In the aftermath of the recent tragic school shooting, #gamergate became quite inflamed at the comments of Anita Sarkeesian.

Below are the comments in question:





#gamergate seems to perceive this as an attack on men, rather than an attack on the societal forces, scripts and gender roles that influence men in ways that enable this sort of thing to happen.

Responses like these were common:







(The images above come from David Futrulle’s article on We Hunted the Mammoth, which does a great job of documenting the toxicity on display here.)

My concern here is not the toxicity of the messages in question, but the outright rejection of what she’s saying as some sort of attack on men. What she’s saying is precisely the opposite of an attack on men; it’s an attack on the societal values pressed onto men.

And in comes Thunderf00t. He has what can only be seen as a typical response given his anti-feminist stance: he interprets this as an inappropriate assault on men. There’s his usual problematic content– victim blaming, pretending Sarkeesian is somehow “playing the poor, demure persecuted woman,” etc.

But things take a turn for the unexpected. His bigotry towards men comes out.

He goes on to talk about the role testosterone plays in aggression. He’s correct, it does. But he takes this even further– it quickly crosses into the threshold of biological determinism.

In other words, he believes the fact that men are committing school shootings and killing sprees as frequently as they are when compared to women is a fundamental, intrinsic and unchangeable part of being male.

To deny cultural forces affect your behavior (not to mention affect your biology!) is profoundly ignorant. It’s a complete rejection of what we know about social science and psychology.

Worst of all, however, is that it’s downright bigoted.

Anita Sarkeesian is saying the problems are cultural and can be changed. Thunderf00t is saying the problems are intrinsic to being men and are unchangeable.

#gamergate should be outraged, but they’re outraged at the wrong person.