Reevaluating Your Logic Toolbox, or, this is what happens when I get existential in the middle of the night

I was explicitly asked to write this essay by a couple of friends, after trying to explain to them what a third party's reaction had been during a mutual discussion between the four of us. However, dearly beloved, it's universal enough that I hope it makes sense to your life as well.

All of us, at some point in our lives, make a sort of epistemological leap, after which we say "these are the tools by which I measure reality, and any other set of tools will result in a false answer." 

Some of us can trace this event back to a traumatic event, after which we found ourselves forced to evaluate the entirety of ourselves and our world. Others experience an ecstatic conversion, religious or otherwise. Most people, I imagine, come about this process in a relatively haphazard way, adopting some ideas from their parents, some from charismatic teachers, from books, from moments of epiphany, from times of deep reflection. There is no particular reason to say that any one of these three ways of forming our toolbox is any better or worse than any other.

It is all well and good to declare that science has the right of it, that our knowledge is empirically verifiable in ways that other systems are not. But even as a dyed in the wool skeptic, I am cognizant that I have only a limited intelligence with the smallest ability to grasp at the edges of the greater whole. There is no metric by which we may evaluate the beliefs of others when those beliefs rest upon a different foundation. Certainly the world could be flat, and all evidence you or I produce to the contrary, either a measurement, or a logical argument, could be discounted as  a fragment of a grand conspiracy to hide the truth, etc. We call the process of the creation of such excuses "special pleading" because there is a way to explain away everything to the contrary. But to the person who believes the world is flat, these explanations are simply part and parcel with with their rubric of belief. Whatever toolbox they have has lead them to evaluate the world in this manner. There is no way to persuade them that the world is a globe, resting in time-space, orbiting the sun, without convincing them that there is something wrong with their toolbox.

What this means, in my view, is that nothing we know, or have come to believe in, is without suspect. The trite way of phrasing this is "the unexamined life is not worth living." I want to reorganize this platitude.

If there is something you have decided is true, if it cannot hold up to sustained and extreme criticism, it is time to reevaluate it.

It's a bit less catchy, I know.

There is nothing to say that any one truth you hold is more correct than any other, simply because you doubt it, or are more sensitive to it being questioned. You could engage in a life long pursuit to daily rewrite your fundamental tools, in a kind of hyper-Cartesianism. This seems impractical. You might go through your entire life without having to fight for the things you believe. It can be remarkable how often the odd conclusions we come to as children can go decades without being questioned (there was a hilarious episode of This American Life which covered exactly this). Conversely, when you examine your truth carefully, you may continue to find it whole and unchanged by questions, or new information.

Neither I am I proposing a kind of ontological relativism. We do not have to dismiss the objectivity of our universe entirely. This is instead a sort of inherent humility, as safeguard against hubris. Everyone feels that he or she has the right of it, that if only others could see our point of view, they would know better.

What we need to recognize, is that our choices when we choose our tools are primarily emotional. People choose to believe in God because doing so is more comfortable for them, I choose to not believe in God because for me a reality without one is far preferable. (There is no real way to measure the correctness of either conclusion. If there were some sort of supernatural reality, it would by definition be unmensurable, and as everyone knows, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is a leap of faith to decide one way or the other, or even to maintain the apparent middle road of agnosticism.)

Pay attention to that discomfort when you are challenged, and be careful of it when you see it in others. If you find yourself fighting back with ad hominem attacks against the person who disagrees with you, or defending your position as either "sensible," "righteous," or "optimistic," you have run up against a link to your fundamental tool box, a choice you made, often long ago. Take a step back from your argument, even from the position you are advocating. Why do you believe this? Why does the other person believe what they believe? You cannot force the other person to change their mind, if what they are basing their ideas on includes conflicting tools in their toolbox.

America, We Need to Talk About Math

Listen, if you're friends with me (and if you're not my friend, why are you reading this, you creep?) you're probably not going to like this. So, you know, apologies in advance. Actually, not really. I like you, but you probably need a bit of a shake up, right now. We all do, if this election season is any indication.

Here's the truth, Bernie Sanders was never going to win the nomination, the math was pretty clear from the beginning, and the reason why had nothing to do with the rigged election system, or unequal air time, or reverse sexism, or whatever you're blaming it on. It's just because more people voted for Hillary Clinton.

No, they really did. In "popular vote" primary states, Clinton tended to sweep, and it was only in states that have that bizarre caucus system, that Sanders did relatively well. We can agree that the whole clusterfuck is out of order and was originally designed to prevent a fully democratic process from prevailing, but that's really beside the point. The point is that, in as close to a democratic process as we have, Clinton won.

And here's why it's important that you look that fact in the face and accept it for what it is: democracy isn't going to always make you happy.

If you hate Clinton (and let me tell you, I'm not a huge fan), you might be tempted to tell all those people who voted for her that they screwed up, and that they need to do what you think is better.

But that's not democracy. Sorry.

Democracy is what everyone else wants, and it was so scary to the founders of this nation, that they carefully crafted a fail safe into the system to prevent weirdness from happening. That's why we have the electoral college with a delegate system, and a separate election for the executive branch. Other countries just vote for individual seats and the majority party chooses a leader. (Can you imagine Paul Ryan as president? That's what THAT looks like.)

So yeah, maybe Bernie Sanders would make a better candidate, or president, or whatever, but that's not how this works.

If you want democracy, you have to be ok with the fact, that sometimes you won't like the results.

So, hold your nose and vote for her, because your alternative is not acceptable. 

Kai thanx bai.

PS You might also be tempted to vote for a third party candidate, and that's probably fine. You're probably a resident of a blue state, and Clinton will probably win your state anyway. But if you live in a swing state, please don't. I'm really too scared not to beg about this. Basic arithmetic says that any non-partisan vote will count as a vote for the majority candidate. As much as we might not like it, this race is far too close for comfort, and it's better to err on the side of the lesser evil than principled abstention. In fact, if you can't stomach voting for Clinton, please don't vote at all. It really is that important this time. We cannot have that man in the Oval Office. Please

Yes, It Is About Race, and why you should care.

WARNING, I have included links for reference, mostly out of a habitual need to cite my sources. However, many of the links include videos and photos of violence and death, and the content is potentially traumatic. Please click with caution. I do research so that others who cannot don't have to. Please be aware of your limits.

Today is the #MillionsMarchNYC, the Day of Anger demonstration in support of protests against police brutality, and the over-abundance of use of force against black bodies, in particular.

I could spend a lot of time enumerating the numbers of persons killed, breaking down the individual situations and the lives of the persons involved. I could parse the entirety of the Darren Wilson grand jury documentation and tell you precisely why the whole thing was a sham (based on law, not based on facts). I have, in fact, done both these things. I have occupied hours and hours of my time doing what a lot of news sources have done over the past few months. I'm not going to do that today.

Instead I want to put a few things in perspective. The #BlackLivesMatter, #HandsUpDontShoot, and #ICantBreathe campaigns are about a lot of things to a lot of people. Once you get started digging into the details behind those meanings, it's easy to get mired in the specific, and in the hard work involved in trying to suss the difference between fact and fiction, real events and myths. It is not that such work is not important, in my mind it is paramount, because it is vital to justice. However, none of these details are at all important to the reasons behind the protests, and it's key that we keep the two processes completely separate.

Things like "was it actually a choke hold?" "did he really suspect the men of shoplifting?" "did the cop have problems that should have kept him off the street?" etc, aren't important when deciding whether or not to support the protesters. This is because the details of individual cases are not pertinent to the belief that there is something systemically wrong.

Further, statistics, are just as moot, as are the questions involved in reviewing them. (Do they really show a higher incidence of police use of force against young black men? Yes they do. But do statistics also show a higher incidence of crime and violence involving young black men? Does that contribute to a cultural view among police officers that young black men are very dangerous?)

What really matters, when boiled down, is actually very simple. No one life, regardless of how the individual inhabiting that life chooses to live, is more or less valuable than any other. When a cop shoots, or beats, or suffocates a citizen, there is no point in saying "well, he was a criminal," "she was assaulting an officer," "he was resisting arrest." There is equally no point in trying to pin down the validity behind the reasons why cops may be subconsciously profiling by race, in order to justify their actions. Whether an individual person is a "good person" or whether an officer has "good reason" for their actions/reactions, is not at issue.

Let me just repeat that in case you're skimming this and missed it: The innate goodness or badness of a person or his/her actions is not at issue. It is not why people are protesting.

What is in question here is a concept that if you concentrate very hard on, you may remember from high school civics class: positive vs negative rights. We are all very conscious of our positive rights: the right to free speech and assembly (this is protesting), the right of freedom of religion, etc. What most people aren't as clear on, is their negative rights. You have the right to not be beaten, killed, or imprisoned. These are negative rights which are implicit. So implicit that we often wander from one day to the next without ever considering them.

What protesters are saying, in no uncertain terms, is that the constant equivocations being made when one person violates another person's right to bodily integrity and safety, are invalid at the root. They are particularly invalid when a person of power and privilege, a police officer wearing body armor and carrying lethal weapons, places his/her physical security over the value of another person's absolute right to life and freedom from physical harm.

Let me repeat that, as well. Each and every person is valuable simply because they are alive. Police officers, in particular, have no recourse to hide behind their own concern, for their own lives, when harming another person.

I won't insult a reader's intelligence by pretending that this is not a grey area. A person who shoots and kills, or otherwise violently disables someone who has the potential to kill many others, is often considered a hero. A person who shoots, or otherwise violently disables his/her rapist, is generally considered to be acting in self defense. I am not advocating an unthinking allegiance to pacifism.

There is, however, nothing grey about saying the following: When a certain type of person (in this case a police officer, but in general, any other person walking around armed and looking for danger), engages any person, but particularly someone who they are predisposed to view as a threat, must be incredibly careful before using their power to subdue someone else.

The previous statement is incredibly general on purpose. I am not attempting to be pretentious by using inclusion-speak, instead I am using it so that the reader will notice precisely what specific examples they plug into these ambiguities. Even if the reader fundamentally disagrees with me, he/she cannot deny the truth I have demonstrated by this example.

It is my personal belief that it should be the sworn duty of a police officer to put himself/herself in danger, in order to serve and protect the inhabitants of the community he/she serves, regardless of who those inhabitants maybe, or what they may or may not be guilty of. We do not fire our citizens for being poor, lazy, or stupid. We do not engage in euthanasia with regards to the homeless, the mentally ill, or the disabled. Why then do we permit our police force to go beyond the bounds of our justice system, and determine who has the right to live, and who does not? By allowing this to happen, we are engaging in a kind of unthinking eugenics, where young, black men who appear somehow threatening or criminal, or anyone who appears to threaten a police officer at all, may be terminated without trial or recourse.

Please imagine, if you aren't already living this reality, that you are a member of a community that is being disproportionately considered dangerous and therefore disproportionately being killed.

Now, what do you do?

How Are YOU Going to Celebrate World Toilet Day?

World Toilet Day sounds like it might be a kind of joke. You know, "all sorts of things have their own day now! Talk Like a Pirate Day, Bosses Day, there's probably even a Toilet Day!"

Well there is a World Toilet Day, and every year since 2001, it has been November 19^th. It may sound silly (who doesn't turn into a five year old at the mention of a potty?), but it's actually deadly serious. It was first created by the World Toilet Organization to increase awareness of sanitation needs across the world. In 2013 the UN officially recognized World Toilet Day as an important informational tool to get the word out and raise money for toilets.

Why would the UN need to raise money for toilets? What you may not know is that 1 billion people live their entire lives without having access to a toilet. This means any kind of toilet what-so-ever, not an outhouse, a pit latrine, or a hole in the ground. This means that when it's time for them to relieve themselves it looks something like this:

or this:

Another 1.5 billion people across the globe do have some toilet facility, but it's highly rudimentary, or it's dangerously positioned. Maybe their waste goes into a river, the same river they use as a drinking source. Maybe the latrine is far from their houses, and dangerous to reach in the dark.

This is a serious health hazard. Simple diarrhea kills as many as 2,000 children every day. This is more children than killed by malaria, aids, and accidental injuries combined.

Supposing a child survives to go to school, he or she then has to sit all day simply "holding it" or go in a nearby field, if possible. When a girl undergoes menarche she often stops going to school, simply because it is too difficult to manage her menses without privacy. Even then, however, women who engage in open defecation are vulnerable to rape. There are no good statistics for how often a woman is raped while relieving herself, but 1 in 3 women are raped at least once in their lives world-wide, and it cannot be wholly coincidental that this same statistic, 1 in 3, is the number of women who do not have access to a safe toilet. Rape statistics are always higher when the crime can be convicted conveniently, and when there is little fear of reprisal. Because of this rates of rape in the developed world appear artificially higher than in mostly rural, poorer countries. If every rape was recorded the numbers of rapes by strangers in communities where open deification is practiced, would almost certainly rival the numbers of date rapes in the US and UK. Anything that can be done to reduce this dangerously high statistic, should be done.

Everyone who is suffering due to a lack of proper toilet facilities is a person. A person with a mother and a father, friends, relatives; they are a person with a mind and ideas. Every time a child dies because of diarrhea, a person is wasted, every woman who gets raped because of unsafe facilities she is scarred physiologically, sometimes physically, and possibly prevented from doing something amazing. If she had a safe place to go at a school, she could complete an education, resulting in a better life for her and her future family. History has shown, over and over, that when the powerful and rich help those without, everyone benefits. What's more, clean, safe toilets increase the economy, by saving money otherwise wasted on treating fecal borne diseases.  Save lives, save minds, improve the world forever. 

If you want to help, you can contribute directly to the World Toilet Organization, here. 

Like Matt Damon? Donate to his organization Water.org, here. 

Don't have any spare cash? (and just a little bit will help) Write to your House Representative in support of the Water for the World Act. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is discussing it November 20^th, that's tomorrow. Let him or her know that you, a voter, care about world sanitation. Here's the handy House.gov page for finding out how to contact your representative. 

If you're looking for more facts, here's the fast fact sheet from the CDC, and here's the UN Human Rights Commission website on the Right of Sanitation given to all of us. And find out more about different kinds of toilets, with the toilet field guide.

And no matter what, talk about this. Tell people the facts, tweet about it, post on Facebook, Instagram, whatever. Take a picture of your toilet, post it, and celebrate that you have a safe, healthy place to go, and you can take it for granted while 2.5 billion people can't.

Here are my toilets, I'm extremely grateful to have them. I use both of them, several times a day, and I almost never have to think about them. The one in the big bathroom is a bit temperamental, but it works, and if I ever get around to it, fixing it will be really easy. The other one is in a half bath off my bedroom. I have a special toilet that I can use, in the middle of the night, just so I don't have to go down the hall. Seriously, I'm a rich woman.

An Open Letter to Amanda Palmer

Dear Ms. Palmer,

I am writing to you today, because of how greatly I have always admired you and valued your work. During some of the most difficult times in my life, I have always been able to listen to your music and feel both that I was not alone, and that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Further, while I'm sure that we don't agree on everything, I have always enjoyed watching your activism, and admire your ability to create messages and let yourself be heard. You are a powerful, brilliant, intelligent, beautiful, and creative woman. The world is a better place because of you.

That is why I was so deeply disappointed to see your reaction to the news relating Jian Ghomeshi and to see that you will still be including him in your show in Toronto. This may not surprise you, because this did happen several days ago (the post on your facebook page, which I have only just now seen, dates to October 26th). I see from your blog that you're having long conversations via twitter regarding this subject. I'm bothered that there needs to be a conversation at all, and so I'm going to outline why below. I hope that even if you do not read this blog, that some people do, and that awareness of the facts regarding these kinds of issues.

The basic facts of this particular situation are this: Ghomeshi has been accused, by several women, of engaging in non-consensual violence during a sexual encounter. Let me be very clear about this: Ghiomeshi was having a consensual sexual encounter with a woman, and without prior conversation or any request of any kind, altered the encounter to include violence (choking and slapping). This is not an accusation that has occurred just once, but as of this writing a total of 8 times. Sexual violence is something that only a few people are excited by, and while completely permissible under certain circumstances, is entirely unacceptable otherwise. The only time sexual violence is acceptable is when all persons involved agree, in advance, that they wish to engage in this, and employ a method of communication to allow for the encounter to stop, immediately, if either person becomes at all uncomfortable (eg, a safe word). If these perimeters are not met, what is occurring is essentially rape, regardless of how it is otherwise spun. Choking or slapping a woman who has not said this would be ok with her, is not BDSM, and to call it that is hiding behind the cloak of an already maligned and poorly understood minority.

You tweeted, in response to someone else expressing their disappointment in your unwillingness to remove Ghiomeshi from your show: "jian is my guest. i don't kick guests out of my house, or off my stage, because of what they're going through. ever. the end." Now, there is something to be said for sticking by persons when they are being accused of something and claim innocence. In the justice system approved by all citizens the nations of the free world, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. That said, rape and sexual violence are one of the most difficult issues facing all cultures today, and may very well be one of the most important issues that we as the human race will face in this century. I don't need to tell you this, you are an advocate for women everywhere and you have come out in support of women who are trying to fight for justice in their own cases of rape.

I am married to a man, and I have an older brother. I love both of these men unconditionally. However, were either one of them to be accused of rape or a similar crime, I would be unequivocal in my reaction. I would separate myself, and anyone vulnerable, from them, possibly permanently. This is in spite of the fact that I believe neither one of them to be capable of such a thing, and so, in that situation I would almost certainly believe them to be innocent.

Why? Because of math.

According to CBS, in 2008, 90,000 people reported being raped in the United States. In 25% of cases, someone was arrested. However, the Bureau of Justice reports, that in 2008, 39,590 men and 164,240 women were rape victims. The statistics in Canada are even more dire. Only 6% of all rapes are reported to the police. One source estimates that in the US, only 3 out of every 100 rapists are ever convicted. This means that the rest of the rapists are simply walking around in the world, having irreparably damaged another person's psyche, capable of doing it again, and never facing consequences for their act. You, yourself, know exactly what I am talking about.

Now, aren't false rape reports a real thing? Don't those also do damage to people who don't deserve to be accused? Why would I behave as if a man I loved with all of my heart, deserved to be punished, unless I believe it? False rape reports do, indeed, happen, and when they do they can ruin people's lives. However, false rape accusations are in the extreme minority of rape reports. Results of studies vary widely, but a conservative estimate would be 7%. This is a heavily conservative estimate, however, most experts prefer 1.5% to 3%. (Deciding whether a rape accusation is credible, one needs to take into account the manner in which the memory was formed and the manner in which it was recovered. Was the rape victim intoxicated or unconscious during the encounter? Is the memory "recovered" through hypnosis? The first requires further evidence, such as a rape kit, or a witness, the second is unlikely to be real at all.)

The reason why I would immediately behave as if my husband or my brother were guilty of rape, regardless of the fact that I believe it would be unlikely to happen, is not just because of the severity of the crime in question, but also because of the statistics above. The rates of false accusations (even convictions) for other crimes are significantly higher, so much higher that we have a very complex appeals system for death row, in the US. (I won't bother to comment on the multiple issues with the US justice system, here.) But rape is different, it is so unlikely for a woman to make a claim of rape in the first place, and so unlikely for a person to be arrested for it, and then even more unlikely for that rape claim to turn out to be false, that I would consider it incredibly irresponsible to not treat it as completely credible.

I hope you will consider the fact that I hold all men, including my own husband and brother, to this standard, and that you will entertain the idea of adopting this policy as well. You are not required to stop loving or liking a person because of crimes they have committed. It is entirely possible to love a monster. And if the person is aware of the reasons behind your decision, and they are honorable, they will respect you for it. My brother and husband respect my decision as well, because although neither of them ever plan on committing rape, they very much appreciate the fact that I would be protecting myself, and other people, from any other rapist that I might encounter. Remember, 1 in 4 college women are raped or assaulted, and 97% of all rapists are still out there, ready to rape again.

Your Fan for Life,

Cara

#GamerGate: the shocking truth behind the hashtag

Well, hello there! Here's another blog post about #gamergate by someone or another. Why should you bother reading it? Well maybe you don't feel like you need to know more, but in my opinion, this is the first truly unbiased survey of the topic, giving each side the benefit of the doubt, trying to see it both ways, at once.
There is a lot of information here, despite the fact that I tried to streamline the events I describe down to the most essential ones. In places where I have editorialized or go slightly off topic, I've used this smaller font, which hopefully allows you to skim over it if you so choose.

So, have you heard about #gamergate? Think you know what it's about? You're probably wrong.

I say that because I've just spent days researching every last nook and cranny of this topic, and I have yet to see anyone come to a clear, disinterested conclusion on the matter.

Let me introduce myself, I am not a gamer. I don't play games, and I could care less about the ethics of gaming or the role of women in gaming. I only found out about this because the hashtag was all over twitter and I finally had to ask "what the hell is this?" The mess of information that I found prompted me to write this.
 Yes, I'm a woman, and essentially a feminist (if you want to label things), but before all those things, I'm an impartial researcher. I've walked into this project with no preconceptions at all, and I've been very diligent in chasing down leads, so I think my conclusions have merit. You can skip to the end to read those conclusions, if you like, but I encourage you to stick with me while I outline my evidence. Whichever side of this you fall on, you will probably be surprised by what I've found.

First things, first. There is a woman named Zoe Quinn, she's a video game developer, and she recently released a game called "Depression Quest" (which came out in early August), and participated in something called Game_Jam and then later something called Rebel Jam (neither of the latter two bore fruit). There is a man named Eron Gjoni, he used to date Zoe Quinn, I guess he's not in gaming, but he is in IT and used to work for a research lab in Boston doing AI stuff. 

I'm going to be super clear about the following: I have no god damn idea what happened between Gjoni and Quinn, and I don't care. I don't care if people cheated, if they argued about things, if he had an anxiety disorder, if she was a depressed sex addict, or whatever. I care about evidence, I'm an evidence person, and the evidence doesn't and can't reveal what happened behind closed doors, and even so, it's no one's business. What did happen, without question, is Gjoni wrote an entire blog detailing the end of his relationship with Quinn (called the Zoe Post, and published on August 19th), and why he felt betrayed by her.  (If you don't want to read the whole thing, and I don't blame you, there's a handy tl;dr here. Don't worry, I read the whole thing so you don't have to. It's what I do. Say thank you. No seriously, say thank you, he's a terrible writer, and it's long.) The blog reveals a two things about Gjoni's character that don't take much arm-chair-Freudianism to grasp: 1. he is hurt; 2. he is obsessed, with a capital obsessed. (The blog has been characterized multiple places as a “9,000 word screed”, which is weird. It makes it fairly clear that people aren't doing a lot of independent research on the front side of this and are just copying each other;s sentences. Screed is not the word I would use, and I also wouldn't use rambling, which I see a lot, too. It's methodical and sourced; it's sad and pathetic, yes, lacking in consistent voice and full of unexamined vitriol, certainly, but it's not incoherent.)

I have no desire to judge whether people are ethical persons unless I have first hand experience with their actions. It's been claimed that not only was Quinn cheating (which she concedes in the various conversation logs in the Zoe Post), but that can be abusive, and supposedly she caused enough kerfuffle to destroy or nearly destroy various companies and ventures. It's obvious that some people haven't ever liked her, but that doesn't say much. Gjoni on the other hand, is no angel either; it takes two people to be in an unhealthy relationship, remember, and even he says that he doesn't care too much about the infidelity because he prefers polyamory, that he was mostly concerned with her hypocrisy as someone who comes from a social justice background; plus let's not forget, the dude posted an entire blog cataloging his ex-girlfriend's sexual life to get back at her, and lost his job (possibly) because of that. Then again, I've also never met this guy, and there are almost certainly nuances about this that I will never catch.

How did this become #gamergate though? I mean, who cares about one guy being pissed about his ex? Supposedly she cheated (gray area) with her boss (dumb) who was married (jesus), and some other people too (dear god break up with her now). OH! Someone who she slept with was a journalist (Nathan Grayson, he works for Kotaku). 

OK, this is a thing. People are worried about bias, and even possibly corruption, in gaming journalism. I mean, it makes sense right? Reviews are an important way for potential customers to hear about your product. Like a book or a movie, if your game gets panned or even ignored, this could totally alter your sales numbers. If you're trying to compete against a bunch of people who are bribing journalists, well, that would suck. Plus, this is gaming journalism, not white house coverage, so if back room deals are happening, it's unlikely to create serious systemic condemnation.

Obviously she was sleeping with the journalist to get good game reviews.

Wait, what?

No, seriously, this is the conclusion people leaped to. And I say “leaped” because I really did read all of Gjoni's blog, and nowhere in there does he ever suggest she was trading sex for reviews. Not once. (Say thank you again, reading that blog was excruciating, but it was important that I read it to be completely sure that the implication was not there, at all.) What's more, the sex-for-reviews allegations are verifiably false. 
(I did find a forum post claiming that Grayson had, in fact, written a blog post reviewing the game, but that it has since been taken down. Ok then. I looked, and no one has a screen shot of this, or a wayback version, or anything. Which is weird because nearly everything in this whole snafu has been triple documented. This short post from January does exist, but it happened before she slept with him. Although, I suppose you could argue that she could have slept with him earlier than they claim... but seriously? Is that really worth trading sex for? An hour of my time is worth way more than that.)

Almost immediately after the Zoe Post goes up, a gamer, who often goes by the handle MundaneMatt, posted a video recapping Gjoni's blog and accuses her of getting favorable reviews because she was having sex with the people giving her those reviews. He does not appear to double check to see if those positive reviews exist, or if they have been written by people she's supposed to have slept with, he just makes the general suggestion. 

This is where it starts, everything afterwards is pure snowballing.

Shortly after MundaneMatt's video is posted, YouTube removes it, due to DMCA request. YouTube member, InternetAristocrat posts a video discussing the fact that the MundaneMatt video, was removed from YouTube after Quinn made this DMCA claim, supposedly because the background image in the original video comes from her website, and reiterating the claim that if Quinn is sleeping with certain persons in exchange for reviews, that would be abhorrent behavior. This video is another step towards assuming that Quinn had indeed engaged in the behavior implied, again, without linking the associated articles. 

(As an aside, there is a legitimate question about whether the removal of the original video is an abuse of DMCA. The DepressionQuest website is protected by copyright, which potentially excludes the use of screenshots, in a non-review capacity, without permission. Whether Quinn chose to use DMCA as an efficient, but suspect, way of removing a potentially libelous video, is not my comment to make, I wasn't in the room when she made the decision. In the end, the onus is on YouTube for this one)

Stick with me, here. I know that the number of handles involved, as well as the numerous platforms, can get very confusing, and I'm sorry. I've tried to make all of this as clear as possible.

Now comes the first hints of serious harassment. Quinn complains about having her tumblr hacked and personal information spread, at one point she claims her father had been called. Allegations are that she made up the whole thing to get attention and sympathy, but there's actually no evidence either way. Certainly some people have her phone number, and have called it to harass her. What is falsifiable, if you have the patience to do a lot of work and dig through hundreds of pages of IRC logs, is the claim that individuals and groups of persons worked towards and discussed numerous ways to make her life miserable. Whether or not they actually got her personal information, they certainly wanted to, and they didn't stop there. She had posted nude photographs of herself online, earlier in her life, and these images were now used as a kind of intimation campaign. I think this was done mostly to shame her, but there was a constant undercurrent of sexual violence in much of the harassment she received, and this worked as a method to underline that. (I'm going to recommend that if you have any sensitivity to images of rape or sexual abuse, that you don't even attempt to read the IRC logs. I could barely stomach to read the curated version.)

An insanely long critique that gets posted on reddit, describing all the holes in Quinn's version of events. I'll save you the trouble of reading it, it's called "Zoe Quinn is a liar", and cites things she's said on twitter, and compares them to to various other posts, with annotations. Unfortunately, it's not very convincing, as it's full of logical holes, and is clearly leaving incidents and important information out. It's too bad, because it obviously took a long time to make, but I don't feel comfortable using it as evidence, one way or the other. Essentially, the best thing I can say about the Quinn being hacked thing, is that while people were clearly talking about doing it, there's no concrete evidence that it actually happened.

Over the next few days, several more posts related to the blog are made in various places, including something on TwitLonger by TotalBuscuit called "What the hell just happened?" The TotalBuscuit post is fairly exemplary of the response in general. Commentators generate opinions with rapidity, but often without the willingness to do original research. It looks like a typical rumor mill, with people coming down on one side or another, reporting things they've "heard", basing their judgement on their opinion of the source they got it from, and riffing off guesses

There is a group of people who run a website called The Fine Young Capitalists, which despite it's name, is about women in gaming (and black characters in manga).  They accuses Quinn of having attempted to destroy their project. They believe she was doing this because she saw them as a rival but note that she used concerns over their trans-policy and the fact that they weren't paying their contestants, as the basis of the attacks. (There are three different sources for TFYC's side of the story: an interview, a sound cloud “confession”, and a reddit post.) 
This is possibly the only place where something slightly good comes out of this whole thing. The group of people who have been “against” Quinn, decide that they will jump in and help TFYC with their crowd fund, which up to this point, had been floundering. They successfully reach their goal and an agreement is made between the harassers and TFYC to create a character based on their specifications. Then again, my guess is that some, if not all, people who were involved in discrediting TFYC genuinely believed that there was something rotten going on, though given how much unbalanced negativity is coming out of #gamergate, it's hard to know how terrible they actually thought it was.

A woman named Rachel who goes by “negat0ry” also comes out, who was a friend of Gjoni's, who claims that Quinn prevented Gjoni from contacting her while she was going through a difficult time, and also harassed her, and involved other persons in that harassment.
I have nothing much to say about this. If this happened, it's terrible, but one would expect that Gjoni should have been man enough, and enough of a friend, to do the right thing. I really feel like I can divide the blame equally here.

In case you thought Gjoni and #gamergate folks are the only ones who have a voice here, Quinn, has been collecting data from IRCs and tweeets. She writes a buzzfeed article,  and had earlier written a blog post, detailing her side of the story. 
Now, the best question I can ask about Quinn, and her reaction, is whether I might have done better. I'm sure I wouldn't have, and it makes a certain amount of gut sense that nothing she could have done would have come across as positive. It does seem like she's really obnoxious and angry in her writing (her first blog post on the subject calls her detractors “terrorists” which is a bit strong). She video tapes herself talking to people who have found her phone number, and does not attempt to engage them in dialogue, just harasses them back. None of this makes her any better than the people she's going after.

OK, you might say at this point, this is all fairly cut and dry. Quinn is a terrible person, and people got legitimately mad, if insanely-over-the-top-mad. Obviously this was just textbook mob behavior. Quinn will eventually be able to move on with her life, and this will all get better eventually, right? Well, remember how Quinn had claimed that her personal information had been disseminated? Let's pretend that was a lie, and that it never happened. If this is the case, maybe that is were some #gamergate supporters got the idea to start spamming, revealing the private information of anyone they didn't like and also, creating false profiles of people pretending to be pro #gamergate.

Confused yet? I'm going to remind you of the time scale here. We're still less than a week in. Large websites and groups where gamers congregate to discuss gaming, and now #gamergate, begin to find it necessary to pass judgment or at least institute crowd control. By Quinn's request Reddit removes posts by certain users on the topic. The same thing happens on 4chan, and with individual accounts on Steam. To be fair to those groups that did enforce censorship, raw cruelty is something that is remarkably hard to quash, and it often seems like the most expedient way of handling a problem like this one is to wipe the slate clean and hope it goes away. Unfortunately, supporters of #gamergate did not see it this way, and felt instead that the “establishment” was simply working to suppress their complaints.

There are so many different opinions, and "sides" to this issue, that it would be impossible to cover all of them, without this blog post becoming ten thousand pages long. To summarize what happens next, people do what comes naturally to humans, they explain the situation to one another, sometimes incompletely, sometimes with embellishment, and the legend and problem outgrow their original boundaries. There is no clear consensus at first as to what the whole thing is about: is it about Quinn? is it about how feminists are destroying gaming with their unreasonable demands? is it about men threatening women?

However, it's important not to forget that there are participators in this discussion who are seriously concerned about gaming journalism. Given that gaming journalism isn't exactly a giant field, it's hardly surprising that journalists are friends with developers and programmers, that these two groups form romantic or sexual relationships, support one another, and accept favors from each other. One #gamergate supporter creates an infograhic tracing what they consider to be the unethical blending occurring between gaming journalism and using Quinn as specific example. Kotaku and Polygon, two websites that review games, change their ethics policies to prevent journalist from monetarily supporting games creation.

Unbelievably, while this entire time I have been referring to one side of this debate as #gamergate supporters, that term does not get coined until Adam Baldwin posts a tweet suggesting the term, ten days after the Zoe Post. This tweet is a clean demarcation between when this was an infighting problem, and when it became a mainstream concern, in which celebrities weigh in with their own opinions. Anita Sarkeesian, known for her Feminist Frequency YouTube videos, in which she has covered issues of the depictions of women in games, tweets that, due to what she considers to be credible threats, she has left her home and contacted the police. As a result of the fact that violent anti-feminists are the loudest minority in the #gamergate discussion, it becomes all too common for anti-#gamergate supporters to begin to criticize all detractors equally, generally as misogynist, but other times in significantly more insulting ways. Understandably, this does not help matters, though it is hardly on par with death threats.

It goes on from here, at about this same pitch, through September and into October (remember, this started on August 19th, we are, now, more than two months in). Sometimes coverage of it seems to slow to a trickle, but in general it stays level while radiating outward into the mainstream. Stacks of articles are penned (which I won't link to here, if you're curious you can just google #gamergate) This is how I learned about it. New hashtags are begun, and more women (and some men) are threatened, have their private information exposed, and feel afraid. TFYC meet their funding goal, thanks to #gamergate supporters, and anti-#gamergate supporters are accused of fabricating the threats (against themselves). The drama at this point has escalated so far, that both sides of the gap are receiving serious threats and harassment, not just the women and feminists who oppose #gamergate. 

No one has actually been hurt yet, despite numerous allusions to violence, and outright rape and murder threats. It could be argued that this particular brand of hate speech is more of an overblown venting than anything warranting actual concern. It's not uncommon to hear it a lot, in certain circles. However, if I were the one being threatened, how would I know if the other person meant it or not? It's almost as if what this situation needs, is a new emoji, or something. The violence/rape equivalence of "no homo".

In Conclusion

Persons on both sides of this issue are human, and have their own lives, and feel harassed and frustrated. MundaneMatt, the vlogger who kicked off this whole thing,  feels like he's been unfairly targeted, and has certainly painted himself into the proverbial corner by refusing to back down from his allegations. Women are saying they are afraid to stay in their own homes after they receive a certain level of threats, and at the same time, #gamergate supporters are refusing to take their concerns seriously. People who think that #gamergate is a legitimate thing worth talking about are getting labeled misogynists and rapists, while people who are against it are called SJWs (which I have to tell you doesn't sound that bad), femenazis, or pussy-whipped, or at the very least, shills for the old style of gaming journalism. Anyone who falls into a gray area is pushed to pick a side, even if all they want to do is point out the facts. Video game journalists are left holding the ball. And honestly, the depictions of women in gaming and their reception as developers and designers was already wanting. This hasn't made anything any better.

Neither Quinn nor Gjoni come out of this looking like people I'd want to have over for dinner. Gjoni is getting painted as nothing better than a jilted ex with an agenda. It doesn't help that he says that despite the fact that he never intended for all of this to happen, he has no regrets, but let's give the guy a break, he's hurting and it's not an easy thing  to renege on. It's easy in hindsight to say that he was really just trying to point out what was wrong with gaming, or that was at least a part of the message, even though according to the original document, it's not true. Quinn is accused of being a bitch, and a slut, and a even an actual whore; which is essentially inflation of the sophistication level of previous criticism. This is a serious problem that women in general find themselves facing, whenever they are in the spotlight. It is not something I would condemn anyone to, regardless of whether I approved of their opinions. I really don't think I would enjoy getting to know either one of them, they both strike me as immature and whiny at best, but who knows, maybe that's just how they come off while their pants are on fire.

Statistics show that the majority of tweets with the #gamergate hashtag are tweeted at the prominent women involved, rather than men, but that while the number of negative tweets outweigh the positive ones, a very large majority are actual neutral

So, what is #gamergate about, then? Is it about gaming journalism? or women in gaming?

No.

And here's the thing, here at the end of all this work I've done, I'm going to take a second and make a judgment call. That's right, I'm going to express an opinion about all of this, come down on a side, and piss some of you off.

You are all wrong.

I've spend days marinating in your crap, and it's pretty clear no one is right.

No, really. There is no evidence that what started this whole brouhaha had any real relationship to the cronyism in gaming, and even if there was, nothing about it warranted talking about killing or raping people. And yes, that's terrible and no one should be afraid for their lives, ever, certainly not over something this pointless. I've been warned by someone peripherally associated with gaming and hardcore video game culture, that it's possible that some people consider this “community” a “safe space”, and that people feel threatened when it turns out that place that they go to hide from the real world is actually just another slice of the real world. The truth is that you can't escape from the real world. Everywhere you go, people will be jerks, have entitlement issues, be lazy, have hobby horses, think you're not as authentic as they are, be mean just for the sake of it, etc., etc., etc.

Jesus Herman Christ on a broken pogo stick, get over it. We are talking about video games, not world peace. This is not worth ruining other people's lives over. I get it, any small community is full of cliques and infighting. I've seen it among activists so often that I just don't get deeply involved with activist groups anymore, not skeptics, not atheists, not paganism, not feminists, not occupy, not even my local library. Any unpaid, unpoliced mass of hoi polloi is going to repeatedly dissolve into nonsense, especially when the internet is a buffer between you and your fellow man.

And there is nothing you can do to end it, except to stop participating. That's right, just STOP. Trust me, I've been inside of flame wars, and since I stopped fighting back my life has been 100% better. I know, I know, the state of the gaming community, and depictions of women in games, and gaming press nepotism and and and and... Just STOP.

Nothing you do now, no matter how passionate you may be, will ever achieve whatever goal you have. Tactics like publishing people's personal information or threatening rape and death will only piss people off. Saying that you're mad at the fringe part of your “side” that is making you look bad, and you're really here to talk about journalism ethics, is not going to get heard any more, you're wasting your breath, everyone else is too loud. If you're a feminist, or on the general “side” of the feminists, you're getting in your own way, too. You're lumping everyone who's “against you” into one category which is unfair, and a straw man argument to boot. It won't make the hate speech go away, only inflame it. The day will not come when your grandchildren will ask you about your pivotal role in the culture changing event of #gamergate. Now is not the time, this is not the hill you want to die on. Just stop.

Take a break, read a book, look at it again. This is a speck of wood in the ocean of life, and if you just stop baling water, it will sink. If you don't like what people have to say, don't listen, if you think there's no room for your opinions, find a better place where there is room. Find a new hobby for God's sake.

These are games, in essence no more complicated than those involving a ball or a stick. And there will always be games, nothing can kill that, because games and playing them are fundamental parts of the human animus. But games are by definition an arbitrary set of rules agreed upon by consensus, when consensus stops, the game stops, so fighting becomes it's own enemy. You're all wrong, this is stupid. Just STOP.

No, you don't need to take a “stand against the attacks against women” or keep “fighting the good fight” against people who don't want to reform gaming journalism. Why? Because if you let this putter out, there will be something similar to fight over later, and maybe that time there will be a chance to win. But right now, there is no way any of you can win this, and by continuing to act this way, you make yourselves all look like idiots. Stop. No... stop. Take your fingers off the keyboard. Even unplug your ethernet cord if you have to. Stop.

And give me my twitter feed back.

 The problem with the internet. (credit)

For a time line, I relied heavily on The #GamerGate Chronicles, this forum post, Know-Your-Meme, and Wikipedia, but since I don't have a lot of experience with this entire topic, I tried to diversify and double check everything. If I got something crucial wrong in the timing of events, or missed an event entirely, please let me know.

Terrorist Muslims! Hide Behind the Couch!

Sometimes I get requests to google things because 1) I'm super good at googling and 2) I'm relatively good at synthesizing information and regurgitating it. 

Request today: are all Sunnis terrorists?

Answer, no.

Wait! I didn't google yet... OK so seriously, this wasn't a genuine question. We already know the answer, but it was actually a request for verifiable statistics about Islamic extremism and Sunni involvement in terrorism, specifically.

So, just to clarify, I'm starting off here pretty much raw, what I know about Islam comes directly from World Religions by Huston Smith, and I haven't read that book in like a million years. I know tons about medieval Muslim culture in North Africa and Southern Europe, but honestly that has nothing to do with this. So, lets say you know more than me and I get something wrong, please tell me (*cough cough* Zara; ok now I hope you've actually read this). Thanks.

So let's start with some definitions, Islam is, of course, the religion based on the teachings of Mohamed as recorded in the Koran (this is the version my spell check likes, so I'm using it to avoid the annoying wavy red line). Fundamentalism, according to google's dictionary is “a form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture”. So that clears that up. I'm gonna bet that fundamentalists don't have to be terrorists. Why? Remember how I said I know a lot about Muslim culture from the Middle Ages? Yeah, that's why. In the middle ages, Islamic minorities ruled several non-Islamic states without resorting to large scale religious oppression. This is despite the fact that several Popes had condoned all violence against Saracens in the Holy Land as a way to get out of purgatory. It's interesting to note that, during the Crusades (which were not fought solely in the Holy Land, but also throughout Europe against pagans and heretics), Muslims were considered to be either pagans who worshiped Mohamed, as a god or followers of Mohamed. who was in fact simply a Christian heretic. In modern times Islam has become known as a member of the Abrahamic tradition, and Catholic Catechism states that as believers in the god of Abraham, Muslims will also be saved on the last day. The Koran itself states that Jews, Christians and Sabian (Gnostic Hermetic Christians), among others, were as eligible for judgment as Muslims, this perhaps accounts for a greater degree of religious tolerance for Christians by Muslims than the other way around.

The religious split that is vaguely recognized by the western press as “sectarianism” occurred in Islam immediately following the death of Mohamed. Briefly, it went like this: Sunnis believe that the prophet did not not appoint his successor and so elected Mohamed's father-in-law Abdullah ibn Abi Qhuhafah (Abu Bakr Siddique) as Caliph (basically, Caliph means community leader, specifically here, he was intended to be Mohamed's successor): Shias believe that the decedents of Mohamed hold a particular place of spiritual importance and they elected `Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, cousin and son-in-law of Mohamed, as Caliph. Several more sects followed, and obviously any person of any group can be a fundamentalist of that group, but we'll stop there, because these two, the Sunni and the Shia are by far the two largest denominations of Islam, and Sunni extremism is the main focus of the question.

So here's the thing about understanding Islamic ideas, there is no one way to interpret them. This is, in fact, one of the ultimate truths about any group of religions. If you climb inside the Bible it is chock a block full of precepts, directives, and admonitions, in both testaments, and there's quite a few that disagree with one another, and a whole bunch that modern Christians ignore completely, which makes sense, because honestly most of it has nothing to do with how we live our lives now. The same is true of Islam. You've heard of Sharia, the set of laws that Muslims follow? It's the same thing. Where Sharia is not interpreted by a governing body, it's up to the individual to choose how to behave, and even when there is some oversight, there are wide differences between one group and another as to how laws are interpreted, or even what is a law and what isn't.

Ok, what about Jihad? Jihad is what causes terrorism, right? Here's the translation provided by wikipedia of the relevant passages of the Koran:

2:190 Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors.
2:191 And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al-Haram until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.
2:192 And if they cease, then indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful. 2:193 Fight them until there is no [more] fitnah and [until] worship is [acknowledged to be] for Allah . But if they cease, then there is to be no aggression except against the oppressors.

So that's... vague. Fitnah, you might be wondering, means something like “persecution” in this context. So again, this is a concept that is open to interpretation by disparate groups and thinkers. This is a conflicting texts issue, in places in the Koran, we are told that worship should not be compulsory, but in others, that those who do not believe in Allah and the last day should be fought. What's a confused person to think?

I'm not going to get into the argument about whether or not Islam is a peaceful religion, or whether or not Jihad is about violence or not, I won't even weigh in on the multifaceted criticisms of terrorist philosophy. Lots of really interesting arguments have been made by a lot more educated persons than me. It's important to note that polls consistently show that a large minority of Muslims believe that violence is often justified in a number of famous cases, such as 9/11, 7/7, and honor killings. These opinions however, are just that opinions. 93% of Muslims are in fact moderates. How can this be? Well, consider the people you know, how many of them would jump at the chance to run off to a different country and kill people who disagree with them? Not many, I bet. But if you view polls, the American populace is split right down the middle as to whether or not the war in Iraq was a good idea or not, and a lot of people think that the war in Afghanistan was a great idea, but that Barack Obama is fouling it up, mostly by not fighting enough. Sunni Muslim extremists are responsible for about 70% of all terrorist killings, the next most active group being anarchists. Just for funsies, here's an article from the Washington Post about how war is actually good for us.

So the short answer is this: out of 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, only 7% are fundamentalists, compared to 2 billion Christians, 10% of whom are fundamentalists; as much as 90% of Muslims could be considered Sunni, so by basic math even if all the fundamentalist Muslims were Sunni (which they aren't), it's not possible for all Sunnis to be fundamentalists; even if we only calculate “approval of terrorism” we're still looking at less than half of the population of Muslims who consider any terrorist action to ever be justifiable, as opposed to more than half of the Christian population of the United States, that thinks that war against groups of people who have nothing to do with terrorism, as retaliation against terrorism, is awesome. So, wait, who are the terrorists?