I had an interesting chat with a new co-worker today. Isaac -- we'll call him Isaac, as that's not his name but he looks like an Isaac to me --was talking with another coworker about people smoking weed. I asked him simply, "Who are they hurting?" He asked if I was Libertarian. I said that, while I respect some of their ideas, I'm not anti-government enough to call myself that.
He then went on to hopefully ask if I was Conservative. I told him my political compasses usually put me in the lower left quadrant, leaning Left with small L libertarian tendencies. He jokingly said "We'll bring you to the Right side yet."
Good luck, pal. If Erin hasn't converted me after 10 years of being a good example, I doubt you'll make much progress overnight.
But that's not why we're here. Tonight, we're here to talk to one my favourite self-imposed punching bags, one Wil Wheaton.
Pull up a seat, William. I'd like to ask you a question: Why?
William, how old are you? Oh Christ, you were born in 1972? You're that much older than me? No, sit back down, I'm not done yet. Pour me another drink, will ya fella? Cheers.
William, why would you screenshot just the article photo and the headline, and then read your own interpretation of the article? And then follow that up with the pound-signs for #fuck racism and #fuck racists. And why would you leave a space in the hashtags? You know that breaks a hashtag, right? You should know, being the world's oldest Millenial.
See, and the worst part is, William "Ban the Nazis" Wheaton, aka William "I'm a good person" Wheaton, is that you left no link to the original source. I had to dig up previous versions of a few different articles to determine that the image and headline were altered from this Washington Post article. You know, theleft-leaning Washington Post. Or is this another example of Liberals Get The Bullet Too? (Is it still a bullet? Do you California Revolutionaries still use that phrase, or have you replaced "bullet" because of how problematic it is? Or do you hate us lowly untermensch Liberals so much that we justify usage of the damnable firearm?)
William, did you read the article? It mentions Black Panther exactly once. Then it goes on to talk about Ready Player One and A Wrinkle In Time in reference to theatre blockbusters, and Bright and The Cloverfield Paradox in reference to alternative format releases. The spirit and message of the article is that, as the production and advertising budgets of big blockbuster movies inflates, so does the amount they need to earn to be profitable, so a movie that makes, for example $500 million with a production budget of $250 million and advertising of $150 million can't be considered profitable. It also talks about how the domestic box office is meaning less and less as US profits flatline and profits in other countries like China are carrying otherwise mediocre successes (like, say Warcraft) to smashing successes.
William, I'd say you're better than this, but you're literally not. I've talked about you more than I've talked about any one person on this blog. I sought to save you before you were lost, and now I chastise you for taking a cheap, manufactured opportunity to push a narrative.
Stop it, William. Not because you're better than this, but because we are.
The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war
Gamergate. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against
their own hobby's press. The ideology which controlled the machines
sent two agents to the forefront. Their mission: to draw the aggro
and act as bait. But they picked the wrong drama to initiate, and
may be failing.
Late last week, a Kickstarter campaign launched for
a service called Social Autopsy, ostensibly an anti-bullying service,
which aimed to collect information on harassing and/or offensive
speech and tie it to a database that would identify a person by name,
by image, and possibly even by employer. I, like many others both in
the free speech camp as well as those against it, immediately saw the
flaws and exploits in a system like this.* But something strange happened with Social Autopsy.
I
mentioned Gamergate earlier because several individuals opposed to whatever-the-narrative-is-this-week stepped in. Zoe Quinn and Randi
Harper, who run anti-bullying organizations themselves, got involved
with Social Autopsy... but not in the way you'd expect people working
in the same field would.
Less than a day after the Kickstarter launched, Social Autopsy's founder, Candace Owens, was contacted by Quinn to
discuss the project. In Owens's own words, Owens provided Quinn with her
personal e-mail address, and Quinn spoke with her both over e-mail and
phone. But not words of support, as you'd expect, but to try and talk
her out of it. Why would someone who was the victim of harassment
herself allegedly fight so hard against a way of unmasking and
identifying harassers?
Owens was suspicious, but rebutted each
argument Quinn had and, again according to Owens, Quinn grew more
frustrated, again giving her credentials and claiming to be
representing various anti-bullying organizations that she declined to
name. With red flags going up, Owens stood firm, refusing to
back down, with Quinn eventually warning her that Gamergate would
come after her.
And sure enough, that's what happened. The
anti-bullying advocate was then harassed off the internet and into
hiding by a boogeyman that was simultaneously a bunch of powerless whiners and also the unnameable threat stalking the tech blogs and gaming press of the
last two years.
Nah, I'm kidding. Hours later, Owens began
receiving nasty messages first on her Kickstarter campaign profile, and then emails on her personal e-mail account -- the one she'd given to
Quinn -- with all manner of offensive language with a single common
thread. “Men, Misogyny, and Gaming,” as she put it. All of the messages came from male names, using gendered language against her, and with video games somewhere in the address field. Keep in mind
that Owens had been nowhere near gaming until now. She hadn't even
heard of Gamergate, but now she was getting emails from addresses
like “gamedeveloperyal@animalfetishporn.us.”
Hours after that her Kickstarter was shut down, and Randi Harper
(again, a noted anti-GG name and herself a... harassment expert) wrote a post on Medium where she blasted Candace Owens and Social Autopsy's Kickstarter
before claiming responsibility for having it shut down.
There's
two possibilities I'm seeing here for what happened next. Candace
Owens is either incredibly smart (if misguided, considering how
terrible an idea SocialAutopsy was) or so uninvolved with the tech
blog drama world that she immediately saw a pattern and started
putting things together, because she then spent the next several days
blasting Quinn and Harper on Twitter, all but accusing themof being the entireharassment machine that Gamergate was accused to be
themselves and writing an epic history of the situation on her own website (I strongly suggest you read it) that puts mine to shame. Candace Owens continues to make noise about more information she has.
Of course, there was retaliation from the usual
suspects. Jesse Singal penned a hitpiece than ran on New York
Magazine's website. Embarrassing human David Futrelle has smeared her. I'm waiting for more to drop. But what
I'm really waiting for is for the gloves to come off and get really
dirty, though. Candace Owens is a black woman. That's not important
to me, but that means she's further up the progressive stack than
Quinn or Harper, and that means her voice should carry more
weight with those most involved in this narrative. I'm 100% sure
there'll be some justification, though: being accused of "internalized misogyny", or called
an Uncle Tom, or something equally heinous to discredit her and
protect the narrative.
Now we can only sit back, wait, and make more popcorn and hope more evidence is presented, because this ride *still* hasn't ended.
*For one, I believe that unless someone's job is directly tied to the things they say online, don't go after her job. For another, how do you weed out fake profiles, anonymous names, and impersonations to make certain that the wrong person doesn't get shamed?
In Which I Say "Mustafa" a Lot “Ooohh.. say it again!” “Bahar Mustafa!”
It's been said that tools designed with the purpose of silencing people, any people, will eventually be turned against and used to silence marginalized people. It's for this reason that I am a strong believer in the concept -- not just the law or the amendment to the US Constitution, but the very idea -- of free speech. No matter how offensive or inane an idea, I still think you should have a right to say that idea, and nothing rustles my very jimmies more than people who take it lightly, dismiss it as a dangerous concept, or make jokes about 'freeze peach.'
Long ago, the Left won the public opinion PR battle by debate. They brought ideas that had not been challenged into the open, and debated them publicly to let the people decide which ideas could stand on merit. Now, the loudest voices in the Left are silencing not only those on the opposite end of the political spectrum ,but also those not as far Left as themselves, so that they can avoid having their ideologies dragged, kicking and screaming, into the light for an evaluation of merit.
Several months ago a 'diversity officer' for a rather upscale British university, one Bahar Mustafa (I love that name), made a bit of a row by publicly stating that white people were not allowed to a meeting with an emphasis on black and ethnic minority students, regardless of whether they were there for debate or for support. I'm sure that she did so in a mature and reasonable manner, too, given her position of responsibility as an employee of the school as opposed a radicalized student. This didn't go over well in the public eye, coupled with her frequent use of the #KillAllMen and #KillAllWhiteMen hashtags.
Come on now, you saw this coming
Either way, it all blew over, she wasn't removed from her position, and she got media attention for the incident both positive and otherwise, and got a chance to make a very public statement.
Unsurprisingly, it was not one that was in the form of a debate where those ideas could be challenged.
Fast forward several months, and the UN Broadband Commission, along with UN Women, held a summit with the focus on “Cyberviolence against Women and Girls.” The highlights of this summit included a 70-page report that covered, among other things, video games and sex work (not just sex-trafficking, but prostitution). The report was... less than comprehensive, and had lots of issues. Citations that pointed towards debunked reports that claimed Pokemon was satanic, that consumer video games were used to train military personnel, a citation that cited the report itself, several blank citations, and the much-derided citation that let to somebody's C:\ drive. The report was ripped to shreds on social media to the point that the UN retracted it, putting in its place a bare-bones version that's a mere 7 pages. It was so bad that even one of the speakers invited publicly denounced it.
Also making an appearance were Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn, who I believe you'll remember from Gamergate notoriety. You know, that terrorist organization that led hate campaigns that drove every woman from gaming... or something like that. They were there to argue that harassment isn't just, as I'm paraphrasing, what's legal or illegal, it's “you suck” or “you're wrong” or disagreement. Granted, not everything they said was without merit, but it's the equivalent of a pork spending bill where you pack in one giant scummy thing with a ton of really helpful things in the hopes of passing them all at once.
I take every so slight issue with the argument that "If you're not allowed to disagree with someone because they're a certain race, gender, or some other factor that's arbitrary to their argument, you slowly erode the concept of freedom of speech," because you end up with Gregory Elliot facing charges for disagreeing vehemently and vocally with someone on Twitter who wanted to dox and harass the guy who did the 'Beat Up Anita' game. Not that anyone did the same for the guy who did the 'Beat Up Jack Thompson' game.
Or did they? Because Ben Spurr, the guy who made the Anita game, is the same person who made the Jack Thompson game, and everyone had a good laugh at that one and never bothers to acknowledge the same person made both games.
Back on track, let's fast forward another month or so: Bahar Mustafa is now facing charges for sending 'threatening communications.' Which is absolute, utter, contemptible bullshit. Yes, it's karmic justice given her air of invincibility surrounding the incidents that caused this, and it's the seeds sown by the UN meeting, but it's also complete horse shit:
She's got a right to tweet dumb shit. People have a right to tell her she's tweeting dumb shit. If they're assholes about it, other people have a right to call them out for being assholes, and bob's your uncle, turtles all the way down.
Just like when the aforementioned cultural media critic makes a poorly researched and flawed observation, people have a right to criticize her. And if they're assholes about it, people have a right to tell them they're being assholes about it. Nothing is immune to criticism -- not even criticism. Criticism of criticism may sound silly on the face, but there's nothing more harmful to a flourishing idea than poorly thought-out or delivered feedback.
The response has been overwhelmingly similar, too. Everyone that's been painted as a villain for the past few years has pretty much stated “Yeah, she said dumb shit, but that's not a crime.”
Because it's not. It's not a crime. And if you make it a crime to say dumb shit, who decides what shit is sufficiently dumb to outlaw? How do we grow if we're not allowed to drag ill-formed ideas and opinions into the public eye and either refine or discard them? Down that path lies madness, where we outlaw one form of speech after another, until we're all too terrified to say what's on our minds, whether it be productive or offensive.
In conclusion, I think Bahar Mustafa is a spoiled brat who lives in an entirely too large mansion and went to an entirely too expensive school with no real concept of how the real world works or what 'oppression' actually means... but I stand with her right to spew whatever idiocy she wants to so that we can all point and laugh. Never get in the way of someone making themselves look like an idiot.
I've written previously about the female Thor situation, in less than complimentary terms. I've outlined valid reasons for not liking this change that extend much further than certain sources who'd have you believe those complaints are simply 'hur durr woman bad bring back manly man.' Today, I'd bring you an example of just how effective it is to make a change like that, and what happens when you release one, just one, issue that doesn't fall into line with what the people who laud you for your poor decision.
Behold, The Mary Sue (archived for your protection): Crusaders of truly the highest calibre, and an honourable website to boot. They obviously genuinely care about the stories and not the naughty bits of the characters in the story.
Tying in with the Secret Wars event, series writer Jason Aaron returns with Thor #1 – a story meant to continue the threads of new!Thor’s heroic journey, but one that fails to be remotely as empowering as her solo series.
Because obviously, stories are only meant to empower characters, not to test them, not to challenge them, or not to *gasp* tell stories about them?
So let’s just address the most pressing concern of that recap: Jason Aaron decided to follow up the empowering story of Jane Foster becoming Thor and finding her place in both Asgardian and human society with a story that features her being murdered – repeatedly.
No, I think you missed something, TMS. The Jane Foster that because Thor isn't in this story. It doesn't feature her being murdered. You said not a paragraph earlier that it was multiple reality versions of her.
At no point in this issue do we learn anything about any of these women as characters, about their lived experiences or their perspectives on these brutal crimes. Our empathy is never encouraged by the narrative to align with them.
I remember in Edge of Spider-Verse where all the Spidermen of multiple realities were being brutally slaughtered -- on-panel, mind you -- by a multiversal fox-hunting party of ancient immortals. I'm so glad we got to learn about the hopes, the dreams, the very essence of those Spider-men. No? Oh, and all the Spider-women: Mayday Parker, Ultimate's Jessica Drew, Gwen Stacy, Silk, and (inexplicably, as she's not even a proper Spiderverse character) 616 Spider-woman all suffered losses on their side of the gender divide too, right? No? Oh..
Instead, the focus surrounds the Ultimate-Thor, Thorlief (a coconut for anyone who can crack the naming conventions going on here), and his determination to solve this crime for pretty self-involved/white knight reasoning.
I've been told only misogynists use the term white-knight. You're not a misogynist, TMS, are you?
At this stage of cultural saturation they’re just normalized, and so audiences have grown numbs to the shock of gratuitous female mutilation and excessive male violence dressed up as redemptive justice.
Yeah, it's a good thing men are never blown up, shot, stabbed, mutilated, or otherwise brutally murdered in comics.
Aaron’s use of this particular trope in such an unimaginative and predictable fashion is precisely what makes it so damaging: stripping Jane Foster of her legacy as a brave and meaningful character
...who is letting cancer kill her because she thinks Asgardian science is too magicky.
Imagine if it was Jane Foster having to investigate a series of her own murders? Not only would that reassert her agency, but it would also offer opportunities for a more interesting detective-victim connection because, hey, they’re all the same person.
That actually would be a better story. Too bad she's off doing something *awesome* like fighting in the Secret War thingie that's going on. We could have had her in a b-list miniseries instead of Ultimate Thor, who no one's cared about since like 2004.
There were other ways to tell this story without taking feminism out into the woods and cracking it over the head with a shovel.
Readers, I was torn between "[EXISTENTIAL SIGH]" and "Actually, it's about ethics in shovel-wielding" here, so have both.
Not only does [Storm] suffer verbal abuse from an older Thor (‘drunken and grizzled detective who doesn’t play by the rules!’) who argues she should be facially branded to remind everyone she’s a mutant, but also has to put up with Thorlief hitting on her while at work?
Hey, at least he's not selling her to rub his hammer because it'll grow like the Thor of myth and legend would. Progress!
She’s also dressed in a shoe-string swimming costume outfit with a headdress that looks like a Thanksgiving turkey at Coachella, it’s all very bad.
Which managed to a) still cover more than her most popular recent outfit and b) look like an homage to old-school Jack Kirby Thor comics. Also, you dropped this - she's wearing practically the same headgear as everyone else.
I think she looks kind of awesome. Also, really no love for Mjolnir-wielding Storm? Really?
Just imagine discovering and loving an empowering, resilient determined hero like Jane Foster as Thor, only to then see her be brutally murdered and replaced with (for all intents and purposes to new readers) the ‘original’ Thor again. While the Jane Foster that readers have followed in Thor is alive in Secret Wars (following the events of the main series), how on earth are people that only want to read her adventures supposed to know that?
She hasn't been replaced. This isn't even the same book. She's off fighting in the Secret Wars (which is a *main* titles, and this is a mini-series. And they could probably find out by looking at the cover. Which, given that comic shops usually sort titles by publisher and title name alphabetically, would probably be at most 2 slots over on the shelf.
We’ve got our safe spaces, Marvel; but why is the rest of your world still so dangerous?
SAFE SPACES FOR EVERYBODY!!
But seriously, though. This is an even clearer example of why you never apologize than when I discussed Shut Up Wesley Wheaton. You can create the most perfect example of something that they'll rally behind, but make one single issue that isn't in lockstep and you'll be dragged under like a pack of hungry wolves are at your heels. Make something, write something, film something, code something... but stop trying to please people that will turn on you the moment they smell blood.
Pardon me while I plug in my waffle
iron once again. This really should be the last time that have to
bring up female Thor.
In fixing my poor education on the
subject of Peter Parker, I've recently read through the last half of his Ultimate Spider-Man run, into the second volume that culminates
in the death of Peter Parker and the rebirth of the character of
Spider-Man as Miles Morales. It's something that echoes and contrasts
nicely the difference in the handling between Miles Morales and the
mystery female Thor.
The main contrast between these two
situations is the respect in which the handover from seasoned hero to
rookie newcomer is handled. In Spider-Man's case, there was an epic
six-issue final battle in which Normon Osborn, as a hulked-out Green
Goblin, escapes SHIELD custody, springing some of Spidey's biggest
and baddest adversaries in the process and begins a hunt that ends at
Aunt May's house. Spidey, Human Torch, and Iceman face off against
Goblin, Vulture, Electro, Sandman, and Kraven. Parker is particularly
heroic, having just survived being shot through the torso taking a
bullet that was meant for Captain America, as he webs himself shut
and drags himself to the battle, before crushing Goblin with a truck.
Aunt May even gets a shining moment of awesome as she shoots Electro
down with her own revolver. And in the end, Parker is given a
magnificently noble send-off, in which a young boy is standing in the
crowd watching as the life slips away from him, and he finally makes
peace with being unable to save his Uncle Ben. A young boy named
Miles Morales.
Morales's uncle is the Ultimate universe
version of The Prowler, a professional burglar (that bears an
uncomfortable resemblance to Deadpool) who does a job on Oscorp labs
only to unwittingly provide a ride to an enhanced spider that ends up
biting his nephew. The first 10 or so issues, as far as I've read, of
Morales has him treating Peter Parker's legacy with awe and
reverence, and rightly so. He's a young kid, younger even than Parker
was, coming from a different background and a different life
experience. His Uncle Ben moment comes when, after discovering his
powers, he gets to the scene of the final battle too late, and blames
himself for Parker dying. His appearances are initially met with
hostility, then slow acceptance, particularly with Jessica Drew,
Parker's female clone and Spider-Woman of the Marvel Ultimate
universe. Morales has a natural and believable amount of self-doubt
for someone of his age. A palpable sense of “Who am I to
take Spider-Man's place?”
Pictured: The Absorbing Strawman
Pictured: Character Assassination on a female villain.
The new Thor... does not take this
approach.
Contrasting between
Morales and Thor, one subject is
treated with a great deal of respect, where the other is not. Where
Parker got a hero's death, and a supporting cast that transfers into
the new character's life to both keep him grounded and teach him how
to be Spider-Man, Thor gets none of these benefits. Where Morales is
both well-established and likeable, the new Thor is flippant (in her
own mind) and arrogant (in addressing other characters). Morales's
book shows minority characters interacting naturally with one another
as well as established characters while Thor's book turns a pair of
established villains into a strawman anti-feminist critic and a
pushover girl-power cheerleader. We get to know Morales as a human
being and as a budding hero, where Thor just plops a stranger in
front of us and says “We're not going to tell you who this is, but
you're going to like her whether you like it or not!”
And finally, Parker is treated with
respect. Given a hero's death and a lasting legacy. Thor is turned
into a drunken layabout with a deified case of depression. Ultimate
Spider-Man is how you go about replacing a hero. Thor is how you go
about disrespecting your own property and alienating fans for
clickbait attention.
Erin Palette is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.
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