Many thanks to Linda for supplying this transcript!
[0:00] Thunderf00t: You know what’s fantastic about the new Feminist Frequency video—I mean really, REALLY fantastic—is it dispels in an instant the entire Anita Sarkeesian victimhood narrative—you know, the one where she’s only being targeted for being A WOMAN:
[0:19] Anita Sarkeesian: “-it’s actually men going after women in really hostile, aggressive ways. THAT’s what GamerGate is about. It’s about, like, terrorizing women for being involved in this industry.”
[0:30] Sarkeesian: “-you know, we have this larger culture in gaming. We’re a subset of—mostly male gamers have been viciously going after women and attacking them.”
[0:41] Sarkeesian: “-again, what I’ve described to you today is not unique to me in my experience. Every day, many women voicing their opinions online deal with a similar flood of slander and defamation designed to undermine their careers, their credibility, their resolve, and their confidence.”
[0:55] Thunderf00t: Remember, the reason she turns off comments is because of the harassment she receives as a woman:
[1:01] Anna Akana: “As unsettling as all of this is, the thing that disturbs me the most is the kind of personal backlash that Anita and her channel have faced. She’s had to turn off her comments and hide her like/dislike ratio. This is not okay. Please watch this video, and share.”
[1:15] Thunderf00t: But of course, if a man were to make exactly the same video, he would get no, um, harassment, right? Because only women get, uh, harassment, because they’re women, and it’s nothing to do with the outrageous dishonesty or the utterly stupid things that they say:
[1:33] Feminist Frequency: “We must remember that games don’t just entertain. Intentional or not, they always express a set of values and present us with concepts of normalcy.”
[1:51] Thunderf00t: Yeah, of course. If a man said something completely stupid, everyone would instantly take it “seriously” because he’s got a penis:
[2:00] Rick Perry: “I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian. But you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas, or pray in school.”
[2:13] Thunderf00t: Which is exactly what FullMcIntosh says at the end:
[2:19] Jonathan McIntosh: “Because it was created by a straight, white man, this checklist will likely be taken more seriously than if it had been written by virtually any female gamer.”
[2:27] Thunderf00t: No, if a moronic man says something stupid, it’s taken no more seriously than if a moronic woman says something completely stupid. DEAL WITH IT. Cute thing is though, apparently Jonathan here so strongly believed that he would get no harassment for being a man and saying stupid shit, that he also took the precaution of disabling comments and ratings. After all, someone’s got to keep the world safe from the horror of free expression.
[2:56] Oh, and, by the way fellas, if you’re gonna herd people up to read stuff off an Autocue, at least move them far enough away from the Autocue that you can’t see that they’re READING IT OFF AN AUTOCUE. ‘Cos that kind of dispels the whole idea that these are, ‘honest people who really believe what they’re saying’.
[3:13] Then the fact that they all look like they’ve been selected and dressed by a PR company to represent a ‘white demographic’ of Joe everyman—I’m sure is pure coincidence. That said, I did recognize this guy who writes songs about feminism.
[3:29] Now firstly, I gotta give the guy credit. He does leave his ratings and his comments open, which does show a degree of maturity and honesty. And just like FullMcIntosh said, the message becomes instantly credible when it’s delivered by a guy. Right? . . . Oh.
[3:47] Nope, apparently a dumb message typically gets a bad rating no matter what your chromosomes are. You know, it’s almost like the flak that Anita Sarkeesian gets is nothing to do with the fact that she’s a woman, and it is in reality due to the fact that her premise that “videogames cause sexism” is about as bogus as Jack Thompson’s premise that “videogames cause violence”:
[4:15] clip: “-game industry lobbyists are quick to point out a total of nine federal courts have rejected so-called “studies” that videogames cause aggression.”
[4:23] Thunderf00t: which it turns out FullMcIntosh also believes: “Scientific consensus is that playing violent videogames increases aggression and aggressive behaviors. Amazing so many people are in denial” (radicalbytes).
[4:35] Yeah, right. Sure, people will just instantly take you seriously if only you’ve got a penis:
[4:42] McIntosh: “-because it was created by a straight, white man, this checklist will likely be taken more seriously than if it had been written by virtually any female gamer.”
[4:50] Thunderf00t: You muppets. But hey, I guess it’s a hard life spending a $160,000 on a project that raised 25 times more money than it needed:
[5:01] Sarkeesian: “I actually raised 25 times [applause] what I initially asked for.”
[5:09] Thunderf00t: Which is already years past its due date, and you haven’t even made half of the videos that you said you would.
[5:17] Akana: “This is not okay. Please watch this video, and share.”
Many thanks to Linda for supplying this transcript!
[0:00] Thunderf00t: You know, Anita Sarkeesian has recently found herself in some goood company. According to her, just like Jack Thompson and Glenn Beck, games are actually a direct and significant influence on people’s behavior.
[0:14] So Glenn Beck was convinced that just merely pushing the buttons on the gaming control in the game Watch Dogs was actually teaching people how to hack mobile phones and computers!
[0:24] clip from “Glenn Beck: Violent Video Games”: “Watch Dogs allow the players to hack into cell phones, ATMs, drawbridges, even helicopters, to wholly envelop the lives of others . . . the idea here is they’re teaching you to hack, and then become the ultimate voyeur in other people’s lives—including their bedrooms—by hacking into their phones, and everything—everything that we talked about.”
[0:51] Thunderf00t: And Jack Thompson was declared by Machinima to be the number one enemy of gaming for his long history of claiming that video games actually teach people how to become school shooters.
[1:03] clips from “Jack Thompson on Nightline”, “Top 10 Enemies of Gaming”, “Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”,: “Though the 130 million dollar suit was dismissed, Thompson is still convinced that these images inspired three murders.”
[1:10] “NUUMBER OOONE! Jack Thompson! Disbarred attorney Jack Thompson has long been an advocate against obscenity in pop culture . . . But this Jack Thompson fella, he sees obscenity as something different than you or I. Basically ANYTHING that offends his own delicate personal sensibilities. Over the years he’s sued or threated 2 Live Crew, N.W.A, MTV, Madonna, and recently he’s turned his attentions towards the video games.”
[1:36] “To him, this is not entertainment. It is a murder simulator.
[1:41] “Once a person is reduced to the status of objecthood, violence against that object becomes intrinsically permitted.”
[1:47] “You’re kicking, punching”
[1:49] “Violability occurs when, as Nussbaum points out, the objectifier treats the object as lacking in boundary-integrity, as something that it is permissible to break up, smash, break into.”
[2:01] “Ultimately shooting, cutting the heads off of people with machetes of people you don’t even know and don’t have a motive to be violent against.”
[2:07] “Since these women are just objects, there’s no need or reason for players to have any emotional engagement with them. Meaningful relationships or interactions are not even possible.”
[2:16] Thunderf00t: Indeed, not only did Machinima declare him the “number one enemy of gaming,” they claim that he was the ultimate end-game villain:
[2:24] clip from “Top 10 Enemies of Gaming”: “He is the ultimate level-boss to the gaming industry. Using videogames as scapegoat for tragic school-shootings, he said: “In every school shooting, we find that kids who pull the trigger are video gamers.
“He even suggested that the PS2 controller’s vibrations help condition gamers’ minds to enjoy killing.”
[2:42] Thunderf00t: Now Anita Sarkeesian must have watched all of this with a deep sense of envy, because she has declared herself to be the ultimate villainess—ah, sorry—correction, she claims that gamers have declared her to be the ultimate villainess.
[2:59] clip from TEDx Talks, “Anita Sarkeesian at TEDxWomen 2012”: “So, in their minds, they concocted this grand fiction in which they’re the heroic players of a massively multiplayer online game, working together to take down an enemy; and apparently, they casted me in the role of the villain.”
[3:12] Thunderf00t: Oh, I know, vanity and aspirational victimhood in one package. Yeah, damn straight, Anita Sarkeesian is pretty much exactly what you would expect from an unholy hybrid of Jack Thompson and that crazy woman from Amy’s Baking Company:
[3:29] clip from “Kitchen Nightmares Amy Bouzaglo Season 6 Episode 16 Part 1”: “I have issues with customers that are trying to be online bullies and say horrible things.”
“Online bullies?”
“I told them, I thought he was a loser, he was a moron.”
[3:38] Thunderf00t: So Jack Thompson claims that video games CAUSE SHOOTINGS. Glenn Beck claims that videogames CAUSE HACKING. And Anita Sarkeesian claims that videogames CAUSE SEXISM. Hey fellas, got a great question for ya: did the game Batman make you wanna dress up like a bat and fight crime as a vigilante?
[4:01] clip from “Jack Thompson on Nightline” “Centuries ago, it was the pamphleteers who were scolded for dragging down society. In the 50’s it was comic books, in the 60’s it was The Beatles.”
[4:10] Thunderf00t: However, meanwhile in reality with the sheer number of computer games played, the one thing that we CAN say with surety is that if there IS any link between behavior and playing computer games, it’s BLOODY weak.
[4:28] clip from “Jack Thompson on Nightline”: “Game industry lobbyists are quick to point out a total of 9 Federal Courts have rejected so-called “studies” that video games cause aggression.”
[4:35] Thunderf00t: But just so we’re clear how dishonest Anita was willing to be to come to this conclusion: she claimed that in the game Hitman: [Absolution] men were meant to get their rocks off to beating up the dancers and then controlling their dead bodies:
[4:49] clip from “Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”: “Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters. It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.”
[5:05] Thunderf00t: The problem was that no one who played the game DOES that. Trust me, I watched at least 40 playthroughs and none of them attacked the dancers, ‘cos in Hitman, you’re not meant to kill innocent people. Indeed, you get penalized for it. So how can Anita then claim that this game is making people sexist?
[5:26] Well, obviously she’s gotta go beat the living crap out of these virtual women herself, then drag their bodies around in a big circle—and you know it’s her doing it, because the body starts right by the body locker that she’s eventually going to put it into, and then she drags it around in a BIIIG circle over the other body to make it seem as nasty as possible. That is, in reality the only people who play Hitman as a fantasy to kill women and desecrate their bodies, are feminists like Anita Sarkeesian. Indeed, it’s kind of ironic that if you actually listen to what she says:
[6:01] clip from “Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”: “-derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters. It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal, connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.”
[6:16] Thunderf00t: Anita’s footage of this part of Hitman is quite literally the only footage that I’ve seen anything even remotely like this. And quite how Anita’s strange fetish for violence against women in computer games proves that games cause sexism—I’m not quite sure. But yeah, with arguments as rigorous as that, it’s quite CLEAR why she’s got the same winning ratio as Jack Thompson. I mean, Anita’s arguments here are about as convincing as suggesting that team games encourage team killing. And just to prove it, here is some POWERFUL footage of Anita going on a team killer killing spree.
[6:55] clip
[7:08] Or it’s like her going griefing in Minecraft—that’s the practice where assholes go and destroy worlds which took people DAYS to make—simply so she can claim that the game is there to encourage and reward people for going griefing in Minecraft.
[7:24] clip from “Jack Thompson on Nightline”: “And it makes him an object of scorn in the gaming world. Kids who wear ‘I hate Jack Thompson’ t-shirts can trade blows with his likeness in the game Mortal Combat.”
[7:37] Thunderf00t: Interestingly though, while Jack Thompson was being inserted into videogames as a character who could be killed in numerous, violent ways, like having his body fed through grated, grinding, bloody wheels of one sort or another—that really didn’t offend Anita’s sensibilities. Apparently men being fed into thrashing machines doesn’t count as sexism, or harassment, or online bullying. However, when someone made a much simpler version of that game with Anita:
[8:07] clip from “16×9 – Dangerous Game: Tropes vs Women bullying”: “The games are not meant as a threat. They’re not meant to intimidate. He goes on to say he was criticizing your project as a person in the media.”
“To make a game to beat me up and then hide behind this idea of ‘we’re just trying to have a conversation’—I mean, I don’t think anyone would buy that. Or anyone would think that that was an acceptable form of communication.”
[8:28] Thunderf00t: Oh no! This must be a unique hatred of women in gaming! Because remember, if there’s one thing that Anita has taught us, it’s that it’s ONLY sexist when it happens to WOMEN. Well, I’m done. Can I have another $160,000 now?
[8:45] “This videogame character is dressed too sexily. I don’t like it! Change it!”
“I’m dressed too sexily and you don’t like it? STOP OPPRESSING ME!”
Many thanks to Linda for supplying the transcript to this video! 🙂
[0:00] Thunderf00t: First we had that fantastic Dove commercial:
[0:03] clip from “dove evolution”
[0:16] Thunderf00t: Then we had “Ban Bossy”:
[0:19] clip from “Ban Bossy”
[0:23] Thunderf00t: And now following close in its footsteps we have #LikeaGirl. The format is pretty generic, you wanna get this behind-the-scenes feel to make it seem less staged and more authentic. You know, “trustworthy”. And you know, maybe get a clapper board in there or something . . . Like the girl sitting down while someone says that you’re “recording audio” . . . despite the fact that that’s the only audio used in the entire video, which, by the way, cost about $130,000 to make. And then take a point that everyone can agree with, you know, like say for instance that women on magazine covers are Photo shopped and then just hope no one spots that the title of these, um, uh, PRODUCT PLACEMENT!
[1:18] I mean I just kind of scratch my head at this one. Are these people really getting upset about people using Photoshop to make themselves seem more beautiful than they actually are, when the very product that they are trying to sell you is meant to make you appear more beautiful than you actually are?—you know, appearance-enhancing cosmetics.
[1:40] I mean, to be honest, if you don’t find this being transformed into THIS a problem, then why do you really care about the Photo shopping? And that of course is just ignoring the fact that the whole thing was just a Unilever marketing campaign time “to coincide with the expansion of Dove brand artificial appearance-enhancing cosmetic soaps and cleansers” (Wikipedia “Dove Campaign for Real Beauty”). Uh—sorry, no, nothing to do with that at all. It was just about how much Dove brand cosmetics agrees with you about just how wrong it is for other women to try to be more beautiful than they actually are.
[2:17] clip from “An Apology to America from Newcastle and Elizabeth Hurley”
[2:31] Thunderf00t: Now we have another corporation with an ENTIRELY philanthropically motivated message. This time they want young, confused girls—about the time they get their first period—to know that a sanitary towel manufacturer knowsand understands their problems. And it’s got nothing to do with all that hormonal shit that kicks off in a woman’s body about this time. No, it’s all down to people saying ‘throw like a girl’.
[2:57] clip from “Always #LikeAGirl”: “So when they’re in that vulnerable time, between 10 and 12, how do you think it affects them when somebody uses ‘like a girl’ as an insult?
“I think it definitely drops their self-confidence and really puts them down, because during that time they’re already trying to figure themselves out. And-”
[3:14] Thunderf00t: Well isn’t that nice of them, to know that the corporation like this has your best interest at heart. In that sense, it’s a perfect viral advertising campaign for something that is intrinsically difficult to market.
[3:29] clip from “BodyformResponds :: The Truth”: “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but there’s no such thing as a ‘happy period’. The reality is, some people simply can’t handle the truth.”
[3:38] Thunderf00t: You get to engage with your audience without having to deal with all that icky stuff that’s usually associated with the subject.
[3:46] clip from “BodyformResponds :: The Truth”: “In the past, we tried to be more honest in our approach. In the 1980’s we ran a series of focus groups to help us gauge the public’s reaction to periods: the cramps, the mood swings, the insatiable hunger—and yes, Richard, the blood coursing from my uteri like a crimson landslide.”
[4:02] Thunderf00t: They get what they want, which is for teenage girls to have a positive association with Always sanitary towels. That is, as long as they don’t think about it too much. Buut we’ll come back to that in a second. If you wanna see how eye-rollingly badly this game can be played, just watch the Pantene commercial. Pfft. No clapperboard. Amateurs.
[4:22] clip from “Not Sorry | #ShineStrong Pantene”
[4:33] Thunderf00t: -where it insists that women keep apologizing like this isn’t something that EVERYONE does just to be polite—no, no. It’s only women who ever do this. Then, of course, what if women didn’t say sorry?
[4:45] clip from “Not Sorry | #ShineStrong Pantene”
[4:59] Thunderf00t: Yes, Pantene wants you to be one of those people who never says sorry.
[5:04] clip from “ORIGINAL VIDEO – Bitchy Resting Face”: “Because if we wanted to be constantly misunderstood, we’d try and talk to a deaf person.”
“Hey, Taylor—I think you might actually be a bitch.
“In real life.”
“You should’ve all been aborted.”
[5:24] Thunderf00t: Oh yeah! Everyone loves someone who never says sorry. Ain’t that so, Liz?
[5:29] clip from “An Apology to America from Newcastle and Elizabeth Hurley”
[5:50] Thunderf00t: Buuut joking aside, and coming back to the thinking about the ‘throw like a girl’ commercial—as much admiration as I have for how well-executed this marketing campaign was, it’s still BULLSHIT. Annd maybe this would be a good time for those ‘meee tooo’ Tumblr-type feminists to get a box of Kleenex in, because if you think the expression “like a girl” is what destroys the self-confidence of young women, then a hard stare at reality will likely cause a gendered panic-attack of apocalyptic proportions.
[6:24] The expression ‘throw like a girl’ probably has its roots in fairly obviousbiology. You know, guys tend to have almost twice the upper body strength of girls (Wikipedia, “Sexual dimorphism”). I know—it’s hardly rocket science. Add in there a spot of culture. You know, girls having less historical need to throw stuff than guys. And the fact that sports mostly focus on higher, faster, and stronger; which on a level playing field, with NO SEXISM whatsoever, is actually men in every category. And you would need a very special class of feminist idiot to say otherwise:
[7:05] clip from Feminist Frequency“Damsel in Distress: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”: “The belief that women are somehow a naturally weaker gender, is a deeply ingrained socially constructed myth; which of course is completely false.”
[7:13] Thunderf00t: Aww, I know, let me taste those sweet, juicy, social-justice-warrior tears. Let me just say that again: on a level field, with NO glass ceiling and absolutely no sexual discrimination, men are faster, stronger, and better throwers. Yet, that’s not sexism you’re looking at. That’s just the reality of being a sexually dimorphic species.
[7:40] So, in demographic terms, little girls tend to be the weakest throwers of all. So guess what, this is simile—or metaphor, or whatever—for someone who throws weakly.
[7:51] Whoa—I know, rocket science! ‘But noo, the fact that little girls are the weakest throwers is clearly wrong because little staged girls in Barbie-pink and rainbow girl here can throw stuff too! to uplifting music which includes important demographics including sporty and token!’ And as with all advertising campaigns, absolutely no fattys and no uglys; because although you’re courageously battling for the self-esteem of young girls, the last thing that you want is your product associated with fat or ugly people. And the fact that you can confuse a teenage girl or actor or whatever into not understanding the difference between the meaning of ‘a girl throwing’ and the simile of ‘throw like a girl’
[8:35] clip from “Always #LikeAGirl”: “Yes, I kick like a girl, and I swim like a girl, and I walk like a girl, and I wake up in the morning like a girl because I am a girl. And, that is not something that I should be ashamed of.”
[8:45] Thunderf00t: I know, poor girl must go white with fear when someone says she’s ‘into shit’, or someone ‘eats like a pig’ or ‘I would kill for a royale with cheese’. But anyway, no—girls’ plummeting self-confidence is all down to the devastating metaphor of ‘throw like a little girl’.
[9:01] THIS is why girls’ self-confidence plummets during puberty. Well, that and of course being called bossy:
[9:08] clip from “Ban Bossy”:“When I was growing up, I was called ‘bossy’”
“I think the word ‘bossy’, is just, a squasher.”
“Being labelled something matters.”
“By middle school, girls are less interested in leadership than boys.”
“And that’s because they worry about being called”
“‘bossy’”
[9:22] Thunderf00t: And as many a feminist has pointed out, when women have such heavy crosses to bear, and the fact that they think that women are such weak and fragile creatures that they really need to have to have their hands held to deal with these horrific social burdens, it must truly amaze feminists that ANY women make it to adulthood at all. All the while having that perplexed look on their face as to why the term ‘feminism’ has inexplicably acquired a reputation of being a CULT, where the only tenent is that you whinely embrace victimhood. GOOD JOB feminists. That’s EXACTLY the role model that young women need.
[10:03] But as for the viral marketing campaign, yet it struck a great blow. And it’s certainly fighting against propagating harmful stereotypes. And it’s made #LikeaGirl mean amazing things, like how you can destroy a teenage girl’s self-confidence simply by using the expression ‘throw like a girl’ or ‘bossy’.
[10:24] clip from “Ban Bossy”: “By middle school, girls are less interested in leadership than boys.”
“And that’s because they worry about being called”
“‘bossy’”
[10:31] clip from “The Doctor Vs The Prime Minister – Doctor Who . . .”and “Ban Bossy” [LOL!]
[10:49] Thunderf00t: Well, in this new age of gender equality they should just learn to ‘take it like a man’. Always. Good job.
Many thanks to Linda for creating this transcript 😉
[0:00] Thunderf00t: So meet Suey Park, the instigator of the #cancelcolbert. And she’s quite clear about one thing, that she’s NEVERclaimed to be an educator.
[0:10] clip: “And I’ve never claimed to be, like, an educator. Um, I’m an activist and I think”
[0:15] Thunderf00t: However when she was sending a question to President Obama, she obviously felt that ‘#activist’ might sound, well, kind of pathetic. I wonder if there’s a way that she could make herself sound more important?
[0:27] clip: “Hi! I’m Suey Park, and I’m from Chicago, Illinois. A month ago, I started the hashtag, #NotYourAsianSidekick that sparked global conversation for, and by Asian American women. I’m an activist, an educator, and a writer”
[0:40] Thunderf00t: (LOLing) that’s just EPIC.
[0:43] clip: “And I’ve never claimed to be, like, and educator”
“I’m an activist, an educator, and a writer”
[0:48] Thunderf00t: So, Suey is one of those precious social justice warrior flowers, always so hair triggered to be outraged at the most trivial of things. And always so, so rational.
[1:01] clip: “And not just shift it to another group, is that we need to understand how genocide, and slavery, and orientalism, all work together to uphold white supremacy”
“how genocide, and slavery, and orientalism, all work together to uphold white supremacy. It’s really kind of the way that I understand my work. Which is why a lot of my work isn’t essentially with these mainstream Asian American activist groups. #NotYourAsianSidekick was actually not a call for Asian American visibility or Asian American celebration. It was actually a call to not be a sidekick to white supremacy”
[1:35] Thunderf00t: We have the great market out there for the professional victims. Giving keynote talks at places like Purdue University about their first-world problems and getting their articles in places like TIME Magazine. But I’ll come to those shortly.
[1:51]:The principle role in this was a keyboard social-justice-warrior, revolutionizing the world one ‘meetooo’ keystroke at a time.
[2:00]: She’s best known for being the instigator of the #cancelcolbert. And she really, really believes in this online activism stuff making a difference, as can be seen in this Tweet here, of ‘(yawn) another online petition about me’.
[2:16]: Yes, it’s clear that she thinks that this hashtag activism about first-world problems can change the world. As long as the online activism isn’t about her racism. Or sexism. Or whatever. But yes, Suey. Claiming that people cannot understand things, based solely on their skin color, or their sex, is what we call racism and sexism.
[2:38] clip: “-especially as a white man, I don’t expect you to be able to understand what people of color are actually saying”
[2:43] Thunderf00t: So understand, Suey, that when you look in a mirror, that the person looking back at you, is what a sexist, and a racist, looks like.
[2:52] And then you gotta foil that up with an expert petulant and dishonest display:
[2:56] clip: “You just called my opinion stupid. That’s incredibly unproductive, and I don’t think I’m going to enact the labor of having to explain to you why that’s incredibly offensive and patronizing”
“Explain”
“I just told you I wouldn’t enact that labor”
“Okay. Thanks for being with us, Suey”
[3:12] Thunderf00t: -where she reports this interview, where she says that the interviewer couldn’t understand things because of his skin color, and his gender, like this: “In case anyone thought I was censoring Colbert, please know I was just talked down to, muted, and silenced by @joshzepps and @huffpostlive.” To which Zepps actually told it like it actually happened: “Ahh, the righteousness of professional umbrage-takers. @suey_park wasn’t muted or silenced. I invited her to explain herself & she declined.”
[3:47]: At which point Suey really threw her toys out of the pram and just took the high road with: “You are so pathetic, @joshzepps”
[3:56]: In case you’re wondering what silencing tactics ACTUALLY look like, just see how feminists deal with an opposing viewpoint.
[4:04] clip: “It’s my hope that as a result of my talk, a few of you may decide to–okay, you know, it’s the signature—it’s a signature of a totalitarian ideology to attempt to quash descent. So every time you interrupt, you’re merely showing your repressive tendencies. You’re not showing anything about your virtue . . . So you think this is a victory? Yeah, why are you so frightened of hearing an opinion different from your own?”
[4:43] Thunderf00t: And you’ll be happy to know that Anita Sarkeesian, popped up to suggest that the backlash was nothing to do with the stupidity of what she said, or the racism or the sexist things that she said. No, it was entirely because she was a woman.
[4:58]: Oh, professional victims of the world unite! Interestingly, the article she links to describes the above interview like this:
[5:06]: “Her treatment on Huffington Post Live by Josh Zepps illustrates how even the mainstream media decorousness could not restrain the impulse to publicly punish and shame a disobedient woman of color”
[5:21]: However, other than the article being hilariously over-the-top, there’s links to a screenshot of a petition, which looks curiously like a White House petition. The curious thing is though, I can find no such petition on the White House. And my suspicions are further aroused by the fact that by the time this very low-resolution screen shot was taken, only ONE person had signed the petition.
[5:44]: I mean, let’s be real. A natural, next-phase in the lifestyle of these professional victims is if they can’t actually get a real threat narrative going, is just gonna be to invent one wholesale.
[5:55]: However, even if the petition was one hundred percent legit, let’s just remind ourselves of some of the other online petitions of the White House, like for Obama to do the Hokey Pokey, or for the U.S. government to build a Death Star. The latter receiving some thirty-thousand signatures and actually got an official and very funny response.
[6:14]: But OH NOES when there’s a petition with just ONE signature to deport Suey Park and remove her first amendment rights, this is actually a real threat against women! And that it’s therefore entirely reasonable for these professional victims to lose their shit.
[6:30]: Now, to a degree, she may have a point about this hashtag activism changing the world. But probably not in the way that she thinks. In this interview here, this is the pertinent bit:
[6:42] clip: “-already”
“Wow. It’s so funny because I feel like there’s new change happening, um, with new media where, social groups that haven’t necessarily had a voice—ever, before—now has a platform.”
[6:58] Thunderf00t: Yes, giving a voice to AFFLUENT, middle-class women in their twenties, still living with their Moms:
[7:05] clip: “One second. My Mom just came home”
[7:07] Thunderf00t: -who NEEDS something to be neurotic about so they can Tweet about their therapy; and how they’re soon to be getting a therapy animal. OH MY god, really—she’s getting a therapy animal and she has the gall to call anyone else PRIVILEGED. I mean, I can see the architecture of the internet now, gently sobbing in a moody basement somewhere:
[7:27]: ‘We invented the internet to make society a better through communication of information. We never—in our most hideous nightmares thought it would be used by the most whiny, and self-righteous losers on the planet to unite in the mother-of-all outraged-about-nothing PITY PARTIES. We just didn’t KNOW!’
[7:50]: But occasionally these whiners do hit the big-time. Well, for fifteen or so minutes anyway. But for ALL of the WRONG reasons. For instance, Suey Park got her opinion into TIME Magazine. An interesting article to be sure. Especially if you do a word analysis on it and you find that the most used word in the entire article, is ‘white’. Followed in second place by, ‘racism’, ‘satire’, and ‘racist’. And in third place with, ‘you people anti-liberals’.
[8:20]: But mainly the star sentence in the whole thing is, “These white liberals are not mad that we pointed out racism, they are mad that they now have to consider the ways in which THEY may be racist.”
[8:34]: OH, SWEET MONUMENT to passive-aggressive irony. Berating people for being racist in the VERY sentence where you were judging people SOLELY on their skin color. Seriously, just Google #cancelcolbert or Suey Park and you’ll get pages and pages of this stuff.
[8:55]: The amazing thing is though, that it gets as much support as it does for these utterly vacuous arguments.
[9:01]: Now let me just say for those people with no discernable skill or talent—for them, playing the professional victim is probably the best option they have available to them. And that the people who really are paying that much attention—to them, all they see is someone saying that ‘I’m being victimized by an evil majority’. And these folks immediately put it into the David –versus-Goliath category and root for the underdog.
[9:27]: Now thankfully, it’s not a long-term winning strategy, and that as time goes on it becomes clearer and clearer—this is actually more The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Oh maybe more aptly, the professional victim who cried ‘sexism’ and ‘racism’ over their first world problems.
[9:44]: And yeah, sure, all of this does wonders for the credibility of REAL victims of sexism and racism.
[9:53]: But the verpidity of these morons—I mean, they think that THIS is a good argument for sexism:
[10:00] clip: “Men occupying the highest ranks in virtually every industry in the world”
[10:05] Thunderf00t: -then just immediately gloss over the fact that men also make up 90 percent of the prison population. I mean, I guess that just must mean that the entire criminal justice system is SEXIST against men. I mean, how else could you explain it? Yes, these are EXACTLY the sorts of sexual partitionings you would expect in a fair but sexually dimorphic species. That is, if you want to claim sexism, you’ve got to demonstrate sexism.
[10:33]: And no matter how many times you bounce up and down and say ,‘look, there’s inequality of outcome’, that simply doesn’t cut it as evidence of sexism. Because in a sexually dimorphic species, even when there IS equality of opportunity, you do not necessarily expect equality of outcome.
[10:50]: Or the vacuous nature of Suey Park claiming everyone else is privileged. I mean, can you imagine her outrage if she was told to ‘check her yellow privilege’ because Asians are universally the BEST PAID demographic in America.
[11:05]: And actually, yes they are. Earning on average twice as much as blacks. Maybe you need a new hashtag, Suey; maybe something along the lines of your ‘BETTER PAID Asian sidekick. Especially when you’re talking about privilege, of the back drop of the immensely well-stacked FINE CHINA teacups.
[11:23]: But fundamentally, yes. Saying ‘check your yellow-woman privilege’ is dismissive, and racist. For EXACTLY the same reasons that THIS is dismissive and racist:
[11:35] clip: “-especially as a white man, I don’t expect you to be able to understand what people of color are actually saying”
[11:39] Thunderf00t: Now let me say this in PLAIN language, so there can be absolutely no ambiguity. Suey Park is not only a racist, and a sexist—I think we’ve covered that already. But also a WORLD CLASS hypocrite. I mean we’ve already seen how she dismisses other people’s online activities “yawn”. But thinks that her hashtag activism is gonna change the world.
[12:05]: In her own words: “This is not reform, this is revolution”—OH, sweet mother of delusion of grandeur! But back to the hypocrisy. You will remember her outrage when someone just called her opinion ‘stupid’.
[12:19] clip: “No. No one’s minimalizing your experiences. No one’s minimalizing your right to have an opinion. It’s just a stupid opinion. I mean, it’s a misunderstanding of what satire is—it’s a misunderstanding of what irony is”
“You just called my opinion ‘stu-piiid’”
“You just called my opinion stupid. That’s incredibly unproductive. And I don’t think I’m going to enact the labor of having to explain to you why that’s incredibly offensive and patronizing”
[12:40] Thunderf00t: Yes, that’s INCREDIBLY patronizing and offensive to call someone’s opinion stupid. It’s demeaning and so forth. Unless of course you’re Suey Park, then it’s perfectly acceptable for you to call other people’s questions stupid: ‘“When white men ask me stupid questions—I zap them into trolls and put them in my garden”’
[13:01]: Suey, tell us what you think of that argument:
[13:03] clip: “You just called my opinion stupid. That’s incredibly unproductive. And I don’t think I’m going to enact the labor of having to explain to you why that’s incredibly offensive and patronizing”
[13:12] Thunderf00t: But for me, the one that sealed the deal that she’s just formally unplugged from reality, was in her interview with Salon. And it went like this:
[13:22]: ““Interviewer: What do you think is the best way to work with white people, to get them on our side?”
“Suey: I don’t want them on our side”
“Uhhh. You don’t want them on your side?”
“This is not reform, this is revolution”
[13:38] Thunderf00t: I’m not quite sure what you’ve got in mind here, Suey. A society free of racism where absolutely everyone is equal—uhh apart from the white people. Really, when you were given that keynote talk at Purdue University at the Conference on Diversity:
[13:53] clip: “I’m an activist, an educator, and a writer. And this spring, I’ll be travelling to all different colleges in the U.S. to connect with students”
[13:59] Thunderf00t: I’m just curious—did you hang a sign outside saying: ‘whites not welcome’?
[14:04] clip: “I think that facebuilding and dialogue are necessary in continuing to build an inclusive movement”
[14:09] Thunderf00t: But this one REALLY knocks the whole thing out of the ballpark in that she’s on a whole new level of bat-shit crazy:
[14:18] ““Yes, because I think it’s important. A lot of white America and so-called liberal people of color, along with conservatives ask, “Do I understand context?” And that’s part of wanting to completely humanize the oppressor. To see the white man as ALWAYS reasonable, ALWAYS pure, ALWAYS deliberate, always complex and ALWAYS innocent. And to see the woman of color as literal””
[14:46] Thunderf00t: HOLY CRAPwoman, what planet are you ON!? Always see the white man as REASONABLE!?
[14:52] clip: “Tide goes in, tide goes out—never a miscommunication. YOU, can’t explain that”
[14:57] Thunderf00t: Always see the white man as, REASONABLE!?
[15:00] clip: “I know that human being, and fish, can coexist peacefully”
[15:07] clip: “It appears, that, there were not weapons of mass destruction there”
“You said you knew where they were”
“I did not-”
“-know where they are, in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad, and-”
[15:20] Thunderf00t: WHAT PLANET are you ON? Here on planet earth, we judge arguments based on their merits. And we call those who judge arguments based on skin color, RACISTS because it’s a STUPID way of judging if an argument is valid or not. Nor do we judge arguments on “privilege”.
[15:38] clip: “Because they live in white privilege”
“Yeah”
“And they live, like, so deeply in white privilege that they can’t get their asses out of it”
[15:44] Thunderf00t: This woman, is a BILLIONAIRE. She’s as privileged as they come. But bizarrely, when she does something stupid—outrageously stupid—we don’t judge her actions based on the fact that she’s a woman. Or that she’s rich, and privileged, and entitled. We judge her actions based on their merits. Or, in this case, the lack of them:
[16:07] clip: “When I was growing up, I was called ‘bossy’”
[16:09] Thunderf00t: ‘Yes, I was called ‘bossy’ when I was a kid. And now I’m a BILLIONAIRE and one of the most powerful women in the world! So let’s get more women involved in leadership by banning the word ‘bossy’’’.
[16:20]: And this man is a billionaire, and as privileged and white as they come. But, according to Suey, we must regard “the white man” as ALWAYS reasonable, ALWAYS pure, ALWAYS deliberate, ALWAYS complex, ALWAYS innocent. BULL SHIT!
[16:36]: If he claims that vaccines cause autism, then his opinions are moronic.
[16:41] clip: “You just called my opinion stu-piiid”
[16:43] Thunderf00t: Sure, Suey. And I don’t say that because he’s white, or a man, or a privileged billionaire. I say it because his arguments are demonstrably WRONG. And only morons and social-justice-warriors would base an argument’s validity—well, lack of it—on whether someone is poor or privileged. That is, only a moron would dismiss someone’s opinion simply by saying, ‘check your privilege’ because it’s a matter of supreme irrelevance to the validity of an argument.
[17:14]: Just like saying someone’s skin color—or if you have girl parts or boy parts—is a matter of SUPREME irrelevance to the validity of an argument.
[17:23]: But for Suey, it’s of almost NUCLEAR face palm proportions. And they are supposedly trying to END racism in a revolution in which white people will NOT be welcome.
Many thanks to Linda for creating this Transcript!
[0:00] Thunderf00t: This is your brain. This is your brain on a new wave of feminism:
[0:05] clip: “Bossy, bossy, bossy”
“When I was growing up, I was called ‘bossy’”
“I think the word ‘bossy’, is just, a squasher”
“Being labelled something matters”
“By middle school, girls are less interested in leadership than boys. And that’s because they worry about being called ‘bossy’”
[0:21] Thunderf00t: Yeah. That’s right, what else could possibly explain the lack of women in leadership roles but the word:
[0:27] clip: “bossy”
[0:28] Thunderf00t: And what better way to correct that than by banning a word?
[0:32] clip: “We need to help them lean in”
“Words matter”
“Let’s just ban the word ‘bossy’”
[0:38] Thunderf00t: Yes, apparently this is the latest in the string of feminist explanations to explain why there aren’t more women in certain fields. I mean, it’s got nothing to do with sexual dimorphism in humans. You know, that OUTRAGEOUSLY SEXIST reason why we split up the Olympics by sex.
[0:54] clip: “The belief that women are somehow a naturally weaker gender is a deeply ingrained, socially constructed myth. Which, of course is completely false”
[1:03] Thunderf00t: Or the fact that the physical dimorphism is accompanied by behavioral dimorphism as well. You know, it’s a consequence of having that neural net we call a ‘brain’, marinaded in mostly one hormone or another—nah, it’s got nothing to do with sexual dimorphism in the behavior of humans. It’s all bound to the word ‘bossy’.
[1:23] clip: “When I was growing up, I was called ‘bossy’”
“I think the word ‘bossy’, is just, a squasher”
“Being labelled something matters”
“By middle school, girls are less interested in leadership than boys. And that’s because they worry about being called ‘bossy’”
[1:37] Thunderf00t: First we have those feminists, like Rebecca Watson:
[1:40] clip: “That’s right, you liberal, intellectual guy, who has a healthy interest in science and skepticism, but who finds feminism distasteful and would rather not hear about it. You are worse than rape threats”
[1:54] Thunderf00t: -who told us that sexism in Atheism was so bad, that a woman could get ASKED FOR COFFEE in an elevator. And THAT’S why there aren’t so many women in atheism. While she simultaneously thinks that starting a charity fund raiser by spitefully insulting every, single, male atheist in the audience, is just funnnny.
[2:17] clip: “I opened with a joke, referencing the fact that”
“Hello, YouTube. It’s been a while. I’ve missed you. And, I’m guessing that you’ve missed me too. Because I’ve heard that if a male atheist on YouTube goes too long without calling a woman a cunt, his balls will actually shrivel up, and then tuck up inside of him, forming what some call a ‘mangina’”
“Most people, got the joke”
“Most people, got the joke”
“Rule number one: don’t try to be funny, even though you are obviously not funny”
[2:50] Thunderf00t: Seriously, you start your video by spitting in people’s faces, and then blame the people whose faces that you’ve just spat in, for not finding it funny.
[3:01] clip: “You think that my sarcasm and feminism causes misogyny. In the same way that birds flying south for the winter causes the snow to come”
[3:11] Thunderf00t: No, Rebecca. I think that people are pissed at you, was CAUSED by you SPITTING IN THEIR FACES for exactly the same reason that I think smoking causes cancer. And then you portray the fact that they’re pissed off that you spat in their faces, as a reason why you’re persecuted, and people need to give you money. Or maybe that’s the whole point.
[3:33] clip: “I’m gonna continue speaking out about feminism and harassment of women online. Why? Because it pisses you off.
[3:40] Thunderf00t: And then we have the “pop culture critic” who doesn’t even like playing computer games, ‘cause it’s “gross”
[3:47] clip: “And also, videogames—like, I would love to play videogames. But I don’t want to go around shooting people, and ripping off their heads. And it’s just, gross. So-”
[3:54] Thunderf00t: -telling people that the reason that she doesn’t like computer games is because it’s “gross”. Oh, no. That won’t do at all. That doesn’t involve accusing people of sexism orblaming men. Yes, the reason she doesn’t like playing computer games is because of the “sexist depiction of women in computer games”. Especially the ones that involve:
[4:14] clip: “shooting people, and ripping off their heads. And it’s just, gross. So-”
[4:17] Thunderf00t: -an argument that is just so mind-blowingly stupid. It’s like calling Victoria’s Secret ‘sexist’ because they only make lingerie in women’s sizes, and that they don’t use an equal number of men to model their lingerie. Yes, the first-person shooter industry demographic is mostly men. Because most girls, like Anita here find that sort of thing “gross”.
[4:42] clip from “boom headshot” (Hahaha! Damn)
[4:48] clip: “shooting people, and ripping off their heads. And it’s just, gross. So-”
[4:51] Thunderf00t: Look, Anita. Just because you CHOOSE not to play a game that doesn’t appeal to you—that doesn’t make it sexist. You choosing not to play that game DOES NOT mean that you are being discriminated against by an unquestioning boys club.
[5:05] clip: “-is that they’re actually trying to maintain the status quo of videogames as a male-dominated space . . . And all of the privileges and entitlements that come with an unquestioned boys club”
“I would love to play videogames. But I don’t want to go around shooting people, and ripping off their heads. And it’s just, gross. So-”
[5:24] Thunderf00t: Just like when I choose not to go shopping for lingerie because it doesn’t appeal to me—that’s not sexism, I am not being discriminated against by an unquestioning girls club.
[5:35] Now, if that what I was after, there are FAR easier ways to get discriminated against by an unquestioning girls club. Like the one that gave you $160,000 to make some videos.
[5:46] clip: “I actually raised twenty-five times what I initially asked for . . . Nearly seven-thousand individuals contributed to make my “Tropes vs Women in Videogames” project bigger, and better, and more expansive than I could ever have imagined”
[6:03] Thunderf00t: Of which you’ve made four. In two years. $160,000. Or maybe that’s the whole point. Oh yeah, good business is where you find it. And selling victimhood to feminism is just as easy as selling a persecution complex to the religious.
[6:25] clip: “Listen, we have an outstanding broadcast here today. I took the time to do a compilation concerning Christian persecution in America. Check this out:
[6:35] Thunderf00t: And almost as profitable.
[6:37] clip: “There is coming a time very quickly here in America that we will not be able to bring this gospel message the way we currently are. That’s why we are urging you to donate today to continue and expand the work of this broadcast ministry before the lights go out. God bless you.
[6:55] Thunderf00t: And now you get this outrageous spinoff that the reason that there aren’t as many women managers is because they don’t like being called ‘bossy’. Because apparently the patriarchy has imbued men with this unholy power not to be discouraged by being called bossy. While these feminists think that women need special treatment, because ‘they’re emotionally fragile creatures than men’. Of course, if I were to say that women are more emotionally fragile creatures and need special protection from being called ‘bossy’ they would instantly label me as outrageously sexist and misogynistic.
[7:28] clip: “-horrible bigots, like Thunderf00t”
[7:31]: But these feminists think they are showing just how well women can compete on a level playing-field by saying that women are too emotionally fragile to handle being called ‘bossy’.
[7:44] clip: “When I was growing up, I was called ‘bossy’”
“I think the word ‘bossy’, is just, a squasher”
“Being labelled something matters”
“By middle school, girls are less interested in leadership than boys. And that’s because they worry about being called ‘bossy’”
[7:58] Thunderf00t: Ah, the face palm fails me. Look, let me say it once. Let me say it loud and let me say it clear: humans are a sexually dimorphic species. MEN and WOMEN are BIOLOGICALLY different. Which MAY or MAY NOT mean, that women are more biologically, emotionally fragile.
[8:21]: However, what we call ‘fair’ in society is equality of opportunity. Which in a sexually dimorphic species DOES NOT guarantee equality of outcome. In simple, simple terms the reason that it’s men who invariably end up shifting a couch up the stairs, is NOT because of sexism. Men are not conspiring to keep the couch-moving trade the “boys only” club with all the privileges and entitlements that come with it. It’s simply that they’re physiologically better-suited for it. You know, the same reason we divide the Olympics up by sex without everyone losing their shit and calling it sexism. If you wanna call it ‘sexism’, it’s simple. You have to show that there was not equality of opportunity. ‘Cause in a sexually dimorphic species, showing inequality of outcome, just doesn’t cut it.
[9:20]: But setting aside the 1984-style aspirations of being able to control words
[9:26] clip: “This is “Ban Bossy” take one”
[9:28] Thunderf00t: Well, I wouldn’t mind so much, but one of the women they have on board was Condoleezza Rice.
[9:35] clip: “There is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11”
[9:39] Thunderf00t: Here’s a radical notion: maybe we should BAN POLITICIANS from telling bold-faced lies to the public to take them into an unjustified war.
[9:47] clip: “There is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11”
[9:51] Thunderf00t: You know, one that’ll kill tens of thousands of people.
[9:55] clip: “There are no limits”
[9:57] Thunderf00t: -BEFORE we worry about banning the word ‘bossy’. Just sayin’.
[10:02] clip: “BAN ‘bossy’ . . . Join us to ban ‘bossy’”
[10:10] Thunderf00t: Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. The U.S. Secretary of education saw this, and thought, ‘Oh, ban ‘bossy’. That’s a really good idea. I really want to be a part of that!’
Many thanks to Linda for creating the transcript 😉
[0:00] Thunderf00t: You know, Feminist Frequency uses a lot of feminist buzz-words. Like: ‘patriarchy’ and ‘misogyny’.
[0:07] clip: “patriarchy, sexist, sexist attitudes, and paternalistic attitudes about women, gender clichés, -and doing misogyny”
[0:13] Thunderf00t: Yep. She sees the oppression of women everywhere.
[0:17] clip: “Women are being institutionally oppressed all the time, in nearly every facet of our lives”
[0:21] Thunderf00t: Now, in many ways, Anita using her “pop critic skills”-
[0:26] clip: “Now, I’m a pop culture critic”
[0:27] Thunderf00t: -to show how oppressed women are, has made it almost a very cartoony, caricature trope of the modern feminist.
[0:34] clip:
[0:48] Thunderf00t: That is, Anita has become the ‘straw feminist’. Which she has previously claimed was merely a sexist trope to undermine feminism.
[0:57] clip: “Every now and then in Hollywood-land, the character that’s identified as ‘feminist’ will magically make its way through the production process and appear on our television screens. Unfortunately, this is almost never good”
“I’ve heard it said that in the game of patriarchy, women are not the opposing team; they are the ball”
“Hollywood writers rely on one of the most deceptive and disgusting tropes ever to be forged in the fires of Mount Doom. That trope is called the straw feminist”
“Women are being institutionally oppressed all the time, in nearly every facet of our lives”
“In television and movies, the straw feminist works by deliberately creating an exaggerated character of a feminist, which writers then fill with a bunch of oversimplifications, misrepresentations, and stereotypes”
“Because it’s basically a choose-your-own-patriarchal-adventure porno fantasy”
[1:42] Thunderf00t: That is, she is not challenging stereotypes. She is reinforcing and fitting into them.
[1:47] clip: “The goal is to make feminists and our movements look completely ridiculous, over-the-top, and unnecessary.”
“It’s an old, yet effective tactic. But clearly it’s working. Because I often hear young women say, ‘I believe in the equal right of women. But, I’m not a feminist’”
[2:01] Thunderf00t: Now, personally speaking, so, broad egalitarian—you know, someone who thinks that everyone should be treated fairly—not just women. I like to use words like oppression to mean things like, this:
Or, words like ‘patriarchy’ to describe cultures like this:
[2:18]: To use the word ‘patriarchy’ to describe situations like this:
[2:22] clip:
[2:30] Thunderf00t: -merely reduces the word to a trivial level of first world problems.
[2:35] And believe me, no one has done more, or worked harder, to undermine the impact of these words, than modern feminists like Anita Sarkeesian.
[2:45 clip]: “The goal is to make feminists and our movements look completely ridiculous, over-the-top, and unnecessary.”
[2:51] Thunderf00t: for instance, Anita wants to uh, research games, of all things to find out just how much society is oppressing her.
[2:59]: Now, in science where we’re genuinely interested in discovering the unknown, we have a tradition. That is, you start with the research. And that after you’ve done the research, you draw your conclusions. This is the antithesis, of things like creationist research, where you start with the conclusions, and then you go to research things to show that your initial prejudice was correct. And this is also how Anita Sarkeesian does “research”. That is, she starts with the conclusion:
[3:30] clip: “Many games tend to reinforce and amplify sexist and downright misogynist ideas about women”
[3:36] Thunderf00t: And then asks for funding to go and do the “research”, to support these prejudices.
[3:41] clip: “As you might imagine, this project requires an enormous amount of research. This is an incredibly ambitious project, because of the scope and scale of the research and production involved. So please donate any amount you can”
[3:53] Thunderf00t: Now in her first video, she seemed to particularly pick on Mario.
[3:57] clip: “-four Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 2, Mario games, Mario Brothers, Mario, Super Mario Brothers, Mario Party, Mario Sports, and Mario Kart, Super Mario series, Super Mario, Mario, fan of the Mario and Zelda franchise”
[4:08] Thunderf00t: There’s just one problem with the Mario example. Mario, just so we are clear is an Italian plumber. It really is hard to think of a more underrated, underprivileged, disposable, and instantly forgettable male.
[4:26]: Peach, on the other hand is A PRINCESS. Well, no privilege there then. Oh, I’m sorry. Did your pop culture critic feminist and womanly skills miss that?
[4:38] clip: “Now, I’m a pop culture critic. I am a feminist, and I’m a woman”
“Because, you know, nothing is worse in a patriarchal society than being a woman. Except maybe being a feminist”
[4:48] Thunderf00t: I’ll make this simple for you, Anita. Really, really simple. You claim as a hypothesis all you want, that woman not being portrayed as you want in video games, is making society misogynistic.
[5:02] clip: “The pattern of presenting women as fundamentally weak, ineffective, or ultimately incapable, has larger ramifications beyond the characters themselves, and the specific games they inhabit . . . We have to remember that these games don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re an increasingly important and influential part of our larger social and cultural ecosystem . . . The reality is, this trope is being used in a real-world context, where backwards sexist attitudes are already rampant”
[5:27] Thunderf00t: Just like you could claim that Pokémon is set in a real-world situation:
[5:32] clip: “Pokémon—plural—are incredible creatures that share the world with humans. Each has his own fighting abilities.”
[5:40] Thunderf00t: And is Satan’s way of getting at your children. In a world that is already rampantly anti-Christian.
[5:46] clip: “So Pokémon is a game, that teaches children how to enter into the world of witchcraft, how to cast spells, how to use psychic phenomena, how to put to work supernatural powers against their enemies, how to fantasy-role-play. . . Pokémon world is a world of the demonic, of the satanic. While you might not take it quite seriously, I assure you that demons take it quite seriously”
[6:11] Thunderf00t: However, merely stating a hypothesis, no matter how vocally, doesn’t make it true.
[6:18]: You fail to realize that you’ve yet to demonstrate any effect that these videogames have on people’s behavior. And until you do, you might as well be claiming that Pokémon are the ‘devil’s way of getting at your children’.
[6:32]: Hell, the people who claim that videogames make people more violent have a far better case than your claim that they make people sexist. And their claims have thus far, proved to be all but inconsequential.
[6:45]: The problem is of course, that people have claimed since time immemorial that violent fantasy media makes people more violent. Problem is of course, with the huge amount of violent video games played, there appears to be no clear correlation of violence in society. Meaning that any social vector, if it exists at all, is small. And they have a far, far, FAR stronger case than you do. Really, really, simple Anita.
[7:14]: Playing Assassin’s Creed does not increase your chances of becoming an assassin; because it’s a fantasy game.
[7:22]: The fact that you kill hundreds of people in this game, doesn’t make you any more likely to be a killer, than the fact that you died hundreds of times means that you won’t mind dying anymore. Because fundamentally, people can distinguish between reality and fantasy.
[7:38]: So, really, Anita. Where is your demonstration that the generation that enjoyed getting this Italian plumber, to rescue this princess from a giant turtle monster that are any more likely to be sexist? EXACTLY. These games are about as likely to make you sexist, as they are likely to make you think that violence against turtles is acceptable.
[8:04]: And this is why the fundamental premise of your entire video series is bullshit. And it will remain to be bullshit. Until you can actually demonstrate a link.
[8:17]: This is what happens when your idea of “well-researched” is to merely go and look for patterns that support your initial prejudices.
[0:00] Thunderf00t: Now, many would think that Anita Sarkeesian has said some pretty dumb stuff over the years, and that therefore no one would take her seriously. Well actually, this year, 2014 she got an Annual Game Developers Choice Award. Specifically,
“The Ambassador Award, honoring someone who is helping video games “advance to a better place” through advocacy or action, is going to media critic Anita Sarkeesian, creator of Feminist Frequency, a video series that deconstructs representations of women in game and pop culture narratives”.
[0:38] Woow, that’s impressive! I mean there really aren’t many towering intellectuals who could lay claim to the title of a “media critic”.
[0:47] But what would it look like if men acted like feminists in “deconstructing the representations of men in pop culture narratives? Well I think it would look a little something like this:
[0:59] “So I got a lot of feedback from privileged women on my last video about why men shouldn’t be used as sword practice by females. This was mostly from women in denial about the serious, social-ableist-oriented, neo-gendered boundary-integrity issues that this problem causes.”
[1:20] “Firstly, they need to educate themselves on that it’s possible to both enjoy a media while simultaneously being critical of its more pernicious aspects. That’s why I always ensure that ratings and comments are disabled—for your comfort and convenience. After all, I AM telling you the truth. And only man-haters would want to allow those telling man-hating lies to confuse the clarity of what I am telling you.”
[1:48] “This is why we need BrotherlyBroadcast videos to be taught without opposition in schools, classrooms, and even universities. It’s only fair.”
[1:59] “In this sense, it’s good for us to remember that we are ALL influenced by the media we watch in a way that closely resembles homeopathy.”
[2:08] clip from Feminist Frequency, “Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games” : “While it may be comforting to think that we all have a personal force-field protecting us from outside influences, this is simply not the case. Scholars sometimes refer to this type of denial as a “third-person effect”, which is the tendency for people to believe that they are personally immune to media’s effects, even if others may be influenced or manipulated.”
“Paradoxically, and somewhat ironically, those who most strongly believe that media is just harmless entertainment, are also the ones most likely to uncritically internalize harmful media messages.”
“In short, the more you think you cannot be affected, the more likely you are to be affected.”
[2:44] Thunderf00t: “That is, the less you think you are affected, the more likely you are TO be affected. I mean, check out the extensive citations below, and you’ll see that I’m telling you the complete, academic, honest truth. But maybe that’s not enough for some people. Maybe there are some out there who say, ‘I’ve watched Star Wars a hundred times. I’ve never even once thought about turning into a Dark Lord of the Sith’; or, ‘I’ve watched The Matrix a thousand times. And no matter how much I think that it’s a fantasy, I still can’t dodge the bullets!’”
[3:20] “Well, facts really aren’t relevant here, because I’m citing feminist research. Specifically, over $30,000 of feminist research.”
[3:30] clip from Feminist Frequency, “Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”: “In short, the more you think you cannot be affected, the more likely you are to be affected.”
[3:36] Thunderf00t: “The first thing that you have to realize, is just how much these games OBJECTIFY men. Again and again, the men in these games are just portrayed as objects to be acted on.”
[3:50] clip from TEDxYouth, “The Sexy Lie: Caroline Heldman . . .”: “We’re thinking about the object-subject dichotomy. Subjects act. Objects are acted upon.”
[3:57] clip from Feminist Frequency, “Damsel in Distress: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”: “is via what’s called the subject-object dichotomy. In the simplest terms, subjects act, and objects are acted upon.”
[4:03] clip from lacigreen, “SEX OBJECT BS”: “-the subject. Subjects act, while objects are acted upon. Now I know you’re thinking, ‘crazy Laci, what’s this got to do with sexuality?’ And the answer is: everything.”
[4:15] Thunderf00t: “Because, once something has been turned into an object, violence against that object becomes intrinsically permissible. Now I know there will be many out there who will say, ‘that’s absurd. I mean everyone knows that the streets are full of cars, which are objects. But if you try to smash those objects up, you’ll get arrested for vandalism; because, just because something is an object, that doesn’t mean that violence against it is acceptable’.”
[4:42] “Well, once again—facts are really not relevant here; because I’m citing feminist research. Specifically, over $30,000 of feminist research.”
[4:54] clip from Feminist Frequency, “Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”: “Once a person is reduced to the status of objecthood, violence against that object becomes intrinsically permitted.”
[5:01] Thunderf00t: “The pattern of having men turned into objects by women such that they can be dehumanized and objectified such that the protagonist women in question can shoot them, hack them, or simply throw them to their deaths, is widespread in popular culture. It even encourages females to throw both old men and young male children off towers.”
[5:27] “Now, the more observant among you might say, ‘but the video you just showed, showed a man throwing a young boy off a tower’. Yes, that’s right—a man being puppeteered by feminist theory. Indeed it’s SO widespread now that almost ALL games are [oriented] to fulfill this deeply seated female need. Women are meant to derive this perverse sense of pleasure from having males desecrate the bodies of unsuspecting male victims. It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to having the subservient gender trait of males controlling and punishing representations of other males.”
[6:11] “In my previous analysis, I came to the CLEAR, academic conclusion that MEN killed by women is actually due to the influences of feminist theory in the mainstream media such as movies and interactive media such as games. And now we find that feminist theory is actually ALSO responsible for all men being killed by MEN.”
[6:34] “That is, feminist theory is DIRECTLY responsible for ALL the violent killings of men in the world. This is clearly a very serious issue, and requires IMMEDIATE action—not just sitting around and talking about it, but to take action. I mean, we could all sit around here whining all day and it won’t achieve anything.”
[6:57] “This requires something serious, not just talk—something radical, something totally different from complaining; something dramatic. I don’t know, maybe as severe as a hashtag. Or better still, we can get this subject unpacked and deconstructed by a pop culture critic such as myself; because we all know that pop culture critics are the intellectual gods of our time. And we all know that if you want something done properly THAT’S where you should go.”
[7:28] “I just want men to be whole, complete, non-disposable characters in movies and not to be shot, stabbed, or disposed of by women; or by men who have been subverted by the detrimental normalizations of feminist theory. Is that really such a big thing to ask from the movie and gaming industry?”
[7:52] “I mean, I don’t care that people say this would make a really dull game, and that no one would want to play it. And I don’t care that people say that it would be an economical failure; because we all know that “economic viability” is just another one of those buzz-words that is used by feminists so that they can continue making these computer games with their erotic fantasies about getting men to kill other men. You just don’t know what it’s like to be a MAN, knowing that any woman out there might use you for sword practice. And yet women still pretend this is not a big social problem.”
[8:29] “Well, I think we should end this. Don’t tell ME not to dress like an interchangeable target. Teach women not to kill. Or better still, don’t tell me to sleep with one eye open. Teach women not to stab people to death in their sleep; like in the film, Basic Instinct.”
[8:47] “Now, I know there will be many women out there who will try and distance themselves from this saying, ‘that’s absurd. I would never stab you to death in your sleep because I saw it in a film’. Well that’s exactly the sort of denial you would expect BECAUSE”:
[9:00] clip from Feminist Frequency, “Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”: “Paradoxically, and somewhat ironically, those who most strongly believe that media is just harmless entertainment, are also the ones most likely to uncritically internalize harmful media messages.”
“In short, the more you think you cannot be affected, the more likely you are to be affected.”
[9:18] Thunderf00t: “That’s right. The ones who say that they are least affected are the ones who are most likely to stab you to death in your sleep. Remember, this is what $30,000 of feminist research looks like. So it must be true.”
[9:32] “Women simply can’t understand what it’s like to be used for sword practice because of their privilege. Women have the privilege of being able to express their sexuality while feminist theory has prevented men from expressing theirs; sometimes, physically.”
[9:49] “Now many women who have been brainwashed by this feminist theory will say that women don’t have privilege. Well yes, of course you can’t see your privilege. That’s like being raised your whole life in a red room, and then being taken out of that red room and being asked to describe what the color red looks like.”
[10:08] “But just because you can’t SEE your privilege, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, and you doubling down and denying your privilege—or even worse, asking me for evidence for it—is simply making the issue worse.”
[10:23] “And this is the reason why I make these videos on manlyism. And BrotherlyBroadcast Videos have been used in classrooms, high schools, universities, and even presidential speeches. Many a times, I received thank-you notes from parents who’ve used this material to educate their daughters, how stabbing a vulnerable man to death in his sleep with an ice pick, is BAAD. Remember, don’t teach ME to take precautions with MY safety. Teach YOUR daughter not to stab people.”
[10:56] “And with all this female privilege, is it any wonder that they’re incapable of understanding how hard it is, to be a man? In short, if you’re a woman, you are unqualified to tell a man what his oppression feels like. And no matter how much you feel the need to ‘femisplain’ why using men as target practice is just ‘harmless fun’, you just need to shut up and listen. You need to educate yourself on what it’s like to be a man. I mean, this is manlyism 101 here. We need for you to become manlyists, the radical belief that men shouldn’t be used for female sword practice; because if you’re not a manlyist, then you’re a bigot. A sexist bigot. I mean, there is nothing in between.”
[11:43] Clip from “Gloria Allred: If You’re Not a Feminist, Then You’re a Bigot”: “I often say that if you’re not a feminist then you’re a bigot. I mean there is nothing in between.”
Many thanks to Linda for providing the transcript!
[0:00] Thunderf00t: Today’s message is brought to you by Jessica Valenti, feminist author who, under the banner of “MORE FEMINISM, LESS BULLSHIT”, Tweets: “I truly believe that American culture prefers girls chaste and dead over slutty and alive.”
[0:17]: Well, thanks for letting us know what MORE feminism will look like, Jessica.
[0:22]: So, there’s ALWAYS someone out there telling you what you CAN’T say. I mean, let’s start from the very top. Some people think that the word ‘nigger’ is so offensive that they ALWAYS, and in many ways, childishly substitute it by calling it “the N-word”.
[0:39] clip from YouTube, “Charles Barkley discusses the N-word on TNT”: “I’m a black man. I use the n-word. I’m going to continue to use the N-word with my black friends, with my white friends.”
[0:52] Thunderf00t: Even Seth McFarlane backs away from using the word.
[0:55] clip from Family Guy: “WHAT did you just call me?”
“I thought that was your name!”
“THAT IS OUR WORD! YOU’VE GOT NO RIGHT USIN’ IT!”
“Hey—hey—hey—I’m cool, I’m cool. No problem . . . Could—could you pass me the oar, N-word Jim?”
“THANK YOU”
[0:10] Thunderf00t: I mean, don’t these people realize that language is context-specific? The word ‘nigger’ is neither universally offensive-
[1:18] clip from Pulp Fiction (YouTube, “SHEEIT NEGRO!!”)
[1:30] clip from YouTube, “Chris Rock – Black People VS. Niggaz (Bring the Pain 1996)”
“Every time black people wanna have a good time, ign’nt ass niggas fuck it up . . . CAN’T DO SHIT . . . CAN’T DO SHIT! without some ign’nt ass niggas fuckin’ it up.”
[1:45] Thunderf00t: Nor does it make a lot of sense to always allude to it as the “N-word”.
[1:50—3:20] clips from YouTube, “Top Gear Presenter Jeremy Clarkson Apologises over N Word . . .” and from Life of Brian
[3:20] Thunderf00t: I mean seriously, what would be the point of having words that you CAN’T use?
[3:26]: And some people think that the word ‘cunt’ is so offensive that they always, and in many ways, childishly substitute it by calling it “the c-word”.
[3:36] clip from YouTube, “Paloma Faith On Meeting Diane Warren & The C Word”: “Her favorite word was the C-word.”
“OH NO, it’s not like that.”
[3:40] Thunderf00t: Well this video is about words like these, and the people who think that you shouldn’t be able to use them.
[3:48] clip from YouTube, “Ban Bossy—I’m not Bossy. I’m the Boss”: “Words matter.”
“Let’s just ban the word ‘bossy’.”
[3:51] Thunderf00t: Well, in the atheist community, it’s people like PZ Myers. Apparently, he thinks that every time someone uses the word ‘cunt’, every single woman on the planet is insulted, devalued, and demeaned.
[4:05] clip from YouTube, “Rebecca Watson – European Atheist Convention 2012”: “And when I point out that ‘bitch’ is a gendered insult that demeans all women—again—most people, get it.”
[4:13] Thunderf00t: In a recent article titled, “How to drive a Brit crazy” he states “It turns out to be really easy. All it takes is five little words. “’Cunt’ is a sexist slur”.
[4:24] Thunderf00t: So PZ tweeted this image here: which is meant to be a social-justice-warrior joke about what happens when the outraged-about-everything brigade want to point out that “‘cunt’ is a misogynistic slur”.
[4:38] clip from YouTube, Feminist Frequency, “Kanye West’s Monster Misogyny”: “’Misogyny, as defined by The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology, is a cultural attitude of hatred for females simply because they are female.”
[4:45] clip from Skepchick Video [?]: “-um, more that I think that there are a lot of things that are, uh, part of a misogynist culture or milieu that would go by unnoticed by most women. They went unnoticed by me for most of my twenties.”
[4:58] Thunderf00t: That is that it conveys HATRED for ALL women.
[5:05]: So PZ goes on: “I retweeted it, and then the replies came flooding in. The defenses are hilarious, irrational, and indignant. It’s incredibly common to see people protest that it’s a perfectly acceptable word; everyone says it in England; it doesn’t have any sexual connotations at all, because apparently, people in the UK are so stupid that they don’t remember that it’s a word that refers to the female genitalia.”
[5:34] Thunderf00t: Well actually, let me tackle that one. Not just as a Brit, you understand, but as someone who has travelled extensively in the wide world. Firstly, colorful language is rarely literal.
[5:47] clip from YouTube, “Trekkie Lingo! ;-)”: “Your use of language has altered since our arrival. It’s currently laced with—shall I say, more colorful metaphors.”
[5:54] Thunderf00t: When people are saying words like ‘dick’ or ‘cunt’, they are not literally referring to the genitalia of all men or women on the planet.
[6:03]: Secondly, no it doesn’t drive Brits crazy. Indeed, quite the contrary, it just shows that you are perfectly fitting into the stereotype of the archetypal American, as the culturally narrow-brained moron.
[6:16] clip from The Simpsons, (YouTube “It’s Chowder!”)
[6:24] Thunderf00t: -arrogantly thinking that your use of the language in YOUR culture is how ALL other cultures around the world must use their language. Sorry, but language just isn’t like that. It’s very plastic in its meaning.
[6:40]: So, for instance, in America, ‘fanny’ means ‘bottom’. It’s a nice way of saying ‘ass’, and it’s a term that you can quite happily use in polite conversation. Not quite so much in England. No, in England, ‘fanny’ means what ‘cunt’ means in America.
[6:58]: Indeed, when I was a kid in England, the terms were perfectly interchangeable. Yeah, there’s one hell of a learning curve on that one. So yeah, news flash social-justice-warriors, the whole planet does not revolve around YOUR use of language. Just because YOU swoon at the mere mention of the word ‘cunt’ does NOT mean that the rest of the world does too. Yes, words have very different associations in different places.
[7:29]: So for instance, in England what you call ‘pants’ in America, are called ‘trousers’. And what they call ‘pants’ in England, are called ‘underpants’ in America. Indeed in England, the term ‘pants’ can even be used as sort of polite and comical swear word in that if something is ‘rubbish’—ah—sorry, something is ‘garbage’, then you would say that it’s ‘pants’.
[7:52]: Well, when I was a kid in England, the word ‘nigger’ was nowhere near as offensive as it is deemed in America. And this is because we didn’t have the Deep South in England; which is where the name acquired most of its social connotations.
[8:08] clip from YouTube, “Where did the N-word come from?”
[8:19] Thunderf00t: There really weren’t that many African sorts in England. But if there were, the offensive term used in England dated back to the colonial days, which was to refer to black folks as ‘Wogs’.
[8:30] clip from YouTube, “Niggers & Wogs”
[8:41] Thunderf00t: But like I say, the term wasn’t that widely used, because there weren’t that many African folks in England. However, after WWII there was a fierce labor shortage in England. And lots of people came over from both India and Pakistan. And so it was that the name ‘Paki’, short for ‘Pakistani’ became a very offensive way of referring to people with brown skin.
[9:05]: Now for people who didn’t live in that culture, it’s probably difficult to see why it should. I mean, surely ‘Paki’ is just a contraction of ‘Pakistani’, right? Why should that be offensive?
[9:17]: But like I was saying, language is rarely that logical. And it carries a lot of the social baggage of its civilization. I mean you could claim that ‘nigger’ is just a phonetically contracted way of referring to someone from Nigeria.
[9:32]: Or maybe another more pertinent example, would be ‘Jap’, which could simply be viewed as a contraction of ‘Japanese’. But it picked up most of its negative connotations during WWII where it was widely used, especially in America, as a pejorative. And yeah, the term has much more offensive connotations in America, than elsewhere in the world. I mean, this is just the plasticity of language.
[9:58]: And, likewise, other contractions of nationalities or nicknames for cultures are not seen as offensive. So for instance, referring to people from Britain as ‘Brits’, or referring to Australians as ‘Aussies’, or Americans as ‘Yanks’, just isn’t offensive. Language can just be infuriatingly illogical like that.
[10:17]: However, yeah, in England, the term ‘Paki’ is seen as a very strong term. It’s almost like ‘nigger’ in America and is a derogatory way to refer to dark skinned people, along with other terms, like ‘coon’ or ‘the brown people’.
[10:32]: However, if you’re over to Germany, the ‘brown people’ refers to something entirely different. It refers to the modern incarnation of the nationalists—you know, after Hitler’s “brown shirts”. They are “the brown people”. And while we’re talking about things that can be UNfortunately offensive in German, ‘schwarze’ means ‘black’ in German. Whiiich, phonetically speaking, makes this one the most unfortunate names EVER.
[10:59]: And in parts of Germany, cats have seven lives, not nine. And you go a little east to the Slovak ones, and you find that dogs don’t go ‘woof’, but ‘haf’. And cows don’t go ‘moo’, but ‘boo’. And in Easter, they chase girls, and whip them, to make them strong and beautiful for the next year. And the girls have to give them candy in return. EEh, it’s kind of like trick-or-treating; which in itself is a pretty weird thing to do if you think about it.
[11:26]: And in places in Spain they throw tomatoes at each other. And one day a year in Germany, women are allowed to go and cut the ties off men.
[11:35] clip about weiberfastnacht
[11:45]: Or in England, once a year, we celebrate a guy failing to blow up the government, by making an effigy of that man and burning it on a fire. Seriously, that’s “family fun” in England—is burning an effigy of a man who’s been dead for a couple hundred years—on a fire!
[12:03]: Oh, and don’t get me started on all the different ways that cultures celebrate Christmas. It’s like they say: travel broadens the mind—it really does. And you know you’ve travelled enough, when you come back to your native country, and it feels like just another foreign land, with its own set of peculiar customs. And you just come to the conclusion that when in Rome, do like the Romans.
[12:28]: And it takes a special level of arrogance to expect every culture on earth to conform in every detail to what YOU find offensive in Minnesota.
[12:40]: As for the word ‘cunt’ demeaning all women, well like I was saying: language is rarely that literal. When people refer to someone as a ‘cunt’, they’re no more making a reference to the genitalia of women, than calling someone a ‘dick’ is a reference to male genitalia.
[12:56] clip from YouTube, “Trekkie Lingo!”: “Are you sure it isn’t time for a colorful metaphor?”
[12:58] Thunderf00t: Or that calling someone an ‘unclefucker’ is referencing someone who actually fucks their uncle.
[13:03] clip from South Park
[13:06] Thunderf00t: These are just colorful metaphors of our time. So no, around the world the word ‘cunt’ or ‘fanny’ means different things in different cultures, like in Australia, where the word ‘cunt’ can almost be used as a term of endearment.
[13:24] clip from The Sound of Music “what is it you can’t face”
[13:34] clip from YouTube, “Australia, Yeah, C**t – Australia’s new National Anthem”
[13:46] Thunderf00t: So what’s the point of all this, I hear you ask. It’s to let people like PZ Myers and the “I-find-that-offensive!” brigade, claiming that because the word ‘cunt’ is really offensive in America, that everyone in the entire world should find it as offensive as they do.
[14:05]: And the strange thing is these folks think that this is showing how wonderfully thoughtful, egalitarian and progressive they are. When actually, it shows the exact opposite—of just how arrogant, narrow-minded, and ethnocentric they are, to expect the entire English-speaking world to fall in line with their use of language in, say, Cowpoke [?], Minnesota.
Many thanks to Linda for supplying the transcript 🙂
[0:00] Thunderf00t: The reason that the “Ban Bossy” Campaign was one of the most EPIC face plants of our time, is that it was so incredibly poorly thought out on the most simplistic and rudimentary levels.
[0:17] There’s an irony in telling people to, ‘ban the word bossy!’ It is, well, kind of BOSSY.
[0:22] clip from YouTube, “Ban Bossy—I’m Not Bossy. I’m the Boss.”
[0:25] Thunderf00t: I mean, seriously, did no one in this campaign think of the internal inconsistencies here? It portrays women as less suitable for leadership, in that if your dreams of leadership can be undermined simply by being called ‘bossy’, it’s highly questionable if you were ever suitable for making those tough decisions of leadership in the first place.
[0:44]: Then there’s the 1984 police-state solution of BANNING WORDS.
[0:49] clip from YouTube, “Ban Bossy—I’m Not Bossy. I’m the Boss.”
[0:53] Thunderf00t: It makes the incredible leap that girls lose interest in leadership when they become teenagers, and then attribute this to the word ‘bossy’.
[1:01] clip from YouTube, “Ban Bossy—I’m Not Bossy. I’m the Boss.”
[1:14] Thunderf00t: Even if it WASN’T a pure distortion of the actual original study, it would be one HELL of a leap of faith to NOT attribute the change in boys and girls with adolescence, and instead say, naah, it has nothing to do with adolescence. It’s all down to a SINGLE WORD.
[1:33]: Put simply the, uuh, factual basis of this ENTIRE campaign was BULLSHIT. They claim that being called ‘bossy’ keeps women from leadership. Yet EVERY single example they give of women in leadership says they were called ‘BOSSY’!
[1:52] clip from YouTube, “Ban Bossy—I’m Not Bossy. I’m the Boss.”
[1:56] Thunderf00t: And they STILL ended up in leadership of one sort or another. I don’t think you really thought that one through, did you?
[2:03]: And finally, even if EEVERY single thing they said was true, they’ve just advertised the way to destroy EVERY woman in a leadership role in America.
[2:14] clip from YouTube, “The Doctor Vs The Prime Minister – Doctor Who . . .” and clip from “Ban Bossy”
[2:43] Thunderf00t: I mean you can see ‘em now, all sat around, pumped up and brainstorming in their Donald Trump’s Tower boardroom:
‘We need something short, punchy, catchy—something people will remember. Oh! Alliteration’s good. I know—how about banning a word? But we need a word that starts with ‘b’. Not bitch. That’s a naughty word; we don’t want to ban naughty words, just ones that hurt women’s feelings. Ones we can portray as sexist. Okay—look, sure, I know that ‘bitch’ hurts women’s feelings too. And it can be portrayed as sexist. But look, we just don’t want a feminist campaign with the word ‘bitch’ in the title. Okaay? We need something short, something punchy. Wow! BAN BOSSY! Yeah, ban bossy! Now all we need is a load of women in leadership to say that they got called ‘bossy’ and how it destroyed their chances of leadership. Don’t worry about the inconsistencieees. No one’s that observant. And then we’ll just use their billionaire’s brown-nosed network to get the U.S. Secretary of Education involved with BANNING WORDS. And then all we need is a pretty object to put on the front of it. Yeah, a woman of some sort. Don’t worry, this is a feminist campaign. We only call it sexism and objectification when OTHER people use beautiful women to sell things. Ah! Perfection. What could possibly go wrong?’
[4:04]: This was all actually backed by an impressive array of successful women, most notably was Sheryl Sandberg’s baby. Sandberg is listed as being worth about a billion dollars. A billion dollars is actually quite a lot of money. Just to put that into perspective, let say this video gets 25,000 views. From her wealth, she could pay each one of those 25,000 people an average U.S. salary of about $40,000. So, she can’t be a complete idiot. Right? Eeeh, that’s until you realize that Donald Trump is worth three to four Sandbergs. Crazy thing is, if you watch Sandberg’s TED Talk, you’ll realize that she already understands why there aren’t so many women in leadership. She describes it EXACTLY: ‘women typically want to have children’:
[4:54] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “And from the moment she starts thinking about having a child, she starts thinking about making room for that child: how am I going to fit this into everything else I’m doing? And literally from that moment, she doesn’t raise her hand anymore. She doesn’t look for a promotion, she doesn’t take on the new projects, she doesn’t say ‘me, I wanna do that’. She starts leaning back.”
[5:14] Thunderf00t: And childbearing age comes right bang in the middle of career development. And then, a sophisticated and dynamic job [?] is typical of leadership, of those privileged enough to have those jobs.
[5:27] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “In the high income part of our workforce in the people who end up at the top Fortune 500 CEO jobs or the equivalent in other industries, the problem that I am convinced is that women are dropping out.”
[5:40] Thunderf00t: Being out of the loop for six months or a year-
[5:42] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “Nine months of pregnancy, three months of maternity leave, six months to catch your breath-”
[5:47] Thunderf00t: -makes it much harder to come back and compete at the top of the pile. So she basically describes how they play it safe—they lean back in more supporting roles rather than leadership ones. They lose interest in being at the top of the greasy pole.
[6:03]: After all, is it really worth pissing your life away, fighting to be at the top of the greasy pole, simply so you can say you have three billion dollars rather than one? Really, when you’re on your death bed, do you really believe that you will look back and think, ‘yeah, I’m really glad that I decided to spend so much of my life dedicated to staying at the top of the greasy pole, simply so I can die with a four and a lot of zeroes after my name, rather than a one and a lot of zeroes’?
[6:32]: In fact, to be honest, in your boardroom, Sandberg, if you were privileged with that choice-
[6:37] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “Everyone who’s been through this, and I’m here to tell you, once you have a child at home, your job better be really good to go back, because it’s hard to leave that kid at home.”
[6:46] Thunderf00t: I would say, that leaning back and living life is by far the best choice. Exchanging life for money that you could never possibly spend, is just a fool’s errand.
[6:58] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “When I was in college, my senior year, I took a course called “European Intellectual History”. Don’t you love that kind of thing from college? Wish I could do that now.”
[7:06] Thunderf00t: Seriously, she’s, say, 44 now. Let’s say she lives another 50 years. If she doesn’t earn a single penny for the rest of her life, she would have to spend TWENTY MILLION dollars a year. That’s five hundred times the average salary of an American, just to consume her wealth.
[7:25] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “Don’t you love that kind of thing from college? Wish I could do that now.”
“The numbers tell the story quite clearly. 190 Heads of State; 9 are women . . . And out of 193 world leaders, just 17 are women . . . 80% of political offices being occupied by men . . . less than ¼ MP’s is a woman . . . of all the people in parliament in the world, 13% are women . . . Men occupying the highest ranks in virtually EVERY industry in the world . . . in the corporate sector, women at the top, C level jobs, board seats, tops out at 15-16%. The numbers have not moved since 2002, and are going in the wrong direction.”
[8:08] Thunderf00t: Sandberg describes this women-losing-interest-in-leadership, in detail in her TED Talk. She UNDERSTANDS the reasons. But what I’m missing out on here, is where is the sexism in this picture? WHO is discriminating against the women here? The different representations of men and women she basically describes as being down to lifestyle choices.
[8:33] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “-and I’m here to tell you, once you have a child at home, your job better be really good to go back, because it’s hard to leave that kid at home.”
[8:41] Thunderf00t: WHERE is the sexism in that? Where is the sexism in not finding women at the top of the greasy pole?
[8:50] clip from DNews?: “-men occupying the highest ranks in virtually EVERY industry in the world.”
Many thanks to Linda for supplying the transcript!
[0:00] Thunderf00t:You ever sat down and wondered, what it would look like if men saw the world like pop-culture-feminists like Anita Sarkeesian? Well if you sit down and think about something, and DON’T conclude that you’re the victim, then you’ve just not thought about it long enough.
[0:16]: Well I think it might look a little something like this:
[0:19]: “In this video, we’re going to examine the trope of men as female target-practice. Now it’s no secret that throughout pop culture—in movies, videos, and computer games—that men are universally portrayed as little more than background objects that can be: shot, stabbed, or disposed of, without real world consequences, while simultaneously, feminist theory prevents this from being done to the women.”
[0:47]: “Now, remember, it’s possible to enjoy a media while simultaneously being critical of its more pernicious aspects and the socially harmful myths that it propagates.”
[0:57]: “In this series, we will critically examine, from a “pop culture perspective”, the trope of expendable men as female target-practice, and how this trope perpetuates and normalizes the acceptability of violence against men.”
[1:14]: “Now it’s well-known that Hollywood glorifies and encourages female violence against men. Indeed, it’s steeped in it. Like in this film, Misery, named after the man’s suffering in this film, where Ms. Chastain breaks the ankles of honest writer, Paul. It extends pervasively through modern media, where it’s seen that holding an un-consensual man captive against his will just because you like him, is fine.”
[1:45]: “Like in this Pink video, where we are encouraged to vicariously enjoy a man being held captive against his will, for no other reason than erotic entertainment of a female.”
[1:57]: “And notice, how fem-o-centrically sexist these videos are, in that the woman is fully allowed to express her sexuality while the man is simultaneously and physically precluded from expressing his.”
[2:12]: “Or in this Lady Gaga video, which takes it one step further, where she’s actually seen to setfire to the man and taking his property, sexualizing the aspects of a man that don’t even require him to be alive.”
[2:27] clip from Feminist Frequency, “Kanye West’s Monster Misogyny”: “I think that bears repeating. This video fetishizes the aspects of women that don’t even require us to be physically alive.”
[2:34] Thunderf00t: “You know, I’ve often heard it said, that in the game of feminism, men are not the opposing team. They are the sword practice.”
[2:41]: “In the film Kill Bill, a film whose verytitle glamorizes and normalizes the idea that fatal acts of violence against men are acceptable, and indeed should even be actively sought out.”
[2:55]: “Here, the interchangeability and disposable nature of these men is formally conveyed to the audience by virtue of the fact that they all wear masks. We are left with no other option, but to conclude that these men are generic, dehumanized objects with no distinguishing features.
[3:13]: “This is emphasized by the fact that we have no connection to these men. We know nothing about them. What are their names? What do they do at weekends? What sort of things do they seek out in a life partner, and so on? No, the only thing that we know about these people is they are utterly disposable. And the only thing left for the protagonist to decide is in which order to kill them.”
[3:36]: “We are simply left with the understanding that men are strictly indistinguishable, violable objects. And once they have been reduced to the level of objects, it’s okay for the protagonist to kill them with no more emotional investment than throwing away a fast-food container.”
[3:54] clip from Feminist Frequency, “Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”: “The dehumanization caused by objectification inevitably leaves us to the concept of disposability.”
[4:00] Thunderf00t: “Again and again, we see the perpetuation of the widespread and regressive belief that the male’s primary role is that of mobile target-practice. And that’s a pity, because this medium presents such a great opportunity to explore why males shouldn’t be used for sword practice.”
[4:19]: “But that’s not what’s happening here. Here, it is clear that these men have been reduced to the level of objects. And once they’ve been reduced to the level of objects, you should feel no more pity about cutting them up with a sword, than a pizza.”
[4:33] clip from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
[4:45] Thunderf00t: “Remember, subjects act. Objects are acted upon. That’s what feminism taught me.”
[4:51] clip fromTEDxYouth, “The Sexy Lie: Caroline Heldman at TEDxYouth@SanDiego”: “We’re thinking about the object-subject dichotomy. Subjects act. Objects are acted upon.”
[4:58] Clip from Feminist Frequency, “Damsel in Distress: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”:“-is via what’s called the subject-object dichotomy. In the simplest terms, subjects act, and objects are acted upon.”
[5:04] Thunderf00t: “And these days, the indoctrination of impressionable children, starts younger and younger.”
[5:10]: “Like in the movie Kick Ass, where a young woman is shown just how exciting it is to go on a killing spree of men. After all, they’re only objects, right? It’s not like killing them should have any real world consequences. Like explaining to the children of this poor, defenseless man”:
[5:29] clip from Kick Ass
[5:30] Thunderf00t: “-killed in cold blood, as to why daddy won’t be coming home tonight.”
[5:35]: “Even law enforcement officers in the line of duty, are not spared from this trope of men as target-practice. It should be noted, that in all of these media, the portrayal of men is universally sexist. The women are allowed to project their sexuality in many aspects, while simultaneously this female privilege is strictly denied to the men, who must remain as generic objects.”
[6:05]: “Seriously, could this sexism be any more explicit than in this scene, where the only two clearly distinguishable people in the room, and the ones with speaking roles, are women, where the rest of the room is full of identical men, whose only purpose in the film is to gurgle blood, as they like dying slowly, on the floor.”
[6:26] clip from Kill Bill: Vol. 1
[6:31] Thunderf00t: “Universally, feminist theory dictates that men are robbed of their sexuality during these scenes where women are simultaneously privileged to be able to appear as thoughtful, independent, sexually appealing, protagonists.”
[6:50]: “Sometimes this is graphically true, as seen in the film, Serenity, where the men are literally portrayed as savages, who the female is valiantly fighting to defeat.”
[7:02]: “Or in Shawn of the Dead, where there is little distinction made between the men, and the zombies.”
[7:08]: “Even in children’s programs, it’s portrayed that because men are not really human, it’s okay to kill them with fire.”
[7:16] clip from Sailor Moon[?]
[7:25] Thunderf00t: “This is now being taken into a new realm with interactive media, such as videogames, where female protagonists are given a subliminal manual on how to destroy cars with a few swipes of a bat, and killing unsuspecting males by jumping on them from behind and launching into savage, and unprovoked fatal attacks, is seen as a good thing—something for fun.”
[7:49]: “The game mechanics encourage this. The men are seen as nothing more than something to be shot, beaten, or blown up for fun. Men, as target practice. Again, once the male has been reduced to the level of object, it’s okay to kill them. Because that’s what feminism taught me about the subject-object dichotomy, is once people have been reduced to the level of object, it’s okay to kill them.”
[8:15] clip from Feminist Frequency, “Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”: “The dehumanization caused by objectification inevitably leads us to the concept of disposability.”
[8:21] Thunderf00t: “It even glamorizes the female execution of law enforcement officers in the line of duty, by striking a happy and indifferent pose next to the body of the police officer she’s just brutally murdered. Let’s just say that again: these games glamorize women killing exclusively male officers in the line of duty.”
[8:45]: “So these interactive algorithms transmit near constant cultural affirmation that female violence against men is acceptable—and, even virtuous. It’s simply the only message being transmitted on this Feminist Frequency.”
[9:02]: “So why does any of this matter? Why should it matter if young women are being sent messages about killing men in uniform? Well the obvious—and negative—impacts have been studied extensively over the years. And it’s been found to have a widespread, negative effect on the behavior of women. And the effects on all people are quite clear and very serious. Research has constantly shown that games like this negatively impact female perceptions about real-world men, and reinforces socially harmful myths about the acceptability of using men, as sword practice.”
[9:43]: “And that’s all without taking into account how videogames allow a more interactive role for the impressionable women, and encourages a more participatory form of this sadistic enjoyment of violence against men. In these ways, the systems work to facilitate female violence against men, into turning it to a form of play; something to be amusing and entertaining.”
[10:09]: “This forces female consumers of this media to become complicit with the game developers in making fatal violence against men a participatory activity. Scholars have again and again found that this has a profound impact on women’s behavior.”
[10:27]: “Now, inevitably, whenever these game mechanics, or the clear academic findings are questioned, many female consumers of this media try to dismiss themselves or distance themselves from the issue by insisting that they don’t personally partake in the options to kill men.”
[10:45]: “But if they do, or if they don’t, does not change the fact that the object was designed and placed in that environment for that explicit function. A game designed to normalize that it’s okay for women to kill men, is still a game designed to normalize the disposable concepts about men, whether you choose to use it, or not.”
[11:06]: “And this we’ve recently been taught. While many might think they have a personal force field that shields them from the effects of these games, this is simply is not true”:
[11:15] clip from Feminist Frequency,“Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”“In short, the more you think you cannot be affected, the more likely you are to be affected.”
[11:20] clips from The Matrix, Iron Man 2, Kick Ass, Kill Bill: Vol. 1
[11:39] clip from Feminist Frequency,“Women as Background Decoration: Part 1 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games”: “While it may be comforting to think that we all have a personal force field protecting us from outside influences, this is simply not the case. Scholars sometimes refer to this type of denial as a “third-person effect”, which is the tendency for people to believe that they are personally immune to media’s effects, even if others may be influenced or manipulated.”
“Paradoxically, and somewhat ironically, those who most strongly believe that media is just harmless entertainment, are also the ones most likely to uncritically internalize harmful media messages.”
“In short, the more you think you cannot be affected, the more likely you are to be affected.”
[12:16] Thunderf00t: I CANNOT BELIEVE that she comes out with this BULLSHIT!
Many thanks to Linda for supplying the transcript! 🙂
Thunderf00t 