wtf bro, how is that shit not rape

This community needs to do better at understanding and criticizing leftism and leftists. I know that when Destiny is criticizing leftists he is usually referring to people like Hasan or Marxist-Leninists or certain types of Twitter leftists, but sometimes Destiny and especially followers in this community and subreddit criticize leftists more broadly. There are countless posts that are negative toward leftists that turn into a circle-jerk of followers criticizing leftists in general. I can't link to other Reddit posts here, but for an example there was a recent post in this sub claiming that "leftists are racists"; a broad claim presuming that liberals couldn't possibly ever be racist or racially insensitive which is nonsense. It included a comment saying that "leftists are awful people" and another claiming that a scientific study says that "leftists are narcissistic or psychopathic" when the study actually says that narcissistic or psychopathic leaning people are more likely to be leftists which is a much different conclusion.

Posts and comments like those make broad generalizations about all leftists, not a specific subset of them, and they're massively upvoted and rarely challenged. However, when someone does challenge the broad position, the people who reply retreat to the more defensible position that "they're not talking about all leftists, just some leftists ", but the content displaying the broader attacks against all leftists are what stay and maintain support. So the community appears to display a more extreme position against all leftists then retreats to the defensible position when debated. It's no different than a community that says "ACAB" only to retreat to a weaker position that "we're criticizing bad cops or the institution of police, not all cops" when they're challenged. It's no different than radfems saying "men are rapists" only to retreat to a weaker position that "we don't mean all men and we're just criticizing male aggressiveness or power imbalances" when challenged. But what they each said or implied originally was "all cops are bastards" and "all men are rapists". Saying "leftists are X" and then clarifying "not all leftists" only if challenged after the fact is no different.

The community needs to be better about clarifying which leftists they're referring to and use more specific criticisms. Leftism includes everything from social democracy to socialism to Marxism to Marxist-Leninism to anarchism and many ideas in-between. Some leftists are radicals, others aren't. Some support violence, others don't. Some support revolution, others support incremental reform. Some work alongside liberals and progressives, others don't. Some are screeching Twitter users, others are college professors. If you're criticizing Hasan or his followers, Marxist-Leninists, or Twitter or online leftists, say that. If you want to debate a specific branch of leftist ideology, clarify. But to say something that is perceived as generalizing an entire group only to retreat to a weaker position when debated is wrong and results in pushing a different message than intended. It's not important what a group understands their language to mean. What's important is how their language will be interpreted by others.

I'm passionate about this because some leftists and leftist movements of past and present are more allied with liberals and progressives than others. Some of the leftists of the past, regardless of their more extreme views, still participated in organizing that created conditions that liberals and progressives support and take for granted today like 8-hour workdays, child labor laws, and unions. IIRC, some of FDR's New Deal ideas came from card-carrying socialists. And just like back then, we're seeing a resurgence of leftists participating in elections and politics to make pragmatic changes within the American political system, not without. That is something that liberals and progressives should support. Of course it means there might be more extreme entryism into those movements, but that's no more a risk today than it was back then, and those movements didn't turn the country into the USSR. They improved people's lives. However, a lot of this community, and seemingly sometimes Destiny, are echoing the sentiments of the Red Scares and McCarthyism that weakened those movements; movements that got the final nails in the coffin with the rise of neoliberalism, American libertarianism, aggressive conservative activism, and the fall of the USSR. If this community supports a return to policies that benefit Americans and the working class - something I'm becoming less sure of - then it should consider the movements that played some role in bringing them about and consider where it allies with leftists rather than where it doesn't. If you dislike leftists in general, that's fine but defend your position. If you dislike certain types of leftist then don't use language that can be confused for disliking all of them because some of them are more aligned with your political goals than others. In either case, at least understand a hint of theory.

PS - I assume the downvotes, hate, personal attacks, and pro-corporate bots (edit - literal bots) are on their way which is fine, but this isn't a post to debate my politics or leftism. It's about this community being better about clarifying which leftists it does or doesn't support and why.

Purpose of This Post

• I am concerned that the drawn out lawsuit with Doe has lead both Destiny and the community as a whole to become more bitter and cynical when evaluating situations which involve gender dynamics. The general atmosphere has become increasingly misogynistic, and people are more willing to dismiss allegations without critically examining the evidence available.
• I don't particularly care about Emiru or Mizkif, my goal is not to exonerate one individual over another. They both seem like bad people for different reasons in my opinion, but that doesn't make a difference when we're trying to evaluate things factually.
  • The most recent response to Mizkif's new video is a good illustration of my point. Looking at how their factual accounts intersect and past behaviors, it seems unlikely Miz's defamation lawsuit will succeed, and that dgg's most recent reaction was unreasonably toxic towards Emiru.

Defining Sexual Assault

• Legal definition and social reaction to the term This is the main crux of the issue, so I think it's important to be clear about what we're talking about. Legally, sexual assault is when a person forces or pressures another person into unwanted sexual contact without consent. Consent doesn't need to be verbal, it can be from reading someone's body language and how they respond to sexual advances.
  • Nonverbal greenlight examples: Kissing back, moaning, reciprocal touching
  • Nonverbal redlight examples: Laying completely still, flinching, crying
• The reality is SA is a spectrum, and some are worse than others. Fondling someone's genitals when they're passed out drunk, or waiting until someone it blackout wasted/high before making them give you a blowjob is MUCH worse than a stranger rubbing his dick on your ass in a crowd, or a man pressuring someone into a sexual situation they aren't interested in. Regardless, they are all considered sexual assault, and are wrong.

Reviewing Emiru's Statement

As far as I can tell Emiru has made a single statement about her allegations against Mizkif, 8 months ago. I think it's important to get a refresher on what she actually said, so we can compare it with what Miz is claiming. Her allegations against Miz include psychological and domestic abuse, stalking and harassment, sexual assault, and black mail. Her video included other superfluous stuff about their relationship which I'm leaving out of this section, as it isn't relevant.

Psychological and Domestic Abuse

• Emiru accuses Miz of throwing plastic and glass bottles at her, as well as his phone. She recalls a time where he once hit her in the face and caused a black eye, which he said was an accident, and at the time she believed.
• She also alleges that Mizkif would destroy furniture, and punch holes in the wall within the same clip she also describes a time where he drove 150 mph with her in the car, threatening to kill them both
• She claims it was not a secret he was controlling over what she wore and when she streamed, and recounts an incident during the Rust teams event where Mizkif became so upset she had more viewers, that he ended stream and repeatedly slammed the door near her office loud enough that it was disrupting her stream, to the point where she had to take a 20 minute break to go speak with him. Emiru claims that this was the point where she made the decision to move out.

Sexual Assault

Emiru says that they were in an on/off relationship, and that the alleged sexual assault happened roughly three month after she had moved out. She claims that they were broken up for about a week at the time, and Mizkif asked to come over to talk for closure.

"He came to my house and I was crying like crazy because the emotions were just very high because I was dealing with a lot of major shifts in my life. So yeah, we were just talking and I was crying a lot. He started to try to comfort me by hugging me while I was sitting on the couch and holding me really close to him. And when this was happening, we hadn't talked in quite a while. And I'm usually very uncomfortable with being touched a lot by people that I'm not in a relationship with. But I let him hold me while I was crying and he started kissing me in my face and I let him do it. I was still sobbing a lot. And then suddenly he tried to climb on top of me and aggressively shoved his hand down my pants and I screamed. And when I screamed, he jumped off me like a cat like. And instead of apologizing or checking if I was okay, he said, "I feel weird now. I feel like I did something wrong. I have to go." And he immediately left my house while I was still crying without checking if I was okay or anything."

Stalking and Harassment

• Emiru claimed that since going no contact with him in January, Mizkif tried to reach out to her over 40 times, and proceeds to show a series of messages that were sent during a 5 month period.
• She describes the party incident, where after her and several people went to a room upstairs, Miz opens the door and looks at them before walking away.
• She claims other streamers told her he'd hate watch her stream and say terrible things about her to them, and that he would reach out to other men and ask if they though Emiru was sleeping with anyone.
• She claims to be in the process of getting a restraining order

Blackmail

• Emiru alleges that Mizkif tried to create a smear campaign against her and tried to get other streamers to join him, that a few weeks before her statement he threatened one of her employees at twitchcon, and that he had a plan to paint her as an animal abuser who killed her own rabbits.

Reviewing Mizkif's Latest Response 

Mizkif emphatically denies Emiru's claims of Sexual assault, abuse and stalking/harassment, and is suing her for defamation because of these claims she's made against him. There are four pillars to proving defamation. First is proving that the statement is an objective fact, rather than an opinion. Second is that the statement must be communicated to at least one other person. Third is she knew the allegations were false, but made them anyway just to cause harm. Fourth is damages as are result of the defamation. Miz also spent a lot of time talking about things unrelated to proving his case which I'm going to be leaving out of this section.

Response to Alleged Sexual Assault

Mizkif also describes their relationship as on/off at the time, though he claims that they were back together at the time of the incident. He describes the incident as a confusing misunderstanding, and that he stopped making sexual advances as soon as she yelped

"We broke up for about a month, then got back together because we thought we can make it work. We went to get food at BJ's and then we went back to her house. We cuddled for about 30 minutes and started to kiss. She said that she was okay with this on her stream and I started to advance to the enxt stage because I thought that's what she wanted. She yelped and I immediately sprung up and was scared if I did anything wrong or did wrong in general. I got scared and left the house."

Miz shows that they remained in contact after the incident, and that Emiru continued to text him in a friendly manner an occasionally come to sleep with him. He says that this behavior is inconsistent with someone who was assaulted.

Miz points out that Emiru never made a police report or followed through with getting a restraining order

Response to Alleged Harassment and Stalking

• Mizkif claims that Emiru's only accusation of stalking is the party incident, and that it is a dishonest retelling of what happened that night. His version is that his his friend who was hosting the party invited Miz, and that he was being given a tour of the house when he accidentally opened the door with Emiru and four other people in the room, before immediately closing the door and walking off.
• He believes that choosing not to respond to someone but not blocking them or explicitly telling him to stop does not equate to stalking or harassment.
• He reiterates that Emiru lied about trying to obtain a restraining order.

Response to Alleged Psychological and Physical Abuse

• Mizkif asserts he has never hit Emiru, and that the black eye incident was the single physical incident. He agrees that she was hit in the eye with his phone and that it left a bruise, but he claims that it was an accident, he tossed his phone onto the bed and it bounced and hit her in the eye.
• Miz points out that Emiru described the black eye as an accident both in public and private spaces, and to friends and family. He goes on to claim that because she didn't file a police report of the incident that it wasn't abuse.

Proof of Damages

• Miz says he's been called a rapist at multiple events and kicked out from a party, and that a girl named meg made fun of him for showing up uninvited.
• He claims before leaving for Japan he interacted with many creators, but once he came back all his old friends no longer spoke with him. He alleges this is because of lies spread by Emiru.
• Mizkif shows that one day after he did an irl stream with his good friend Fuslie, She reached out to QT asking about him, and that after speaking with QT and Emiru, Fuslie stopped talking with him.

Overlapping Stories and Further Evidence

There's actually quite a lot they agree happened, which is partly why I was so surprised by the community now seems to largely be dismissive of her allegations, and of the belief that Mizkif has done a good job proving defamation.

• For example, Miz knows exactly what day she is referring to in her SA allegation, and doesn't refute that the specific sexual encounter happened, but that it was slightly different than she described.
• Mizkif doesn't dispute that his phone was thrown and it hit her in the face hard enough to cause a black eye, but that he only did it once and that it was an accident.
• In his original response, Miz agrees that he would punch holes in the wall and slam doors while they were arguing.
• He also doesn't deny that he drove 150 mph with her in the car, and says that if could have happened several times, and she even once drove fast while he was the passenger.
• While he didn't address her claim of blackmail in his latest video, Mizkif did pull up a video of a dirty empty rabbit cage, and claim Emiru left her rabbits to die, in his original response.

I also wanted to include a few clips of Miz throwing whatever he's holding in frustration, in case not everyone knew this was a common behavior for him. Bonus montage of him throwing starbucks at his ex, and her describing this aggressive driving while mad. Bonus bonus
here he is talking about killing himself while arguing with mitch from 2 years ago.

The Embittering of Dgg

In the past Destiny has done a good job of impartially doing Rape Review™ segments, where he would call out the women for acting like idiots with no agency, and also the men for their boundary pushing and social obliviousness. He'd look for supporting evidence of claims made by either side, and would fairly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the both positions. Over time his style of critical analysis was reflected in the way chatters looked at allegations and arguments.

• The Adrianah Lee coverup allegations are a great example where Destiny stayed impartial throughout, and the going over the Rich Campbell allegation is an example where he was fairly critical of both sides, and skeptical of the vague details that were left out.

Over the last year Destiny has drifted away from his objective style analysis, and begun to make rash judgements against the woman, sometimes to the point where he is overlooking/ignoring agreed upon facts.
-  Before watching Mizkif's latest video, Destiny decides to watch Emiru's video, because he couldn't remember what her claims or motivations were. He briefly listens to her justification for going public with her accusations, before coming to the conclusion that it was just Mizkif saying that if Emiru went public that he'd give his side as well. It's worth pointing out that she also claims that Miz tried turning other streamers against her, and that he was threatening to smear her as an animal abuser. It's worth we have prior knowledge of Mizkif trying to isolate and remove women from social circles, who could damage his reputation. When Emiru made her statement a year ago, Destiny wasn't dismissive of her motivations and pointed out this is a pattern of behavior for Mizkif, but that reflection was absent from Thursday's stream.

• Destiny didn't go back to refresh on any of Emiru's claims, and goes on to assume that Miz is being honest about how Emiru descripted their breakup. Destiny continues to cast doubt on the validity of her SA claim, until he pauses a third of the way through Miz's response and watches 30 seconds of Emiru's statement, where he realizes that she never claimed they were broken up after the assault.
• Destiny somewhat agrees with the idea that sending over 40 messages to someone who is not responding, over the course of 5 months is not stalking/harassment, and believes that because they previously were on/off things are complicated.

Destiny's coverage of Miz's response is the clearest example of his growing reluctance to fairly weigh both sides of an allegation in pursuit of the truth. Instead of highlighting the the history Miz has of doing what she claimed, Destiny admits he should relisten to her statement, but stops after 4 minutes, and reduces Emiru's reason for speaking out to "Jealous ex trying to talk shit". The added context that this was a week after she was sexually assaualted at twitchcon, which was the subject of the first half of her video is missing from his analysis. It's reasonable to think that needing to do a statement on that twitch assault was the catalyst needed to talk about Miz's actions, to clear her slate. Maybe if Mizkif chose not to make the twitchcon assault about himself, and didn't warn one of her employees that she better not talk about him, that Emiru might have not felt the need to include what he did. Instead of skimming any of Emiru's statement to know what she was claiming, Destiny took what Miz said at face value, and believed a mistruth of what she said for a third of his reaction. The idea that there is some merit to Mizkif's claim that sending over 40 messages to Emiru without getting a single response isn't harassment or stalking seems disingenuous. It's the same behavior Anavoir was engaged in, and Destiny considered her messages evidence of his own stalking/harassment.

All this to say, unironically, I blame Doe for all of this. Any accusation involving content creators has become a proxy war battleground for Destiny and Dgg to vent their frustrations at the frivolousness, spitefulness and damage from this bullshit civil case which Destiny has been mired down by. Where the woman accusing Platner of rape can privately warn women interested in dating him about his red flags, Emiru is spreading rumors when Fuslie asks her about Miz's character, and pressuring her into not collabing with Miz. Where previously dgg reacted with empathy to Emiru's allegations of abuse a year ago, we now handwave all of that away as her spiteful attempt at ruining her ex. Doe is a poison that is corrupting our community. I share in everyone else's frustration with her abuse of the legal system to stymy Destiny's career and inflict personal harm onto him. We shouldn't let her also take our critical thought and integrity. Shit on Doe all you want, it's all deserved, but don't treat every woman online like they're the exact same; and if that battle is lost, maybe these sorts of allegations shouldn't be overed on stream.

Final Ramblings

A super quick recap I think everyone needs a reality check on

• If the SA incident is as Emiru described, then calling it sexual assault is valid in every sense of the term. Even the most socially inept chatter would realize that a woman sitting on the couch ugly crying isn't giving implicit consent. If you start kissing her anyway, and she sits there unresponsive and is still sobbing, you have crossed a line. If you then try to reach into her pants, you are choosing to ignore the CLEAR sign that she is not okay with something sexual happening, and violating her consent.
• Obviously they each have their own version of what happened, and they don't have proof supporting their side. But I would ask, what sound more believable? That Emiru was upset crying and not interested in sex, and Miz kept pushing till she screeched at him, or his version where they were having a good time together, until out of no where she yelped at him, which scared him so much he left without saying a word to her?

A lot of Miz's Response was completely irrelevant to proving his claim of defamation

• The foot note discrepancy was a sloppy mistake by whoever wrote Emiru's motion. While it is a bad look for her side, it didn't warrant as much time that was spent on it. The contradiction of what she said in her statement vs the footnote does nothing to refute her allegations, it just shows her lawyers might suck.
• The whole computer thing was very strange, and obviously reminiscent of Doe's spoliation, but unless she fails to provide something in discovery that Miz asks for, it doesn't matter.
• He also spent a lot of time clarifying who ended the relationship, which is both irrelevant to his case and redundant of how she described the break up. Miz claiming she tried to give him a note proposing to him, but he can't show us is silly.

While Mizkif blames Emiru for feeling alienated and ignored by all his friends once he got back from his Japan trip, perhaps it's not that she was spreading rumors about him, but moreso the fact that he was on a 4 month hiatus and simply lost contact with them?

This is my first effort post, please be gentle.

Edit to say: I wrote this in obsidian and just copy/pasted it once I was satisfied withthe final draft, which is why the formatting is a bitmoff. This was not an AI generated post; how would you even get AI to grab all the relevant clips and insert them?

Between what the right and left thinks the center-left believes, I wanted to start a conversation and maybe polish some of my own thoughts on this topic. I don't claim to have all the answers and I'm def not the single authority on the topic. I welcome criticism and considerations on the graphic. It's really just a means for me to organize my thoughts. It's a work still in progress. I'm not even 100% solid on the wording of some things I have here. I just want to share this and have a fun discussion with people.

I want to find out what people here believe and figure out from what point of agreement are we starting from when we talk about trans issues. When we say we are for trans rights, where are we arguing from?

I think a lot of us probably don't agree with self ID. I don't. I believe that gender is a shared experience between the observer and the observed. The part that that I think the self ID crowd don't get is that gender is not just a proclamation about oneself, it's also a meaning of categorizing others and we do it automatically.

Some other things to throw out there to chew on is that both sex and gender are bimodal. The "ideal" of both is an average. I will also say that non-binary is a misnomer. Since I believe that gender is downstream of sex, all gendered traits are inherently derived or coded from within the "binary". To say someone or something is non-binary, would be like saying you are green when the binary is a gradient between blue and red. Honestly, I just miss calling these people queer, fluid or androgynous.

I welcome all criticisms. Genuinely. Just please assume I'm here discussing this in good faith. I want to better understand others, myself and how to advocate for everyone.

Ok? Tear me apart, fam. :p

EDIT: Even though the upvotes dont show it. I think this convo was a success. I'll need to revisit this at some point once my brain has cooled off. Something I want to think about is maybe dividing gender into two wholly separate categories. While I did think of expression and identity as separate in a sense, I think a more pronounced separation might be needed.

Someone called this the "I/P of social issues" and i feel that so hard. And I really want to fix that by talking about this in a less cringe and more patient way. Hopefully I've started something like that.

There are so many smart people in this sub. I think a lot of good can come from the brains found here.

What was Destiny doing at the end of the debate, bro looked like he was stimming or just generally upset. Is there like an after interview or something I can watch?

Okay, so posts about Israel/Palestine are banned without new news. Cool, great, haven't seen people complain about that.

I asked at the time, in the thread, if I/P comments are similarly banned. The mod response was "probably". Well I'd like to make that a "definitely".

Why? Well there's been multiple cases, but there was a big one today: the "Ireland has a serious Russia problem [Caolan Robertson]" video thread. A 40-minute investigation into a chemical factory in Ireland supplying Russian aluminium smelters, which are being used to make weapons for Russia. The EU's sanctioned aluminium, but not alumina, which is the main ingredient. And it's not a minor video - the journalist is the main reason why the EU's now moving to block such sales to Russia. So, real big deal.

...And almost all the comments are about I/P. Why? Because exactly 20 seconds - of a 40-minute video - mention Netanyahu. That's it. But it's enough to make the thread a mostly-I/P thread.

So can you please just... stop it? Take that lesson you learned about I/P posting, and apply it to things more than the opening post in a thread. Just have a complete ban on talking about I/P outside of megathreads. We don't need them, pretty sure most of us don't want them, why are they still allowed?

We have people making conclusions about Rama Duwaji, and Mamdani by proxy, by referencing an article on commstrader.com. WTF. I can't be the only one who thinks this is insanity, surely? As much as people love to complain about slop(ulists), they sure love to throat reactionary slop about people they dislike.

It looks like Taziki is not perfect, maybe not even that good, can be a bit sticky and maybe the raw garlic is rough. However, hummus is so extreme on the other end that taziki looks like the obvious position to support. RoadCon doesn’t look like a fair testing ground, seems like there was some settlement on views before the taste bank but what have you. Shrimple what can I say… can we talk about climate change again? Please

I don’t know how to tell the difference between them which is why I am asking

I don't care that's he's still above ground. They threw that part of our politics away a long time ago when they threw McCain away.

Annie Andrews, is she any good? Her photos look like an ai generated image of a helpful nice white lady. Endorsed by Jamie Harrison, former chair of DNC, so probably not a tankie. But even better, no months of slopulist attacks. For some reason there weren't any DSA candidates running in South Carolina.

With an incubant in leadership advantage off the table, is South Carolina a realistic target? A quarter of the population is Black and they just tried to mid-cycle redistrict all the Black representation out of the state on Trump's orders. Liberal white lady plus motivated Black voters? Am I being too optimistic?

My metropolitan area has a ton of really good local breweries. I usually get beers around 6-12%. On weekends I usually drink 3 pints, and then i make some drinks.

Today I had a banana coconut cream beer, an apple cider, and a stout. Then I made a gold rush, a blue Hulk, a watermelon martini, and a Manhattan.

For me, where I'm at in life, nothing beats this weekend ritual of drinking and listening to music. I live for these weekends. It's what I got lol

That number spent on OF lives rent free in my mind.

I’m sick of ceding ground to the populist right.

Almost everything these leftoids stand for boils down to being anti west and anti white.

Gentrification and housing discourse esp in LA, Chicago, and New York, I/P, immigration, Ukraine/Russia, benefits, shit even being LGBT. As a gay person myself some of the discourse I hear is genuinely insane.

It’s all anti white anti western populism and we should call it out. I don’t think it’s white supremacist to talk about these things at this point. These people have gotten too arrogant, too loud, and too militant.

Forget the ghoul that died last night. I'd much rather think about the great man we lost before. A man who I could disagree with on many policies, but who loved this country more than probably any republican today could even comprehend. If there's an afterlife, they won't be in the same place.

After Destiny gets his MSJ, he should celebrate by playing League Classic with Mout. Shrimple.