Why I Didn’t Stay Silent

Twitter is kind of a mixed blessing. It’s a wonderful place to meet people that share you beliefs and interests. It offers a way for fans to interact on a more personal level with their idols than they’d been able to before (did I ever tell you guys that Steve Valentine tweeted at me once? Because it was awesome.) Whatever your particular pleasure, you can indulge it on Twitter. Yes, even the weird stuff.

At its heart, Twitter isn’t really a website. It’s a community. Imagine that Twitter is a high school. Just like every high school, Twitter has cliques. You have the science kids, the video game nerds (what up, my people), the jocks, and the bullies.

This high school was custom made for the bullies.

The internet is like bully heaven, after all. It’s a near consequence free environment where they can assume their ultimate bully form (like if Voltron was a total asshole), focus in on someone that has somehow erred (the error can be real, or as is most likely the case, almost entirely manufactured) and make their lives a hell on earth.

Internet bullies seem to consider themselves the Knights Templar of the internet age, seeking out injustice wherever it dwells and wiping it out with the keyboard of justice. They go on abusive crusades against people that have usually done nothing wrong. Often the people in the bully mobs don’t even care about whatever transgression their victim is supposed to have committed. They just get off on the twisted sense of community that comes from teaming up with a large group against a smaller, easily vanquished opponent.

A lot of the time, it seems that the victims of online bully mobs are women who made the mistake of being women and being visible. Anita Sarkeesian was attacking viciously because she wanted to discuss how women are presented in video games. Jennifer Hepler was driven off of Twitter entirely because she writes for video games, and cares more about those stories than she does about combat (which, quite frankly, I rather appreciate in someone who is writing stories for games.) Sex positive activist and educator Laci Green was targeted when an old video surfaced in which she made a joke about transvestites. She apologized, explaining that the video was several years old and that she was less ignorant now (and ashamed of what she said), and deleted the video. She was still brutally harassed to the point where she, too, left the internet for a time.

Recently journalist Caroline Criado-Perez successfully campaigned to have a non-royal woman appear on British banknotes. Sane people would either think, “Hey, that’s pretty cool” or “Meh.” Misogynistic internet bullies, however, lost their shit. Mary Beard and Stella Creasy, both of whom were involved in Ms. Criado-Perez’s campaign, joined her at the center of an online hate campaign that included rape and death threats which at one point were arriving at the rate of fifty every hour.

Twitter did nothing to protect these women, in some cases insisting that the threats of violence weren’t violating their Terms of Service. Mark Luckie, who is a manager at Twitter, eventually locked his account and blocked Ms. Craido-Perez  because she repeatedly tweeted at him, asking for his help.

Enraged by this, columnist Caitlin Moran proposed a one-day boycott of Twitter. This movement was called both #trolliday and #twittersilence, and she suggested that the silence of so many would make the point to Twitter that their inaction was unacceptable.

In other words, she felt like the best response to internet bullying and the lack of intervention on the part of the people in power was… to shut up.

I don’t think it worked the way she intended.

The goal of internet bullies is to silence their victims. To drive them away from the public forum, to make them invisible, to have them be forgotten. Why on earth would they be perturbed by a day of silence on the part of vocal feminists? They’re thrilled. To quote Damian Thompson, “Oh, the blessed relief. Today someone turned down the volume of self-righteous feminist sermonizing on Twitter and the network enjoyed a brief interlude of (relative) civility.”

A day of silence isn’t going to be much of a thorn in Twitter’s side, either. They know that in the long term, they’ll lose very few users over this entire debacle and that the people who were silent today will be back tomorrow. They’re also getting a small break from dealing with the people who were vocal in their displeasure regarding Twitters actions and lack thereof.

I can think of very few situations where silence is effective as a form of protest. I’ve always felt that if you want to create change, first you have to be noticed. You have to make noise, draw attention, even be a thorn in someone’s side. You have to make the status quo so uncomfortable that change is the lesser of two evils. Silence very rarely does that.

That’s why I wasn’t silent today. Sure, all I tweeted about was Doctor Who, silly costumes and sewing stuff, but I was present and I was visible. I was not silent, and I will not be silent.

Phoenix Comicon Day 2: It’s A Man’s World

Saturday started out a bit more smoothly than Friday did for me at Phoenix Comicon, mostly because by Saturday I’d figured out where almost everything was.

This turned out to be a really good thing, because the attendance was a lot higher on Saturday than it had been on Friday (or would be on Sunday), and knowing how to get where I was going made things a lot easier on me. The organizers of this year’s event had decided that rather than stagger panels so that the beginning and end times overlap, they would run the panels concurrently, with a thirty-minute break between each session. On Friday, I thought that scheduling the panels this way was brilliant. I had plenty of time to get from one place to another, and even time to grab a drink or stop by the bathroom on the way.

What had appeared to be a brilliant idea on Friday caused serious traffic problems on Saturday afternoon. Having all the panels run concurrently meant that, for 30 out of every 90 minutes, everyone was out on the convention floor at the same time. Movement through the convention center slowed to a crawl, and police officers were called in to help direct traffic. Some people were even denied entrance to the convention because there was just no room.

Nothing on the schedule was worth getting crushed to death between Wreck-It-Ralph and The Black Knight from Monty Python, so during this part of the day I decided to go upstairs and sit out the worst of the crowds. I managed to find a spot that was fairly secluded, and I was leaning against a wall texting a friend when a guy walked up to me, hand extended.

“Hi, I’m *Random guy name*” (Totally don’t remember.)

I shook his hand and introduced myself. I was baffled as to why he was talking to me, but whatever, I’m a friendly person.

He asked what I was doing at the convention, and I was a bit confused. I was wearing a media badge, and I wasn’t sure if he was asking if I was covering the convention for work, or if he was asking something else. I explained that I was there for several different reasons, including wanting to write about it.

“Oh, so you’re a writer?”

I affirmed that I was.

“I’m a computer engineer.”

I murmured something along the lines of “That’s nice”. The conversation was getting weirder and more stilted, which is impressive considering it had started out pretty damn weird and stilted. I still had no idea why this guy was talking to me.

After an awkward silence he said, “You wanna go somewhere?”

I froze.  After a second he looked away from me and muttered “liketolunchorsomething”, and I just shook my head and told him I was waiting for someone.

He walked away from me without saying anything else.

I wanted to crawl out of my skin and set it on fire. I felt awful after that, but I couldn’t seem to put a finger on what I was feeling. It wasn’t until later that night that I got a handle on it.

It was shame. I was feeling shame, because as soon as it happened I started questioning myself. How did I invite it? What did I do that made him feel his attentions would be welcomed?

I’d gone over every aspect of my existence a hundred times before I realized I was doing it. Was it my clothes? Nah, couldn’t be that. Was it the way I was standing? I even wondered if there was some secret convention language I wasn’t aware of, a language where “Leaning against a wall texting” was code for “$50 for 30 minutes, protection provided by the establishment”. (Is there? Because if there is someone better tell me NOW.)

I wondered if I misinterpreted it, but… I didn’t. I don’t tend toward knee-jerky, histrionic reactions to things, and in the past I’ve been accused of not being reactive enough when someone is being sexually creepy toward me.

A guy walked up to me and, without any encouragement from me, asked if I “wanted to go somewhere”, and I spent the next 24 hours trying to figure out how it wasn’t his fault. I spent 24 hours feeling ashamed because of something he did.

I was pretty pissed when I figured that out.

I was still reeling from the unwanted come-on when I stopped later that day to talk to a games reviewer that was attending the convention in a professional capacity. I was asking him how he’d gotten started, and explained that I was interested in writing about games and gaming culture- he interrupted me here.

“You’re lucky,” he said, “because it’s not hard to get jobs as a gaming journalist if you’re a woman. You don’t have to be a good writer. Hell, you put on a sexy outfit, do some sexy cosplay, and they’ll make you famous.”

He went on to explain how most of the women that are writing about games aren’t even REAL gamers; they just started playing with the current generation of consoles and think that gives them the right to write about games. He talked about fake geek girls and women who cosplay for attention. He was like a walking example of every attitude I rail against on my blog.

By the time I finally got away from him I was feeling pretty bruised. I left the convention after that. Instead of attending the “Dramatic Fanfic Readings” panel I’d been looking forward to (I love me some dramatic fanfic readings!) I went to a bar, got a drink with some friends, and then back to my hotel to shower until I could scrub the thick slime of misogyny and sexism off my skin.

Saturday wasn’t a great day for me at Phoenix Comicon. It wasn’t the convention’s fault; they made some mistakes with scheduling, but they handled the resulting chaos well. The environment they created- and I feel it’s important to say this- did not encourage this type of behavior from either of the men I encountered. Phoenix Comicon staff made the event as safe for everyone as they possibly could, and they did a lovely job.

Still, it was a harsh reminder of why I write about the things I do- because things like these still happen in what should be a safe space, and that’s bullshit.

What Happened to Adria Richards: The Internet Is A Gigantic Bag of Dicks.

(I was going to put a picture here, but I made the mistake of doing a Google image search on “bag of dicks” and now I need to go drink  until I forget what I saw.)

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the Adria Richards/ PyCon “scandal”. On one hand, it seemed like something I should write about, because sexism in gaming specifically and the tech industry in general is a subject I rant about a lot here.

On the other hand, I think the whole thing was ridiculously blown out of proportion.

For those of you that live productive lives and don’t spend all of your time reading articles on the internet, Adria Richards is a former “Developer Evangelist” at a company called Sendgrid. (“Developer Evangelist” is apparently a fancy way of saying “Head of Developer Relations”.) She recently attended PyCon, a convention for people who program using Python. Yes, there’s a convention for that. There’s a convention for everything.

Adria was attending a panel when, according to her account on her blog, she entered a conversation with the two men behind her. They were discussing the panels they’d attended when one of the men started making jokes about “forking” and “big dongles”. This made Adria really uncomfortable (which, for all you brodudes out there, is something even the most laid back woman might feel when a complete stranger starts making dick jokes at her).

She says that she was going to wait until after the panel to address the situation until the panel displayed a picture of a little girl who had attended the convention’s Young Coder’s Workshop. She thought about the future that little girl faced, the obstacles she’d have to overcome if she wanted a job in the tech industry and the treatment she’d have to endure, and a part of her said, “NOPE. FUCK THIS SHIT.” (That’s my interpretation. I don’t think she’s said “fuck this shit” about this situation at any point. Well, she probably has, but not on the internet, because let’s be honest, the internet isn’t exactly a safe place for her right now. Bag of dicks.)

She turned in her seat, snapped a picture of them on her phone, and tweeted it, along with a description of their behavior. She also tweeted a link to PyCon’s code of conduct.

PyCon staff acted quickly, pulling the men out of the panel and discussing their behavior with them, before allowing them to return to the conference. (Initial reports said the men were booted from the conference, but PyCon organizers say that’s not what happened.)

Playhaven, the company both men worked for, was not at all amused by the incident and terminated the employment of the man who’d made the joke.

Because the situation had already generated significant internet attention, and because the internet is a giant bag of dicks, this ended up being worse for Adria Richards than for either of the men involved. Yes, even worse than it was for the guy who lost his job, and yes, I KNOW he has three kids, the dicks on the internet have pointed that out approximately 11.5 billion times.

Adria Richards became the internet’s favorite punching bag. People were furious with her for costing that poor, poor man his job, because the fact that he was held responsible for something that he did was somehow her fault. She was mocked mercilessly for her race, her gender, her appearance; called a humorless bitch a thousand different ways, and received death and rape threats. The company she worked for was targeted as well; Sendgrid started losing business and their website was taken down by a ddos attack. (Playhaven, the company that actually fired the guy, had no trouble with their website.)

It wasn’t too long before Adria Richards found herself out of a job as well. Sendgrid stated that, because of the incident, she was no longer effective in her position.

So, two people unemployed and a woman facing a barrage of internet abuse, all because of a joke about forking with big dongles.

That’s eye-rollingly ridiculous.

If I was at a convention in a professional capacity, I could very well have made the same mistake this guy did: make an off-color joke in casual conversation without considering that it may cause others discomfort. I’m not trying to excuse his behavior; it would have been just as wrong if I’d done it. I don’t think that this incident proves this guy is a misogynist or a creep. All it proves is that, like many other people, he thinks dick jokes are funny. He’s right. Dick jokes, in the right context, are funny.

I also likely would have made the same mistake Adria Richards did. To clarify, before I lose my Feminist Joykill membership on the grounds of treason, I do not think she was overreacting when she felt offended. I don’t think she was wrong for speaking up; in fact, I think tweeting at the PyCon staff explaining the situation was an excellent solution. However, it was very poor judgment to tweet the picture she did. It was a level of public shaming that was extreme and unnecessary for what he did, especially considering that she didn’t ask him to stop directly before she did it.

Poor judgment or not, I likely would have done the same thing, and I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. I tweet everything.

Here’s the thing about sexual jokes. Everyone I know thinks they’re hilarious in the right context (and when they’re actually funny). In the wrong context they cease to be funny and become uncomfortable. This isn’t just true for women; I talked to a lot of friends of various genders while writing about this and they all told me the same thing: suggestive jokes made by someone you don’t know or in an environment where they are not appropriate don’t feel like jokes. They’re uncomfortable and can even feel predatory. Adria Richards wasn’t being an over-reactive, man-hating feminist that had no sense of humor. She was a woman attending a male-dominated event and faced with a situation that would have made many people uncomfortable.

For the man who was involved in this situation, having his picture plastered all over the internet has not compromised his anonymity.  This probably won’t make it harder for him to find another job (nor should it; I’d imagine he’s learned his lesson). For Adria Richards, the consequences are far more painful. People will remember her for this, and it will likely have a lasting and negative impact on her career.

It’s been a big few months for women in tech. They’ve been speaking out loudly against sexism in tech industries, demanding and affecting change in a lot of ways. The #1reasonwhy movement laid out how prevalent and damaging sexism is in the tech industry while #1reasontobe battled it with both encouragement and mentoring for women. Meagan Marie wrote about the harassment she suffered while working as a reporter for Game Informer and her refusal to be silent about that type of treatment ever again. Her actions both validated and empowered women that had found themselves in similar situations. Brenda Romero, the co-chair of the IGDA’s Women in Games special interest group, resigned her post in protest after she learned of an IGDA sponsered party that had featured scantily clad female dancers.

This is big stuff. This is stuff that takes incredible courage and is incredibly necessary because it effects incredible change.

Adria Richards spoke up and was punished for it to a degree that will likely discourage other women from making a stand.

Good job, internet, you gigantic fucking bag of dicks. You’re why we can’t have nice things.

Fake Geek Girls: Not a Thing.

It’s that time of the month again; the glorious time when some douchebag with a victim complex rails against the cruel, cruel twist of fate that allowed women into the geeky clubhouse.

Yes. Women. With boobs. They pretend to like geeky things; they pretend to read comic books and play video games, but we all know the truth.

THEY ARE POSERS. FAKES. These… these… HARLOTS of geekery spend months crafting accurate costumes and thousands of dollars attending to conventions, just so they can prey on innocent geeky men. Many of those men are apparently virgins or bad with women (not my words), and these devil women come prancing into the hallowed halls of geekdom with their boobs and their lips- and they have the nerve to WALK AROUND where men can see them.

Can someone just think of those poor men?!

It is unbelievable that this travesty is allowed to continue. The fact that these… these… succubi are permitted into these sacred gatherings – “mantherings”, if you will- to sate their unholy thirst for-

Um. Actually, I’m not exactly clear on this point. Something about… attention, maybe? To hand out erections like some kind of twisted Easter Bunny? Perhaps they maintain their youth and beauty by bathing in the tears of sweaty virgins? Like Elizabeth of Bathory only, you know, grosser.

Or maybe- and I know this is going to sound crazy, but stay with me here- maybe women (yes, even pretty ones) can love geeky things as much as men do.

Maybe some women are so captivated and empowered by a character they want to be that character, even if it’s only for a few days.

Maybe some women are artists who look at a character design and see inspiration and challenge. Maybe when they attend conventions, they’re displaying their art to public scrutiny, and not their bodies.

Maybe the “fake geek girl” isn’t the problem. Maybe the problem lies within the idea that geek culture is a tree-house with a “No Girls Allowed” sign posted on the front door; that women have no business liking things like comic books or video games- and that if they say they do, it’s because they want to get a man’s attention.

And that’s just not true. No “maybe” about it.

When a woman cosplays- just like when a man cosplays- they are inviting you to look at their costume. That’s it. They are not inviting anyone to inspect their bodies, to comment on their bodies, to touch their bodies. They are not making any offers or promises, regardless of how revealing their costumes are. (No, Tony Harris, just because a woman has “glossy open lips” doesn’t mean she is promising “the moon and stars of pleasure”- and contrary to your apparent beliefs, the highest aspiration of most women is not having some random chinbeard wanking over her. Because, ew.)

To be perfectly honest, the kind of attention Mr. Harris believes women attend these cons for is readily available close to home. Bars, nightclubs, the gym or the grocery store. If all a woman wanted was to be objectified by random guys, she could get that anywhere. What she can’t get anywhere, what she’s likely looking for when she attends a convention, is the opportunity to be surrounded by people who get it. They love the same things she loves, they get excited by the same things she does, and they can look at the costume she is wearing and admire it for what it is: a love letter to the character and the character’s creators.

“Cosplay-Chicks” aren’t the problem, “Fake geek-girls” aren’t a thing and the “No Girls Allowed” sign is off the clubhouse door.

What EA’s Jeff Brown Said, and Why I’m Angry About It.

There is apparently a feud brewing between Lorne Lanning, creator of Oddworld, and EA, creator of every game you’ve ever played. (Ok, not really. But almost.) As I understand it, Lanning claims EA tried to acquire his development team (and something about Russian gangsters), and EA’s corporate spokesman, Jeff Brown, issued a statement denying those claims. A statement that read, in part, “We wish Lorne luck on the game and recommend Lithium for the paranoia and Tourette Syndrome.” (link)

Honestly, I don’t care about the business side of this story at all. I’m not interested in anything that EA may or may not have done regarding Lanning’s team, I’m not even all that curious about the Russian mafia bit. I got invested the second Jeff Brown, on behalf of EA, used mental illness as a slur.

I take that shit personally.

Why does Mr. Brown’s statement rub me so raw? Consider for a moment what he is saying, the stereotypes he is playing on.  His sarcastic comment REALLY means, “I think this guy is full of shit, and I want to belittle him. Therefore, I am going to suggest that he needs to be medicated for these conditions that I probably know next to nothing about (besides what I’ve seen on House). I am doing this because I truly believe that people with serious mental illnesses are worth less as human beings; they should not be taken seriously. Anything they say is likely made up, even if they believe it to be true in their reduced capacity for thought or emotion. Releasing a statement that says I think he is mentally ill will tell the entire world that they can and should disregard what this man is saying, because crazy people are, you know… crazy.”

Then I imagine he gave himself a high-five and said, “SWEET BURN!”

His statement wasn’t just a dismissal of Mr. Lanning and his claims; it was a dismissal of every person out there that struggles with mental illness, and while I don’t believe it reflects EA’s official stance, he was speaking on behalf of his company.

Did you know that there is a link between mental illness and gaming? While some suspect gaming triggers disease, I personally believe that people who struggle with disorders like mine are attracted to games because they give us a sense of accomplishment and control that we don’t often get to experience in the real world. In games, we get to win, we get to be the hero. They provide an escape from daily lives that are often a struggle.

When a company that makes the games I use as a coping tool mocks my illness, it’s disheartening.

He was also perpetuating the stigma that keeps people from learning about mental illness in a way that helps them provide understanding and support for their loved ones. It keeps people from seeking help for themselves, because they are ashamed of needing it. Stigma keeps people sick and makes them suffer, and it’s this kind of thing- this mocking statement and the underlying assumption that everyone thinks this way about mental illness- that cements that stigma into place.

Mental illness is not a choice. It is not a character flaw. It is not a weakness, a failure, a crime.

It does not make people worthless. It does not (usually) make people dangerous.

Mental illness is crippling, it is isolating, and it is not a joke.

You’re not funny, Mr. Brown.

For a great website that is working against stigmatizing mental illness, check out http://www.bringchange2mind.org/.