Prominent feminist cancels university talk after threats of a ‘Montreal Massacre style attack’
A prominent feminist critic of the video game industry cancelled a talk scheduled Tuesday evening at Utah State University after the school received multiple, legitimate threats against her safety — including one promising to mimic the Montreal Massacre.
Anita Sarkeesian is a Canadian-American cultural critic whose YouTube series and Twitter account, @femfreq, highlight misogyny and chauvinism in video game culture. But her prominence has also made her a target of multiple, repeated attacks, and the threats she received Tuesday are just the latest and most serious in a long list of violent backlash.
One email sent to staff and students at the American school hailed Mark Lepine, the man who shot and killed 14 women before himself on December 6, 1989, as a hero”for standing up to the toxic influence of feminism on Western masculinity.” It promised the “deadliest school shooting in American history” and promised to attack the feminists who joined Sarkeesian’s talk and the nearby women’s centre. It was posted online by Utah’s Standard Examiner.
Sarkeesian tweeted that she cancelled the talk not because she was caving to “terrorism” but because the school refused to require attendees to be searched for firearms or other weapons.
“GamerGate” is the online name for a haphazard group of video game enthusiasts who take umbrage with feminist and cultural criticism of video games. It overlaps ideologically with many “men’s rights’ corners of the internet, where internet trolls discuss and target women like Sarkeesian for challenging their so-call “masculinity” or “ruining” gamer culture by asking that games, for example, stop depicting rape as a fun perk for victorious heroes.
Sarkeesian’s YouTube video critique popular video games and common tropes to the genre through a feminist lens. She has criticized the outright celebration of violence against women in many games, and this has started to take hold in video game reviewing and reporting as well. The men who loathe the possibility of change in their beloved violent toys rallied behind the “Gamer Gate” label to attack Sarkeesian and myriad other female gamers, developers and critics.
Check out Sarkeesian’s work for yourself here:
(follow link)
Prominent feminist cancels university talk after threats of a ‘Montreal Massacre style attack’
A prominent feminist critic of the video game industry cancelled a talk scheduled Tuesday evening at Utah State University after the school received multiple, legitimate threats against her safety — including one promising to mimic the Montreal Massacre.
Anita Sarkeesian is a Canadian-American cultural critic whose YouTube series and Twitter account, @femfreq, highlight misogyny and chauvinism in video game culture. But her prominence has also made her a target of multiple, repeated attacks, and the threats she received Tuesday are just the latest and most serious in a long list of violent backlash.
One email sent to staff and students at the American school hailed Mark Lepine, the man who shot and killed 14 women before himself on December 6, 1989, as a hero”for standing up to the toxic influence of feminism on Western masculinity.” It promised the “deadliest school shooting in American history” and promised to attack the feminists who joined Sarkeesian’s talk and the nearby women’s centre. It was posted online by Utah’s Standard Examiner.
Sarkeesian tweeted that she cancelled the talk not because she was caving to “terrorism” but because the school refused to require attendees to be searched for firearms or other weapons.
“GamerGate” is the online name for a haphazard group of video game enthusiasts who take umbrage with feminist and cultural criticism of video games. It overlaps ideologically with many “men’s rights’ corners of the internet, where internet trolls discuss and target women like Sarkeesian for challenging their so-call “masculinity” or “ruining” gamer culture by asking that games, for example, stop depicting rape as a fun perk for victorious heroes.
Sarkeesian’s YouTube video critique popular video games and common tropes to the genre through a feminist lens. She has criticized the outright celebration of violence against women in many games, and this has started to take hold in video game reviewing and reporting as well. The men who loathe the possibility of change in their beloved violent toys rallied behind the “Gamer Gate” label to attack Sarkeesian and myriad other female gamers, developers and critics.
Check out Sarkeesian’s work for yourself here:
(follow link)
Prominent feminist cancels university talk after threats of a ‘Montreal Massacre style attack’
