This just posted at feminist philosophers:
An email sent to Utah State University officials threatens to terrorize the school with a deadly shooting over a talk to be delivered by feminist critic and Tropes vs. Women in Video Games creator Anita Sarkeesian, Polygon confirmed with the school’s Center for Women and Gender Studies. . .
“If you do not cancel her talk, a Montreal Massacre style attack will be carried out against the attendees, as well as students and staff at the nearby Women’s Center,” the message reads. “I have at my disposal a semi-automatic rifle, multiple pistols, and a collection of pipe bombs.”
The Montreal Massacre, also known as the École Polytechnique Massacre, took place in 1989 in Canada. Marc Lépine, who the email references, killed 14 women, injured 10 and killed four men in the name of “fighting feminism” before committing suicide.
The sender claims to be a student at the school, and adds “you will never find me, but you may all soon know my name.”
This latest threat marks yet another in a growing history for Sarkeesian herself and women in the video game industry at large. In August, following the release of another episode of her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series, Sarkeesian fled her home after receiving “some very scary threats” against her and her family. During GeekGirlCon, which took place this past weekend, officials confirmed to Polygon that a threat was made over her appearance there.
*******
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GUYS SO AFRAID OF?? Seriously. Answer me that.
Why are you so afraid of what we say that you have to kill us?
[Hell Yeah, I’m a Feminist is a feminist blog, often radical feminist (radfem), always anti-gender and anti-sexism.]
1 comment
Gaming community has a narratively rich and time-honored (for permissive definitions of “honor”) tradition of violent threats.
It isn’t even restricted to women (though Sarkeesian is at an unfortunate Venn diagram intersection of “people who dislike women somewhat strongly” and ” ).
For instance, Call of Duty ex-design director used to get hundreds (literally hundreds) death threats per week. Why ? Oh, people got upset about a minor tweak
Do people who sent him those (over, let me remind you, the ever important issue of “pretend guns acting not quite to their liking”) really mean to murder him or his family (and yes, some of the threats went as far as speculating as to possible means of killing his children and other such tasteful extensions of an already classy affair) ?
I honestly don’t know. He remains adamantly un-killed to this day, to the best of my knowledge.
Hell, even I get death threats every now and then (and remain unkilled to this day) and I’m neither a feminist celebrity nor a male game designer working on world’s most popular shooter.