Month: October 2014 (Page 2 of 3)

Writer’s Note: if more harassed women have stories they want to share – on both sides or outside of Gamergate altogether – and can provide links that are well-sourced and thorough, add them to the comments. I will try to add the best, most thorough stories to this page. Unfortunately, most pro-GG stories I could find are just a couple of tweets, and therefore lack much in the way of context or depth. Ladies, tell your stories, in longform, for the record. It’s important.

This article is about harassment. And it’s not just about attacks on anti-gamergaters.  Some are #gamergaters who were harassed – either by antis or anarchistic assholes.  But many of these are from events that predate #gamergate, in totally different scandals and explosions.  As an aside, I’ll note that the stories coming from the pro-#Gamergate faction are much lighter and sketchier, because they aren’t capturing the experience in any sort of verifiable longform. This is probably a factor of the anti-GG side having a lot of writers on that side of the fence. Still, I encourage the harassed to tell their story in a way that can be archived in a readable format for posterity and verifiability. And I will note that #Gamergate has been saving harassment, large and small, aimed their way in this Tumblr.

But it’s pretty clear to me that most people on both sides are good people who believe harassment is wrong. It’s also pretty clear that a tiny minority of people on both sides, and probably on a third side that is ‘pro-watching-the-world-burn’, are using the outrage of these people in order to camoflauge doing some truly heinous shit, with the express intent of keeping the outrage engine going.

I’ve said from the beginning, as long as there are people harassed, and my friends and colleagues are afraid to speak freely on the topic – pro or con, then I don’t give a shit about the cause of journalistic corruption.  Worrying about what an op-ed writer said a month ago, and whether some shitty independent games award was won legit means NOTHING to me because right now, bullies (on both sides) are trying to silence dissonant voices.  Most frequently, that means women, especially women who don’t ‘pick the right side’.

I’ve been concerned about harassment of women online since even before gamergate – I believe the fact that Sony and Xbox won’t address that what you see on FatUglyOrSlutty is something any online gamer will tell you is all-too-normal — THAT is actually holding the games industry back from expanding our markets (and cynically, our sales and profits as well).  You shouldn’t need thick skin to play a video game.

So I’m so happy that people finally want to talk about harassment.
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