminism for the first time via Dworkin, it astonishes me that anyone takes her seriously.
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### Author:  [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/611 "2014-09-24T21:13:08Z")
I think it’s somewhat telling that the Wikipedia root page on feminism doesn’t even feature Andrea Dworkin’s name . [Not the once](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism).
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### Author:  [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/612 "2014-09-24T21:18:44Z")
The only place where Dworkin is prominent is the echo chamber.
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### Author:  [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/613 "2014-09-24T21:24:50Z")
> [@Donna\_Lange](#):
>
> Oh, and yes, I’m a woman. If you think otherwise, I have a few gifs that made more than a few people horny and I’m sure 10 times more puke ^\_-
As I recall, one in which I participate. In a sense.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/614 "2014-09-24T21:30:20Z")
Seriously, Dworkin was quite likely mentally ill and anecdotally I’ve never heard a serious person name her as a model for improvement of the women’s condition.
Holding up Dworkin as the archetypal feminist would mean that no sane person would accept that label. The fact that she alienated so many feminists and liberals herself is conveniently ignored.
It would be slightly less ludicrous to pin feminism to Catherine MacKinnon, who is quite radical but not as sensational as Dworkin—or, and I think this is significant—as unattractive as Dworkin was.
MacKinnon is also not widely accepted by mainstream feminists, but Dworkin makes a better strawman because she was ugly, unpleasant, extreme, and quite possibly insane.
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### Author:  [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/615 "2014-09-24T21:38:57Z")
> [@Kobal2](#):
>
> I think it’s somewhat telling that the Wikipedia root page on feminism doesn’t even feature Andrea Dworkin’s name . [Not the once](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism).
Not surprising. Once you subtract her anti-porn crusade (which was really an anti-sex crusade) she did nothing for feminism. Nothing signifigant towards equal pay, equal rights, etc. Others did the work while Dworkin ranted.
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### Author:  [@Ibanez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibanez)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/616 "2014-09-24T22:30:25Z")
Modern feminism has a lot of serious problems that followers of the ideology aren’t willing to admit or want to see.
This[woman](http://naughtynerdess.tumblr.com/post/98184739316/an-open-letter-to-emma-watson)has no problem doing so. Her response to Emma Watson’s latest speech.
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### Author:  [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/617 "2014-09-24T22:39:01Z")
[QUOTE=A blogger, and an idiot]
I don’t think that many in the west disagree that women are deserving of all the rights and privileges of men. The truth is far more sinister. I don’t often hear men say that women don’t deserve these things by any stretch of the imagination. The majority of people I hear saying that women are oppressed are feminists.
[/QUOTE]
Oh absolutely, absolutely, [I obviously approve the principle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhZRDoGZg00).
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### Author:  [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/618 "2014-09-24T22:51:25Z")
Honestly, women who go “Well I don’t need feminism because I have all these opportunities open to me, I’ve never had to deal with sexual harassment and apart from maybe a few issues…” remind me of those lummoxes who say “Why do I need unions ? I’ve got paid leave, safe working conditions, health insurance and…”
Yeah, we know you do. Now say “Thanks”. Now get fighting to _keep it that way_, if nothing else.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2014, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/619 "2014-09-24T22:58:25Z")
> [@Ibanez](#):
>
> Modern feminism has a lot of serious problems that followers of the ideology aren’t willing to admit or want to see.
> This[woman](http://naughtynerdess.tumblr.com/post/98184739316/an-open-letter-to-emma-watson)has no problem doing so. Her response to Emma Watson’s latest speech.
Not one word of that describes an actual problem of feminism, much less a serious one.
That heap of straw is one of the most mind-bendingly stupid things I’ve ever read and it’s pretty much parallel to those who perpetuate the myth of a post-racial society.
> [@](#):
>
> ings by any stretch of the imagination. The majority of people I hear saying that women are oppressed are feminists
No shit? Jesus, what a moron.
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### Author:  [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2014, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/620 "2014-09-25T00:14:18Z")
> [@Ibanez](#):
>
> Modern feminism has a lot of serious problems that followers of the ideology aren’t willing to admit or want to see.
> This[woman](http://naughtynerdess.tumblr.com/post/98184739316/an-open-letter-to-emma-watson)has no problem doing so. Her response to Emma Watson’s latest speech.
I think she lost me at the unironic use of “man-hating feminist.”
---
### Author:  [@Ibanez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibanez)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2014, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gamergate/697596/621 "2014-09-25T01:39:15Z")
> [@even\_sven](#):
>
> I think she lost me at the unironic use of “man-hating feminist.”
That’s ok, the usual posters responding aren’t my target audience anyways since you’ve been drinking the kool-aid for too long.
Have a nice day m’lady.
\*tips fedora.
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