Out Of Many, One

The great thing about #Gamergate is that it is, metaphorically speaking, a target-rich environment. Sometimes I think to myself that #Gamergate is the best thing that ever happened to me, because it educates me about radical ideologies like feminism and motivates me to think critically.

The social justice warriors of the anti-#Gamergate Overwatch keep telling everybody who will listen that #Gamergate is all about harassment of women in gaming. The reality is that there is plenty of mischief on both sides of the debate, as was evidenced yesterday when Shanley Kane (Twitter handle @shanley) posted Milo's telephone number, and invited her flying monkeys to annoy him.

I wasn't aware of her before this incident, so I looked at her Twitter timeline, and it seems her latest crusade is directed at Linus Torvalds, because of some remarks he made at a Linux conference in New Zealand. He was asked about diversity in the Linux world, where, according to Business Insider flying monkey Julie Bort, "women and minorities are appallingly scarce."

Torvalds responded, "I don't care about you. I care about the technology and the kernel. All that [diversity] stuff is just details and not really important."

Bravo. Torvalds has created this beautiful thing, the Linux kernel, and it is open source, meaning that anyone who has merit can contribute to making it better. The kernel doesn't care if the coder is Indian, or Trans, or whatever. The only people who do care about that are diversity bean-counters, and they contribute nothing of value to the kernel.

I wanted to learn who this @Shanley is, and why she wants to "depose Linus." One of her tweets yesterday, to @valleywag, said "...I'm not a "Diversity activist" i'm a fucking FOUNDER AND CEO of a better media company than YOURS." She does have a "media company," called Model View Culture, but she will have to work harder to dispel the notion that she is a "diversity activist." Because it's right there in the masthead: "Model View Culture Technology, culture and diversity media." Their very mode of production seems to be agitation for diversity.

Curious, I clicked on the link to a story by Kẏra, entitled "How to Uphold White Supremacy by Focusing on Diversity and Inclusion." Ordinary feminism isn't good enough for Kẏra, because "cisgender white women will dominate women’s groups that aren’t run by...trans women and women of color."

Her main thesis is that the "current reframing of affirmative action as an initiative to promote diversity" is a "toxic effect of liberalism." Liberalism, she asserts, is a set of "ideas [which] value a certain perception of equality at the expense of those who suffer due to social inequality." "Liberals," she contends, "are able to demand that protesters remain totally peaceful, pacifist, and nonviolent." That sounds to me like she condones violence as justified means to her ends.

Her final paragraph contends that "assimilation doesn't equal liberation," that in fact, "assimilation equals death. When we talk about diversity and inclusion, we necessarily position marginalized groups as naturally needing to assimilate into dominant ones, rather than to undermine said structures of domination."

The unofficial motto of the United States is E Pluribus Unum, which means "out of many, one." The original reference was to the citizens of many colonies or states forming a single union. The current meaning is understood as suggesting that out of many peoples, races, religions, languages, and ancestries has emerged a single people and nation. Just as the efforts of many have culminated in a robust kernel, like Linux, so the contributions of all citizens are necessary to make this a more perfect union.