150 writers, scholars sign letter to cancel cancel culture

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I just don't see the World the way you do. I don't see a link between vote with your wallet and what you're saying. In fact, I read that mosque massacre man's manifesto, and he certainly had no connection to any of this. And Alex Jones? Come on, he's just a wacko. And he was a wacko long before any of this stuff started. And his head was the very first one on the block of cancel culture.

Anita Snakeesian, the name I use for her says it all, but I still don't think she should have been harassed. It was both wrong and made her stronger. I don't think that was just right wing btw, she attacked gamers, all gamers, not just right wing. I don't know anything about burning shoes, but if they were bought and paid for, nothing wrong with that. Left violence is sweeping the World via Black Lives Matter right now.

Some of the stuff in your post doesn't make sense. "I will actually fix if you opinion is" and "Do you think the Left do those sorts of actual violent thing that the Left does?" I take it that last one was that the right does, but I don't know what the first one was.

This is whataboutism but I will bite anyway.

Traditionally it has been the right has engaged in cancelling stuff be it banning and burning books and records(See Joe McCarthy) and the liberals and left in America that advocated against censorship (See Free Speech Movement). That was then this is now. IMHO the right attempts at silencing have generally been more lethal, the Regressive left’s generally more influential.

Which side of the aisle do you think most terrorists come from? They are literally a type of cancel culture befitting a lot of people on the Right that when they get angry at something they will take a symbol of that thing they hate and shoot it with their gun. You think that the Left were hanging effigies in protest of the lockdown or creating effigies of Greta Thunberg to hang from a bridge because they don't like her politics? It is people like Tucker Carlson that spread conservative fear that awful things are happening and someone has to do something, which leads to things like terrorists going out to shoot a bunch of people, and give attention to conspiracies like Alex Jones and QAnon, the Left don't have these sorts of things.

You are probably right that you don't see the world the same way I do. You see cancelations of people spreading awful ideas as attacks against free speech. You see no connections of the violent Right wing threats to people they don't like, they love to say how they would love to beat up a woman who they think is critical, and the people that eventually go out and try and do something.




Question, why do you call Anita a Snake? Did she ever actually do anything bad? She did not actually attack gaming, just thought that maybe we could involve to have more healthy heroines and stories that are not possibly problematic tropes.
And no, it was the right wing side of gamers that attacked Anita, those guys love to pretend that they are the "real gamers", and attack anyone who they perceive as a possible threat to their hobby in the same way that conservatives do to their way of life. You can say that you don't think she should have been harassed, but you can see that she was, with a lot of violent imagery, and those right wing gamers tried really hard to ban her because they hate feminists that much. When you combine the sort of attacks she got with what happened with GamerGate, you get a really good view of the type of cancel culture that exists on the opposite side of Left wing cancelation, and it is the side that loves to do things like rape jokes and convince themselves that she was an evil snake for daring to talk about the Damsel in Distress trope.

You might say the Anita was getting canceled because of some sort of Patreon controversy, but you know that is not the real reason. The people that tried to cancel and harass her into oblivion did not care that she was not quick enough to deliver on her feminist content, it was that they hated that she dared to critique gaming through a feminist lens. They see such a person as a snake because how dare someone bring gender analysis into a medium that they have decided has to ignore what they consider politically correct. The type that get violently angry if there is some female empowerment that is not sexy or some LGBT representation, because that is political, but their wish of more gruff straight white male main characters is totally apolitical.

Black people have been on the receiving end of violence for a very long time, especially as luck would have it from the Right side, the cops with racist ideas and want to live power fantasies.

I would say that the difference is that the Left can often explain why they might have banned someone, that the person may have been a rapist, or their language has aspects of calling for violence and discrimination against a group that is already sensitive like a minority. Right wingers somehow often understand that as the Left somehow thinking that the protected group is lesser because it needs protection, the type that sat Leftists are the real racists because they don't think the race can take being called slurs.

While the Right largely base their cancelations on fear and baseless things like a book about wizards or Pokémon cards are training children to summon the devil. That people who fight for economic equality are commies that they have to prove are hypocrites because they inherited a second house. That feminists want to get revenge for women being treated bellow men and ruin things they love. That a pizza shop is actually a secret pedophile ring in the non-existent basement. Crazy conspiracies that fall apart under logical analysis of wider attention.

Right now you have Right Wing people that want to cancel the lockdowns because they think the Corona Virus is actually a hoax, and they also think that wearing masks is dangerous to ones health despite the fact that doctors do it all the time.

This isn't the conversation I want to have. I can come back with counters of the left doing things, but where is that going to get us? I don't think it's going to get us anywhere, it's just going to blow up the size of the posts we make to each other. I'm not saying I'm not open to it later.

You see, I think certain actions are bad regardless of who it is that's doing it. Do you think that? I'm trying to show you that cancel culture is bad. I'm not sure, what are you trying to do? Show me you think the right is worse than the left in the actions it is taking?

Anita, I don't really want to talk about her either, but a direct quote from her, right here:

https://www.facebook.com/femfreq/posts/ ... 001376355/

That's why she's a snake. That quote says it all. Games were just a vehicle for her to advance an agenda.

I've come to the conclusion that the more "woke" people are, the more close-minded and bigoted they become, sadly.

No matter how much you try to point out how bad "cancel culture" is, the woke and their enablers will continue whining their whatabout-isms at you, then when they risk being "cancelled" they claim victimhood as a "minority".

You don't think that games as art have relevance to societal issues outside of the space of gaming? I think that reading quote of saying "It’s never been about video games. It’s always about social justice" in a way not intended is seeing her as saying she was using it just as a vehicle for an agenda. Rather than the intended cultural elements reflected in games.

I just recently watched her rather in depth video on the Last of Us 2, and you can see how she still holds that focus less on the literal mechanics of the game such as how good it looks and stuff, but about how the game makes you feel, like questioning how effective it was in forcing the player to be a part of some pretty awful things with the character. Because it was clear that the game really did want to make the player feel things, and part of that could be at odds from general combat getting you to kill, to trying to get a response after it literally forces you to press square to torture. Although enough praise for being a rare game to put you in control of a queer character, and how it was generally pretty tasteful.

A lot of people on the Right see that sort of discussion as worth being canceled over, because they would rather not have to think too hard about how not only was a transgender character included, but whether it is right if their character seems just built around their character being transgender.

Anita has clearly been more interested in that social stuff more than the games themselves, but no idea how it makes her a snake from the fact it does not hurt anyone.

Anita is a bad faith actor. That's why she's a snake. And she hurts gamers if her rhetoric is adopted in the gaming industry.

It's not invalid to have an opinion on games' "relevance to societal issues outside of the space of gaming" as you put it. Some games directly reference the real World or have political themes and such.

You are not calling me a bigot, are you?

My whataboutism is from the point is that the canceling from the Left is from a place that is far less things like threats of violence.

I do think that there are some elements of Cancel Culture that go too far to make generalities about a person before they can explain themselves, but a case like Rowling is not that when she responded several times and only reinforced that she holds bigoted views. I can point to figures like the already mentioned so far ContraPoints that the wokescolds tried to cancel, and ProJared that was the victim of a messy divorce and some bad faith people that tried to paint him as a dangerous person.

I can see the merit of defending people from overzealous cancelation that is not fair, but I think some people that well deserve scorn for things that they have done or said could be hitching a ride in these stop cancel culture movements to try and protect themselves from criticism they deserve. And spreading ideas like saying that gender transitioning is a new kind of gay conversion therapy, certainly is worth people deciding that they don't want her to have the platform to spread it.

How does she hurt gamers? What did she ever say that hurts "gamers" if the gaming industry would be a bit more aware that treating female characters like a prizes to be won. Super Mario Odyssey, the latest game of the franchise which was a main example Anita gave, pretty much addressed this in how at the end Princess Peach seems uninterested in being treated like a an object between the hero and villain, and spends the post game being on vacation rather than Mario's trophy. Did that hurt gamers?

Games have become quite a bit more progressive in the last several years, and it hasn't hurt gamers that there are more games you can play female characters who are not made just to be sexy.

About this, I actually wanted to respond to you back when this came up in that other thread, but I didn't want to open up another conversation at the time.

I was like wot? the first time I read that part of it, I had to reread it to grasp what she was trying to say. Maybe you already understood, but I'm not sure. She's worried that young people who are gay, not trans, could be confused into thinking they're trans instead, and transitioning. So it effectively is a kind of gay conversion therapy if someone who's just gay ends up having a sex change, because now they'll be attracted to the opposite sex instead. But they're not trans, so will suffer irreversible consequences.

I don't think she's a transphobe. Maybe a good doctor might be able to reliably diagnose gender dysphoria at a young age, but it's such a huge risk at such a young age when people might not be able to properly understand what it is they are feeling, with such devastating consequences if you call it wrong.

It's the ideology over everything else that would hurt gamers if adopted. By destroying the quality of games by putting that a distant second to a list of boxes that need to be checked. That ruins creativity as well.

I've not seen the end of that game, but no, that doesn't hurt gamers. It sounds like a fun meta-joke. But I've never seen the damsel trope as a bad thing. Or the girl as a prize to be won. Princess Jasmine in Aladdin scolded the other main characters with those very words in Aladdin, but unlike her, the game damsels had already had their hearts "won" by the characters you play as, and want to be rescued and to return to their lives with their lovers.

And I also agree it's good to have some more actual, nothing to do with race, diversity among female characters.

This is why diagnosis does at a young age means only prescribing hormone blockers to prevent the wrong puberty so the child will be at a point they can more likely understand how they are feeling to make the choice, something that Rowling mischaracterizes to ignorantly bring the whole thing into question. Rowling is under some weird thought process that transgender people are more accepted than gays and lesbians, which makes no sense when you consider gay and lesbian trans people.

Rowling thinks that the acceptance of trans people, the separation of gender and sex, will erode the meaning of same sex attraction, that gay boys will be convinced to becoming girls, and lesbian girls will be convinced into becoming boys. The whole thing is ridiculous if you have heard from the trans people that went through the process and explain it as incredibly thorough and personal, and not at all about sexual attraction.

Anita never talked about some list of boxes that every game must tick, she just talked about how certain tropes are far more pervasive than they need to be, with that pervasive nature possibly influencing people in ways they don't understand, and a few games that challenge it could do some good.

While the Damsel in Distress trope seems relatively harmless, and there is nothing wrong with characters of any gender to be someone the player wants to save, it is that overuse of the trope commodifies the affection of the damsel as a prize to be won. It removes the agency of female characters in what they want, which could influence the males that consume the media to think that they deserve affection from just being nice, why one could explain there are so many of what people call "Nice Guys" within the gamer space. That we have had too many games where we have the female character needing to be saved, and the male hero gets a little something something for being a hero.

(starting at around 3:50)


Especially in terms of Nintendo games, I really like it when female characters have been getting their fair shot, like how the Hyrule Warriors game had a huge cast of characters including female ones that can be just as effective as Link. I liked playing Zelda in Cadence of Hyrule, and Zelda feel like a really fleshed out character in Breath of the Wild, really hoping that the sequel will have Zelda as more than someone who needs to be saved. I really think it is cool that the Splatoon games pretty much actually portray the female character as the default, with its other female characters as interesting and strong.

I think it is cool that a game series like Borderlands have multiple female player characters so you don't have one just being "the chick", and that the enemies are diverse in their gender so that you even have female Psychos without it feeling like it is pandering by saying that the most iconic enemy type can be women too. That goes a bit into the complaint that men are often made expendable by having the role of cannon fodder.

I like how the Crash Bandicoot remakes allowed me most of the time to play as female counterpart Coco. I like how the Crash Bandicoot racing game took Tawna and the "trophy girls" and had them as more than pretty faces with different hairstyles and they are playable characters too with their own personalities.


These are the kind of things that Anita was actually talking about that should be put into games, and it is not destroying it by giving female characters more agency and some more equal position as male characters.

What is it about her beliefs, that so frightens (triggers?) you and so causes you to revert to a bigotted "attack the messenger" approach rather than putting forward a rational explanation of how she is "wrong" and allowing other people to make up their own minds as to which side they themselves consider to be "right"?

It might surprise you to know this, but people are ALLOWED to have a different opinion on topics. If you cannot convince people that YOUR opinion\belief is correct through evidence, or through countering what the other person has to say, and so need to rely on a bigot's tools such as "silencing"\"canceling" those who you do not agree with, it shows the public at large that, on the balance of probablitites, it is YOUR argument\belief which is flawed, not theirs.

Remember, the definition of a bigot is someone who attacks or punishes a person or group (thereby demonstrating intolerance) for their beliefs, not a person who attacks the beliefs that another person (or group) may have.

Because Rowling's facts are in fact wrong, mischaracterizations she has held onto after being presented with the facts, conspiracy theories about gay conversion therapy and arguments that the discussion is about whether sex is a real thing, which no one disputes. It is not a simple case that she has bad opinions, it is that she is spreading incorrect facts that people are going to agree for no reason other than she said them. And how she is being "canceled" is by having people agree to what the actual facts are rather than conspiracy theories.

She is free to have those opinions, but not spread them in a way that makes the lives of people harder. There is no epidemic of people being convinced that they are transgender, and you can talk to actual transgender people to see that the process is incredibly rigorous, but their voices are not getting out to the public over a famous author who thinks transgender women are not women.