Rad Fem Org Who Plotted #TakeBackTheTech Accuses GamerGate of “Cyber Attack”

Get ready to read the funniest fucking shit of the fall season. If you’ll recall, Seattle4Truth did an awesome video which spotlighted some shady things a UN backed outfit was up to. They were basically cooking the books in order to try and show some false groundswell of “harassment.” Freedom of speech is not something we should be compromising for hurt feelings and we definitely shouldn’t let some phonies fake the record. If someone threatens violence or breaks the law, then they should be punished. Other than that, I think people should be able to say whatever they want online. It’s why I have such an open policy here on my own comment section.

Anyway, back to the funny shit you’re about to read. The people who spearheaded this campaign put out a press release yesterday. It’s just now getting around this morning. I’m not sure if it came out late, or what. Given the complete failure of their last campaign, the incompetence shown here doesn’t really surprise me. The unintentional hilarity in this post is simply off the charts. Since it’s a press release, I’m just gonna reprint the whole thing. In it, they accuse GamerGate of a “cyber attack”:

Today, Friday the 9th of October 2015, misoynists, trolls and a variety of people who associate with the #Gamergate hashtag decided to occupy and corrupt the #TakeBackTheTech and #ImagineAFeministInternet hashtags by posting thousands of anti-feminist and misogynistic tweets and memes. This attack is the response to a tweet chat organised by the Internet Governance Forum, Best Practice Forum on Countering Online Violence and Abuse, to discuss the impact of such violence. The volunteer who was organising the tweet chat also received an email in her personal inbox declaring the launch of the attack to “destroy” the campaign. This online attack against feminist activism online is deliberate, planned, and coordinated and it’s only one example of the attack that feminists face online.

Take Back the Tech! is a collaborative campaign to reclaim technology to prevent violence against women. It started in 2006 and works with local partners to run campaigns online and offline to raise awareness of technology-related violence against women and girls, promote digital safety and amplify women’s voices online.As a hashtag, #TakeBackTheTech has been used by activists to draw attention to issues of online violence against women, and to organise around periods like ‘Sixteen Days of Activism against Gender Based Violence’. #ImagineAFeministInternet first came into use in 2013 when the Association for Progressive Communications convened a gathering of over 50 activists in Malaysia to discuss what a Feminist Internet would look like – open, digitally secure, safer for feminist activists. Increasingly #ImagineAFeministInternet has become more popular as digitally connected feminists have come together to conceptualise what a safe, activist online space would look like.

Today’s cyber attack by the trolls emphasise that more than ever feminists and activists need to respond swiftly to online violence. Our organisations, movements and allies need to support the digital security of women’s rights defenders online. More than ever we need to #TakeBackTheTech and #ImagineAFeministInternet. As individual activists and members of various social justice activists we call on you to do the following:
Report abusive accounts to Twitter

• If you feel so inclined, create alternative accounts to push back against the trolls
• Reclaim the #TakeBackTheTech and #ImagineAFeministInternet hashtags
• Support the process of documenting instances of online violence against women
• Highlight the importance of feminism, technology and women’s rights online
• Share knowledge of how to end online violence against women

Support #TakeBackTheTech and our efforts to #ImagineAFeministInternet

The post goes on to list Jac Sm Kee (@jhybe) as the woman to talk to about all this. She’s the one of the coordinators for all this. Here she is talking on Seattle’s video. She says all kinds of things, so watch the full vid if you want the entire story:

Here’s the email that S4T sent one organizers. It was cited as an example of #cyberviolence by the press release:

To me, its hilarious. Is it “in your face?” Yes, of course. It’s hardly an act of violence, though. That’s the problem. These braindead idiots are cheapening our language and poisoning the discourse, all so they can get a leg up on their ideological opposition. It’s pathetic and it’s wrong. No matter what your political persuasion is, you need to fight this aggression against free speech right until the very end.

More on this story as it develops throughout the day.