Interviews: Brianna Wu Answers Your Questions 557
Last week you had a chance to ask the head of development at Giant Spacekat Brianna Wu about Gamergate, starting a company, and women-in-tech issues. Below you'll find her answers to your questions.
Penalties and Online Harrassment by Anonymous Coward
I read all the time about the experiences of online harassment victims. As pointed out in your Patreon, most all of this is obviously criminal activity, and it takes lots of time to document it for police. Why have I virtually never read about someone getting arrested? I've even looked around. I was sure at the height of Gamergate, a flood of news about arrests was coming, and now it seems like that's never coming.
I can only think of two cases: One was in Canada, where a very mentally ill young man, no older than 20 I think, was arrested for SWATting people repeatedly, among other things. The other was in the UK where again a very young man was arrested for threatening a politician over twitter. Just googling "twitter arrest" brings up lots of cases where people who pulled various stunts had their anonymity removed and were arrested, but none of them for the kinds of harassment you've discussed reporting to the police. The first hit is several Huffington Post articles about it. Is it not reported in the media? Do the police just not care, or not know how to investigate it? Are the people doing the harassment just that crafty? Do you believe increased enforcement will reduce harassment online, and particularly if so, what needs to happen between then and now?
Brianna: So, starting this conversation - I should say that the FBI has asked me not to comment on the specifics of ongoing cases. But, I can talk about the situation in general terms.
Working with law enforcement has been one of the most exasperating experiences of my life. The amount of media attention to my case has been extreme. There was a Law and Order episode based on my experiences and those of other victims of harassment. I’ve been in most major media around the world. I’ve been on Nightline and John Oliver, and there still have not been any prosecutions in my case.
As bad as it’s been for me, the women I worry about are ones that don’t get media attention. The truth is, if you are a woman, and someone threatens to murder you online, it's overwhelmingly likely that no help is coming, and you're on your own.
I don’t think the people working on my case don’t care. I think most people go into law enforcement because they want to help people like me. It does seem like a question of training and resources, particularly with local police, that the need has far outpaced the tools.
It greatly troubled me when, after sending the FBI leads for months, they asked me to mail them a hard drive with my evidence. They said, because of their systems, they were unable to read email attachments or access shared Dropbox folders. It’s hard to imagine how any law enforcement agency can operate in 2015 with those constraints.
The FBI employs over 15,000 people. As best as I can tell, none of them are specifically tasked with prosecuting cases like mine. In June, Representative Katherine Clark submitted a proposal to congress that would allocate 10 operatives and an attorney to prosecute online threats. I hope we can make that happen.
Questions:
by juanfgs
I never heard much about game developers, but it seems like GamerGate has put many of them in the spotlight, specially women. Has the Gamergate movement somehow boosted your popularity and of other game developers and benefited you in any way? Do you regret that a big part your popularity didn't stem from the work you've made all these years in your professional life and rather from a political counter-movement?
Brianna: One of the biggest misconceptions about me is that, professionally, I was unknown before Gamergate. I had more conference invites than I could accept before Gamergate. I had a show on 5by5 before Gamergate, which was a very prestigious network. I had been speaking up on women in tech for years before Gamergate. In fact, the month before I was dragged into the mess, I had a two-hour talk with my team about their need for me to be in the office more. It's been a struggle for years, balancing my role as head of development with the responsibility of being an increasingly public figure for the company.
I do think it’s accurate that Gamergate has made me better known to the general public, rather than just industry insiders. It frustrates me to no end that the public doesn’t recognize my work as an entrepreneur, as a software engineer, or as a leader of an ambitious company - but rather as a feminist figure and a victim of Gamergate.
My career goal has never been to be a feminist media critic like Anita Sarkeesian. To be honest, the thought of my career still being about this five years from now is incredibly depressing.
I want to make games, and I want to provide jobs to the many talented women I know in the industry. I don’t want to be known as a victim. I want to be known as someone solving engineering problems about emotion the rest of the industry isn’t interested in.
One the key parts of my personality is I am extremely pragmatic. Maybe it’s the developer part of my brain - but I work with the system I have and not the system I want. And, if standing up to the horrific abuse of Gamergate has opened doors for me? Yeah, you'd better believe I’m going to walk through them.
Capital
by HellYeahAutomaton
How did you secure the capital to start Giant Spacekat? How did you do it in 3 months, and what obstacles did you face?
Brianna: So, I can’t talk specifically about all of our funding. But I can say how we started Giant Spacekat and made our "minimal viable product." I quit my job when I married my husband, and followed him to Boston. I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue a graduate degree or start my own company.
A family relative offered us the chance to live in Frank’s grandmother’s house for free if we renovated it. That would free up capital for us, so I jumped at the chance. I spent half a year renovating the house. Then, we moved in - took our rent money, and used it to hire our first employee.
The part of this story that’s key is, I saw an opportunity - and I went all in. Renovating this house was disgusting and backbreaking. My husband and I spent hundreds of hours removing this horrible wallpaper from the 40s. I had to wear a hazmat suit and a respirator to encapsulate asbestos in the basement. We had to redo the entire electrical system of the house. But I sucked it up, got to work - and I launched my company.
As for obstacles faced, something that a lot of people don’t know about are the criminal efforts to harm our company financially. We’ve had multiple attempts to hack into our company’s dev account, to the point where we have had to work with Apple to put additional safeguards into place. We’ve also had to deal with repeated identity theft and credit card fraud.
egalitarian?
by johncandale
Why are you a feminist instead of a egalitarian?
Brianna: Egalitarianism is about equal rights for all people, but this is assuming that everyone starts in an equal situation, which is not the case.Feminism is advocating equal social, political, legal, and economic rights for women - and we are at a huge deficit with those rights.
I think this question is really telling about the incredible amount of unconscious privilege men have in technology. Anyone outside the industry can see it - this is a place built by men for men. It’s so built to serve them that women can’t even have a movement to address our systematic exclusion without some men insisting it should be about them too.
I am a feminist because my focus is, correctly, on making technology more equal for women.
The absence of privilege is not oppression. But, I think it often seems like that to some men. It distresses me greatly that when I talk about problems like exclusionary hiring practices - just how quickly men turn the conversation to what is fairest for them. You’re essentially asking for your privilege to be baked into the language of our fight for equality.
Game Design
by deltatype0
I am a "neutral" in the Gamergate debacle, preferring to observe more than directly interact, but in one case I watched the somewhat-infamous interview between Wu and Reddit KotakuInAction mod TheHat2. In it, they discussed the points of her iOS game "Revolution 60" and game design in general. One of the questions asked there was why she decided to work with iOS first versus the popular PC platform Steam. I don't remember the exact answer, but I think it revolved around developing for a platform that more women were likely to use, being the mobile market, and maybe some development-specific answers.
My question is this: Given what you've learned about programming in iOS, would you have developed for a PC platform like Steam first and ported to mobile later? Given female trends towards mobile platforms like the Nintendo DS/3DS, would it make more sense for your studio to explore developing games there? Or was your goal all along to produce a more 3D-visual action title for mobile phones?
For context, my wife is not as big of a gamer as myself, but I find she enjoys playing a lot of mobile puzzle games. I think the mobile market has a lot of potential for bigger things, and I think having the input of the majority player base on that platform makes sense, but I often don't understand why, as a mobile developer, you would be overly concerned with "the core gamer" demographic in the console platform. It seems to me that they aren't likely to crossover into the mobile market often, so there is little reason to "attack" that demographic as we've seen a few people, including Brianna, do through the last year.
Brianna: First of all, if you are “neutral” on the horrific abuse many women have suffered at the hands of Gamergate, you are a part of the problem. Being able to lean back in a chair and talk about Gamergate as if it’s a fun controversy isn’t a privilege I have, and it’s not a privilege women in the game industry have. This is about being able to continue working in the field I love.
Being neutral about threats to murder, rape and intimidate women with opinions is a character defect.
As far as your question - we’ve certainly thought about working with Nintendo. I have good connections with Nintendo of America - but Unreal is barely supported on Wii-U and 3DS. Often, these versions of Unreal are custom variants that are not supported by Epic. It’s a shame, because I think the touch interfaces would make us a natural fit for both - though the vert decimation it would take to get our skeletal meshes to work on 3DS makes me cringe to think about.
My proudest accomplishment with Revolution 60 is that anyone can pick it up and play it, regardless if they are a gamer or not. I don’t think that you should have to be a hardcore gamer to enjoy a story. That didn’t happen serendipitously, it happened through game design constraints and a lot of playtesting. I think that design philosophy is extremely compatible with Nintendo.
Are custom engines dead for 'normal' developers?
by MBCook
More and more developers seem to be using the existing engines (i know you used Unreal 3 for Rev 60, Unity, UbiArt, etc) which makes sense given the huge number of features they provide with little initial development cost and common tool sets/plugins used by other developers. Do you think there is much future in developers using custom engines for games (both indie and non-AAA) or do you think it will continue to become more uncommon for common genre games as you start at a larger and larger feature 'deficit' by having to redevelop the features on your custom engine, let alone porting issues, leaving only vert large/profitable houses (Naughty Dog, Insomniac, EA, etc) to be able to bear the time/$ costs?
Brianna: When you are an indie studio, you have to be absolutely ruthless about what you spend resources on. To me, getting into OpenGL and coding custom engines is a suicide mission for small teams. It’s worth noting that Apple’s 3D frameworks just don’t measure up to Unity or Unreal.
If someone has solved an engineering problem already, I see no point in reinventing the wheel.
I think indie teams get a little bit of a break - but you still have to do one or two things better than anyone else, including AAA. For us, we concentrated on characterization and animation. I would put the quality of Revolution 60s animation against anything on any platform. We wouldn’t have been able to do that if we’d wasted resources writing a custom engine.
"Developer" or "Journalist"?
by Rick in China
I'm interested in what development languages you excel in and how you mastered them - as head of development for a gaming company, I think that's my first question. Follow-up side-points would be when you transitioned from journalist to game developer, and why game development? Was it related to some of the 'sparks' and 'movements' by some other females 'in the gaming community' - and seen as an easy way to jump on a bandwagon that was clearly going to make waves? Journalist to developer just seems like a very strange transition to me, so I'm curious about the particulars. Do you have a github account where you publish some of your code?
Brianna: I’ve had many jobs over the course of my life. I’ve worked in politics and well as media. Both have been very helpful backgrounds for me in running a studio, which is a very political job. One of my greatest frustrations as a developer is that I don’t get to spend as much time doing gamedev as I used to. The truth is, I can hire another engineer - but I can’t hire someone to replace me.
I feel like my entire life has prepared me for this moment. There’s very little I would change about the choices that brought me to this point.
I can’t help but read your question and feel like you might not have the best of intentions. I read it as you are feel that I need to prove to you that I’m a legit developer. I think my record as someone whose first game won several game of the year awards speaks for itself. I think my two popular shows on Relay.FM where I am an industry analyst on technical issues speaks for itself.
I do have code up on Github, but like many women developers - it’s under a gender-neutral pseudonym, because I know it will be torn to pieces if it’s not. I once wrote a joke on Twitter with pseudocode, written to be readable for non-developers - and received a litany of sexist accusations and code critique.
There is an unconscious bias that men are assumed competent until proven otherwise, and women are assumed incompetent until proven otherwise. My track record of success speaks for itself.
Customization / Modification of Unreal Engine
by Anonymous Coward
Hi Brianna. No idea if this will bubble near enough to the surface for you to see it, but I'm curious how much, if any, work you and your team had to do in the "guts" of the Unreal Engine to get your game out the door, or if all of your work was done at the Unreal Script / editor level.
Brianna: One of the great things about Unreal is that there are certain game types that are coded into the engine already. If you want a top-down Diablo game, they’ve done that work already. If you want to make an FPS, they’ve done that work already. But it doesn't cover everything so we ended up having to do a lot more work than other game types.
It’s hard to stress just how much work we had to do to get Revolution 60 to run on older Apple devices. You start out with 512 megs of RAM, and a good chunk of that is taken up with Springboard. Then, iOS 7 came out midway through development and we found ourself suddenly with 134 megs less RAM to work with. We lost over four months solving that problem.
Revolution 60 got a lot of critique for our textures - which has always felt unfair to me. Low resolution textures were a deliberate tradeoff. Infinity Blade looks amazing, but they only have 2 characters on screen at a time. Cyrus has 22 mesh influencing bones, with a level 2 joint influence. Holiday has over 75 mesh influencing bones - requiring a second draw call with level 3 joint influence. We have up to five characters on screen at once, all with a 2k diffuse and a 2k normal. On top of that, there is a ton of custom animsets and sound that isn't hardware decoded. This is very ambitious to ask all of this to run on the iPhone 4S.
I would guess that about 1/4th of our development was spent working around these hardware limitations in Unreal. Holiday doesn’t run because we are loading and unloading every section you walk through from memory. I was handed sections to texture, and I had four 1k maps for many of them. Given those constraints, the game looks AMAZING. I could write a textbook on extremely efficient texture stacking.
A lot of people think beautiful textures are the test of a good materials artist, and it's true. But - I think working under memory constraints is an even greater challenge.
There are a lot of gamers out there that like to play armchair developer because they don’t understand these engineering tradeoffs. None of them could have made a game as ambitious as Revolution 60. I made the choice to emphasize characters over graphics, and I’d absolutely do it again.
Virtual Reality?
by Anonymous Coward
You hinted a bit in an episode of Rocket that you're playing with the idea of making a game for VR. Can you go into any detail on that, or talk about the future of VR gaming (if there is one)?
Brianna: As much as I would love to, I am unable to comment on that right now. I will say, if you thought I shook up the industry last year? Trust me, our best is yet to come.
So the good questions were ignored. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like many people predicted in the submission for asking the questions, it looks like the good, hard-hitting questions were totally ignored.
What's the point of having these /. interviews, regardless of who they're with, if all we get are answers to lame, uninteresting questions?
This isn't the only case where this has happened, of course. The same thing happened with the Linus Torvalds interview a few weeks ago. The best questions remained ignored, or if answered indirectly, the answers were pretty half-arsed.
If the best and most relevant questions aren't going to get answered, then /. should stop with these shitty interviews. Each one takes up two front page slots that could instead have been filled with relevant, useful stories.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe they were really bad questions. Retard level stupid. :D
You have some links to the questions so we can verify or rule out?
Re:So the good questions were ignored. (Score:5, Interesting)
Transgender voice? [slashdot.org]
You recently tweeted that no one who isn't transgender should voice opinions on transgender issues yet you regularly voice your own opinion on these issues. Is this a tacit "coming out" of your own transgender past, and if so, what does it mean for your own position as a representative and "megaphone" for women's issues and how you speak to the personal history of growing up as a woman?
Steam Greenlight [slashdot.org]
You recently ran a successful campaign to get your game approved on Steam's greenlight. What approaches did you use to get your game ranked high enough to be greenlit. What do you feel had the biggest impact in getting the numbers? What suggestions do you have for other Indie Game Developers who want to get their games approved on Steam's greenlight system?
Regarding your own game [slashdot.org]
Considering you have spoken out in the past about female characters in games being overtly sexualized, could you explain why the protagonists of your own game Revolution 60 wear what appears to be skintight lycra to show off their perfect hourglass figures?
And that's just a few that didn't get modded down. Many of the +5 best questions early on got "mysteriously" modded down to -1 flamebait by.... somebody. Like this one which was at +5 funny when I remember reading it a few days ago:
On Managing a Patreon Campaign [slashdot.org]
Ms. Wu, when sending yourself harassment over steam [theralphretort.com] or twitter and faking having to leave your house [theralphretort.com] over harassment in response to trolling people, do you find TOR or a more traditional anonymous proxy to be more effective?
A bunch more were mysteriously modded down. [slashdot.org]
Re:So the good questions were ignored. (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit.
Several questions were at +4 or +5 for days, and then suddenly got modded down to -1. That is pretty blatant abuse of the modding system by someone.
Re:So the good questions were ignored. (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder how many new Slashdot accounts were created from her Twitter whining and suddenly got mod points.
That or Dice decided to pull a Reddit and just hide them so they didn't appear "unfriendly to women in industry".
And right now I'd like to point out that Randi Lee Harper is speaking at OSCON this weekend.
TL;DR: A large and prominent tech conference (3.5K attendees) run by O'Reilly Media and sponsored by major tech companies is presenting Randi as an "anti-harassment" activist. When evidence of her track record of abuse and harassment was brought to the attention of the conference organizers last month, they publicly dismissed those contacting them about her as "trolls".
WHY THIS MATTERS: This is by far the biggest venue Randi has ever appeared in and the deception that she and the conference organizers are engaged in is shameful. If enough of us post evidence of who Randi really is to the #OSCON tag, there's a very good chance that future conference organizers (and their sponsors) will think twice before embarrassing themselves by giving Randi a platform.
DETAILS:
Although #OSCON was notified of Randi's antics when news of her speaking engagement became public last month, they chose to ignore the evidence, instead of taking seriously their obligation to their attendee's well-being. Adding insult to injury, a statement by @joshsimmons dismissed those who had raised concerns as "trolls":
http://www.oscon.com/open-sour... [oscon.com]
They followed this statement up with a fawning "interview" in their online magazine in which they didn't ask Randi a single question about her atrocious behavior:
http://opensource.com/life/15/... [opensource.com]
The conference starts today (Wednesday) and runs until Friday. Detailed information including the list of sponsors, can be found at http://www.oscon.com./ [www.oscon.com]
Details about Randi's talk can be found here: http://www.oscon.com/open-sour... [oscon.com].
Here are some links to some resources about Randi's misbehavior, such as Milo's just concluded series of articles, Ralph's followup, and Stephanie Greene's series from a few months ago. Please post links to other resources, such as blogs, articles, images, etc., which you think are worth posting to the #OSCON hashtag, in the comments.
http://www.breitbart.com/londo... [breitbart.com]
http://www.breitbart.com/big-j... [breitbart.com]
http://www.breitbart.com/big-h... [breitbart.com]
http://www.breitbart.com/big-j... [breitbart.com]
http://theralphretort.com/pill... [theralphretort.com]
http://s2b20blog.mukyou.com/hi... [mukyou.com]
http://s2b20blog.mukyou.com/th... [mukyou.com]
http://s2b20blog.mukyou.com/th... [mukyou.com]
http://s2b20blog.mukyou.com/bl... [mukyou.com]
Re:So the good questions were ignored. (Score:5, Funny)
Just like many people predicted in the submission for asking the questions, it looks like the good, hard-hitting questions were totally ignored.
I doubt she has an opinion one way or another on systemd.
Re:So the good questions were ignored. (Score:5, Funny)
Just like many people predicted in the submission for asking the questions, it looks like the good, hard-hitting questions were totally ignored.
I doubt she has an opinion one way or another on systemd.
First of all, if you are "neutral" on the horrific abuse that is systemd you are part of the problem!!!
Re: So the good questions were ignored. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: So the good questions were ignored. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly what I was thinking reading through this. She answered not a single negative comment, only the positive ones. Just like Cosby, if you don't respond to critics, they will bury you.
I am still very curious about her response to the accusations of her harassment and doxing of others. If she truly thinks these things are wrong when used against women, how can they be acceptable when used for a woman against people she disagrees with.
Also, though it is hardly my business, I would have loved to see her either confirm or deny all the comments about her being trans. There is nothing wrong with being this way, but it does kind of reduce credibility of her cause which may be why there was no answer either way.
Re: So the good questions were ignored. (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't actually know that she got sent the hard questions.
Does the interviewee go through the original post and look at everything that got a score of 5? That's a fairly low bar to hit, and probably a bit unreasonable.
I think it more likely that one of the editorial types gathered up the questions, using the best spelled of various repeats among questions (ok, that's a stretch), and decided what to send. I don't expect that they'd send anything that was outright abusive, no matter what score the question had, or how many people supported it.
Re: So the good questions were ignored. (Score:4, Informative)
We don't actually know that she got sent the hard questions.
He claims to have read through all the questions on Twitter [archive.is].
And it looks like someone forgot which account they were logged into [twitter.com] when faking harassment again! Oops!
Re: (Score:3)
And it looks like someone forgot which account they were logged into [twitter.com] when faking harassment again! Oops!
Sarcasm in text. It's hard. And some people just don't want to understand, which makes it harder.
Re: (Score:3)
Do you really expect her to answer your troll questions where you won't even acknowledge her gender? I wouldn't answer questions about my mental health, or about allegations that were already debunked by other commentators etc. Engaging would only feed into the harassment, it's best to just try to answer people with a genuine interest in what you are doing and forward copies of the worst of it to the FBI.
By the way, have you ever heard of retweeting? It's where you copy/paste a tweet that someone else sent
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps Slashdot could use a new Director of Talent [washingtonpost.com]? I hear a pretty good one [wikipedia.org] just went on the market after her former employer slashed and burned any remaining semblance of their credibility...
Re: (Score:2)
Does the interviewee go through the original post and look at everything that got a score of 5?
They certainly can, if she's such a techie that's certainly within her abilities. Interviewees have done so before.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You're assuming she's done something wrong. You seriously think she's going to say "yup, the morons behind gamergate were right, abuse of women is a good thing because they shouldn't be in gaming, and I'm only doing this for the lulz"?
Re: So the good questions were ignored. (Score:2)
Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
"The truth is, I can hire another engineer - but I can’t hire someone to replace me."
Impressive.
"I read it as you are feel that I need to prove to you that I’m a legit developer. I think my record as someone whose first game won several game of the year awards speaks for itself. I think my two popular shows on Relay.FM where I am an industry analyst on technical issues speaks for itself."
Neither speaks to being a developer at all, unless you wrote the game yourself, which you didn't. And being an analyst doesn't make you a developer.
Incredible.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
But dude, she totally wrote some code that's under another name that she can't disclose at present because of, you know...stuff.
And I totally have a hot supermodel girlfriend in Canada. She's a developer too!
Re: Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks, /.! (Score:4, Interesting)
If it happens, you can thank /. in part for that.
wrong answer (Score:5, Insightful)
"Brianna: First of all, if you are “neutral” on the horrific abuse many women have suffered at the hands of Gamergate, you are a part of the problem."
no, anyone who attacks a neutral party is a part of the problem. not everyone knows all of the details, and neither side seems to be entirely trustworthy.
carry your argument out a bit further - you are suggesting that portugal,in part, caused the holocaust.
roflcopter captcha: partly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That was expected, "if you are not for us, you are against us" would be her answer.
She was unknown to me before gamergate, and now the only thing I ever see from her is hate speech against men. Her toxic views of male gamers appear on video game sites as fact. Her views of video game design as being misogynistic is being promoted as fact.
Her video games reviews are only about sexism, leaving off what games are really about, gameplay, interaction, puzzles, design, ingenuity.
Shes a one sided hate parrot, an
Re: wrong answer (Score:3)
Re: wrong answer (Score:4, Informative)
Like the time she forgot to log out of her dev account on Steam before starting a thread saying bad things about herself. She was called on it by a Steam mod and ended up removing the thread shortly after. (https://archive.is/t1Oxl [archive.is])
Or the time she was talking private chatting with a group of anons that ended up mysteriously being involved in harassing her (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1WSLdFCAAEicWf.png:large [twimg.com])
Or the time she claimed GamerGate was threating a PAX conference, except the threats were from one of her followers directed at GamerGate supporters (https://i.imgur.com/nAxgNCD.png [imgur.com])
Or the time she created the brololz account to harass & mock people on twitter (http://imgur.com/y1OK1By [imgur.com])
I don't agree with anyone receiving death threats and it's dumb that I have to state that whenever Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu or Anita Sarkeesian come up, but I'm all out of empathy for these women. Who seem to continually kick beehives, get stung by wasps then parade it around as evidence that bees need to be eradicated. They're definitely creating they're own "misery" which gets them big bucks and lots of attention while breaking the #1 rule of the internet (don't feed the trolls)
Interesting choice of questions to address (Score:4, Insightful)
You say that you don't want to play the victim or the token IT female or the feminist propagandist... And then proceed to focus on literally nothing else, even at the expense of answering the damned questions asked. Seriously, why bother?
Re: (Score:2)
I think the editors need to expand the Q&A FAQ. They usually say they will pick 10 of the highest rated questions to send along, so I don't think Brianna Wu actually picked the questions. The editors would probably filter out any questions they thought would be offensive to the interviewee, so likely the "hard" questions wouldn't have been sent along.
Also, I'd note that many of the so-called "hard" questions could easily be categorized as "bullshit" or "harassment" questions.
This is funny. (Score:4, Informative)
Stopped reading after the second question after Wu said she was well known before GamerGate. No, no she wasn't. She's taken full advantage of the GamerGate situation for her own shameless self promotion, even going as far as trying to incite abuse against herself on Steam. She just forgot to log out of her developer account.
http://theralphretort.com/wp-content/uploads/Selection_999023.png
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well the moron mods are out in force.
Finding conference invites (which is what her claim is about) from before gamergate is an easy google search away and yet people mod up these easily disprovable lies.
And I fully expected to get modded down for this.
Re:This is funny. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well the moron mods are out in force.
Yep, I can see that. What the hell happened to you, Slashdot? I leave for a couple years, 'cause I've been busy, and now you're giving this opportunist a Q&A? Not only that, but throwing her softball questions so she can push her professional victim schtick, and downvoting people who point this out?
This is just sad.
Re: (Score:3)
Yep, I can see that. What the hell happened to you, Slashdot? I leave for a couple years, 'cause I've been busy, and now you're giving this opportunist a Q&A? Not only that, but throwing her softball questions so she can push her professional victim schtick, and downvoting people who point this out?
Simple, they got sold off to an advertising company, that also mets out a job search site and they tossed their lot in with the social justice crowd because "outrage sells."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
What rights do men have that woman do not?
HATER!!!
Any other questions?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
There is a massive difference in degree here.
Consider this: Alice and Bob get in to an argument. Things get heated, and Alice calls Bob a jerk. Bob then beats her severely. Alice, after regaining consciousness, files a police report.
Both sides have done fuck up things. Trying to pretend it was a completely black and white, good vs evil conflict does not get you any respect
What I'm saying is you get nowhere when you are unwilling to admit that both sides were in the wrong and attack neutral parties purely because they are neutral.
If you're neutral in the case of Alice and Bob, you are indeed part of the problem. Sure, Alice was wrong to call Bob a jerk, but that is not in any way equivalent to the severe beating Alice received. Insisting that all wrongs are somehow equally egregious, and using that
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You seem to forget that the people on "her" side of the argument also made death and rape threats.
So basically some people allegedly affiliated with some global cause with her received death threats so it's OK to be neutral on her personally receiving them. Basically you're reducing it to partisan shit flinging= and using that to not condemn reprehensible behaviour.
It's not us-versus-them.
This person received actual death and rape threats.
If you are neutral about that, then yes, you are part of the problem.
No nuance allowed. You're for us or against us. (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, if you are “neutral” on the horrific abuse many women have suffered at the hands of Gamergate, you are a part of the problem.
And this is why we can't have grown-up conversations. Even the mere thought that there might be anything of merit on the GG side is tantamount to a rape threat. It's intolerant and childish.
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When there's public abuse and large numbers of people thinking "Meh, whatever" or "Not my problem" allow it to continue and are part of the problem. Instead of "being neutral", support the parts of the movement you believe in and condemn what's not acceptable.
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Re:No nuance allowed. You're for us or against us. (Score:4, Informative)
The Quinnspiracy scandal was incredibly minor and would have blown over within a week or so. The only reason it got big was because discussion about it was so heavily censored, all for a VERY minor developer. Fears about the gaming media had existed for a long time prior, but it was only the censorship of the Quinnspiracy that caused it to ignite. If there are allegations that a person is using sex to gain power and coverage and those allegations are immediately and widely censored, what do you think people will say? Certainly not "Oh, I guess we're all just a bunch of misogynist neck-beard basement dwellers after all and there's nothing to see here. Obviously we were wrong!" It was a wake-up call and a rallying cry for people to revolt against an ethically bankrupt media.
It's been almost a year now, far too long for a simple hate movement.
Also, do you have any proof that the Zoe Post is made up of forgeries? Have you even read it? It's still online. What I read was commentary backed up with screenshots of conversations. Either the guy was such a nut that he spent ages forging fake Facebook and text conversations or he hit prtsc a few times. Occam's Razor, no?
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That's not what she's saying; that's a gross misrepresentation.
The fact of the matter is that Gamergate, from its inception, was largely a misogynistic endeavour that wildly eclipsed anything legitimate buried way underneath. It started with an insane screed by a jilted ex-boyfriend and continued on as an excuse for hundreds of people to harass women. It MAY be possible to feel that Gamergate had legitimate points, but there's so much hate swirling around it that it was hard to get down to those points.
It i
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It started with an insane screed by a jilted ex-boyfriend
So what part of the "insane screed" agaisnt Zoe Quinn are you claiming was untrue? And on what evidence?
Re:No nuance allowed. You're for us or against us. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't be neutral on GG, honestly.
I can only speak for myself, but I think a lot of others may fall into the same category. Most everything I know about GG is spillover in slashdot discussions. I know there's accusations of journalistic impropriety, and accusations of misogyny, and a lot of harassment, and a huge heaping pile of arguments. But it's such a mess that I still don't even know what someone means when they say they're "anti-GG" for instance, because I don't know which side of which issue that actually means. And frankly, just based on the generally incoherent and overheated arguments that have spilled over here, I'd rather not investigate further.
I know I'm against harassment (of all kinds, against all types). I know I'm against unethical journalism. I'm also disinclined to insert myself into situations of histrionic drama where I'm unlikely to be able to make a difference. So I don't really know what sides of what parts of what sub-issues that puts me in relation to GG, and I don't care to find out. So I'm agnostic, or neutral, or maybe willfully ignorant of enough details to be able to say more. It doesn't seem such an unreasonable stance to take.
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Even the mere thought that there might be anything of merit on the GG side is tantamount to a rape threat. It's intolerant and childish.
No one said that, you made it up.
Being neutral that people (mostly women) are being repeatedly doxed is definitely a character flaw. Having strangers call your family or coworkers at 3AM and screaming at them is a pretty clear cut case of abuse.
There is definitely one side to the GG controversy that is intolerant and childish, but it isn't the women game developers.
Here's a plan: stop being assholes because someone said some words you don't like. When other people, even ones who agree with you behave this w
Re: No nuance allowed. You're for us or against us (Score:4, Informative)
Being neutral that people (mostly women) are being repeatedly doxed is definitely a character flaw... There is definitely one side to the GG controversy that is intolerant and childish, but it isn't the women game developers.
I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but Briana Wu, along with other "SJWs," is accused of doxxing and harassing GGers... Exactly what she accuses them of doing. She's also accused of posting threats to herself under "anonymous" screen names, then claiming that the treats came from GGers. I'm sure if I look hard enough, I can find SJWs accusing GG of false flag harassment too.
Obviously, real harassment is bad. False flag harassment is bad for a different readon. But to a dispassionate observer, both "sides" are doing the exact same thing. It's ridiculous to claim that one side is the side of the angels. That's why "neutral on gamergate" is a reasonable position.
It's a shame that your criticism is targeted at GG exclusively, because both sides could stand to follow your advice.
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GG has merit? I thought that anyone with something reasonable to say abandoned that moniker a long time ago. The remainder being just a noisy bunch of bottom feeders pretending it's all about ethics in journalism while spending all their time ranting about feminism and harassing women online..
If you actually think there's a diamond at the bottom of that cesspool, please, pull it out and show us. Then get it as far away from that mess as possible. Leave it in that filth and no one will ever see it.
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No, imagine talking to somebody who *claims* to have been punched in the face, and saying 'I'm neutral on this, as I don't have enough evidence.'
Or is she expecting the 'privilege' of having her word taken at face value simply because she's a woman? See how pernicious that line of thinking is?
When you take the 'victim's' word at face value, you wind up with this [wikipedia.org] and people even tangent [wikipedia.org]
Feminist vs egalitarian (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are you a feminist instead of a egalitarian?
Brianna: Egalitarianism is about equal rights for all people, but this is assuming that everyone starts in an equal situation, which is not the case.Feminism is advocating equal social, political, legal, and economic rights for women - and we are at a huge deficit with those rights.
I don't understand this answer; how is advocating for equal rights for women not egalitarian?
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I don't understand this answer; how is advocating for equal rights for women not egalitarian?
Because she doesn't care about anything but women's rights, nor what rights might be lost by everyone in the process of securing them. Which I totally understand, because she's a woman, and because she's clearly very self-focused. Which I totally understand as well, because most of us are.
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Well, it is understandable, but the rest of the society should draw the line at equal rights. Otherwise it will be just the same wrong.
While I agree, I think it's highly unlikely to swing that far. It will be the same kind of wrong, but less of it.
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If infinite money exists, but right now I have $50 and you have $30, egalitarianism says you should get $20 more.
Infinite money does not exist. So if I have $50, and you have $30, I would have to give you $10. Which isn't equal for me, because you get $10, and I lose $10. I lose. Why should I have to lose?
Of course, civil rights aren't money. Which is why the idea of egalitarianism seems sound. But when the exercise of equality influences the course of zero-sum decisions (like money decisions), the idea of
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So, you're saying that feminists want gain more civil rights while removing some of men's civil rights? What civil rights do men have that women don't?
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If infinite money exists, but right now I have $50 and you have $30, egalitarianism says you should get $20 more.
Infinite money does not exist. So if I have $50, and you have $30, I would have to give you $10. Which isn't equal for me, because you get $10, and I lose $10. I lose. Why should I have to lose?
Of course, civil rights aren't money. Which is why the idea of egalitarianism seems sound. But when the exercise of equality influences the course of zero-sum decisions (like money decisions), the idea of egalitarianism doesn't work. Whoever already has more wins.
Last time I checked, infinite money has existed ever since we stopped backing it with finite resources (gold, silver, etc.). Now we have governments printing as much as they like and banks that are "too big to fail" that are allowed to gamble with our 1's and 0's however they choose all the while knowing that there will be no repercussions for failure.
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she says she's not an egalitarian because she's only interesting in advocating rights for females.
Why? Because they start out with less rights than men (in her view).
Personally i believe she just doesn't like the word egalitarian and wants to identify as a feminist without realizing it's the same thing logically.
Non-answers abound (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: "I'm interested in what development languages you excel in and how you mastered them"
A: "My track record of success speaks for itself."
Hmmm...
Okay. (Score:3, Interesting)
Learned a bit more about Brianna today, cool (I guess).
Unfortunately, her logic:
(Neutral in the Gamergate argument) == (You Support Rape and Death Threats etc..)
Doesn't sit well for my respect of her and became a bit of a stigma.
I don't see my post... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, that's a wrap folks (Score:3, Insightful)
I quit my job when I married my husband, and followed him to Boston. I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue a graduate degree or start my own company.
Ms. Wu, right there you already have vastly more privilege than many trans women I know and a lot of guys I know, too. How dare you speak of privilege? How dare you take these things for granted?
I do hope you gender lunatics one day learn how to think critically. How many trans women are unable to get bottom surgery? How many trans women are uncertain how they'll afford their next prescription refill? How many trans women are unable to work as their mental gender? Switching gears, how many men are out of work and about to lose their homes? How many men with degrees are homeless or working 2 shit service jobs 80 hours a week with no hope to even save more than $500 before the next disaster saps their savings entirely?
Do you even know one single thing about privilege? No, it appears that you've never had those problems. You would never understand what it's like to have nothing in the world and to lose even what you have when you come out. You have the privilege of being unaware of your privilege!
How many trans women get married and rely on a man for income? Hell, how many people who aren't cisgendered women get those advantages and privileges?
You've made your choices, Ms. Wu, as have a good number of gender lunatics. I will never understand your worldviews. I will never understand why you rely on men to provide for you and then ask for pity under the delusion that somebody's denied you some ephemeral privilege instead of following the way of the Amazon feminist/woman.
"It is a man's world, not because it should be, but because we let them have it. The man's world is based on a woman's weakness. The Amazon world is based on truth and a woman's individual strength."
Fare thee well, Slashdot. I'm afraid it's time to uncomment your line in my hosts file one final time. If anybody wants to debate me on these points, look me up over on Soylent.
-- kurenai.tsubasa
Captcha: discord
she's just another man hater. (Score:5, Insightful)
This line shows it all for me:
"The truth is, if you are a woman, and someone threatens to murder you online, it's overwhelmingly likely that no help is coming, and you're on your own."
Why is she making this a gender-specific issue?
Does anyone else see the inherent sexism and wrongness of her thinking here?
Unfortunately this is just another perfect example of a massive problem in society now from many women and most PeeCee media outlets blatantly promoting the idea that a politically correct society just automatically understands that a women's life and rights are somehow intrinsically more valuable/important than a man's, so women should get extra special protection just because vagina.
Ah yes, let's talk about gender politics some more (Score:5, Insightful)
Ms. Wu, you don't know me, but I'm a woman in tech.
I admit that I have been harassed in my career. Sexually, by men. But by women also, where the weapon of choice was rumor and innuendo.
So you see, men and women are equal, in that they are perfectly capable of cruelty towards others.
All that having been said, you will not, during the course of a normal workday, ever hear me talk about being a woman.
Know why?
Because my job is not dependent upon being a woman. It depends upon me being able to do my job, and last I checked, being able to communicate, use a computer, or design a test does not automatically somehow reject me from the process of doing my job or make it harder.
Yes, there is sexism, I will not deny this, but it isn't pervasive, it isn't everywhere, and you'll never find me pointing at shadows demanding everyone within the sound of my voice do something about some formless terror that in the course of damn near a year hasn't become as corporeal as, say, Ferguson, or Charleston, or the Bill Cosby controversy.
Because it doesn't help anyone.
YOU are the one creating a hostile environment by stirring up this imagined "terror" of Gamergate, and demanding this wild snipe hunt be enacted to purge no one in particular, and scare everyone to varying degrees.
YOU are the one saying that the environment hates women so much that you need to create a "safe space" for women around you to the exclusion of men, and yet somehow find yourself "qualified" to decry sexism.
YOU are the one reacting defensively to questions by even the most neutral of submitters.
People actually like me because I'm not all about gender politics, at least not until women like YOU show up and demand to be taken seriously and I have to tread carefully, so people don't think I want to be part of your crusade...because, fuck, I just want to do my job and get along with my coworkers.
So, here's a proposition for you: if you want it to stop being about sexism, how about you stop talking about sexism?
If you want people to take you seriously, don't sidetrack the discussion into other subjects.
If you want people not to question your credibility, avoid questions about the things you don't want to talk about and answer questions about the things you do, and DO NOT WAVER. Give people the impression that the only subjects you'll entertain are the ones that make you credible in the field. Make sure they know you don't have time for the bullshit that ISN'T about game development.
That is how I am successful, Ms. Wu, and Slashdot. That is how many women I know, peers and mentors, have been successful. Not by being a woman first and a developer/engineer/career whatever second.
I'll not be cynical for the moment and ask you to emulate those women. Not the ones whose valuable time is spent glossing over the few individuals who have wronged you because I guarantee, there weren't that many.
I hope you take this advice, Ms. Wu, because I think that's what a good feminist would do.
mod this up... (Score:2)
Well said!
Sadly she won't (Score:5, Informative)
Because it is good advice for actual progress. Wu isn't a feminist, she's a professional victim. I mean that literally: She makes her money by whining about being victimized and guilting people in to donating to her pateron to fund her life. She's a developer in only the most basic sense. She has one product ever, a mobile game that is very poor quality. She has no track record for actually working to advance women's rights or gender equality. Her profession is literally being a victim.
So she has no interest in advice from actual successful women developers because she's not. Her issue isn't having lots of skill but being kept down because of gender, it is having minimal skills and then playing pretend about the source of her problems.
That's why she agreed to the Ask Slashdot. She wanted the "mean" questions she refused to answer because she can point to those as examples of "harassment" to further her cause. She's not stupid, she knew what she was doing.
However while she won't take your advice, hopefully other women will, because it is excellent.
Re:Ah yes, let's talk about gender politics some m (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll say it again: threats to life and limb are criminal offences, even on the internet. WHY has nobody been prosecuted over these alleged threats? Could it be because she sent them to herself, if they even exist? And if they do exist, records should exists on a server log somewhere. Why aren't those servers being examined?
I think it's because Ms. Wu isn't being entirely truthful.
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You already lose credibility by citing "We Hunted the Mammoth", a hatefully biased source in and of itself.
And yes, I did my research. As far as I can tell, the whole Zoe Post thing was just a breaking point in a long drawn-out consumer unrest that should have begun and ended with "we're not clicking your pages anymore, sorry".
As for Brianna Wu, I'd never heard of her before Gamergate. The first I'd ever heard of her was that she'd been harassed. That was it. Her game was nothing special. And I follow
What a great satire (Score:2)
Will the real Brianna Wu ever show up and actually answer questions? I did thoroughly enjoy reading these obviously fake, asinine question/answer pairs though, so thanks for the laugh!
Older Apple Devices (Score:3)
..to run on older Apple devices. You start out with 512 megs of RAM...
Yikes... Must be an age difference... When I think of "older Apple devices" I'm thinking of like 64 KB... And I know people with older ones still...
Why should anyone help you? (Score:2)
The truth is, if you are a woman, and someone threatens to murder you online, it's overwhelmingly likely that no help is coming, and you're on your own.
First, it's not because you're a woman. If you're a man, woman, or other and someone threatens to murder you online, it is overwhemingly likely that no help is coming because no one is actually coming to murder you. There is no actual threat. Some 14 year old is saying nasty things to you to get a rise out of you.
And yet you claim this is a serious threat and somebody needs to come protect you. You were not "driven from your home" by angry gamergate neckbeards. You'd have a point if you left because an actu
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Re:credit to slashdot and brianna for doing this (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, the amount of sexism from the interview was amazing. Wu really should clean up that attitude, it hurts her cause far more than helps.
Oh...you meant the comments asking valid questions about Wu's harassment and doxing of others and the questions of what sex Wu was born, as that relates pretty heavily on her positions. Sorry, continue on.
Re:credit to slashdot and brianna for doing this (Score:5, Insightful)
>> obviously, the tech world has a problem with sexism.
Sorry but its very not obvious to me.
I've worked as a software developer for 35 years, for many different employers in several different fields and countries, and haven't yet seen anything other than environments that encourage women developers, treat and pay them equally, and mostly actually cut them more slack than the guys get.
The girls were obviously getting an easier time than guys during my CS degree at university too.
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you have the social observational abilities of a clod of earth if you don't see the language that guys engage in about and around women
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I've seen far more hostility on slashdot than in my workplace
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That's because you read Slashdot all day while you're at work.
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i don't see the problem
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i think my description of people who engage in sexism is pretty objectively accurate. stupidity is actually something that exists in this world and actually forms the source of some people's low grade opinions. this is objectively true. someone who doesn't believe in climate change, for example, is a low information person fed propaganda rather than proof. they are therefore, objectively, low iq, stupid people. these are opinions and people you do not respect. not because i am disrespectful by default, but
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how am i suddenly a racist asshole?
can i call you a pedophile if we're just going to smear people without any proof or purpose now?
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i don't know who you are, you came and found me and sought me out here. you hide your identity, a coward. you accuse me based on a supposed longstanding awareness of my past (really just smearmongering insults). so are clearly a bully and a stalker
you are the warpath against me, a *warrior*, out to seek *justice* against my behavior on this *social* network
you're such a blind loser
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show me an example of the harassment you claim
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That's what it is though. It's not feminism for the sake of equal opportunity. It's feminism for the sake of misguided personal gain at the expense of everyone else.
Modern feminism has become about being equal+ rather than just equal.
Re:Thanks.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it's fair to say men can't talk about women's issues because they're men. That just creates a closed loop where any outside argument can be shut down by saying "well you're not a woman, so anything you say is invalid". That's the sort of thing you see a lot from hard line feminism - the idea that nobody but them can truly understand the argument, and we just have to take their word for it. Other SJW groups tend to do the same things. Any time you hear something like "check your privilege" or statements which point in that direction, it's a sign that the person you're talking to probably has no reasonable rebuttal to an argument.
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A man can speak from a position of sympathy, but never a position of experience. This is the difference. Just as an Indy developer cannot speak from a position of experience compared to all women developers.
Re:Thanks.. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a great deal of irony in that statement. Do you think men never suffer harassment, or discrimination? Are these things which are exclusive to women?
Do you not see how hypocritical it is to shut someone out of an argument based on gender?
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I can't say I, as a man in tech, have any clue as to the harassment my female coworkers go through. I can be sympathetic of it, but I cannot speak from experience of being sexually harassed, or harassed because of my gender. Do you not see the difference here?
I also don't claim to be an expert on the harassment that women in tech go through. Even if I were to transition to female (as Wu allegedly did), I would not claim to be an expert on the harassment that women suffer in tech.
On the other point I was
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That's the sort of thing you see a lot from hard line feminism
An interesting perspective. I've never seen a feminist, hard-line or not, espouse such a thing. That argument seems to exist exclusively withing groups like GG and AVFM, who apparently have inside information in to the secret feminist cabal that's out to destroy the world.
Sorry about that last bit. I just can't take you conspiracy nuts seriously. Particularly when you spend so much time and energy arguing against your own imagination.
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No, that's bullshit. If you're going to shut down an argument, shut it down by attacking the failings of the argument. Not the gender of the person making the point. All arguments should arrive at a weight of 0 until valid points are made to either support, or debunk it.
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Doesn't seem to stop feminists from spouting off what it's like to be a guy, generalizing and stereotyping men as they go. The real catch is that their spouting often becomes state and institutional policy everywhere. That's quite a privilege, so perhaps feminists should check it.
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I see you didn't get the memo.
Feminism WAS about equal rights, then when they got them they realized some things actually require hard work and talent. Thus feminism is now about equal outcome, regardless of merit or ability.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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That needs a stable solution, not a chaotic one. (Score:2)
In that case, you add x kg to the lighter side. But that's not at all what gets advocated. They advocate adding x kg to the X group or the Y group or whatever, rather than helping all disadvantaged people equally. If we always help those who are disadvantaged equally--regardless of whatever traits they were born with--the scales will tend towards balancing and the group interests will tend to be more aligned, as we're not deciding which groups are worthy or not worthy of society's support.
If we're always
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The internet! Where EVERYONE actually gets the 'equality' they all claimed they wanted!
Ummm... No. See, as you point out, women can't express themselves freely because, by virtue of being a women, they will be treated unequally the instant their gender is known. That is not the case for men, who are free to reveal their gender as people tend to assume that anonymous users are men. You insist that anyone who's not a straight white male must hide some aspect of themselves to avoid unequal treatment. That's not equality, it's oppression.
This isn't complicated.
Re:Thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)
The truth is, if you are a [life form of any kind], and someone threatens to murder you online, it's overwhelmingly likely that no help is coming, and you're on your own.
There, I fixed it for you.