Torture and Gamergate

The Senate report on torture came out a few days ago. Unsurprisingly, it said we tortured people, sometimes for no good reason. A number of people, including (perhaps shockingly, such loons as Ted Beale) pointed to this article which said that willingness to torture became a "litmus test of seriousness with respect to the fight against terrorism." We tortured, in short, to prove our toughness. Then Dick Cheney emerged from his undisclosed location and growled that the report was "a load of crap," thus proving the point.

I was struck by this. Here, in Dick Cheney, we have a physically weak man who never served in the military, never even marginally was at any personal risk, acting "tough" and "serious" and "responsible." In Gamergate, we have a bunch of couch-sitting / Cheetos-eating geeks acting "tough" about "ethics in gaming journalism" and "raising serious concerns."

I've discussed subtractive masculinity. Since when has playing a video game been "masculine?" If you dropped a typical gamer back into the 1950s, I suspect the men of the era would use many adjectives to describe a gamer. "Masculine" would not be among them.

In short, in both instances (torture and Gamergate) you have insecure people desperately trying to become secure while avoiding any risk to themselves.