Rebuttal of the AmazingAtheist's Gamer Gate Video

Welcome to my almost dissertation-length rebuttal of the video above. I haven't had the chance to do a good shredding of an AmazingAtheist video since I had my own YouTube channel but I am sure it won't be too difficult to shake off the rust. :P

TLDR Summary: I illustrate how the video is filled with intellectual dishonesty, hypocrisy, a false dichotomy, baseless assertions, things taken out of context, poor-reasoning, jumps in logic that border on conspircy theorist type of silliness, sweeping generalizations and fallacies in general. In a nutshell, his arguments are easily refuted with basic logic.

"Zoe Quinn is a feminist (here we go), social justice warrior who is known for using lies, harassment and manipulation for her own personal gain."

Okay, lets break this down shall we? We are not even a minute into the video and we already have our first attempt to bash feminism. How is this actually bashing feminists as a group you ask? Oh, that is an excellent question, thank you for asking. :P Well because it is an attempt to establish feminists as the "enemy" here, which is a common theme for TJ and the video continues to do so later but I will get to that in a moment. What this "us vs them" narrative of gamers against feminists does is create a false dichotomy.

Why I am a Feminist

* I am a feminist because I have studied history and understand that without feminism, I wouldn't have the majority of rights that I enjoy today. That is a hint for the women who apparently have not studied history.
* I am a Feminist because I enjoy being able to vote.

* I am a Feminist because I enjoy being able to own property.

* I am a Feminist because I enjoy being able to get an education.

* I am a Feminist because I enjoy being able to get a job.

* I am a Feminist because any time a woman tries to speak up about issues that affect us, we are either verbally or physically attacked by some men. If its on the internet, you will be called ever name imaginable, threatened with violence, harassed, etc... If its in the real world, we have seen things like the Montreal Massacre, where many women were murdered by an Anti-Feminist. The threat of another Montreal Massacre was recently used to scare Anita Sarkeesian into canceling her speech at a university campus. Feminists in middle-eastern countries are also under the threat of
death, such as Malala Yousafzai, who was shot just for promoting education for women. And we can't forget Pussy Riot, the feminist  Punk band in Russia who were thrown in prison just for speaking out about feminism and LGBT rights.

Anti-Feminist Tactics: Why are some men this afraid of Feminism?

If you are a gamer then you probably already know that Anita Sarkeesian and some other women have been targeted with death threats just for speaking out about sexism in gaming. It reached the point where the case is being investigated by the FBI and Sarkeesian had to leave her home for a while. She also recently had to cancel a speech at a university campus after someone called in a threat to turn it into another Montreal Masscare. For those of you unfamiliar with the Montreal Massacre, it was a mass shooting committed by an Anti-Feminist, where 14 women were murdered on a college campus. Why did he do it? He said he was fighting Feminism. Trying to intimidate women into being silent about these issues is the most common tactic you will see from Anti-Feminists and if you dare to actually speak about the threats then they say you are just "playing the victim."

I have been threatened quite a few times myself over the years, especially back when I had my YouTube channel. However, I will NOT be intimidated into being silent. When they have to resort to using tactics like the ones below, it shows that even Anti-feminists realize they are losing the battle.

Anyway, I thought I would list the common tactics used by these people so that you can know what to expect.

Wow, so I challenged a rather hostile MRA to a debate. (Updated)

In one of my previous posts I mentioned the Anti-Feminist YouTube channel that uploaded a fake video where this guy who sounds like he is probably 14-years-old supposedly "destroyed" a mysterious unnamed (red flag #1) feminist in a debate. The only problem is that you could clearly tell the so-called "feminist" was actually a guy using voice-changing software because of how robotic the voice sounded.

I made a post pointing out his blatant dishonesty and challenged him to a real debate with a real feminist. Apparently he responded to my email tonight (a day later) saying that he accepts my challenge and then he immediately (like 15 mins after he sent the email), posted this in my thread on his YouTube channel:

What? lol Yes, apparently I backed out of the challenge even though I had sent him an email asking who I would be debating, whether or not he was okay with my terms and what specific topic related to feminism he would like to discuss.

Wookie's Debate Guide

I have always enjoyed debating ever since I had my first real taste of it as I was growing up. I had a mentor who was constantly challenging my views and knowledge of certain subjects so I suppose it was natural that I would become interested in debate and joined the debate team in high school. Whether it is a formal Lincoln-Douglas discussion or just some quick one on an internet forum, I have always enjoyed a good debate. Ideally, a debate is a civilized exchange of opposing ideas, even though it doesn't always work out that way. However, that is always what we should be trying to achieve and it is still a great form of "mental workout" regardless of how it turns out.

My favorite topics are science, history, feminism, religion and philosophy. Both my parents and my mentor pushed me pretty hard to learn as much as possible as I was growing up so my education extended well beyond what I learned in school. Yeah, it was stressful at times but it has given me the opportunity to be able to successfully debate people who are often twice my age.

Anyway, enough about me! I mostly posted this to give you guys some advice to help improve your debate skills. :P

Note on the Feminism/Ancient Rome Debate with Lana Voreskova

The debate may or may not be over, depending on when and if she responds. If it continues, I will update it accordingly. :P My debate challenge to MRAs and Anti-Feminists is still open as well. So far I have challenged three people. Thunderf00t declined. Alison Tieman initially accepted but then didn't respond to my emails about setting it up. And the Manhood Academy.... Well, we know what happened there. lol

If any MRA YouTuber or blogger wants to have a discussion about any feminism issues, I would like to do a formal debate on Google Hangouts with a third-party moderator. We can stream it live or post it on YouTube. It doesn't matter to me.

A Debate About Feminism and Ancient Rome - Part Three

Before I get into this next post I want to say it is interesting how you asked me to start providing sources for my information and yet you don't seem to think you should do the same. I provided sources for all of my arguments in the previous post and yet you only provided a single source for ONE argument and it was just a link to the twelve tables. As a history expert, one would think you would have access to plenty of sources for all of your arguments.

Also, judging by your lack of acknowledgement, I am assuming you want to pass on discussing Disposable Male Theory? Wise decision.

If you want to show that women were “oppressed” and you want to make an honest case, then you need to show that women were oppressed relative to men. If I say for example that African men were oppressed during slavery in the Americas I am being dishonest. My statement is true, but it is only half the truth because it contains the false implication that African women were not oppressed.

Oppression is subjective and it is relative and it must be taken in the context of the time. As men and women in most societies had different rights responsibilities and obligations and as their lives and freedoms were limited in different ways, it is very difficult to make a clear case either way, but to simply keep giving examples of how women were discriminated against while ignoring the often even harsher ways in which men were discriminated against, is transparently dishonest.

A Debate About Feminism and Ancient Rome - Part Two

Again, Lana's responses to my arguments are in the quotation marks.

ME: The first thing I noticed is that you didn't even attempt to address the fact that women were required to be under guardianship of a male, who made most of the decisions for her. In fact, you seemed to avoid it like it had Cooties. :o Anyway, that law essentially gives a woman the status similar to that of a child, which is what one would expect to see in this type of patriarchal society.

You also didn't address my question about a formal debate on Google Hangouts early in the upcoming year. Would you be interested in an actual debate?

"There were five different classes of Roman citizenship for most of Roman history. Cives Romani, Latini, Socii, Provinciales, and Peregrini. Actually there were more than twenty if you want to be pedantic, but I am dealing with major citizenship groups and ignoring the subsections of those groups. Women of Roman bloodlines, born south of the Rubicon and north of Sicily were Cives Romani; the highest class of citizen."

A Debate about Feminism and Ancient Rome - Part One

Note: Some irrelevant and/or repeated comments were removed from both of our posts too reduce the size of these already massive posts. No words or sentences removed changed the context of any points or were important to the discussion. EDIT: Unfortunately, when we came back from the holiday break, I discovered that she had inexplicably turned off replies for the thread so we can no longer make new comments. I did try to contact her about reopening the thread so that we can continue our debate but she hasn't responded yet. However, I will continue trying and hopefully get a response at some point soon. If she reads this, I would also still like to have a live formal debate on Google Hangouts in the near future.

WARNING: This is a very long debate so grab a Pumpkin Spice Latte and something to eat before you sit down to enjoy this discussion. :P

So I was watching a video about Anti-Feminist women and noticed someone claiming that men have always been discriminated against worse than women. Naturally, I just could not resist getting involved in the discussion and ended up in a debate with the person in question, especially when she started getting cocky and telling people they shouldn't "cross swords" with her because she supposedly knew more about history than everyone else.

Upcoming debate with Sargon of Akaad

That's right, folks! Sargon has accepted my challenge to a debate on Google Hangouts for the upcoming reboot of my old YouTube channel. I am probably going to ask Noel Plum if he wants to be the moderator so that Sargon can have someone he is comfortable with for this debate.