Couldn't agree more.

I'm not sure if feminism and men's rights are quite the same thing though. Personally I feel that both movements should be for the betterment of society, for both men and women, but I think it is perhaps unavoidable that feminism has a focus on the issues women face. If men have their own banner to rally behind how do we avoid this boy vs girl playground bullshit that it tends to devolve to. Should we all not have a foot in each camp, men fighting for women's issues and women for men's. Would we call this feminism or something else?

Let me disabuse you of some of your assumptions...

I didn't do gamergate and I don't really give a fuck about feminism/anti-feminism as it pertains to how I treat women in the real world (that being egalitarian, everyone should be equal).

Now that that's out of the way, yeah, I am for fucking real. Whether it was a stunt or just a bunch of people turning up to a talk which they paid their money to get in to, it doesn't really matter. Sarkessian was the aggressor (unless you truly believe that threaten = criticise someone's ideas online then show up in person to let them have their say), using a position of power, backed up by a bunch of like minded people to abuse paying attendees who's only crime was sitting up the front and listening quietly, which they are entitled to do.

/shockfuckinghorror, never mind free speech, you can't even listen to people anymore without them wetting their pants in terror.

There is plenty of video footage of said event and you are more than welcome to point out to me exactly where in that footage any of the so called aggressors did anything actually aggressive. Aka, the point where my opinion of what went on is different to the reality. I don't need to convince people of the reality of the situation, I can just roll the footage.

She broke the code of conduct, and while other YT'ers were being ejected for being in public areas (a breach of the CoC), she was given an explicit pass by the Greens. Sargon and the rest of the so called aggressors were not ejected or banned from Vidcon which indicates to me that they did nothing wrong in the eyes of the organisers. The aggressors seemed to get along fine with other people they met that they ideologically disagree with, with no other incidents being recorded. Sark, on the other hand, also verbally abused Boogie2988, one of the nicest and most considerate people I've seen on YT, and someone who had gone out of his way not to offend her.

All this is a matter of record, not my opinion. So now comes the question of your integrity. Are you going to actually back up your claims with a little actual evidence, or are you just going to go back to calling names... ; P

Are you for real?

Do you not see that you are literally gaslighting by attempting to paint an individual, who organized a stunt aimed at intimidating another person in public, as the victim of the incident?

I don't even give a shit about gamergate or the feminism/anti-feminism celebrity battle that you, clearly, have taken a side on. I don't support anyone involved because all of the participants appear to be acting like asshats. But any objective viewer can see that one side made a bold move to aggressively provoke an opponent and succeeded in their goal of getting a response. It was bullying and abusive and it illicited an undignified response.

Let me reiterate, I am not your opposition in your crazy war. But I have to point out that it is a perplexing bit of mental acrobatics for you to attempt to perpetuate a false reality by accusing an intended victim of trying to perpetuate a false reality.

That's a clown move and if you had any integrity you would pause a moment for a little self examination.

^ @ChaosEngine: I think she makes perfect sense -- she just has some hang ups in regards to her own gender. (She's also really dumb.)

"Leave Hillary Alone, Bullies"

Sarcasm. Reference to an old meme regarding Britney Spears?

"Aww, c'mon guys, give her a break. Anyone can be out of commission.... for weeks on end... whilst in the heat of battle for the highest office in the land. No press conferences for nearly a year? No scheduled campaign events for days upon days? No statements, no answers, no accountability, no problem. Layin' low to run out the clock before November, but you're SEXIST for noticing it."

Sarcasm and calling out Hillary and the media for using misogyny and sexism as a crutch rather than ignoring the sexism like a good woman should in this man's world. Like Palin, who mans up and doesn't let her emotions show. (I don't believe in this viewpoint, but I believe Palin does.)

"And you're MISOGYNIST for questioning a female's fitness. Good thing media didn't hound the crap out of '08 candidate John McCain for his decades-old military medical records or I'd guess them to be hypocrites."

More sarcasm in regards to feminism, while calling out the hypocrisy of the media going after McCain's medical records, but excusing Hillary.

"Leave Hillary alone! All that email-evidenced yoga, and wedding planning, and cookie-baking-grandma-duty wears you out. Believe you me."

Sarcasm and misogyny in the form comparing Hillary's email scandal to typical female activities such as practicing yoga, wedding planning and baking cookies. Not exactly sure why she's focused on making fun of typical female activities. Palin clearly has some emotional issues she needs to work out. Maybe she wishes she was a man? lol. Anyway!

"Heck, even those of us claiming to be fit as a (seasoned?) fiddle, hit bumps in the wellness road. Even I. Especially I. (Remember Piper's middle name is "Grace"; mine isn't.)"

Is she referring to Trump as the "seasoned" fiddle? No clue.

Also not sure who Piper is... Piper Laurie from Twin Peaks? Piper Wright from Fallout 4? Pied Piper? Likening the Pied Piper to Jesus Christ, who by "grace" she is saved? Help me out here.

"Rock-running recently, I tripped over my own two feet and crashed & burned face-first. I recovered with the doc's SuperGlue, and now any man who asks "what happened?" I'll refer to as just a mean ol' SEXIST bully."

I think she's appealing to men by referring to stitches as "SuperGlue", sorta like duct tape fixing everything. She should have said the doc's duct tape. That would have been funny, actually. But for real, I think Palin may have an inner desire to be a man and not a "weak" woman.

"Glad for Hillary's protective media's precedence. The next woman running for POTUS has no need to answer to much of anything, for we've got weddings to plan, and Down Dogs to do, and cookies in the oven! So just leave us alone, boys."

Almost full circle to earlier in the message where she lists a bunch of typical female activities: wedding planning, yoga ("Down Dogs" = downward facing dog, a pose in yoga), and baking cookies.

I guess she's claiming Hillary is just a whiny girl so she might as well just do a bunch of dumb girl stuff. Meanwhile, Palin is doing "man" stuff like jumping on rocks, then she goes to the hospital, gets her head superglued together and back out on her feet doing more man stuff.

I'm gonna go bake some cookies now. That sounds like the best idea Palin's ever inspired me to do. Bake some motherfuckin' cookies.

Also, everyone should practice yoga and if you're going to get married, doesn't everyone help with the planning on some level? Why is Palin so dumb?

I don't really care what his fans said on Twitter or anywhere else for that matter. Unless he explicitly instructed them to go out and harass somebody you can't realistically hold him responsible for the actions of others.

1:1 example? Were we even reading the same article? The bulk of the article describes how the Baphomet board on 8chan used publicly available information, possibly gleaned from thunderf00t's video, or perhaps not, to target Jennifer Keller and her business. The folks over at Baphomet were really just doing this for their own amusement, here's a quote from the article.

" I'll save the trouble that I'm a bit of a thunderfag and while I understand he's a cucked shithole obsessed with Anita Scamkeesian, the fact they will get him fired merely on the base of their hurt feelings kind of ticked me off. "

I should also take a moment to point out that Jennifer Keller aka 'Laughing Witch' on YouTube along with others engaged in a letter writing campaign to try and get Phil Mason 'thunderf00t' fired from his job. Now I don't know about you, but I would call that harassment. I find that kind of behavior unacceptable no matter which side you are on. But there she was, down in the trenches slinging shit right along side the other trolls and misanthropes.

As for specious arguments, the focus on minor details and painting whole groups of people with a broad brush, Sarkeesian and company do all of these things. Sarkeesian criticizes an industry and thunderf00t attacks her criticisms and questions her rationale. But supporters will try to draw attention away from his arguments by calling it an attack on her.

You want to hold thunderf00t responsible for the actions of trolls and MRA wack-jobs, but are you willing to hold Sarkeesian responsible for the actions of feminism's lunatic fringe?

Then you haven't encountered any of his fans on twitter.

And he is pretty much the largest and most 1:1 example the above video is referencing: He uses specious arguments, focuses on minor details or extreme examples to paint with a massive brush, and generally is more vitriol than skepticism.

And the difference between Sarkeesian making videos critiquing and thunderf00t is myriad: Sarkeesian focuses on depictions and media, thunderf00t focuses on indviduals and a very amorphous idea of "feminism" with videos like "Why feminism is poisoning atheism", "Why 'feminism' poisons EVERYTHING", all pretty much completely obsessed with Sarkeesian and Rebecca Watson.

That's not skepticism.. that's a creepy personal vendetta.

The other major difference are their fans. I don't recall Sarkeesian ever taking out a personal vendetta against a random person and suggesting her fans bombard their business on Yelp with bad reviews and then people on the doxxing boards of 8chan joined in the online attacks.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/25/1439148/-Phil-Mason-is-Working-With-Baphomet-to-Ruin-DC-Business

I mean, it's not quite as simple as "one person makes videos critiquing, another makes videos critiquing". But I feel like you probably already knew that.

I always felt that my progressive ideology was a natural result of my atheism and 'skepticism', so it was really weird to find all these angry conservatives online shouting at women, muslims and black people while calling themselves atheists and rational skeptics.

I think the 'problem' with SJWs online is that a lot of concepts that 20 years ago would have been discussed mainly by well-educated academics, such as privilege, appropriation, etc., are now becoming mainstream and are being wielded by teenagers, lunatics, and people who are no smarter than you or I. This is technically a good thing - we need to get those concepts into the open if we are ever going to address the real problems they describe - but it means that there will be some people who fuck up or overreach while trying out these concepts. If somebody badly wants an excuse to dismiss all of feminism, or all of racial equality, there will thus inevitable be some teenager online with a webcam who is all too happy to give them that excuse - but why look for that excuse in the first place?

I wanted to say something like:

"Wait... some people need a guide to figure this out?"

But the relentless innuendo and mocking of modern feminism won me over by the end.

Women want it both ways. Feminism isnt about gender equality its about gender inequality in favor of females. Fuck that. You act like a man and hit a guy, expect to get treated like a man and get hit back.

1. I *AM* an LGBTQ person, I don't speak for them, but I am one voice.
I tend to avoid harassing people.

2. No.

3. a) Both. They aren't mutually exclusive. I want women to be equal and I want legal protections in place to maintain this. This is not secret information.
b) They do.

4. Question 3b) suggests women should be responsible for their safety. Question 4 seems to criticize the notion of being responsible for your own safety. Glad to see unified thought in this. The answer is I expected random bouts of mockery, judgement, and violence. You know, the other 95% of my life.

5. Because shitting on a group that seeks to change culture to react similarly to loss of black life as it does for white lives, while pointing out where society fails to meet this standard is pretty charactersticly racist.
Also I don't say that "Kill all white people" is not racist.

6. Yes. Did you know that the permanence of objects, the transmission of ideas and culture and systems of law are based on events in the past? That by studying history we can understand how humans work in a unique way, that knowing that say, there was a WWI may help us understand the conditions under which WWII occurred and that this knowledge may help us decide what to do in the aftermath of WWII to avoid a recurrence?
That if a group has historically had problems, many of those problems have probably been inherited along with consequences of the problems (such as poverty, strongly inherited social trait). Yes. Linear time,human affairs, culture. They are all things that exist.

7. Yes, I have many examples of people doing this. Mostly this is due to short lifespan. But there are many manchildren in our culture, who seem to think that other people asserting boundaries is immature.

8. There are programs designed to help boost male education dropout rate. If you 'fight' for 'improvements in the fairness of social order ' to help achieve this, you are a Social Justice Warrior, and so you could just have asked yourself.
Also, American bias? Pretty sure this is not a global stat...

9. Because one focusses on correcting the inequalities between the sexes and was born at a time when women didn't have proper property rights, voting rights etc etc, and so it was primarily focussed on uplifting women and so the name 'feminism'. Egalitarianism on the other hand, is the general pursuit. Many feminists are egalitarian, but not all. Hence different words. English, motherfucker....

10. Nothing, as I am not.

11. No, my grandparents were being enslaved in eastern Europe by the far left and right (but more the right, let's be honest).

Seriously though, I don't remember the liberal protests of "Not all ISIS".

12. Ingroup outgroup hatred and distrust is a universal human trait. Race seems to provoke instinctive group psychology in humans, presumably from evolving in racially separate groups.

13. The phrase is intended to deflate 'Black Lives Matter' whose point is that society seems to disagree, in practice, with this. There's only one realistic motivation to undermining the attempts to equalize how the lives of different races are treated socially.
It's also designed to be perfectly innocuous outside of this context so that white people can totally believe they aren't being dicks by saying it.

14. My social justice fighting is almost always done in secret. I hate the limelight, and I hate endlessly seeking credit for doing the right thing. So I try to keep it to a minimum while also raising consciousness about issues where I can.
Hey wait, did you fall for the bias that the big public figures are representative in all ways of the group? HAHAHAHA! Noob.
Wait, did a man voicing a cartoon kangaroo wearing an Islamic headdress, superimposed on video footage of a woman in a gym grinding her hips tell me to stop trying show off how awesome I am and and to get real?

15. No, they are both not capable of giving consent. Sounds like you have had a bitter experience. Sorry to hear that.

16. I spent two decades trying to change myself. I tortured myself into a deep suicidal insanity. When I stopped that, and when society had changed in response to my and others plights being publicised sympathetically I felt happy and comfortable with myself.
You would prefer millions in silent minorities living through personal hells if the alternative means you have to learn better manners? What a dick.

17. Sure. It's also OK if you say 'nigga' in the context of asking this question. But I'm white and English. You should ask some black Americans if your usage causes unintended messages to be sent. I'd certainly avoid placing joyful emphasis, especially through increased volume, on the word.

18. Ah, you've confused a mixture of ideas and notions within a group as a contradiction of group idealogy. Whoops. I don't understand gender identity. I get gender, but I never felt membership in any group. That's how I feel, and have since the 1990s. The internet has allowed disparate and rare individuals to form groups, and some of these groups are people with different opinions about how they feel about gender and they are very excited to meet people other people with idiosyncratic views as they had previously been alone with their eccentric perspective.

19. If white men are too privileged then the society is not my notion of equal.

20. After rejecting the premise as nonsensical. In as much as I want rules to govern social interactions that take into consideration the diversity of humanity as best as possible, I recognize those same rules will govern my behaviour.

21. Women can choose how to present themselves. Video Game creators choose how to present women in their art. I can suggest that the art routinely portrays women as helpless sex devices, while supporting women who wish to do so for themselves.

22. You DO that? I've never even had the notion. I just sort of listen and digest and try to see if gaps can reasonably be filled with pre-existent knowledge or logical inferrences and then I compare and contrast that with my own differring opinion and I consider why someone might have come to their ideas. Assuming they aren't stupid I try to understand as best I can and present to them my perspective from their perspective. I don't sing, or plug in headphones or have an imaginary rock concert.

23. I have done no such thing. Look, here I am listening to you. You have all been asking questions that have easy answers to if you looked outside your bubble of fighting a handful of twitter and youtube users thinking these people represent the entirety of things and seeking only to destroy them with your arguments rather than understanding the ideas themselves.

24. Reverse Racism is where white guys are systematically (and often deliberately) disadvantaged - such as the complaints against Affirmative Action. I'm sure your buddies can fill you in on the details. The liberal SJWs you hate tend to roll their eyes when they hear it too. Strange you should ask.

25. No. I've never seen the list. I just use whatever pronouns people feel comfortable with. Typically I only need to know three to get by in life, same as most other English speakers.

26. I'm the audience motherfucker, and so are you. That's how it works.

27. I don't do those things, but yes, I have considered the notion of concept saturation in discourse. Have you considered the idea that people vary in their identification of problems, based on a number of factors. Some people are trigger happy and this may be a legitimate problem. Since you are aware of this, you also have a duty to try to overcome the saturation biases.
Similarly, if you keep using the word 'fucking', motherfucker, you'll find it loses its impact quite quickly. See this post motherfucker. Probably why you needed to add the crash zoom for impact. You could have achieved more impact with less sarcasm and and a more surprising fuck.

I had to stop watching. Yeah. Nothing to do with feminism.

As for saying that if you hit someone once, that person has the right to beat you senseless?

No. No, that is not true.

I know that men do that to men. And it is wrong when they do it to each other. That is very definition of poor impulse control. (And to sneak into feminist territory -- men who say "she made me do it" as an excuse for beating up their significant others? I suspect that behavior can be traced back, in part, to the beat downs and humiliations they received early in life, including from men.)

This is called the cycle of violence and has nothing to do with the true face of gender equality.

What? Januari pretty much said the same thing as most others in this thread - that you have to make a real effort to tie this to feminism, which is indicative of the video creator reaching pretty hard. It doesn't seem to me that the thread consensus is that critical perspectives on feminism are bad, but that the video really didn't address feminism, and didn't offer a critical perspective on much of anything. Where are you getting this ad hominem vibe from (except for my comment on 'Douchey McShitbeard' which I will happily own as ad hominem. Just look at that beard)?

I didn't enjoy the video, i didn't see it as a triumph of common sense or reason. I also didn't enjoy the flippant criticism as though this was specifically an attack on feminism by @enoch who never has anything good to say about feminism - which is patently bullshit and follows on from the simplistic line of thinking "feminism good, anti-feminism bad".

Criticism of feminism/civil rights/anything is valid and important. In the same way as Fathers For Justice must guard against a minority of members that are misogynistic, so must feminism guard against a minority of members that are misandrist. Why? Because these people turn non-members against you - being able to criticise your cause is one of the healthiest ways to grow it. Ad hominem attacks are no better than chauvinism and i would hope that my fellow feminists would agree with that.

What i did enjoy was @Januari 's comment which was critical of the point without being critical of the person and perfectly summed up the reasons why a decent person *should* dislike this video, in a vacuum.