Terrorists at Utah State force speaker to cancel

[warpus]

The focus is on gamergate, or whatever they are calling it, because it's in the media right now and everyone is up in arms about it. Or something.

 

[useless]

She isn't a con artist, people donated to her of their own volition. You'll never to actually prove she is, beyond libelous conjecture.

Also:

Finally, the Tropes vs Women project is a nonprofit endeavor. We never place ads on any of our episodes and always make our videos available for free to everyone on YouTube. For those that may be interested, Feminist Frequency is registered as a public-benefit nonprofit corporation in the state of California.

http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/79882515581/recently-it-came-to-our-attention-that-we-had

 

[Quackers]

I have nothing to good to say about the woman. She is a con artist and a charlatan.

But threatening to murder her is a step too far. Cut it out guys. Just ignore her and the ********s will go away.

 

[useless]

I have nothing to good to say about the woman. She is a con artist and a charlatan.

Got any evidence she's a "Con artist"?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I'm not sure why this became a publicity stunt? The decision to cancel was made in consultation with Utah State University. And as for whether this sort of thing is a regular occurrence, again, from the article:



Doesn't seem like an attention grab to me.

Downtown...aren't you a sports journalist?

There hasn't been a major sporting event in the US since the invention of e-mail that hasn't been threatened in a nut-job e-mail. How many get cancelled?

There is always someone spouting when a controversial speaker makes an appearance. That's part of being a controversial speaker. If she gave her speech in Utah how many people would have known it even happened? How much attention is she getting for the cancellation?

 

[Quackers]

Got any evidence she's a "Con artist"?

We've both been over this before, don't you remember, in another thread? I don't think there have been any major developments since then. I stand by my point.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Finally, the Tropes vs Women project is a nonprofit endeavor. We never place ads on any of our episodes and always make our videos available for free to everyone on YouTube. For those that may be interested, Feminist Frequency is registered as a public-benefit nonprofit corporation in the state of California.

For those that may be interested, being registered as a 'non-profit corporation' means that after the staff (possibly of one) gets paid their salary and bonuses there is no 'profit' made by the corporation. Managing a 'non-profit' can be among the highest paid jobs in the entire nation.

 

[useless]

We've both been over this before, don't you remember, in another thread? I don't think there have been any major developments since then. I stand by my point.

The reason i asked again is that you didn't prove it back then and you've yet to prove it now.

 

[Traitorfish]

I have nothing to good to say about the woman. She is a con artist and a charlatan.

But threatening to murder her is a step too far. Cut it out guys. Just ignore her and the ********s will go away.

A step too far. Just a step. Not a leap, or a bound, or even a hop; just a step. General harassment, that's fine. Threatening to assault her, we could make a case for that. Threatening to rape her, obviously, goes without saying. But threats of murder, well, that is just a little bit much for Quackers' tastes. She doesn't deserve quite that level of abuse. Close, but, ah, there's that single and solitary step left that dictates, no, not quite.

Chivalry has not yet passed from this world, my friends.

 

[downtown]

Downtown...aren't you a sports journalist?

Yes I am

There hasn't been a major sporting event in the US since the invention of e-mail that hasn't been threatened in a nut-job e-mail. How many get cancelled?

This doesn't happen nearly as often as you think. For the biggest events, your Super Bowls, your NBA Finals, sure, there are nutjobs, but there are also massive security protocols in place. You can't compare a campus event at a place like Utah State to the freakin' Super Bowl. I regularly write about one of the largest college football programs in the country and am unaware of any threat like this ever being made at one of their football games since I started. If it happened, the response would show up in public records requests.

When smaller events, like high school football games, or small college (like USU) athletic events get threats like this (which is rare), they often do get either canceled or postponed. Moving prep football games because of concerns about gangs, or holding the events without spectators, isn't rare.

I did event promotions work while I was at Ohio State, when we brought in much more controversial figures than this woman, and we never got an explicit threat for a school shooting. Protests, sure. Something like this? No.

Utah State clearly thought it was credible enough to action and escalate.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yes I am



This doesn't happen nearly as often as you think. For the biggest events, your Super Bowls, your NBA Finals, sure, there are nutjobs, but there are also massive security protocols in place. You can't compare a campus event at a place like Utah State to the freakin' Super Bowl. I regularly write about one of the largest college football programs in the country and am unaware of any threat like this ever being made at one of their football games since I started. If it happened, the response would show up in public records requests.

When smaller events, like high school football games, or small college (like USU) athletic events get threats like this (which is rare), they often do get either canceled or postponed. Moving prep football games because of concerns about gangs, or holding the events without spectators, isn't rare.

I did event promotions work while I was at Ohio State, when we brought in much more controversial figures than this woman, and we never got an explicit threat for a school shooting. Protests, sure. Something like this? No.

Utah State clearly thought it was credible enough to action and escalate.

Consider the possibility that the media is not informed of every nut job e-mail that gets tossed into the trash can. I worked in the athletic department of a fairly innocuous university and we got plenty of nut job e-mails. Complaints about our mascot, complaints about title IX, on and on and on; some generic, some explicit, all ignored.

For a speech, before you ignore it common courtesy requires informing the speaker. I'm guessing that in this case the speaker insisted that law enforcement be contacted to 'assess the threat', and the university complied. Law enforcement is always going to 'err on the side of caution', since they frankly have no stake in the event actually happening. If every event that received a threat got cancelled that would be no loss to them. For the event to happen someone with a stake in it has to overcome the recommendation law enforcement is guaranteed to make. In this case no one had a stake in making the event happen, because there was more to gain by cancelling it.

 

[Kennigit]

Remember people, this is all because she said negative things about games

Incorrect

It is because of mental instability of the potential perpetrator

It is not advisable to try to rationalize the irrational and erratic; there is not really great nor clear cause and effect relations

The potential perpetrators romantization of mass violence is the most notable cause, if various other cases of mass violence is anything to judge by; but, this again is not all encompassing

The form of violence to perform is much more in-the-air

 

[Antilogic]

This doesn't happen nearly as often as you think. For the biggest events, your Super Bowls, your NBA Finals, sure, there are nutjobs, but there are also massive security protocols in place. You can't compare a campus event at a place like Utah State to the freakin' Super Bowl. I regularly write about one of the largest college football programs in the country and am unaware of any threat like this ever being made at one of their football games since I started. If it happened, the response would show up in public records requests.

This is the point I wanted to make. The security protocols for most universities are much more lax than at major public events like the Super Bowl. The course of action they took is justifiable if the school, speaker, and law enforcement thought the massacre threats were genuine.



Regarding Anita Sarkeesian, there is some room to critique her work--the example used on a MR call was that she claimed the incentive structure of some video games promotes the killing of random female characters and thus devalues them, but she makes the claim in front of a montage with the Hitman series that actually punishes the player for killing anyone besides the intended target. A sloppy citation, though, doesn't warrant death threats or the abuse she is getting. Just about every academic would have to be on notice for that.

 

[Kyriakos]

Maybe you and all the other people offended by her critical feminist analysis of video games should get over the fact they're being subjected to the same analysis that films, tv programmes, books etc are.

I often hear gamers wanting their hobby/interest to be taken seriously, well here was a chance and they blew it.

NOTHING Anita has said justifies the response she has gotten, and if you seriously think it has, you need to take a good long look at yourself and think "do people deserve death and rape threats, or threats of committing violence because they have a different opinion on games"

Indeed "NOTHING Anita has said justifies the response she has gotten", but that is because she is another media-made lame mouthpiece to create more braindead division when there is no issue here to begin with. She is not some martyr for a cause, nor an intellectual on computer games culture ( , that is like a BA on telecommunications, to use that simpsons joke). She was turned into an issue, by the usual media, for the usual reason to have some crap to present supposedly as important news.

This thread/OP is about her being threatened in an email. Do you think it takes awesome amounts of calculation for a teen or whatever to send a threatening email to/about some celeb they hate? It is hugely unlikely they have either the means or the actual will to kill her.

 

[Samson]

"The predicament there is that the state of Utah has a law that a person with a legal, concealed carry permit cannot be kept from entering any public building," Vitale said. "It's including universities ... that's the law. Our police just followed the law."

Is it just me, as a pinko liberal european, that finds this amazing? Do they mean public as in owned by the state, so they cannot prevent concealed firearms being taken into court houses, or the state legislature? Or do they mean public as in somewhere anyone is allowed to enter, so they cannot prevent concealed firearms being taken into bars, hospitals, schools etc? Both of these sound pretty weird to me, is Utah the exception among US states, or is this normal?

 

[EgonSpengler]

This thread/OP is about her being threatened in an email. Do you think it takes awesome amounts of calculation for a teen or whatever to send a threatening email to/about some celeb they hate? It is hugely unlikely they have either the means or the actual will to kill her.

I agree with you, it's probably just some brain-dead douchebag who wouldn't even have the stones to throw harsh language at Sarkeesian if he actually met her in person. But still, it's not on the shoulders of the target of a threat to parse its legitimacy. I can't remember his name, but there was that guy who posted a bunch of vile crap about his ex-wife to Facebook and then said, "but I wasn't being serious! I was just venting!" If you wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, he still made the mistake of posting his fantasies on a public forum, so the threat had to be considered real, so he has to go to jail (or whatever the punishment for death-threats is). It doesn't actually matter whether he meant it or not.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Is it just me, as a pinko liberal european, that finds this amazing? Do they mean public as in owned by the state, so they cannot prevent concealed firearms being taken into court houses, or the state legislature? Or do they mean public as in somewhere anyone is allowed to enter, so they cannot prevent concealed firearms being taken into bars, hospitals, schools etc? Both of these sound pretty weird to me, is Utah the exception among US states, or is this normal?

They mean public as in owned by the state. So, yes, I suppose you must be allowed to take a gun into a courthouse, library, or government office building if you have the permit. And it may not be only Utah, but every state has its own laws regarding firearms (which is itself a thorny topic). I wouldn't call it normal, no.

 

[Antilogic]

Is it just me, as a pinko liberal european, that finds this amazing? Do they mean public as in owned by the state, so they cannot prevent concealed firearms being taken into court houses, or the state legislature? Or do they mean public as in somewhere anyone is allowed to enter, so they cannot prevent concealed firearms being taken into bars, hospitals, schools etc? Both of these sound pretty weird to me, is Utah the exception among US states, or is this normal?

It's not just you, plenty of Americans find it amazing as well. Laws governing this vary by state, but Utah is definitely not an exception. For example, Georgia has a law on the books that allows guns in any public places including children's playgrounds (causing parents to freak out and call the cops), bars (but you aren't supposed to drink if you are packing heat), and stores (where two guys who were open-carrying demanded each other's gun licenses and nearly shot each other because they were playing sheriff too hard).

 

[EgonSpengler]

It's not just you, plenty of Americans find it amazing as well. Laws governing this vary by state, but Utah is definitely not an exception. For example, Georgia has a law on the books that allows guns in any public places including children's playgrounds (causing parents to freak out and call the cops), bars (but you aren't supposed to drink if you are packing heat), and stores (where two guys who were open-carrying demanded each other's gun licenses and nearly shot each other because they were playing sheriff too hard).

Oklahoma recently granted a liquor license to a shooting range.

 

[Kyriakos]

I agree with you, it's probably just some brain-dead douchebag who wouldn't even have the stones to throw harsh language at Sarkeesian if he actually met her in person. But still, it's not on the shoulders of the target of a threat to parse its legitimacy. I can't remember his name, but there was that guy who posted a bunch of vile crap about his ex-wife to Facebook and then said, "but I wasn't being serious! I was just venting!" If you wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, he still made the mistake of posting his fantasies on a public forum, so the threat had to be considered real, so he has to go to jail (or whatever the punishment for death-threats is). It doesn't actually matter whether he meant it or not.

I agree, of course, that any such threat must be examined. But the issue is that it was so widely publicised. It is not like Sarkeesian is the martyr roaming the desert to save humanity. She makes a fortune out of posting dumb stuff about sexism/violence in video games. I mean she is more of a poster-person for how to make money fast by being the media system's new diversion.

Sure, investigate the email threats. But don't turn this into a story people are supposed to have to care about. It is more of the same small-time media crap.