Dear Threatener(s) of Anita Sarkeesian:
When I read your threats, here’s what I think: You are scared shitless. You are terrified that women will take away the things that give structure to your life. You are so scared that all you can do is spew hate and make threats. You fear that if women come into “the club,” it will change and there won’t be a place for you.
You are scared of women because somewhere, somehow, you were broken.
You learned to hate yourself for “weakness,” for love, for taking emotional risks. Maybe you were hit by your father as a boy and told that boys don’t cry. Maybe you were abandoned by your mother and that has made you afraid to trust anyone again. Maybe you were bullied by other kids and there is still a hot core of shame in you which you run, run, run from because it hurts so much. Maybe you were sexually abused. Maybe you had no specific traumas but lived a life of constant stress and loneliness. Maybe you were raised with luxury and things as a substitute for love.
You know what happened to you.
Whatever it was, it made you feel that women are your enemy. I don’t say think because it’s deeper than logic or the rational mind. It’s your emotions, your self, your soul.
Women didn’t do this to you.
You didn’t do it to yourself either.
You need to have compassion for yourself.
You have learned that surviving in the world means having power, and that power is expressed through violence. Games tell you this over and over. You kill to win. You feel powerless in real life, so you crave the power that you have in games. You have now discovered that making threats gives you power in the real world. You finally feel strong.
It’s a lie.
A terrible, hopeless, brutal lie.
You’re going to continue to tear yourself apart with rage and hatred and the desire to kill, and it’s not going to make things better.
The enemy within is more frightening than anything you will face in any game or movie. That’s who the fight is against. Fight against your own self-loathing and despair. The only way you are going to feel safe is by making a safe place within yourself, not outside.
It’s hard. It’s horribly hard to surrender like that. You have to rip away all those scars you’ve built up and make the wounds raw again. You’ll feel flayed, exposed, helpless. You’ll hate yourself for feeling that way and will try to use that hatred to make new scars.
But if you can do it, if you can find the bravery to confront your own pain, that’s how your life will stop being ruined and start being whole.
