Regressive Progressivism: A Case of Friendly Fire

Embedded journalist on the front
lines of the secret culture war.

Oh boy, do I get to talk about Anita Sarkeesian this week? I think I doOOoo!

I need to change my byline to "embedded journalist on the frontlines of the secret culture war." That would, of course, require having a byline to begin with, but considering the crazy things I find happening and the points of view that I find on them, it'd be worth it. Plus it sounds unbelievably cool.

(Editor's Note: Done.)

My Regressive Progressivism series has highlighted cases of hypocrisy, cultural cannibalism, and some spectacular own-goals in its time, but this one has to take the cake.

It's a special time of year, apparently. It's been so long that I actually forgot, despite being one of the few that witnessed and told the tale of, the original incident. That's right, it was recently the anniversary of Gamergate, specifically the "hate screed of the jilted ex-boyfriend" which was, in reality, an airing of grievances on a personal blog by a victim of domestic abuse. That'll be relevant shortly, I promise.

Kotaku UK recently interviewed prominent gaming YouTuber TotalBiscuit, host of possibly the biggest gaming podcast, professional Starcraft announcer, and all-around consumer advocate, on the topic of 'haters', which I assume means trolls and harassers. The discussion was around moderation tools and how to use them to guide discussion in the community. Overall, this was fairly tame stuff.

However, from the progressive side of the gaming eliterati, there were two problems with this. Firstly, Totalbiscuit was allegedly "pro-Gamergate" and the article was published on the anniversary of Gamergate. To a normal, sane, uninvolved person, this wouldn't have been an issue. However...

Outrageous & irresponsible of Kotaku UK to post this puff-piece on a Gamergater on the hate movement's anniversary. https://t.co/trVmZmDXvX pic.twitter.com/4SDStFolkB

— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) August 16, 2017

How many times have I said Twitter is a bad idea? 

Now, in isolation this isn't a big deal. Feminist Frequency (Anita Sarkeesian's project) disproves of an article. No big deal, right?

Wrong! Big deal. The article's author, a trans-woman named Laura Kate Dale, was met with a deluge of disapproval due to TotalBiscuit's support of  the ethics side (He disavowed any and all harassment while promoting the idea that there was a problem with videogame reporting) of the Gamergate debacle.

So, in a nutshell, what happened? A progressive trans-woman interviewed an internet personality with a solid take on moderating a community, which displeased a progressive cultural icon, which in turn resulted in harassment, threats, and (allegedly) doxing, resulting in Laura Kate Dale being chased off of Twitter. Granted, she said she wasn't leaving because of the deluge of negative attention, but that to me reads just like Joss Whedon's "I fell down some stairs" moment after Age of Ultron. 

You don't even get to explain yourself.

Kotaku all but retracted the original article. I'm surprised they even mentioned that Dale received threats. That's dangerously close to breaking the narrative. 

I'm sorry it took this long to get an appology post up. There were a lot of factors that delayed this. For that, I am sorry.

— Laura Kate Dale (@LaurakBuzz) August 17, 2017

See the replies? It will never be good enough, no matter what. 

When even fervently progressive voices like Jim Sterling and Rhianna Pratchett call out how irresponsible and wrong it is to attack someone like this, you have to take notice. A group of people harassed a trans-woman off of twitter for talking about video game stuff, and yet this isn't about "evol right-wing gamers" or Brianna Wu; this is a progressive hate mob that attacked someone on their own side for talking to the "wrong" person about a relevant topic, and it's rather sickening.

You have to take this in perspective, and by the rules that have been laid forth:

• Anita Sarkeesian is a cis-woman with over 700,000 followers who has spoken to the UN and appeared on Stephen Colbert's show. 
• Laura Kate Dale is a trans-woman with less than 50 thousand followers who runs a podcast and writes for a site that's a bit of a joke. 

By nearly any definition, there's a clear power imbalance there, and I genuinely feel, no matter how much I disagree with Dale, that Anita acted irresponsibly and fanned some pretty hefty flames in her direction.

Oh, and anyone wondering why I haven't mentioned Charlottesville? Nazis and Communists are both bad. The ground could open up and swallow both the Alt-Right and Antifa and I wouldn't shed a tear. There, that's my community service for the week. 

'Comic Fans' Don't Have To Be Your Audience. 'Comic Fans' Are Over.

Wow, that title sounds familiar. I wonder where I've heard something like that before? 

When I spoke previously about the Exponential Outrage Theorem, I had no idea it would become relevant again so quickly, and in such a ludicrous manner. Several years ago, I commented that Marvel was playing a long game in diversity, and it was working for them; they were introducing new characters while promoting legacy characters to keep them around, which respected both new and legacy characters, and DC was making some very public and messy mis-steps.

Since DC's Rebirth event, they've become wildly popular amongst comic fans, and the diehard Marvel purists (as well as more casual fans) are starting to turn away from Marvel due to creative decisions such as the disrespect shown the character of Thor, turning the ev0l cis-het white male Captain America into a 'Nazi', and the introduction of a black girl who got her start by stealing things from MIT as the new Iron Man lead. Sales have slumped a bit in comparison to DC, who is not only overtaking them in comics sales and popularity, but also just had their first broadly-accepted cinematic universe movie in the fantastic Wonder Woman (which despite having a female lead and a female director, was devoid of any out-of-place identity politics).

Last week, an innocent Marvel editor took some of her co-workers to Ben & Jerrys, and posted a selfie getting milkshakes. This innocent act earned her a deluge of abuse, harassment, and threats, which were detailed on such sites as Bleeding Cool, Upworthy, The Mary Sue, and talkradio.co.uk, who went so far as to label this the "new Gamergate." OH! That explains the title. I was wondering where I got that from. So these articles went on, as they always do, to display the requisite six nasty tweets the editor...

...what? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm being informed that they did not display the six requisite tweets from literal nobodies. Bleeding Cool supplied 5 mild tweets from literal nobodies, Upworthy only 3, and both sites showcased a literal deluge of support from industry insiders, fellow co-workers, and assorted random people. The Mary Sue supplied no negative tweets at all. No screenshots were provided of the alleged DMs from anyone. Most of the coverage consisted of this same pattern: a small example of mildly rude tweets, then easily 3-4 times as many pictures of random people with milkshakes supporting the editor and her friends. This hardly paints a picture of hostility. In fact, The Mary Sue even went so far as to respond to the criticism of their coverage with what can only be described as plugging their ears and shouting "I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I??" This is quite possibly the most juvenile piece I think I've ever seen on their site, and that speaks volumes.

With all due respect (that being very little) to talkradio.co.uk, the only way in which this seems to be a 'new Gamergate' is in that an enthusiast press is attacking its audience for what seems to be a minor slight at most, all the while celebrating what good people they are. I've seen far too many overblown outrages over the last few years to take anything at face value anymore, and the evidence is getting flimsier and flimsier each time it happens. This is, by far, the most exaggerating instance I've seen. It's so exaggerated that someone did some preliminary math over in Reddit's r/comicbooks and, basing the number of Marvel readers (conservatively) on the number of issues of their biggest book sold (roughly 225,000) against the 7 negative tweets they found (reminder that Redditors, at least most of them, are not paid to do the work that journalists don't bother to do), they came up with the fact that three-thousandths of one percent of Marvel readers objected to the milkshake picture in any form.

I am tired. I am very tired. This tires me. But I will not stop pointing out the sheer BS that happens every time something even remotely controversial gets drummed up in entertainment press. This is by far the worst offender so far, as it's provided the least actual coverage of the alleged wrong-doings and wasn't even based on an announcement or change or anything like that, but just a selfie.

Stop trying to paint your readership as monsters. Stop trying to fit your customers into a little 'basket of deplorables' and expecting them to thank you for being good people when you do. It doesn't work like that.

Attracting a Slightly Better Class of Troll

We've gone from the bog-standard "You guys are stupid/dumb/evil/make me sick" responses to a slightly more nuanced, if blithering, kind of troll.

Just for fun, let's keep track of how many entries on the Internet Arguing Checklist are used:

1. Skim until Offended
2. Disqualify that Opinion
3. Attack, Attack, Attack
4. Disregard Inconvenient facts
5. Make Shit Up
6. Resort to Moral Equivalency
7. Concern Trolling
8. When all else fails, Racism!

This is clearly "Skim Until Offended" (1/8) and "Racism!" (2/8).

"You sound angry" is part of Disqualify That Opinion. (3/8)

I'm not sure if being faux-upset at my use of "drive-by" is Concern Trolling or Moral Equivalency (drive-by shootings are bad, see, and I used the phrase "drive-by" in conversation and not about a literal drive-by, so that makes me a Bad Person because I'm somehow making light of murder), but it's something.  (4/8)

This is one I've seen a bunch of times in online arguments: "I don't have to do research, but you have to do it for me" i.e. "Prove my satisfaction that you aren't what I say you are", and we all know how well proving a negative goes.

Also, I don't owe this jerk anything.

But since we've given him the link and he refuses to use it, I'm going to file this under "Disregard Inconvenient Facts." (5/8)

If we weren't before, we're definitely deep into Make Shit Up territory. (6/8)

Another repetition of "You sure are angry", along with another tactic I've seen online: "Oh, I'm not talking to you, person who is making good points; I'm only talking to this person right here."  Which is a valid technique if someone is trying to distract and pull you off-topic; not so much when the person is addressing the question you asked.

Let me just say how inordinately pleased I am with that phrase. You'll notice that I didn't insult him -- I said he charged in LIKE a syphilitic rhino, not that he WAS one. Plus, the imagery is delightful.

More "Disqualify That Opinion," this time by suggesting that anything said by Operation Blazing Sword is suspect.

This is "Attack, Attack, Attack." Basically, "I'm convinced you're forming a taxpayer funded queer militia to overthrow the government, and because you haven't specifically refuted my idiotic claims" -- and why would I, when they're patently ridiculous? Besides, as said earlier, I owe him no explanations -- "I'm going to phrase my statement in such a way that you look bad by implied association and/or refusing to denounce people." (7/8)

And he doesn't learn (or has poor reading comprehension). I gave him three chances, and he persisted which means he received a ban for his trouble. I really only let him stick around this long because his idiocy amused me, but the moment he strayed into defamation the fun was over

So that's 7 out of 8 on the checklist, and that's only because I'm not sure if an argument was Concern Trolling, Moral Equivalency, or maybe even both.

Also, being able to say "All further communication must through our lawyer" sure makes my nipples all tingly.

The Bait Is Evolving

Twitter genuinely needs to die for the benefit of humanity.

It is very rare that I would genuinely say that a form of speech should be taken away, but if there is one that I sincerely feel needs to be stopped, it's Twitter. The now-arbitrary character limit breeds lack of context (be it intentional or otherwise), and the sheer volume of communication in such brief snippets breeds confusion and contempt when that lack of context comes into play.

It's a playground for misunderstanding and miscommunication, and nowhere is more clear than when one of these 'hate campaigns' starts. I am reminded of the aftermath of the first trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, with the scene of the Tattooine Jakku desert and Finn's head popping up in his Stormtrooper outfit, when some lore-heavy nerd's first thought was "Wait, how is there a black Stormtrooper? Weren't they all cloned from a Maori guy?"

Thus began a game of Chinese Quantum-Entanglers that ended with mainstream press outlets reporting on violent white supremacists on Twitter raging about "The Black Stormtrooper"... and then it turned out the movie had gone with the Extended Universe strategy of conscription and enlistment in the twenty or so years since the end of Return of the Jedi, and that this wasn't even the Empire, and Finn had a perfectly good reason for being there. But the point still stands that there were maybe six people, all obvious trolls from their profiles and other tweets, that were 'raging' over "The Black Stormtrooper", and the media, hungry for controversy, picked them up and ran with a global white supremacist nerd conspiracy as the headline.

This time, though... this is different. In the wake of the Orlando shooting, and during LGBT Pride Month, the hashtag #HeterosexualPrideDay started to trend. Dutifully, the media picked up the story and ran like crazy. They ran hard, without doing even the most basic of research, which is what I did instead.

Google Translate can't even figure that out completely. 

The first tweet reads something like "I am a man gatda example cheonge coincidence hetero pride daeyi tag 've achieved so laughter and pain" and the second one "Sincere people who really funny flame went bosae."

I can't be 100% certain what it means, but from context of the words that were successfully translated, it would appear to be a South Korean trying to bait a reaction. Trying and failing, as it seems the hashtag had very little traction until at least June 22, at which point since it's been one half ironic mockery of straight people and one half outrage at the existence of the hashtag. This isn't just a troll this time, it's self-perpetuating troll bait. There was no troll campaign like the half-dozen twitter trolls trying to set a fire under "The Black Stormtrooper" situation; this was literally people searching for #HeterosexualPrideDay in the hopes of being outraged, and the media was no different.

And so, since then, I've been seeing outrage stories from the likes of The Guardian and Huffington Post popping up on my feeds, and personal missives from people angry at those darned heteros, and I've been trying to defuse the situation where I can... but at this point I can't be patient anymore. I'm just disappointed. I mean, I understand it if some really clever trolls manufacture a situation that sets everyone off -- that's what they do -- but in the absence of effective trolls, we're now making our own outrage.

Please, I beg you: Stop using Twitter. One day, there will be nuclear fire, and it will be because someone said something on Twitter and a whole shed-load of people overreacted. And I'll sit there amongst the ashes, cackling and saying I told you so. And you don't want me to be right, do you? Not on that scale. Not even *I* want that.

Orlando: Playing the Blame Game

I'm having real trouble putting all of the thoughts of the past week in a sensible order, but I'm told my writing skill outpaces my opinion of my writing skills, so here goes: I have seen very, very few people in the last week being anything but complete and utter assholes.

On Sunday, June 12th, a man entered an Orlando night club. When the dust settled, 49 people were killed and 53 were wounded.

This is the fact of the matter, at it's basest level. Further details include that the man was the son of an ideological supporter of the Afghani Taliban; that he used legally purchased weapons which were illegally modified; that he called 911 and pledged allegiance to ISIS and insisted that the US stopped bombing ISIS targets in Syria. But all of those are, apparently unimportant.

So far I've seen:

• Progressives blaming white people, Christianity, and guns. 
• The gaming press demonizing the games industry for daring to have the biggest games event of the year, planned months in advance, in the wake of the shooting. 
• BlackLivesMatter speakers using the tragedy to attack white people.
• An argument with an associate who blamed it all on 'toxic masculinity.'

All this because a Muslim man pledged allegiance to an extremist group and opened fire on a crowd of gay and trans people, most of them Latino, and in the aftermath I am completely disgusted by the mediabatory frenzy that ensued, primarily on the progressive side, jumping to rationalize blaming everything but the belief system of the shooter.

Because we can't know, can we? We can't ever truly know his motivations, only that he was carrying a big scary AR-15 and that he had a problem with gay people. That much we know. Anything else is speculation. We have to discount what he posted on his own Facebook, and what he told a 911 operator. We have to discount what his religion's stance on homosexuality is, and how widespread that belief is, or the treatment of alternate sexualities in some quarters of that belief system. And we certainly must discount ISIS claiming him as a 'soldier of the caliphate.'

Because as Western progressives, we would know better than he would know his own motives.

I'll tell you what I know, because I've seen it:

• I've seen gay and trans friends immensely worried because they're being thrown under the bus to protect a religion and being used as a tool to attack other people. 
• I've seen some incredible mental gymnastics to blame anything but a set of ideas that might well be needing some criticism. 
• And I've seen my lovely editor herself putting together something wonderful, by taking the common-sense approach of "do what you know to help people."

As a final thought, and I'm not at all sorry who I may offend here, be it those of either conservative or progressive nature: I don't care what your belief system is, it's not above question. I spent my teenage years in the deep south of Alabama questioning Christianity. I've questioned Islam. I'll question any ideology or religion you put in front of me if I see something contradictory or that doesn't make sense. And I'm not going to stop because you call me a racist or an infidel.

And just to go on the record: I'm not a gun owner. I don't plan on buying one because I don't trust myself with one. But I'm not going try and take away anyone's right to own one. I'm also not gay or trans, and I'm not an ally (because I've seen how allies get treated) -- but I'm a friend if you need one.

So long as you're not an asshole to me, of course.

'Cuz We Are Living in a Post-Context World, and I Am A Post-Context Girl

Context is a wonderful thing. Context is what paints a picture around a very small thing and gives it meaning. It's a very important thing; without context, that very small thing is open to being wildly misinterpreted.

These are all obvious things, so why am I bringing them up? 

Context.

A couple of weeks ago, the big news going around was that Rose McGowan, well known for playing the least popular sister on Charmed, a less popular series 'inspired' by The Craft (seriously, Piper was best girl on Charmed anyway), posted a scathing invective against the marketing campaign for X-Men: Apocalypse, scolding the studio for portraying 'casual violence against women' and not being able to 'manage to put any women directors on your slate for the next two years' and including a quote from a friend's 9-year-old that said 'Dad, why is that monster man committing violence against a woman?'

The classic Claremont Grip. 

The Casualness Angle
Some minor spoilers for X-Men: Apocalypse here, and some context, as well.

Mystique is very strong, very agile, and a very skilled fighter. She's shown, throughout the six X-Men films she appears in, incapacitating men much larger than her with ease, being generally fearless, and (thanks to her mutant powers) an expert at infiltration and espionage. Mystique is, in short, not one to mess with. She's a major player in the X-films universe, and a persistent villain in the comics.

Apocalypse is two steps shy of being a god. Hulk and Thor would probably have trouble standing up to him, as he completely walks over the X-Men, even overpowering Charles Xavier in his own mind. In short, Apocalypse is the biggest threat the X-Men have ever faced in a movie, so much so that even the MCU's Avengers team couldn't have taken him down either. The fact that he has Mystique in a classic Claremont Grip on the billboard isn't showing 'casual violence against women'; it's showing that an insanely powerful supervillain has the upper hand over one of the main stars of the movie, who is also an extremely capable combatant. It speaks volumes to her combat prowess that she was able to get close enough for Apocalypse to lay hands on her, considering Google searches for "Marvel Apocalypse" and "Marvel Apocalypse choke" turn up very few results for choke-holds.

The one exception being Apocalypse choking The Hulk out. From behind. With tentacles.

Or possibly cables.
But saying "Apocalypse Hulk tentacle asphyxiation"
really ought to help our position in the search rankings. 

The Marketing Angle
There is a meme floating around showing images from Deadpool with Angel Dust choking out defenseless Weasel and very defended Colossus, juxtaposed with Apocalypse strangling Mystique, and Deadpool wondering why two of those images are fine and one isn't.

Dammit, Wade, it's "you're". 

The obvious retort that I've seen has some merit, in that Angel Dust wasn't strangling anyone on the billboards for Deadpool. But if we take that a step further, there were five billboards that I saw for X-Men: Apocalypse: 

one with Magneto hovering menacingly with metal objects;

one with Storm shooting lightning from her hands;

one with Psylocke in a threatening pose;

one with Jean holding Scott's head as he fires his optic blasts;

and one with Apocalypse holding Mystique by the throat.

That's five billboards: four featuring one of the previously well-marketed female characters, one controlling the actions of a male character, two being generally awesome, and one in an inferior position to a god-like being. Deadpool's billboards... had no female representation.

[Nerdvoice] Actually, Salem, the billboard that was a satire of a typical Valentine's Day chick-flick had a picture of Morena Baccarin. [/nerdvoice] -- Erin

The 9-Year-Old Angle
Do 9-year-olds speak like Gender Studies majors, or do Gender Studies majors speak like 9-year-olds? I can never keep track of this stuff anymore. Either way, a 9-year-old didn't say that. Or maybe a 9-year-old had been fed that shit like Sunday School and was parroting it. 

My point here is that context is everything, and Rose McGowan is just another in a very, very long line of people that attack without context, whether they genuinely don't know the context or purposefully ignore it. This is no different than people that were against theBatgirl cover last year, where context (the fact that Barbara was once victimized when she was shot and paralyzed by The Joker, but has since faced him and overcome her fears to beat him) was also ignored, or any one of a number of huge public outcries. 

I'm rapidly losing the ability to give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to whether or not they're just ignoring context to try and gain attention over something. Rose, you're free to point out stuff you might find 'problematic', but I'm also free to point out that you're willfully ignoring context to make a point. 

Just Who Are The Angry Nerds Here?

We're now about six weeks away from the moment of truth. Ghostbusters 2016  – which I've written about before (see my writeup on the trailer) – will be coming out in the middle of July. People will go and see it. Reviews will be written. Viewer ratings will be assessed. Box Office numbers will be crunched. Personally, I'm not going to see it because I didn't see its spiritual predecessor Adam Sandler's Pixels either, and I'm not sure if I can follow the story without having seen the first movie.

I'm kidding. I know they're in no way related, save for the level of one's brow when it comes to humour. That said, you really couldn't be blamed for thinking they were, and that is where the bulk of the criticism is coming from, regardless of what the production company or their unwitting allies in the press would have you believe. Sony and Paul Feig have been playing a very risky game with the marketing of the film, banking heavily on outrage culture and progressive buzzwords in an attempt to sell it to an audience that would probably go see it solely on the gender of the characters, and even going so far as to delete negative criticism that wasn't based on sexism from the trailer's YouTube comments section.

I'm not the only person not going to see it, either. Recently, James Rolfe (aka The Angry Video Game Nerd) released a video, approximately six minutes long, explaining to over 2 million viewers why he wasn't going to see it even though he's a big fan of the original films (or at least the first one). He calmly, reasonably lays out his reasons for it, briefly dismissing the fact that women are playing the starring roles, and explains that he's just not interested, doesn't think it'll be good based on the trailers he's seen, and won't be providing coverage of it for his channels. See below for the statement in his own words.

That was a pretty reasonable statement, right? I thought so. Apparently I'm in the minority on that, as what happened next was a coordinated strike the likes of which hadn't been seen since GamerGate or the Sad/Rabid Puppies coverage. No fewer than 20 outlets dropped hitpieces on Rolfe:

1. The DailyBeast
2. IndieWire
3. The Atlantic
4. Birthmoviesdeath
5. Pedestrian
6. Wired 
7. Salon
8. TheSuperficial
9. BroBible
10. DeathAndTaxes 
11. Fastcocreate
12. TheStranger
13. Fansided
14. PopCrush
15. FiveThirtyEight
16. News.com.au
17. Gothamist
18. NZ Herald
19. Filmink
20. SomeEntertainment

All of this because a moderately e-famous comedy critic said he wasn't interested in seeing the movie. (Credit to the archivists at KotakuInAction for compiling that list; it was taking me forever to hunt them all down). And every single one of them furthers the narrative marketing that Sony and Paul Feig have been pushing hard since that first trailer came... no, even before the trailer, since the very first announcement.

Having actually seen the video, the only way I can wrap my head around this is to imagine that these 'journalists' saw the title of Rolfe's video and judged the content of it without watching it. And with that, the needle on my irony meter has hit the red so hard that it came loose and lodged itself in the wall, barely missing my beloved Play Arts Kai Harley Quinn figure. 

I mean, isn't this what you're criticizing Rolfe himself for? For judging a movie not worth the $11 it would cost for a regular screening (not even 3D or IMAX) without having first seen it? It wouldn't have even cost you anything to watch his video and judge his reasons yourself before calling him a dickless man-baby, only a mere six minutes or so of your life. Is the world of 'journalism' so fast-paced that you can't spare six minutes that you'd have otherwise spent just making stuff up?

I can't help but think to something Anita Sarkeesian once said, and how she was right without even knowing it. It's not that sex sells; instead, sexism sells. Sexism is what gets you clicks and page-views and ad revenue, not actually reviewing your sources and telling the truth, and the bigger target you can paint the better. Queue Notch, aka Markus Perrson, the creator of Minecraft.

Perrson recently responded to a tweet about 'mansplaining' wherein he called it 'a sexist term designed to silence men via gender shaming.' He cleverly followed up with 'cuntfused' and sent the gaming journalism world into a tizzy, with hitpieces from Destructoid and Vice hot on the wheels of the AVGN incident, with headlines like “Minecraft billionaire feels oppressed by women.” The poor bastard even got the dreaded label of "MRA" for speaking his mind.

Dare to disagree, people. Dare to disagree. 

A Short Thought and a Shout Out

I'm mulling over some news from a doctor, and also have no real, tangible thoughts on anything this week (and there's Rifftrax Live tonight!), but I do have a small, important thing I'd like to say on a topical issue. And after we've got the serious thing out of the way, I'll end it on a fun note.

Bathrooms
They're a big, nasty topic these days. There's a lot of misinformation and a lot of anger. Personally, I'm unconcerned with who uses what bathroom. I'm not sure why there's a differentiation, anyway. Bathrooms are bathrooms to me, and the only real difference is the number of stalls and presence of urinals. That said...

• To the extreme far left: moderate conservatives are not calling trans women men in dresses.They're expressing a concern, perhaps poorly worded, that actual scary cis-het males are going to dress in drag to assault women and children in restrooms. Given your usual statements regarding cis-het men, I'm surprised you aren't more aligned with them.
• To the extreme far right: please calm down. Who is allowed in the toilet probably isn't going stop a predator from entering a restroom just like a gun-free zone isn't going to keep a badguy with a gun out. In fact, the this fear of cis-het men entering restrooms dressed like women is starting to sound a lot like the androphobia expressed regularly by radical feminists.
• To the moderates on both sides: Talk to each other, for crying out loud.

Something a little more upbeat
Remember when I said I wasn't really a Star Wars fan? I've sort of softened a bit, mostly in part to The Force Awakens. So, even though I was posting the Fourth Doctor like a jackass yesterday, here is a concession. May the Fourth be with you, even if I'm a day late.

The 5 Most Disgustingly Oversexualized Costumes I Saw When Walking Through "Spirit Halloween" Monday Night.

Outrage! Click the link and be outraged! 

It's that time again, the time of year when innocent people go shopping for costumes so they can have a good time sitting and discussing Important Things with Special People at Halloween parties (and definitely not getting plastered and making out with a complete stranger). And with that comes the societal pressures that the Patriarchy puts on women to dress as "sexy" versions of costumes. Fine thinkers such as Laci Green and the folks over at Jezebel have pontificated to a great extent on the oppression laid bare by our society. So, in that spirit, I took a stroll through the Spirit Halloween store (located in just about every city in America for the next week or so) and have documented the five most disgustingly objectifying costumes I could find.

1: Sexy Cat In The Hat

That's right. Even Dr Seuss isn't safe from the disgusting objectification of our society. Note the clear differences between the male version (displayed in the picture and obviously not included in the package) and the female version. See how the male version looks completely normal and accurate to the source material, while the female version accentuates the female form and bares so much more of that filthy flesh.

2: Sexy The Walking Dead Michonne

Michonne is a beloved female lead character in AMC's The Walking Dead. On the show, she tends to wear body-hugging clothing, but it's still functional, as it's meant to make it harder for zombies to grab loose clothing. Her one concession is to modesty, where she covers that form-hugging clothing with a loosely draped cloak, often imbued with zombie viscera to throw them off of her scent. See here how the costume completely misses the point, instead sexualizing her struggle to survive in the zombie apocalypse.

3: Sexy Dottie The Clown

Even beloved childhood entertainers are not safe here, as this ladiess clown costume obviously veers wildly into the 'sexy' territory. I mean, look at those bared elbows! Those exposed ankles!

4: Sexy Baby Jammies

And speaking of childhood, not even children are safe, as this takes an adorable baby's pajama outfit and cuts it down to nothing but a mere slip of a costume, exposing things a baby should never be exposing, and coupling it with a huge phallic object.

5: Sexy PBJ

And the coup de grace, a Halloween costume that blatantly perpetuates Patriarchy, insinuating that a woman's costume is incomplete without a complementary man's costume. Literally a sexualized piece of bread with jelly that is clearly a menstrual metaphor, and useless without the man's sticky contribution.











I'm sure I don't have to explain that this is completely satire. The purpose for writing this is that I'm getting a little sick of hearing about sexualized Halloween costumes. Yes, there are a lot. Yes, some of them are sexualized versions of other costumes that aren't. But you know what? They sell *really* well. And it's not guys buying them. If you're bothered by what a woman is wearing, that might be a problem with you and not with the women that enjoy wearing them, with the companies making the costumes, or with the society that gets a laugh out of it. There's plenty of well-made, non-sexualized costumes available in lots of stores. Even non-sexualized versions of sexy costumes. So please. Do yourself (and the rest of us) a favour and go buy one of them, go out to a Halloween party with some friends, and enjoy your evening. I'd love to say that's what I'll be doing, but I'll be at work. 

The TMS Chronicles: Taking the Bait. Hard.

Don't feed the trolls, don't feed the trolls, don't feed the trolls... dammit.

So this week, you may have seen... oh, who am I kidding. Of course you saw. It was everywhere: Variety; Salon; The Daily Show (Trevor Noah, I am so disappointed in you); and of course The Mary Sue, leading the charge as always. 

I wrote about their previous misrepresentation and overreaction to the alleged MRA boycott of Mad Max: Fury Road. In that instance, it was one guy on a RedPill site (not even an MRA – someone who looks down on that crowd) who was calling for a boycott because the movie was feminist propaganda. It wasn't.

Between the pregnant woman getting creamed by a monster truck, the completely nude lookout (in the desert? Come on – protective clothing!), the fat women being milked like human cows, and the fact that the much-vaunted female protagonist had a poorly-thought-out plan that had to be corrected and overridden by the male protagonist, that movie fails the critical theory test at every step, despite how much its been embraced. But that's the entire point. It wasn't feminist propaganda, and there was no “MRA Boycott” of it. 

Fast forward a few months, and the internet at large (and The Mary Sue in particular) has learned absolutely nothing. Yet another hashtag was started recently, and the narrative this time is that there's a massive group of white nerds that are boycotting Star Wars Episode VII because three major leading roles are being cast by minorities.

(Granted, there was a bit of scuffle earlier in the year when John Boyega pulled off a Stormtrooper helmet, but that was mostly, if you looked into the actual complaints, confusion over *why* there was a black Stormtrooper when the original Stormtroopers were clones of a character depicted by a Maori actor.)

Of course, all this was just another great excuse to label the nerd community racist when it was really people forgetting the 20 year gap between trilogies. Half the original trilogy Stormtroopers could have been black by that time, as the clones were dying off and other human-type species were recruited or conscripted into the Imperial army. The narrative, as usual, differs greatly from reality.

I counted and there are 10, maybe 12 accounts, all with similar profiles, that started the hashtag. At that point, notorious admitted child groomer and paragon of the social justice crowd Sarah Nyberg used the hashtag, which was followed by a flood of people loudly denouncing it. After that point, there were so many people using it to show what good people they are that you can barely find any of the original tweets .

Which was the point the entire time. There was no group of racist white nerds that were boycotting Star Wars. The mere idea of nerds boycotting Star Wars, after how thirsty they've been for it since the prequel trilogy shat upon the franchise from a very great height, is absurd to begin with. Star Wars is like a religion to some of these people: they don't care about the details, they just want more of it.

But The Mary Sue and a few other sites didn't care. There was a story, another chance to bash nerds, so they took it and ran and not only didn't check to see if it was legit, they didn't even care. They wanted to #ListenAndBelieve so badly that they didn't dare consider it was a troll. They even doubled down after further information came to light.

In fact, the rhetoric being spouted now is that it doesn't matter if it was a troll. A thing was said, an awful, terrible thing, and we must combat the terrible, awful thing as if it were real, because it doesn't matter if it's a windmill, it could have been a giant and we must stop the giants whether they exist or not because they might exist!

Then something strange happened. Esquire reported on the narrative itself. Rather well, giving a breakdown of what happened. Even Mashable (which really came as a shock to me, because every time I see something being shared from Mashable it's the same typical clickbait BS) spoke up. Mashable became a voice of reason, calmly explaining what happened from the timeline of the tweets down to 4chan's involvement and celebration of the attention they gained. I was simultaneously shocked and inspired to see a site that I had little to no respect for actually speaking out against knee-jerk outrage bait.

Thing is, if no one had taken the bait, the topic would've died in its tracks. - Mashable

It kinda gives you a sense of hope, in a way. A New Hope, if you'll forgive me. Hope that maybe people are getting tired of outrage. I know I got tired of outrage years ago. Outrage, and the narratives that cruelly cynical people use to make themselves look like shining paragons of virtue, while behaving like complete and utter tosspots.

I'm hoping to see more voices like this in the future.

The TMS Chronicles: A Master-Class in Kafka-Trapping.

In 1986, the first game of the Metroid series was released, in which a sci-fi bounty hunter explored a desolate alien planet and its subterranean tunnels in order to stop a highly dangerous life-form from being used as a weapon. For completing the game quickly, players were rewarded with a reveal that was still in its infancy at the time: Samus Aran, the protagonist, was a woman. Since then, Samus has been long been held up as iconic; one of the early pioneers of capable and badass women to be followed by many others from the famous Chun Li and Lara Croft to the niche Aveline de Granprie and Nilin Cartier-Wells. 

I wonder if anyone's told
Gwendolyne Christie
she can't possibly have
been born a woman?

Now, I've long held that The Mary Sue is a respectable, objective source of news and information (picture me unable to say that with a straight face), but this time they really outdid themselves. Now, we're not specifically going to be looking at the article -- plenty of other people have done that already and dissected it much more closely than I'd care to. As far as its content goes, all I can say is “Sure. So you think Samus is Trans based off of some non-canon works, the word of someone that didn't design the character or write the story, and the fact that no woman anywhere could possibly be six foot three inches tall. Even if you don't want (or don't have the talent) to go about creating new characters you can draw inspiration from, there's already a precedent for trans characters in games. Please don't discard Birdo, Poison, Flea, Guillo, Reni Wassulmaier, the character creator options in the Saints Row games, Kainé, Kaoru, Sya, or Cremisius Aclassi just because you've got a bigger, juicier steak you can claim. Besides which, I find it questionable to co-opt an icon of one group for another."

What we'll be looking at today is why this article was published, the tone of it, the backlash, and the reaction to the backlash. Penned by Ellen McGrody (who I've never heard of) and Brianna Wu (who I've been warned against writing about before – fuck it, I'm naming names going forward), it starts with a very confrontational titles. “Metroid's Samus Aran is aTransgender Woman: Deal With It.” Inflammatory, and backed up with little to no proof. In fact, the entire thing seems to just be a cleaned up Tumblr post. No, really. Here's the original.

So naturally, people -- men, women, and non-traditionally-defined alike -- objected. Samus is pretty much universally beloved. Even I am fond of the character (I have the World of Nintendo figure of her), and I haven't played a Metroid game since Super Metroid back on the SNES.

Sure, like any time anyone says anything (I got death threats once for claiming $25 was a fair price for a quesadilla maker), there were some responses as inflammatory or more so than the original article's title itself, but plenty that were reasonable. And days later, Brianna herself* responded once again on TMS, with a predictable article outlining how the gaming community is transphobic for disagreeing. The other co-author's response was... less tactful.

The tl;dr of this entire episode is that The Mary Sue gives a platform to someone with a well-documented history of baiting trolls and holding up their responses as proof not only what terrible people they are, but also whatever community they can be seen standing closest to, while also overlooking the mere fact that the person making the claim must provide the proof. If there were story-canon sources that Samus wasn't born a woman; if she didn't already hold such a coveted spot as a forerunner of female protagonists; if the argument had been framed as a theory and not as an adolescent attempt at an activist mic-drop, the response wouldn't have been nearly as heated. And she knows it. TMS knows it. Ms McGrody, judging by her responses, may not know it, but that's her personal issue. Brianna wasn't pulling her punches, either, even turning to her own allies as examples of transphobic responses:

A moment of self-awareness happens.

This was a clear case of outrageous symbiosis. Brianna needed a fresh excuse to label people as awful human beings, and The Mary Sue needed a new outrage manufactured. They both clearly stepped into this looking for a heated response, got it, and held it up as proof how they're so much better than people they disagree with. Detestable. 

As it stands, given the events of the manga series and her exposure to Chozo DNA, the otherkin have a stronger claim on Samus anyway.

*yes, herself. It's been posited that Brianna is trans, but I've never witnessed her saying it, so until then she clearly identifies as a woman and I'll respect that.  

A Picture Worth About 162 Words

I'm phoning it in this week. My granddad died Saturday, I think I'm getting a sinus infection, I just installed Windows 10 and I seem to have misplaced OpenOffice, so I'm going to leave you all with a picture gleaned from the comments section of a recent Gawker article regarding ousted Reddit CEO Ellen Pao and their narrative that it was rampant misogyny that drove her out.

"Pending Approval."

That's the sound of a narrative breaking in the head of someone that was Listen and Believe-ing hardcore. Gawker's in flames, and their only hope is trying to pretend everyone's surprised that a 60 year old man said something racist years ago. Here's hoping Hogan's lawyers leg-drop them through the judge's bench. 

Regressive Progressivism and Fallout 4

There's a Bush and a Clinton fighting for the white house. Jurrasic Park is killing it at the box office. Mortal Kombat is being blamed for a massacre and DOOM is getting heat from cultural critics for its violence. I feel so very old and so very young at the same time.

The outrage du jour following E3 this year was accusations that Fallout 4 is 'transmisogynistic.' A word I don't understand (and that spellcheck doesn't recognize, but then spellcheck doesn't recognize spellcheck either), and I'll explain why later. All of this sparked over a second-long part of a clip of combat and features in Fallout 4, previewed at the pants-darkeningly exciting Bethesda event, their first ever major showing at the yearly trade show.


The clip, as you can see, features a man wearing a dress. This is big news for several reasons:

1. Just taking into account the last couple of Fallout games, there were some really excellent outfits and armor sets that were gender-specific: The Merc Charmer outfit, for example, had a bulky steel collar and coat for male players, but placing it on a female character it had a miniskirt and leggings. Similarly, the Stylish Gambler's hat in New Vegas for men was a replica of Indiana Jones's fedora (found on a skeleton in a 50s-style refrigerator) for men, but for women it was an ugly veiled pillbox hat. 
2. The appearance of a man in a dress in Fallout 4's trailer signifies that you are no longer restricted by gender as to what clothing you wish to wear. For immersion and gameplay, this should be a huge step forward. You would think progressive-minded folk with a penchant for gender activism would be celebrating this. You would even think they'd go so far as to realize that you can now play as one biological sex that identifies as another gender.

But no. The logic is that Bethesda was using the imagery to express 'lol man in a dress is funny.' Nearly the exact words.  Meanwhile, actual trans people are pretty happy about this. (For example, the editrix of this blog. -- Erin)

And even if we're looking at this as just 'man in a dress,' one of the more irritating aspects of this particular outrage is that activists have a habit of erasing the progress that the drag queen/transvestite community has had in making things like breaking gender roles, homosexuality, and transgender more acceptable to the mainstream. Back in my teenage and early 20s, I had friends in the drag community, both gay and straight, and I saw the shit they put up with from ignorant and bigoted people, and it seriously rubs me the wrong way when people claiming the moral high ground shit upon them from a very great height.

And transmisogynistic? To borrow a phrase of theirs, the word itself is problematic. I believe this should (theoretically) fall under 'transphobic', as the word transmisogynistic a) excludes female-to-male transition and b) smacks of one ideology co-opting another group's concerns for their own. That's right, hashtagtivists, I speak your language. Fluently. I'd tell you to check your privilege, if I were capable of doing it with a straight face.

But it comes down to this: Fallout did it first. Those same slacktivists throwing a ticker-tape parade over Fire Emblem having same-sex marriage? Fallout 2 had same-sex marriage. A gay character? Go talk to Arcade Gannon in New Vegas or Carol and Greta the Lesbian ghouls in Fallout 3. Or Flak (and possibly Shrapnel) in Rivet City. I'm only surprised it took so long to ditch gender-specific clothing, and I'm happy it has, as there are some snazzy suits that Justine will look totally badass wearing. 

Fallout has a long history of being open to new ideas, and attacking it for making progress in an area like this isn't progressive, it's regressive.

Also, as a sidenote: I'm sick of hearing about flags, too.

Mad Max: Furiosa-ly Spinning a Narrative's Wheels

A few weeks ago, the 'man-o-sphere' (a collective name for various men's rights and tangentially-related movement's websites and adversarial boogeyman to its it equally-silly-named counterpart, the fempire) erupted in a chaotic backlash after seeing Mad Max: Fury Road, saying that it was all a big distraction to preach feminism at hapless, unsuspecting men, and that MRAs everywhere were boycotting the film.

At least, that's you'd think if you looked at initial headlines from trusted and totally-not-biased source The Mary Sue.

Now, I haven't seen the movie. I'm honestly not sure if I will, unless I catch it streaming somewhere at some point. I don't often go to the cinema; these days, it takes a major ticket to get me to go. Make it a Rifftrax Live or a Marvel film, and I'm there. But I've seen maybe one Mad Max film and I honestly wasn't that impressed. So I'll pass, but not because my man-jimmies are rustled, but because I'm still fresh off of Age of Ultron and waiting for Ant-Man. I'll probably pass on Jurassic World for now, even if it is 70s-era sexist (what's up, Joss?).

The original article that started this whole mess was posted on Return of Kings, which according to the linked “About” page is less 'men's rights' and more 'Al Bundy's NO MA'AM' by way of the 'He-Man Women-Hater's club.' I get a serious Poe's Law vibe off of Return of Kings and would doubt its very veracity were it not for being familiar with too many things on the opposite/nearest end of the gender-political horseshoe. Even according to its own published work, they are fervently anti-MRA. But the three little letters, “MRA” are, as I stated earlier, an adversarial boogeyman to sites like The Mary Sue, who will conflate everyone from GamerGate to the GOP with that boogeyman in an attempt to discredit opposing – or even unrelated – viewpoints.
So The Mary Sue published their article, and then everyone from The Verge to The Daily Beast (seriously, who keeps giving Arthur Chu work?) to CNN picked it up and ran with it, not even bothering to do their own research. So that one guy on a fringe gender activist website, who hadn't even seen the movie, turned into millions of angry misogynist MRAs angrily boycotting a movie they hadn't seen... whilst simultaneously lauding a film full of half naked women getting beaten up and run over as a feminist triumph because the author of The Vagina Monologues (which, I'll have you recall, included a 'good rape' in reference to a child being molested) was brought in as a consultant. Another clear case of why TMS wins my vaunted “Intellectual Dishonesty Award.”

But, as they often do, the narrative is once again shifting. Feminist Frequency gave the movie a sound trouncing. Other sources are saying it didn't do so well on the fem-front. Jezebel published the most incomprehensible attempt at satire I've seen in my entire life.

I'm just sitting here shaking my head, shrugging my shoulders, and going 'Meh.” If you like Max, I hope you managed to enjoy the movie amidst the nonsense gender-politics war surrounding it. What is even journalism anymore? My head hurts.