{"id":2750,"date":"2013-09-13T09:01:44","date_gmt":"2013-09-13T17:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/?p=2750"},"modified":"2013-09-13T09:01:44","modified_gmt":"2013-09-13T17:01:44","slug":"by-now-all-this-is-past-the-point-of-relevance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/2013\/09\/13\/by-now-all-this-is-past-the-point-of-relevance\/","title":{"rendered":"By now all this is past the point of relevance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>But it needs to get written down anyway. On Saturday morning, September 7th, I woke up feeling grumpy about the way nerds had treated my friend Elizabeth and made the following series of ill-advised tweets.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p>So <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/twoscooters\">@twoscooters<\/a> and I were both widely cited for being upset with Penny Arcade. She\u2019s since received thousands of rape and death threats.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; bananabread (@BrendanAdkins) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BrendanAdkins\/statuses\/376382665164746752\">September 7, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p>I haven\u2019t seen a single negative tweet or email. No threats, no hate, not even an attempt to argue. Not one.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; bananabread (@BrendanAdkins) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BrendanAdkins\/statuses\/376382915262697472\">September 7, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p>Now go ahead. Tell me again why women on the Internet need thicker skin.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; bananabread (@BrendanAdkins) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BrendanAdkins\/statuses\/376383490301767680\">September 7, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>If you see the numbers under those widgets you can see that they became the most far-reaching things I have ever written. I did not plan for that. They were tossed off, poorly thought out, and not particularly intended to stand in the record. This took a while to dawn on me, and when it did, I considered deleting them. I chose not to mostly because it wouldn&#8217;t undo anything, and because I should be held to account for my words.<\/p>\n<p>I failed as an ally and a writer in several ways by writing what I did. The most significant and glaring is that I didn&#8217;t ask Elizabeth before posting them. That&#8217;s enormous. She and I had talked privately about the abuse she was getting, so it was on my mind, and I am so used to violent misogyny being directed at women who point out flaws in popular culture that I failed to consider her public stance about it. But even if she had discussed the hate more openly, I still should have asked. At the very least I should have reconsidered using her twitter handle, which made it even easier for a new wave of garbage to find her.<\/p>\n<p>Also, as several people have pointed out, those three tweets are not exactly an iron syllogism. Elizabeth wrote <a href=\"http:\/\/elizabethsampat.com\/quit-fucking-going-to-pax-already-what-is-wrong-with-you\/\">a strongly worded post taking a strong stance<\/a> against PAX; all I did was <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BrendanAdkins\/status\/374630026525675520\">briefly express disappointment<\/a>. I still think someone with a feminine name and icon would have received more abuse than I did for that tweet, but I certainly am not doing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gdcvault.com\/play\/1018080\/\">the kind of work Elizabeth does<\/a>, and should not have tried to accord myself her stature.<\/p>\n<p>There are other things about my phrasing with which one might well take issue, but those two are the most basic and important: I didn&#8217;t show my friend the respect she deserves. I can&#8217;t undo that, but the least I can do is point out for other people who want to be allies where I went wrong. I hope this helps someone else avoid a similar mistake in the future, especially if that someone is me.<\/p>\n<p>As for the original matter of the controversy, I&#8217;ve been wrestling with it, but the simplest way to put it is that I take a version of Elizabeth&#8217;s view. I&#8217;m not going to PAX in 2014, I&#8217;m definitely not volunteering there, and I won&#8217;t be back unless and until they demonstrate change from the top down. It won&#8217;t be enough for PAX to come up to the standard of games conventions; from here on they&#8217;ll have to be twice as good as everyone else to make me consider attending.<\/p>\n<p>I have dear friends in and around the Penny Arcade organization, many of whom work tirelessly to create safe space, and I&#8217;m not going to spurn you or your work for being involved with PAX. But I will say that attending any conference without a <a href=\"http:\/\/adainitiative.org\/2013\/08\/conference-anti-harassment-campaigns-do-work-three-existence-proofs-from-sff-atheismskepticism-and-open-source\/\">clear, detailed, rigorously enforced harassment policy<\/a> is a bad idea. PAX rose to that standard in 2012, but when internal pressure from the volunteer corps relented this year, they failed again. That alone is a valid reason to stay away.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/loveconquersallgam.es\/post\/60281881446\/an-open-letter-to-jerry-holkins\">Some people can&#8217;t do that.<\/a> PAX is a big part of how money works in games, and if the choice is between taking a stance and making your rent this year, I don&#8217;t have the moral authority to stand in judgment. I hope you&#8217;ve got other avenues for promotion too, though. I won&#8217;t see you there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But it needs to get written down anyway. On Saturday morning, September 7th, I woke up feeling grumpy about the way nerds had treated my friend Elizabeth and made the following series of ill-advised tweets. So @twoscooters and I were both widely cited for being upset with Penny Arcade. She\u2019s since received thousands of rape [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,14,54,63,42,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conspirators","category-fame","category-games","category-injustice","category-naivete","category-shame"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2751,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750\/revisions\/2751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}