Culture
There has been a trend over the past decade or so in which a very specific part of America’s political spectrum appears to be simultaneously advocating for “free speech” in ways that have nothing to do with the American system while also attacking all kinds of other speech and insisting that speech not happen. Hypocrisy isn’t something new to American politics, of course, but the levels at which this is occurring are starting to get damned ridiculous. For example, the phrase “stick to sports” has entered into the popular lexicon. It existed prior to recent times, of course, dating back at least as far as Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, and Billie Jean King. But the reactions to figures such as Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James, who was told by one cable news anchor to “shut up and dribble,” has taken a tone that just doesn’t fit with modernity.
It’s something we might as well deal with as a culture, because this attempt to chill the speech of others is spreading well beyond the realm of athletes. The barrage of attacks against Disney by the state of Florida and its officials very much sent the wrong message to roughly half the country: if someone says something you don’t like, there will be government-led retaliation. When leaders do that sort of thing, they send a message to their constituents: companies have no business commenting on public policy, particularly if we don’t like their commentary.
Which is how you get this filtering all the way down to Bungie, a company that makes video games, dealing with blowback simply because the company put out a statement indicating it disagreed with a leaked SCOTUS draft decision that would eliminate federal protections for abortion and that it would support its own employees however it could.
At Bungie we believe that everyone has a right to choose their own path and that freedom is expressed across all facets of life. The leaked draft decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade represents a blow to freedom in America and is a direct attack on human rights.
By creating a divide between those who posses [sic] the fundamental right to make healthcare decisions that are right for them, and those who do not posses that same freedom, this decision, should it become final, will have far-reaching consequences that will be felt for generations across socio-economic lines.
Bungie is committed to safeguarding the freedom and privacy of its employees and providing support to all employees affected by this decision.
Standing up for reproductive choice and liberty is not a difficult decision to make, and Bungie remains dedicated to upholding these values.
I don’t care where you stand on the issue of abortion in general, there isn’t a thing to be angry about in this statement from either side. Bungie, as any company, is made of people. People who have opinions on the laws, or lack of laws, that effect their lives and the lives of their employees. This public statement was also done as much to be heard by Bungie staff, some of whom may be worried or frightened as to what this all means for them, as it was signaling its values to the public. And yet the company’s announcement via tweet came with some replies that were the equivalent of telling the company to “shut up and make video games.”
The Destiny-maker, which is set to become a Sony subsidiary in the coming months, went on to defend its position in the replies to a heavily trafficked tweet that went out to the company’s 2.8 million followers.
In response to a tweet arguing that Bungie “shouldn’t even be involved in this bunch of political BS,” Bungie wrote, “We’ve chosen our side and it wasn’t difficult. Our company values exist beyond our games.” In another response (to a since-deleted tweet), the company writes that it would “prefer to use our platform to make the world better for our employees and beyond.”
People, get it in your heads: Bungie is made of people. People have opinions on public policy. There is no more sense in telling the company to not make those opinions public than there is your pushing back publicly on those public opinions. It’s literally the same thing.
And even more than some individual, Bungie is a company that makes culture. Asking that nobody at the company comment on things happening to our culture is silly in the extreme.
So, no, don’t stick to sports. Don’t stick to making video games. Don’t stop arguing and discussing your disagreements with them, either. Either side telling the other not to talk isn’t just failing to advocate for the “free speech” so often cited, it’s also just behaving like an asshole.
Filed Under: culture, culture war, free speech, politics, video games
Companies: bungie
I don’t care where you stand on the issue of abortion in general
I do. Because the side that wants to re-criminalize abortion should be made to remember what that means in full.
Criminalize abortion and every rapist and domestic abuser will gain the ability to hold a woman’s reproductive care (or a miscarriage) over her head. Hell, that Texas bounty hunter law incentivizes the family of a rapist whose victim terminated her pregnancy to sue his victim (and her doctors) for that abortion.
Criminalize abortion and any person convicted of that crime will likely be convicted of a felony. In numerous states, convicted felons don’t have the right to vote. And that’s to say nothing of miscarriages investigated as abortions/murders.
Criminalize abortion with no exceptions for the life of the mother and women will die. Not only will women not be treated in states that ban abortion, states with Texas-like bounty hunter laws will prevent women from being medevac’d to another state for treatment out of fear of being sued. Women having miscarriages or eptopic pregnancies may not even say what’s wrong with them when they go to the hospital out of fear that she could be charged with murder. And that doesn’t even get into the issue of “back-alley” abortions, which will continue to happen even if abortion is made illegal again.
Criminalize abortion and the next logical step will be to criminalize contraceptives. After all, if the most extreme anti-abortion activists get their way (and they’re well on their way to that outcome), they’ll claim that life begins at the moment of fertilization?—and anything that prevents the egg from being fertilized is akin to murder. (You think I’m joking, but I’ve seen at least one news story this week where such a claim was made.)
If you support criminalizing abortion, you support women dying. You support throwing women who don’t die in jail?—even if they have an abortion for the sake of saving their own lives. You support making abortion a privilege for the wealthy, who can leave the country and have an abortion in a country with a well-functioning healthcare system without anyone really giving a shit.
So yes, I care where someone stands on the issue. I care because it’s the difference between supporting a woman’s right to decide her own fate and supporting the idea that a woman’s only purpose in life is to have babies regardless of how she was made pregnant?—or how old she is, for that matter.
(And yes, I’m using “women” instead of “people” or “people who get pregnant” because it’s simply easier to do here.)
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So free speech is perfectly fine, just as long as it’s not conservative.
otherwording (or in-other-wordsing)?—?noun
Example: You will often find the phrases “in other words” or “so you’re saying” at the beginning of an instance of otherwording.
See also: strawman; your post
That’s your take. Unless by ‘conservative’, you mean Ron DeSantis. Because what he did wasn’t him exercising his right to free speech, it was him violating the First Amendment to punish Disney for doing the same. So I guess your statement should really be “So free speech is perfectly fine, just as long as it’s not egalitarian.”
So I guess your statement should really be “So free speech is perfectly fine, just as long as it’s not egalitarian.”
A more accurate phrasing would perhaps be ‘So free speech is perfectly fine, so long as it is conservative speech.’
Or that. ?
Did you read the article? Did you understand the words used? Because It look like you launched you conservatives are being censored trope without reading a word of the article.
Which ‘conservative’ speech is being penalized, be specific both in which speech and what the penalties are.
The Conservative trope of “There is no such thing as transgender!” of course. ?
Techdirt isn’t the government.
And if you sincerely believe in the intellectual garbage that is the modern Republican Party, ie, NeoNazism, COVID-denial and terrorism, then the door’s over there, use it before you start being homicidal.
I have no idea where you got that idea.
This is just saying that this one particular “argument” (“Stick to sports/movies/musics/games/whatever”) is an old, tired, lazy “argument” that never made sense to begin with, goes against the spirit of having free speech to enable public discourse with everyone who wants to do so, and chills the speech of others, and people should (not “must”) stop using it. You can say it, and this isn’t about telling people who express conservative views or disagreement with people expressing non-conservative views not to do so; rather, it’s saying not to use this particular argument to shut down someone else who’s expressing their political views or views on a social issue or major event regardless of the political leanings or beliefs being expressed in the process.
Even if it’s mostly or entirely conservatives making this particular argument, this isn’t about criticizing a conservative viewpoint; indeed, there’s nothing inherently conservative about the argument. It’s only saying to use better arguments to support your viewpoint (whatever that may be) and/or attack another’s viewpoint (whatever that may be). (Frankly, even just asserting “you’re wrong” or “I disagree” without anything else would be a far better argument than saying “people/companies/organizations involved in the X industry should not express their opinion on anything not directly about X”.) Which viewpoint is being expressed is completely and utterly irrelevant to the point of the article.
(BTW, for those who are going to try to draw comparisons between this and moderation, there are many important distinctions, not the least of which being that the people being criticized in the article are saying certain people and companies shouldn’t publicly express political views at all, not merely within the private property of another against the wishes of the property owner. These are two very different things, the difference between saying “Don’t say that here,” and, “Don’t say that at all,” and while it’s not censorship, it’s a lot closer to censorship than any instance of an online platform moderating content on its platform (absent coercion by the government).)
It existed prior to recent times, of course, dating back at least as far as Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, and Billie Jean King.
I…think you may be a little confused about Jackie Robinson.
Either side telling the other not to talk isn’t just failing to advocate for the “free speech” so often cited, it’s also just behaving like an asshole.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
I… think you may be a little confused about Jackie Robinson.
Oh? How so?
It existed prior to recent times, of course, dating back at least as far as Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, and Billie Jean King.
I…think you may be a little confused about Jackie Robinson.
I think the one confused here is you, not the writer.
Either side telling the other not to talk isn’t just failing to advocate for the “free speech” so often cited, it’s also just behaving like an asshole.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
Do you have a rebuttal? I fail to see the problem. Either side telling the other not to talk at all (at least about a certain topic) is certainly not advocating for free speech even if it doesn’t necessarily contradict it, and I don’t think saying that people who say “Stick to X” as their only response to someone’s opinion are a$$holes is inherently wrong.
Stick to trolling. :b
The barrage of attacks against Disney by the state of Florida and its officials very much sent the wrong message to roughly half the country: if someone says something you don’t like, there will be government-led retaliation.
In clear violation of the First Amendment. We don’t have a constitution like the US’ in the UK, but Staffordshire County Council has never taken away Alton Towers’ Section 70 licence whenever it doesn’t like what Merlin Entertainments has to say on any subject.
ION, whilst Bungie has been on the wrong side of history on previous occasions, they’re bang on this time. They haven’t come out as specifically pro-choice or anti-abortion, they’ve only said that it’s their employees’ decisions to make, but they will support those employees whatever their choice.
They haven’t come out as specifically pro-choice or anti-abortion, they’ve only said that it’s their employees’ decisions to make, but they will support those employees whatever their choice.
That’s literally being pro-choice.
I meant by their words, not their actions.
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Bunch of fucking baby killers. Women who get abortions as birth control are murderers.
Sure thing slaver.
Women who get abortions as birth control are murderers.
Only if they get it as birth control? Is it not murder if the abortion is done to save the life of the mother?
Remember: Anti-choice conservatives believe a 13-year-old girl isn’t mature enough to know whether she’s gay, but is precisely mature enough to have a child?—even if having that child kills her?—if she’s made pregnant by rape.
Actually, females are never gay, they’re lesbian. Calling them gay only serves to linguistically erase pre-treatment gay trans men.
Definition of gay **
**1 a : of, relating to, or characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to people of one’s same sex
Literally the first definition in Merriam-Webster’s definition of gay.
The most common use of gay is for men, but it’s just fine to use for women too. Lesbian is only used for women because the etymology of the word originates with Sappho of Lesbos..
That is the modern meaning of the word “gay”, only added to the dictionary in light of its overuse by lesbians. The proper word to describe same-sex attraction is “homosexual”.
It was used to refer to lesbians for as long as I can remember.
How old are you? 10?
To wit: Ellen didn’t say “I’m homosexual” or “I’m lesbian” on that fateful episode of her sitcom.
… said nobody with any capacity for rational independent thought, ever.
Takes one to know one.
We know you want to murder the lot of us.
Yukcuan88
Yukcuan 88
The woman was standing her ground against the crazed fetus.
I’m sorry, but they aren’t the only ones who get abortions (victims of rape or incest, people with dead or nonviable fetuses inside them, and people who risk serious injury or even death should the pregnancy continue to term, for example), and many of the ones who effectively do so are often ignorant about or unable to access effective methods of birth control, with most of them doing so because they are simply unable to afford pregnancy full-term or child-raising.
Furthermore, nearly all elective abortions occur well before the third trimester, when the fetus’s brain begins to be able to react to stimuli, and, most would argue, not a baby yet or maybe even a living human person distinct and separate from the mother, and historically and even according to the Bible, life for the purposes of what is considered murder doesn’t begin until after birth. Even if it is or should be considered immoral killing and is or should be illegal, that doesn’t make it killing babies or murder by many definitions.
Also, statistics demonstrate that banning abortions does not actually reduce the number of abortions performed or reduce the number of fetuses and babies killed; it only increases the number of infants who die after birth, the number of people who die from or during childbirth, and the mortality rate of abortions. If what you want is to save babies and the unborn or to reduce abortions (at least elective ones), banning abortions will not help reach those goals. There are other ways to do so more effectively, especially improved universal sex education (and not “abstinence-only” sex ed) and improved access to and education about birth control, not to mention improved welfare programs so that being unable to afford costs associated with full-term pregnancy, childbirth, and raising a child will no longer be a major factor in why some choose to have abortions.
How dare Bungie have an opinion on a monstrous change to the legal landscape, don’t robots know that they haven’t yet gotten their civil rights movement and are just suppose to- hold on, I’ve just been told that Bungie is in fact filled and owned by humans, and that those individuals are the ones that made those statements.
Strange, I thought people were allowed to hold opinions and voice them, I guess for the people telling them to shut up and get back to making games that only applies when they aren’t using their own property to say something those people don’t like.
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What about the Baby’s body? What about their choice to not being murdered by the one person who is supposed to protect them?
Do you support abortion in cases where a woman could die unless she has an abortion?
Quick hypothetical for you: Say an already born kid finds themselves in dire need of a blood or organ donation or they will die and the only donor available in time is the father. Should the law require that blood or organ donation, and should the father be considered a murderer if for whatever reason they refuse?
My desire to live doesn’t mean I get to use someone else’s body against their wishes for that end, that’s why things like blood and organ donation are considered voluntary, as the alternative as TAG pointed out in another thread is the dead having more bodily autonomy than pregnant women.
Abortion is murder
Then there doesn’t need to be a separate law making it illegal. Murder is already illegal. If you really believe that abortion is murder, then start arresting mothers and charging them with Murder 1, because an abortion is premeditated. Doctors? Hitmen. Murderers for hire.
And while you’re at it, since (generally speaking) a death has some degree of investigation associated with it, let’s spin up the miscarriage task forces. Oh, your baby died in utero? Well we need to look into that to see if you were at fault in any way and possibly guilty of negligent homicide or worse.
We’ll also need birth defect investigations. Had a beer or cigarette during the first 5 weeks when you don’t even know you’re pregnant? Child abuse. We’ll be putting that kid into foster care.
We would do these kinds of investigations if it was a 5 year old that was affected, so if a baby is a person, we need to be doing it for them too.
Forcing a woman to carry to term is doing far worse than just “protecting the unborn.” It’s putting the child so far ahead of the mother that if she becomes pregnant, the law turns her into an incubator instead of a person.
I think that politicians should stick to politicking and stop making medical decisions for other people.
Glad I saved this copypasta…
Abortion
Denying women the right to abortion means women have less bodily autonomy than a corpse.
Here’s the thing, people.
It doesn’t matter when life begins.
It doesn’t matter whether a fetus is a human being or not.
It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about a fertilized egg, or a fetus, or a baby, or a five year old, or a Nobel Prize winning pediatric oncologist.
That entire argument about what is or is not technically alive is a deliberately distracting, subjective, and unwinnable argument that could not matter less.
You cannot be forced to donate blood, or marrow, or organs, even though thousands die every year, on waiting lists.
Your organs cannot be harvested after your death without your explicit, written, pre-mortem permission.
NOBODY has the right to use your body, against your will, even to save their life, or the life of another person. Even if you have already died.
Denying women the right to abortion means women have less bodily autonomy than a corpse.
That’s it.
That’s the argument.
Claiming other people have no right to make statements or they should stay in their lane…
What say you to the Catholic Bishops trying to get SCOTUS to rule that an extension to allow victims of priests to sue is wrong?
What say you when those Catholic Bishops try to say that POTUS shouldn’t be allowed communion for DARING to have a different opinion?
Freedom of Religion keeps the state from demanding we all follow a religion, but it is also supposed to protect us from religion demanding we adhere to their beliefs.
They submitted 4k letters from women who regretted having an abortion, and those 4k women are supposed to be speaking for all?
Most of them are religious type people who feel the pressure from their faith community to feel bad about it.
They submitted a letter from an IVF baby who was frozen for 2 years before being born to support the idea that life totes starts at conception and can survive, with millions of dollars in medical support systems so all babies should be allowed to be born.
Why aren’t these people staying in their own lane?
A baby can’t eat steak, so we should ban steak.
Sounds stupid because it is, because some women regret having an abortion no women should be allowed abortions.
Because some drunks can’t control themselves we should ban booze.
Because some assholes shoot places up we should ban guns.
That one I really want them to explain how it is different.
A vocal minority is demanding the entire nation do what they want, not for science but for THEIR religious beliefs and people who are supposed to uphold the constitution are helping them violating the rights of other citizens by forcing them to adhere to religious law they do not follow.
There is no reason outside of some people dislike it or my religion says no to block abortion, there is no valid reason to allow the laws to support only some peoples beliefs.
The claims of its to save the babies is a distraction.
They wouldn’t wear a mask to save lives of pregnant women.
They wouldn’t get vaccinated to save lives of pregnant women.
Its sort of like how they claim life is sacred while cheering when someone with an iq of 56 who was railroaded to death row is executed.
The claims of its to save the babies is a distraction.
They wouldn’t wear a mask to save lives of pregnant women.
They wouldn’t get vaccinated to save lives of pregnant women.
Its sort of like how they claim life is sacred while cheering when someone with an iq of 56 who was railroaded to death row is executed.
They just keep leaving off the second half of the sentence. ‘All life is sacred… so long as it doesn’t cost me anything.’
One does wonder how many of the protestors outside clinics would run like hell if a woman going in said, you’ve changed my mind but you have to sign this contract to pay for all of my prenatal care, medical care for delivery and be responsible for 18 yrs of child support for the baby.
‘I can afford an abortion, what I can’t afford are the medical bills related to pregnancy and birth, and definitely not how much it would take to raise the kid, so time to show how much you really value the ‘sanctity of life’ by putting your money where your mouth is.’
Yeah, somehow I doubt there would be many/any takers for an offer like that.
Don’t forget that there is a major reason that some churches hate abortion and birth control and people who are not heterosexual and making babies. For centuries, the church has existed to control people and siphon off a portion of their labor and/or earnings. At various times the church has even insisted that people of a certain age and gender go to war for them.
Well, you can’t control and demand money or service from people who aren’t born. And if you aren’t going to make babies that will be raised to “fear the lord church” then you are kind of useless to them, because they are looking to increase their strength and power for the long haul. Every religion or organization that wants to control people and extend their influence has insisted that their members have children if at all possible, and have even said things like if God has closed a woman’s womb then she must be cursed (it would not surprise me of some of the women burned at the stake as witches were simply infertile women).
IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH LOVE, and everything to do with power, control, and money. That is why once the child is born, they can so easily wash their hands of the matter, because now it’s the woman’s problem. Oh sure, she can give the baby up for adoption, but have you ever noticed how many adoption agencies are run by religious organizations? They will try their hardest to place those babies in the hands of “good, god church-fearing” parents and only if they can’t find anyone like that willing to add a child to their family (or if forced by the law) will they consider giving the child to a atheist or non-traditional family. Of course if the child is not white then all bets are off – they will place that child with any family that will take him or her, as if they were trying to get rid of a three-legged puppy.
That is the interest of the religious people in all this. In their view women are just supposed to be baby-making factories that provide fodder to the church. However I will just bet that if they could only make abortion illegal for white women, but not those of other skin colors they would go for that in the proverbial heartbeat. That gets into a whole other discussion about why abortion clinics have sometimes been tolerated in more “urban” areas of a state but not in the suburbs (Margaret Sanger, who was the founder of what would become Planned Parenthood, was a supporter of eugenics and although not overtly racist herself, she was more than willing to reference the works of others who were into race-based eugenics).
Now all that said, I don’t personally favor abortion, but as a man I think it is none of my business to tell a woman what she should do with her body. People have opinions on all sorts of things but that doesn’t mean those opinions should be made the law of the land. There is such a thing as the tyranny of the majority, but we don’t even have that here because all indications are that the majority of people support leaving Roe vs. Wade in place.
I would say that if you really want to protest this decision, the best way to make a statement would be to stop going to church, and never put another dime in a church collection plate. Don’t support charities run by churches. If possible (and I realize that not everyone can do this), don’t attend weddings or funerals that are held in churches. Don’t let your kids go to Sunday School or to a Vacation Bible School or some similar form of child indoctrination. Refuse to attend meetings in facilities that are rented from churches. If there is more than one hospital in your town, use the one that’s not affiliated with a church or religious organization. And when I say church, I’m specifically referring to the kind that support having the law tell women what they can and can’t do with their bodies (if you attend a church that doesn’t try to control its members or support right-wing political causes then use your discretion; I realize not all churches are equally bad). Not only will you be a more mentally healthy person by not subjecting yourself or your family to such a controlling organization, but you will also be hurting the church in the one thing that matters to them – attendance and financial support.
If even 20% or 30% of the people who disagree with the direction the country is going would start shunning churches and religious organizations, I believe it would have an impact. And no, you won’t go to “hell” if you don’t go to church, what you probably think of when you think of “hell” was, according to the scriptures in their original languages, a place only for the devil and the fallen angels. But the English translators took three or four very different words and translated them all as “hell”, and that’s has supported the church’s contention that if you don’t listen to them and obey them you’ll be eternally damned, which is one of many big lies that preachers tell. People seem to forget that the only people that Jesus really despised were the religious people of his day, and especially the ones who made all kinds of rules for others to live by but would not lift a finger to help any of them (see Luke chapter 11 starting with verse 37). So you are not “sinning” if you don’t listen to them or obey everything they tell you to do, particularly when in your heart you know they are wrong.
Oh and by the way, apart from what religious people claim to know (because they think god speaks directly to them, I guess), how do we know that a soul doesn’t enter the body of a baby just shortly before birth? I only mention that because the more extreme church people seem to think that the soul enters at the moment the woman’s egg is fertilized (without any proof of that whatsoever). But there are a growing number of people who believe that souls live many lives, so if one life never gets started or is ended prematurely, those souls simply go on to their next life (if you want some evidence of that, look into the works of of the late Dr. Ian Stevenson and/or Dr. Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Note I did not use the word “proof”, just “evidence”). My point being that far from the separation of church and state, here we have laws that codify a particular religion’s beliefs into law. And our Supreme Court seems perfectly okay with that. I won’t go into all the implications of that (it is really late as I write this) but it is something that should be quite distressing to anyone who believes the law should be neutral toward all religions. If we didn’t want the Church of England dictating how our people should live, why would we be any more comfortable with the Catholic Church and the right-wing fundamentalist churches dictating what should be in our laws?
I think this article is confusing the timeline a little bit. “Keep politics out of games”, “Politics don’t belong in games” and the like are common criticisms just like with the response “Games are political, just see things like Bioshock”. This has been going on for a few years now, well before the whole Bungie/Disney thing. There is always controversy when some popular game implements some progressive position.
Games are political, because humans are political creatures.
And politics is an extension of herd mentality.
Telling people to stop being political is pretty much telling people to stop being human.
Not just Bioshock, but Final Fantasy VII, Fallout 1, and Fallout 2 (that’s all I can think of off the top of my head).
Final Fantasy VII
Yeah, a lot of people tend to forget these days that Final Fantasy VII was about a group of eco-terrorists committing violence against a corporate government that was (literally) killing the planet before the story veered into the “we gotta go kill a god” territory that JRPGs love.
The entire Fallout series, I would have thought. Aren’t all the games set in a world where the Cold War never took place?
This is distinct from “game companies shouldn’t talk about politics” when it comes to speech outside of the games they make.
On the other hand it’s good that assholes are freely exposing themselves as assholes. I mean, don’t you really want to know that the person speaking is, in fact, an asshole as you hear them speak? It’s a win-win for free speech! Makes moderation look like a loser’s paradise.
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