quote:Originally posted by Destineer: It's very clearly gray spandex and not skin.
I don't know - if you miss the contrast with the exposed chin it's easy to assume it's a stylized depiction of skin.
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I actually gave it a full 24 hours before posting this, its been around Facebook for a while, and even I have to admit the letter seemed trollish. I tend to trust the SLTrib though.
But I'm sure she's making the whole thing up, right Germaine?
quote:Forced to cancel my talk at USU after receiving death threats because police wouldn’t take steps to prevent concealed firearms at the event.
Utah's gun law is an extension of a constitutionally protected right. The police -of all people - aren't going to start making up places where state law does and doesn't exist.
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posted
That is not even remotely the point. Gun laws only played a part in her having to cancel. The real issue is that the woman received death threats for daring to publicly speak about her critiques of media. I personally think the law is idiotic, but that's not an issue for this thread, even as off as it's gotten of late
As a friend of mine put it -- there is an inherent flaw to argument, "Video games are just a fantasy and don't actually make people act violently towards women, and if you keep saying they do, I'll beat you to death, you stupid bitch."
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posted
That really is the whole point. Did you read the article? She would have continued with the lecture had the police denied entry to anyone lawfully carrying a concealed firearm. She has lectured in the past, despite having threats against her life.
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: There being no way to effectively mitigate the threat is the "whole point"? Not that there is a threat?
WORST ARGUMENT EVER.
Don't be intentionally thick. I wasn't addressing the broader points of the discussion and you know it.
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posted
I'm not falling for the bait. Feel free to argue about gun control elsewhere. I'm trying to address the issue of a woman speaking about women's issues re: video games and getting repeated threats to her life and safety by dudebros who want to maintain the illusion of some hypermacho boys club that is their idea of gaming.
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: There being no way to effectively mitigate the threat is the "whole point"? Not that there is a threat?
WORST ARGUMENT EVER.
Don't be intentionally thick. I wasn't addressing the broader points of the discussion and you know it.
I'll note that I was responding to a post where you were responding to a post that actually acknowledged the side issue and then redirected to the broader points of the discussion, and the content of your post was "yes huh it's the whole point".
I'm not being intentionally thick. You were very clearly saying that the more important thing to discuss is the gun control aspect.
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posted
For those of you who (like me) have *no* idea what this #GamerGate deal is actually about, this is a pretty decent rundown of what exactly happened and why.
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quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: Her tweet, according to the article:
quote:Forced to cancel my talk at USU after receiving death threats because police wouldn’t take steps to prevent concealed firearms at the event.
Utah's gun law is an extension of a constitutionally protected right. The police -of all people - aren't going to start making up places where state law does and doesn't exist.
What's your stance on free speech zones for Occupy protestors?
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posted
Anita Sarkeesian's interview with Rolling Stone.
"I have gone ahead with events that have been threaten with bombing attacks before — three times, in fact — but each time I felt appropriate security measures were taken by law enforcement and venue security personnel. This time it was different. When I spoke with Utah police about what security measures were in place to protect the campus, I specifically requested metal detectors or pat-downs to make absolutely sure no guns were in the auditorium. Police responded by stating that they would not do any type of screening whatsoever for firearms because of Utah's concealed-carry laws. At that point I canceled the speaking event because I felt it was deeply irresponsible for me or the school to put everyone's lives at risk if they can't take precautions to prevent firearms from being present at an event at an educational institution — especially one that was just directly, clearly threatened with a mass shooting spree. "
Makes sense to me. She recognized the police could not ensure her or the attendees safety because their hands were tied, so she cancelled. Doesn't sound like duplicity on her or the police's part.
But that does make me wonder what to do since the 1st and 2nd amendments are clearly banging into each other in this instance.
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posted
Well, the 2nd as interpreted for maximum possible gun ownership and possession is obviously supremento anything else at any time.
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I can understand though that a person, having found out that a threat has been made to kill Ms. Sarkeesian and those attending her speech, that they would want to attend the speech armed, and not rely on the police protect them.
I'm not sure what the solution is here. I definitely don't think Ms. Sarkessian or the police did anything wrong in this instance. The law is quite clear.
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posted
So if the president was speaking on a campus in Utah would the Secret Service have to allow audience members to carry guns?
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quote:Originally posted by dkw: So if the president was speaking on a campus in Utah would the Secret Service have to allow audience members to carry guns?
The President is guarded by SS because he represents a national security concern, you and I not so much.
If we modify this rule, I can basically shut down the entire 2nd Amendment by issuing a death threat. If I'm speaking at a public park, can I require the police to disarm the people there too?
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quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: For those of you who (like me) have *no* idea what this #GamerGate deal is actually about, this is a pretty decent rundown of what exactly happened and why.
quote:Originally posted by dkw: So if the president was speaking on a campus in Utah would the Secret Service have to allow audience members to carry guns?
I can't find a definitive answer to this. There's this:
quote:The White House, hoping to allay fears of a security threat, has said that people are entitled to carry weapons outside such events if local laws allow it. "Those laws don't change when the president comes to your state or locality," spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
quote:The notion that geek-loved media and genres are disrespected just doesn’t jibe with reality. But more, I don’t know what alternative people are asking for. What would victory look like– what would it mean for them to be respected in the way people want? There’s this weird notion of active respect for art forms that just doesn’t occur in real life. Like, I sometimes think the people making these complaints imagine the rest of us sit around going, “hey, you know what genre I really respect? Cop shows.” “Totally. I also really respect cop shows.” Nobody gets that level of active respect for the things they like. But when you’re operating in an environment where you’re told that absolutely every minor dissatisfaction in your life is a political issue, there’s every reason to adopt the stance of “oppressed minority” rather than “human being dealing with the same constant dissatisfaction that we all do.” Even if that self-identification as oppressed person is absurd. I mean I will give them this credit: they are playing the media and the companies that advertise very well. This may be an absurd campaign to justify threats against women and other awful behavior through facile discussions of ethics in journalism, but it is also a savvy piece of media manipulation, undertaken by people who have learned the lessons of left-wing political critique too well. We wrote the book for them.
Argument is like all other human behaviors: subject to conditioning through reward and punishment. And we’ve created these incentives on the left: always politicize; always escalate; always ridicule. We’re living with the consequences of those tendencies now.
posted
Well I know the first things I look for in a fair-minded and reasoned criticism of a given position are a) an opening assumption of fundamental dishonesty on the part of the criticized group and b) an assertion of some degree that a very widespread fault is the province of one particular side of a political divide.
I'm not sure to what extent this piece represents your own position, Destineer, but I hope it's not much. That's some grade-A schlock right there. Particularly since *both* sides of the Gamergate controversy claim victim status! And anyone with a moment's time to review political news today will in that moment that claiming to be a victim is a fundamental strategy of all sides now.
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posted
It does represent my own views to a great extent. DeBoer isn't saying that only one side of the controversy is claiming victim status. He's saying that lefty "the-personal-is-political" type activists are the ones who invented the practice of over-using victim status in this way, and their opponents have only recently adopted it.
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posted
I'm not sure what you mean by him assuming fundamental dishonesty on the part of the group he criticizes. In particular, he's not saying that lefty activists are lying when they claim to be victims. He's just saying that sometimes they're mistaken about whether they're victims, and it's poisonous to have an environment in which its unacceptable to disagree with someone about whether they're a victim.
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quote:...but it is also a savvy piece of media manipulation, undertaken by people who have learned the lessons of left-wing political critique too well. We wrote the book for them.
Labeling a piece of behavior a 'savvy piece of media manipulation' seems to me to clearly suggest at least a lack of sincerity, which is also often referred to as dishonesty.
quote:It does represent my own views to a great extent. DeBoer isn't saying that only one side of the controversy is claiming victim status. He's saying that lefty "the-personal-is-political" type activists are the ones who invented the practice of over-using victim status in this way, and their opponents have only recently adopted it.
I get that he's saying that, and it's still bunk. Politicizing the personal, transforming a contentious issue into a personal attack and defending it as such and then attacking challengers as though they are challenging you personally is hardly a modern phenomena. It's pretty classic, really. 'Over-using' victim status is a value judgment anyway, and open to discussion, but the idea that the left 'invented' utilization of victim status is ridiculous. I can go back sixty years and find plenty of reactions to black voting drives along the lines of 'why do you want my daughter to marry one of those coloreds'. Claiming to be a victim is a classic, because if successful it puts the other party in the position as the aggressor, which is almost universally bad.
quote:I'm not sure what you mean by him assuming fundamental dishonesty on the part of the group he criticizes. In particular, he's not saying that lefty activists are lying when they claim to be victims. He's just saying that sometimes they're mistaken about whether they're victims, and it's poisonous to have an environment in which its unacceptable to disagree with someone about whether they're a victim.
This is where things fall apart. 'Unacceptable to disagree with someone about whether they're a victim'. Why exactly is it 'unacceptable', and how is this lack of acceptance transformed into some sort of restraint? It is 'unacceptable' to many people for others to claim victim status on any number of issues, and they try and shut down discussion themselves using precisely the same tactic!
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quote:I get that he's saying that, and it's still bunk. Politicizing the personal, transforming a contentious issue into a personal attack and defending it as such and then attacking challengers as though they are challenging you personally is hardly a modern phenomena. It's pretty classic, really. 'Over-using' victim status is a value judgment anyway, and open to discussion, but the idea that the left 'invented' utilization of victim status is ridiculous. I can go back sixty years and find plenty of reactions to black voting drives along the lines of 'why do you want my daughter to marry one of those coloreds'. Claiming to be a victim is a classic, because if successful it puts the other party in the position as the aggressor, which is almost universally bad.
It's certainly not new to claim that some political controversy affects you personally, or to take someone else's political position personally. But that's not what the article is talking about.
What is relatively new is to take run of the mill interpersonal interactions in your own life as instances of political oppression (these are sometimes called microaggressions these days).
(Note that DeBoer says, and I agree, that a lot of the time these small events are oppressive. The problem lies in the assumption that if they seem oppressive to a marginalized person, that always means they are actually oppressive. This point of view is one tenet of standpoint theory, a philosophical position that I strongly disagree with.)
quote:This is where things fall apart. 'Unacceptable to disagree with someone about whether they're a victim'. Why exactly is it 'unacceptable', and how is this lack of acceptance transformed into some sort of restraint?
The way it works is that, if you try to suggest that someone's interpretation of their experience as oppressive is mistaken, you're lumped in with sexists, racists, etc. Since it's unacceptable to be sexist or racist, this is a way of treating disagreement as unacceptable.
This isn't what always happens, of course, but if you look at the dialogues surrounding a controversy like #CancelColbert or SF's "RaceFail09", it's a distressingly common pattern.
quote: It is 'unacceptable' to many people for others to claim victim status on any number of issues, and they try and shut down discussion themselves using precisely the same tactic!
Yeah, many right-wing communities have what is effectively the opposite problem.
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posted
Anita Sarkeesian wrote an op-ed in the NYTs today.
Wonderful read. I'm so pleased Nintendo's experiment with the Wii drew her back into videogames. Her final lines made me smile.
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posted
Why do you want to stop people from having fun with bleach, Dana? What kind of monster are you?
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You can't stop a meme, opposing it will only make it stronger. It's like riding a carnivorous rampaging rhinoceros. If you try to get off too soon it'll trample you to death.
I like the term, I think its funny and often on point for as long as console vs PC gaming is still a hot button topic for people.
On the other hand Wealthy PC Noble[s]men[/s]people is also humourful.
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You can't stop a meme, opposing it will only make it stronger. It's like riding a carnivorous rampaging rhinoceros. If you try to get off too soon it'll trample you to death.
I like the term, I think its funny and often on point for as long as console vs PC gaming is still a hot button topic for people.
On the other hand Wealthy PC Noble[s]men[/s]people is also humourful.
What I got out of this article.
"I'm not calling for political correctness, but I'm calling for political correctness."
I don't think ANYONE associates the meme with Nazis or Hitler. I'll have to tell my friends not to order Kamikaze shots at the bar, since "not associating oneself with Japanese suicide pilots is just good living."
I also think it is a fairly humorous term, especially when talking about console fanboys.
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Although I'm not too sure, but I think its possible you forgot the original irony of the term.
Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation invented the term to refer to The Witcher which was a PC exclusive game because "Which as you know are made to be as complex and intuitive as possible so those dirty console playing peasants don't ruin it for the glorious PC Gaming Master Race [Insert Image]".
Which we [PC Gamers] took to with relish because we being slightly dense do think ourselves superior to 'the console fanboys' and thus use the term unironically.
The term doesn't refer to console fanboys (Which Yahtzee considered himself), it refers to us.
PC Gaming is thought to be: -More complex (Excel Spreadsheets, Flight Simulators, Keyboard & Mouse). -More expensive. -More difficult to get into.
Which we decided made us different and more awesome to have overcome that challenge and thus voila.
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posted
I love master race jokes. I tell them all the time and they don't make me seem like a weird nerd who doesn't really get it, not at all. Don't get me wrong, I have console using inferior race friends,
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posted
It is impossible to play computer games on a couch using your tv. This has literally never been accomplished. Checkmate, nerds
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posted
So I guess the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld is forbidden. And like every other episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
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