3901

I think she has reported that she pays herself just under half of what FF takes in. $540k reported revenue to her foundation since 2012 so that would be around 85k a year. This + private speaking fees, she did about 20 appearances in 2014 and I don’t know or really care if/how much she got paid for each gig.

Anyways the bigger point is the symbiotic relationship she has with the ‘terrorists’. Before her Kickstarter harassment, she was getting 4000 views on her youtube videos and that wasn’t going to change. She blew up when the MRA freaks went after her and that’s been the pattern ever since. People didn’t give her money because they cared about what she had to say, they gave her money because she was on their side of a culture war.

The paradox of all this is that Anita Sarkeesian would be completely irrelevant without the harassment that all her backers decry. This isn’t an apology for the harassment, those people are losers. But the issue is a lot more complex than you make it out to be.

3902

Are they trying intimidate you into doing something that furthers their ideological, religious or political agenda?

Yes it is a very broad term. The allied bombing of German and Japanese civilian populations in World War 2 is closer to the original meaning of the term, but now (probably since the 70s) it can refer to any action that instill fear or terror in service of some larger ideology, usually with the distinction of targeting civilians/noncombatants.

A good way to think about it is that wildly different crimes and acts are tools in the terrorists toolbox, from simple intimidation to mass murder. No one would say that intimidation and mass murder are similar acts, and yet they are both terrorism.

3903

It’s misogynoterrorcide!

I believe I used the term “trivialisation of a cause damages it” back in Sept, thanks for demonstrating this.

3904

The only thing I know of that she has out is called Revolution 60 on Greenlight. Controversy creates cash, that game would not have passed Greenlight on its own merits so quickly, and it’s obvious.

That site looked like a collection of insane radical Gators. I’d need something legitimate to believe that. Given how BW is, it’s believable, but you gotta give better sources before you put that level of accusation on someone.

3905

See, it’s weird, you’re not the first person to make this argument. But, here’s the thing, if that was true, if that wasn’t bullshit concern trolling…

it wouldn’t be you saying it. You weren’t ever for that cause! “I personally hate women, but AS needs to tone down her mild youtube criticism to advance the cause of equality” is not a convincing argument.

This shit where people who benefit from those flaws tell the people complaining about society’s flaws to shut up about those problems to make them better? That shit doesn’t date back to September, it dates back to the fucking dawn of recorded history. That’s what people said about Stonewall and Selma, man.

3906

“At first I opposed sending death threats to random women in tech, but then I heard some guy on a forum called it terrorism, so now I support the death threats and oppose equal pay for women,” is not a thought process by a real person, and if it it was, is L8 really the bad guy of that story?

3907

Terrorism is a form a political process. A minority or in other way weak group defend their political ideas against a stronger group. The difference of power is so big that the terrorism group is not tryiing to have a militar victory (thats would be a guerrilla) but to cause terror, and force the other part to accept their conditions.

So for terrorism to exist, you need mass media (or else, the terror can be produced), you need a political message, you need conditions that want to be meet, you need a way to create terror (or everybody will ignore you).

The mission of every terrorist is to force all parts to be in a negotiation table where the terrrorist group and the other group have the same level of bargaining power.

Solitary cracy people putting bombs are usually accepted at terrorism, but it almost is not. Maybe accepting a crazy bombermen as terrorist is a sliding slope that may destroy the definition to allowing anything and everything to be labeled as terrorist. Some groups may have a financial interest in doing so to apply to more people the terrorist laws.

3908

You are completely utterly wrong.

The mission of every terrorist is to force all parts to be in a negotiation table where the terrrorist group and the other group have the same level of bargaining power.

That can be true but often isn’t. Often there is no negotiating table.

3909

Yeah, I agree with Soapyfrog on this one (of course, IANAL) - no mass media is needed, and political messages/conditions can be as simple as “we want these types of people to go away or shut up.” If it’s focused on an individual (for instance, if people just kept heaping on Sarkeesian and didn’t give one whit about anybody else in the discussion), I’d argue it’s just “normal” criminal action. However, when it targets a group then it steps beyond into the realm of terrorism.

3910

I find it amusing to see how threatened your worldview is by a gaming critique made by a woman. I don’t agree with all of Sarkeesian’s comments but people like you and playingwithknives demonstrate the need to express them.

3911

This is a silly conversation about a particular poster’s rhetoric. I don’t think Sarkeesian is threatening. As Timex noted above, the stakes are zero. We’re talking about twitter drama over video games, you can’t get deeper into Plato’s cave than that.

Anyways I am actually interested in talking about Sarkeesian’s ideas. She is per Rolling Stone America’s foremost critic. I’ve read her grad thesis, have you? I think she is a puritan who is peddling moral panic to adults who are insecure about their interests/pastimes (like ex-gamers) and she’s making a damn good living at it. This is a very old pattern in American cultural criticism that has found some new trappings in second wave feminism.

3912

The irony is that I only bothered to watch her videos after this sordid saga began. I agree with her on some things and not others, but she does succeed in making me think about how women are treated in games, which is really the ultimate intention (fantasies about censorship aside). The degree of outrage she provoked and the reaction thereof just drives her point home.

3913

Yup. Any conversation about Anita Sarkeesian immediately validates the work of Anita Sarkeesian.

I’m the same way. I didn’t watch any of her videos until last year, but I learned a whole lot that I’d have otherwise not noticed. Especially her videos she started long before she focused on games, like toy ads, Smurfette, and Straw Feminist. Nothing incredibly groundbreaking, but a good 101 course.

3914

The downside is terrorism often then becomes a term of political convenience. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

3915

Not to be too nitpicky, but I think we are in third wave feminism at this point: Right to vote -> Equality -> Grrl power.

3916

Sarkeesian is not a third wave feminist.

3917

I would argue the term terrorism was never meant to apply to small scale actions, or used outside of of inter- and intra-state political or military contexts.

But so has the word evolved in usage, I think really since the 60s and 70s where various small political movements started using terrorism to make noise well out of proportion to their actual influence, during that time many things that were effectively just criminal acts only loosely associated with any ideology started getting labelled as terrorism.

Now the term has a broad application, although in people’s minds the word evokes “car bomb in a crowded civilian market” rather than “online death threat”, one is mass-murder the other is intimidation but the goal of both is to terrorize for some larger purpose, as so both are “terrorism”.

For my part a “freedom fighter” would confine their attacks to military targets or authority figures in the regime they battle, a terrorist prefers to attack the civilian population with the aim of causing maximum fear and chaos. The grey area in between the two is vast.

3918

I know back when I studied terrorism back in the 90s terrorism was defined as political violence orchestrated by non-state actors. Not sure if that definition has changed dramatically, at least in academic circles. One man’s terrorist was another man’s freedom fighter, and where history comes down on you largely depends on whether or not you win.

So putting that aside, what’s the difference between terrorism and and harassment?

3919

Mass media is absolutely needed. Without journalist you can’t have terrorist. This why terrorism is a thing from the modern world, and not before journalist was invented.

You need people to care about what you are doing. If you do this terror thing and nobody know or notice. you are a very bad terrorist. Real terrorism to be efective, need to be broadcasted on the news. So maybe you put a bomb in a dog, you want everybody in the city to know about it, everybody in the country, everybody in the world.

If you have a group of people that is happy with just causing damage, thats vandalism, not terrorism. Is the political message that turns simple vandalism into terrorist.

Also rarely you can confuse a guerrilla with terrorism, lol. A guerrilla have a static group of soldiers and assets, and use these assets to fight a asymetric war destroying assets from the enemy, personal if they can. They play a war thing where objectives are choosen for their militar value. A Terrorism can attack a empy building of offices that is choosen for the symbolic value, even if has zero militar value.

TL;DR:

How this group choosen their objectives?

random or no political message => vandalism group
political message => terrorism
militar value => guerrilla

on the real world there can be some mixing, a guerrilla can behave like a vandalism group once they have conquered a city, or maybe do some terrorism of their own. But still words have a meaning, ignore the idiots that try to confuse things for themselves and everybody else.

I am sorry if this sound insulting obvious, but a terrorism group is supposed to cause terror/fear. Somebody that make you just angry is not a terrorist. A terrorist is not somebody that make other people life slightly uncorfotable. Also a terrorism is a terrorist for their actions. Somebody that all he do is talk, he is not a terrorist (Can be something else, like a propaganda dude).

postdata:
I like Aleck definition a lot, is compact and better than anything I have wrote.

3920

Well certainly target selection is a big part of it (targeting civilians as opposed to the regime directly), and of course “non-state” has nothing to do with it, the original definition of terrorism covered ONLY state actors, though of course terrorism could orchestrated by state actors, non-state actors, and individuals alike.

So putting that aside, what’s the difference between terrorism and and harassment?

Intimidation can be a tactic of terrorism, so your question is unclear.